Word of the Day
Learn a new word every day! The Dictionary.com team of language experts carefully selects each Word of the Day to add some panache to your vocabulary.
to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like.
The verb bamboozle, “to deceive or get the better of someone by trickery or flattery,” has no certain origin even though many explanations, more or less plausible, have been suggested. Bamboozle first appears in print in 1703; in 1710, Jonathan Swift, in his letter The Continual Corruption of our English Tongue, printed in The Tatler (No. 230), denounces bamboozle and other now unexceptionable words: “The third refinement observable in the letter I send you, consists in the choice of certain words invented by some pretty fellows; such as banter, bamboozle…. I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress…, but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.” By 1712 bamboozle had acquired the additional meaning “to perplex, baffle, mystify.”
the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is appropriate to only one of them or is appropriate to each but in a different way, as in On his fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold.
The grammatical and rhetorical term zeugma “the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is appropriate to only one of them,” is a favorite of grammar enthusiasts (if of no one else). Zeugma appears once in Old English (spelled zeuma, a Medieval Latin spelling) in the Enchiridion (“Handbook”), a scientific and mathematical textbook by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Byrhtferth of Ramsey (c.970-c.1020). Byrhtferth only defines zeuma and translates it into Old English (gefeig “a joining”). Zeuma next appears three times in an anonymous Middle English grammatical treatise from the mid-15th century. The author defines zeuma and gives easy examples in Latin. Zeugma comes via Latin zeugma from Greek zeûgma “something used for joining, a yoking, a bond, zeugma” a derivative of the verb zeugnýnai “to yoke, bind fast.”
very angry.
The adjective frumious is one of Lewis Carroll’s whimsical creations, appearing in his nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" in Through the Looking Glass (1871). Carroll, in a preface he wrote to a later poem, The Hunting of the Snark (1876), where frumious is also used, etymologized frumious as a blend of fuming and furious.
a person who speaks, writes, or reads a number of languages.
Polyglot “one who speaks, writes, or reads several languages,” comes from the Attic Greek polýglōttos “many-tongued (i.e., of an oracle); speaking many languages,” a compound of the prefix poly- “much, many” (from the neuter adjective polý) and familiar in English, for example, in polychrome, polygamous, and polygon. The combining form -glōttos “having a tongue, using a specific tongue or language” is a derivative of glôtta "tongue." Attic Greek is one of the four Greek dialects in which serious literature is composed, the other dialects being Ionic (Herodotus’ Histories, for example), Aeolic (the lyric poetry of the poets Sappho and Alcaeus), and Doric (the traditional dialect of choral odes in tragedy). The other dialects have the form polýglōssos and the noun glôssa, source of English gloss “a marginal or interlinear translation or explanation of an unusual or difficult word or phrase.” Polyglot entered English in the mid-17th century.
a day's work.
If you know that darg means “a day’s work,” you may be able to figure out that it comes from day and work. Darg comes from Middle English daiwerk, daiwark, daiwork “a day’s work or customary service; a day’s fighting; the amount of land that can be plowed by a team in one day.” The development of the sound seems to be from daiwark to dawark to dark and darg. Darg is the usual form in Scotland and North England. In Australia darg means “a fixed or definite amount of work; a work quota,” a sense that is also found as a coal mining term in mid-19th century Northumberland and Durham, counties in northern England. Darg entered English in the early 15th century.
