junket
[juhng-kit]
- a sweet, custardlike food of flavored milk curdled with rennet.
- a pleasure excursion, as a picnic or outing.
- a trip, as by an official or legislative committee, paid out of public funds and ostensibly to obtain information.
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- to go on a junket.
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- to entertain; feast; regale.
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Origin of junket
1350–1400; Middle English jonket < Old French (dial.) jonquette rush basket, equivalent to jonc (< Latin juncus reed) + -ette -ette
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for junket
Contemporary Examples
The only downside for the Congressman was if their junket became public.
On a Congressional junket, paid for by a private party, you have tens of hours of exclusive time with a Congressmen.
I've been on exactly one 10-day junket to China, so I'm hardly qualified to answer that question.
The US China Accounting WarDecember 13, 2012
In an interview the day after the junket for The Town, Affleck resisted being neatly boxed into the comeback story narrative.
“It was like a performance,” Paltrow told an ITN reporter during the Two Lovers junket.
Historical Examples
They'd come on this junket partly to get away from their troubles and their wives.
Attention Saint PatrickWilliam Fitzgerald Jenkins
There were cakes of all varieties; there was clotted cream; and of course there was junket.
Robin TremayneEmily Sarah Holt
Marriage is like the rennet you put into the junket—it turns it!
The Celebrity at HomeViolet Hunt
Stir the junket tablet in the cold water till it melts, and add this.
The Fun of CookingCaroline French Benton
When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had just helped them to junket.
MarriageH. G. Wells
junket
- an excursion, esp one made for pleasure at public expense by a public official or committee
- a sweet dessert made of flavoured milk set to a curd with rennet
- a feast or festive occasion
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- (intr) (of a public official, committee, etc) to go on a junket
- to have or entertain with a feast or festive gathering
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Word Origin
C14 (in the sense: rush basket, hence custard served on rushes): from Old French (dialect) jonquette, from jonc rush, from Latin juncus reed
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for junket
n.
late 14c., "basket in which fish are caught or carried," from Medieval Latin iuncata "rush basket," perhaps from Latin iuncus "rush." Shifted meaning by 1520s to "feast, banquet," probably via notion of a picnic basket, which led to extended sense of "pleasure trip" (1814), and then to "tour by government official at public expense for no discernable public benefit" (by 1886, American English). Cf. Italian cognate giuncata "cream cheese" (originally made in a rush basket), a sense of junket also found in Middle English and preserved lately in dialects.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper