In our monthly Wordnik newsletter (which you, too, can get in your in-box by subscribing to our Word of the Day via email) last month we asked for volunteers for a new feature, our Wordnik of the Month. We got a great response, and are happy to feature Madison Andrews as our very first WotM (pronounced “whottem”)!
Madison Andrews is a journalist, editor, and graphic designer based in Austin, Texas. When she isn’t posting SAT Critical Reading and Writing advice on her blog, Mad Skills Vocabulary, she is a columnist and contributor for A New Domain and Tech Page One. Follow Madison @madskillsvocab, or send her an email.
Of course, we had some questions for Madison …
1. How do you use Wordnik?
I use Wordnik to enrich the educational content on Mad Skills
Vocabulary. I’m particularly excited about our latest feature, Mad Skills Word Search, which I designed with Paul Bonner of NimbleQuick studios.
Mad Skills Word Search is a web app that uses the Wordnik API to provide definitions and examples of SAT words. So, say you’re a student, and you run across the word perfidious in a blog post or word list on the Mad Skills Vocabulary site. You could click on that link to find several different definitions and context sentences for the word.
Word Search is still in the early stages of development, but we’re excited to see where this project will lead. Currently, the only way to invoke the application is to click on a linked word in an article or word list on Mad Skills Vocabulary, but we’ll be adding a search page to the Mad Skills Word Search site. We also hope to eventually allow our users to take advantage of some of Wordnik’s more exotic offerings – etymologies and related words and audio pronunciations.
We’re also interested in building a community of Mad Skills users, and will be doing some other cool stuff in that direction, as well.
2. What’s your favorite thing about Wordnik?
My favorite thing about Wordnik is that it makes language fun, engaging, and interactive. Most students can’t learn new words and truly expand their vocabularies just by memorizing lists of SAT or AP exam words. They need to interact with a word, see several definitions, read lots of examples, hear the word, learn how it relates to other words that they know. Really get to the point where they can almost taste it. That’s what Wordnik provides, and that’s what I hope to provide in a more targeted way for the students who visit Mad Skills Vocabulary. For Mad Skills, the Wordnik API makes that possible.
4. What one thing do you wish Wordnik would do (that it doesn’t now)?
Well, one thing we’re thinking about for Mad Skills is adding an interactive flash card application, and maybe even practice exams for high school and college students, and I agree with many of the users on your community forums that some kind of flash card capability would be a great addition to Wordnik, as well. But really, at this point we’re more focused on the API and figuring out how to take advantage of everything it provides, and we’re very happy with what we’ve seen so far.
5. What are some of your other favorite sites online?
… and whatever site I end up choosing as a replacement for Google Reader,
currently Feedly.
Would you like to be a Wordnik of the Month? Email us at feedback@wordnik.com with your answers to these questions, and enjoy your fifteen minutes of wordy fame …
Filing taxes is a pain but be glad you’re (hopefully) not paying any of these ludicrous levies. From a penalty on hirsuteness to fees for pig-feeding, here are 10 of our favorite bizarre taxes.
beard-token
“Russians who wanted to keep their beards were forced to a ‘beard tax’ upon payment of which a token or receipt was issued. This was the famous Russian ‘beard token.'”
King Henry VIII of England set up a tax on beards in 1535, perhaps as a convenient way to raise funds (the bearded king was himself exempt from the fee). His daughter, Elizabeth I, reintroduced the tax, penalizing “every beard of more than two weeks’ growth.”
The beard-token was introduced by Peter the Great of Russia in 1724. It was a copper coin given as a kind of receipt “to those who had paid the tax of 50 rubles every year for the privilege of wearing their beards.” The czar introduced this beard tax in the spirit of modern reform.
Danegeld
“Æthelred had in an earlier part of his reign levied a land-tax known as the Danegeld to pay off the Danes – the first instance of a general tax in England.”
The Danegeld was “a tax levied in England from the 10th to the 12th century to finance protection against” Danish invaders, otherwise known as Vikings. Danegeld comes from an Old Norse word meaning “Dane tribute.”
fumage
“Another of Sir William Petty’s helps in the arithmetic of population was the Chimney Tax, a revival of the old fumage or hearth-money- – smoke farthings, as the people called them – once paid, according to Domesday Book, for every chimney in a house.”
Fumage, or tax on chimneys, was set up in England in 1662, as “it was considered easier to establish the number of hearths than the number of heads” per household. The tax was repealed in 1689 by William and Mary, who stated that fumage was:
not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man’s house to be entered into, and searched at pleasure, by persons unknown to him.
“The peasants came to understand that what he wished was to break up the Mir, or rural Commune, and to put them all on obrok – that is to say, make them pay a yearly sum instead of giving him a certain amount of agricultural labour. Much to his astonishment, his scheme did not meet with any sympathy.”
In feudal Russia, a peasant absent from his lord’s estate had to pay a special tax or rent called the obrok. Obrok translates from Russian as “rent, tribute,” and is also known as quitrent.
pannage
“The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs – ‘sylva de centum porcis,’ as the old family parchments describe it.”
Pannage was, in medieval England, “a tax paid for the privilege of feeding swine in the woods.” It was apparently a common practice to release domestic pigs in the forest to let them feed on “ fallen acorns, beechmast, chestnuts or other nuts.”
Pannage also refers to the act of pigs foraging in the woods, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), as well as the fallen acorns, etc. that they feed on. The word ultimately comes from the Latin pastio, “feeding, pasturing.”
piccage
“The usual payments made to the owners of markets and fairs are of toll and stallage. In some places, however, piccage, pennage, and other dues are payable.”
If you were a strolling player in Tudor-era England, you had to pay a piccage tax for the privilege of setting up a booth at a fair. Also spelled pickage, the word probably comes from the Anglo-Norma pic, “pickaxe,” perhaps for the act of breaking ground to set up a booth.
poll tax
“The Justice Department, acting swiftly under President Johnson’s orders, filed a federal court suit yesterday to wipe out Mississippi’s poll tax. Under the law, state voters must pay $2 a year to cast ballots in state elections.”
A poll tax is “a tax levied on people rather than on property, often as a requirement for voting.” The term poll tax originated in the 17th century where poll means “head” and comes from the Middle Dutch pol, “head, top.” Poll meaning “the casting and registering of votes in an election” also comes from the Middle Dutch pol, from “the notion of counting heads.” Thus, a poll tax as a requirement for voting has a double meaning: a tax on a person rather than property, and a tax to vote.
In the 19th century United States, the poll tax as a requirement for voting emerged “as a means of restricting eligible voters,” such as African Americans, Native Americans, and poor whites. In 1937, the poll tax was found to be unconstitutional.
scutage
“Continued abuses of scutage, extortion of money from nobles in return for certain privileges, aroused not only the Barons, but the lesser gentry and even the lowly citizens.”
Scutage, also known as escuage, is “a tax paid in lieu of military service in feudal times.” The word comes from the Latin scūtum, “shield.”
sheriff-tooth
“The sheriffs themselves must brood upon the long decline of their once powerful office. Why was the ancient custom of tenure by ‘sheriff tooth‘ abolished? The tenant was bound to furnish abundant good food and drink to the sheriff of his county.”
In 13th century England, the sheriff-tooth was levied for “the service of providing entertainment for the sheriff at his county courts.” Between 1327 and 1377, according to the OED, residents of Derbyshire, a county in England, complained of the sheriff-tooth as “wrongful exaction,” akin to extortion.
wax-scot
“There was at one time in England a due called wax-shot or wax-scot, a gift of wax candles presented to churches times a year.”
Wax candles don’t come cheap, or at least they didn’t in 17th century England. Parishioners were required to pay a wax-scot “to supply the church with wax candles.”
Wax-scot is also known as wax-shot. Shot meaning “discharge of a weapon” comes from the Old English gesceot, which also means “payment.” This is also where we get the term scot-free, “without having to pay.”
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words. Here are our latest selections.
AHLTA and VistA
Jon Stewart: “The Defense Department uses a medical tracking program called AHLTA while the VA uses a generally superior program called VistA, and those two programs are unable to communicate with each other.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 27, 2013
AHLTA, or the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application, is “the electronic medical record (EMR) system used by medical providers of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).” VistA, the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, is the system used by the Veterans Health Administration, the medical system of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
The systems are not entirely compatible, causing major backlogs in the processing of veterans’ disability claims.
arabber
Andrew Zimmern: “Starting in the late 1800s, arabbers were a common sight in east coast cities, markets on wheels, bringing fresh produce to people before there were neighborhood supermarkets and offering a living to African Americans who were barred from taking jobs traditionally offered to whites.”
“Baltimore and Chesapeake Bay,” Bizarre Foods America, March 25, 2013
An arabber is “a street merchant who sells fruits and vegetables from a colorful, horse-drawn cart.” The term seems to come from street arab, an obsolete and now offensive term for “a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city.” (Fans of The Wire will remember that arabbers played a part in several seasons of that show.)
autopsy
Jon Stewart: “Last week the Republican party released its report on what went wrong in the 2012 election, and how the Republican party can reverse its fortune in the future. It’s a document of idealism, principle, and hope.”
Newscaster: “Officials are calling it an autopsy.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 26, 2013
An autopsy is the “examination of a cadaver to determine or confirm the cause of death.” The word comes from the Greek autopsiā, “a seeing for oneself.” An analysis of a finished event is also often referred to as a postmortem, which is Latin for “after death.”
beagling
Andrew Zimmern: “They’ve invited me along to try a very particular kind of rabbit hunting, better known as beagling.”
“The Ozarks,” Bizarre Foods America, April 1, 2013
Beagling is hunting with beagles. The word beagle may come from the Old French bee gueule, “loudmouth.” More on dog words.
dirk
Appraiser: “Now, dirk is basically a fancy name for a type of a dagger or a knife that evolved really from a utilitarian item to something that became very important to ceremonial purpose for the Scottish military.”
“Cincinnati,” Antiques Roadshow, April 1, 2013
A dirk is a dagger in general but refers especially to “the long and heavy dagger worn as a part of the equipment of the duniwassal, or gentleman, among the Celtic Highlanders of Scotland.”
flimflam
Mawmaw: “The man said he’d bring the oil to the house, but I was flimflammed.”
“Mother’s Day,” Raising Hope, March 28, 2013
To be flimflammed means to be swindled or cheated. The origin may be Scandinavian, possibly coming from the Old Norse flim, “a lampoon.”
fuchsteufelwild
Nick: “Its stomp can cause the earth to shudder beneath him. Its muscles secrete a highly concentrated acid allowing him to burn and slice through their victims.”
Hank: “Sounds like our guy. That is one ugly fuchsteu – whatever.”
Nick: “Fuchsteufelwild.”
“Nameless,” Grimm, March 29, 2013
A fuchsteufelwild is a creature, or Wesen, in the Grimm universe that can transform between human and goblin-like form. The word translates literally from German as “foxdevilferocious,” and idiomatically as livid or very angry.
The fuchsteufelwild in this episode refers to himself as “rage.”
mandola
Appraiser: “The mandola is related to the mandolin the same way a viola is related to a violin.”
“Myrtle Beach,” Antiques Roadshow, March 23, 2013
A mandola is “an older and larger variety of the mandolin.” Mandolin is a diminutive of mandola, which means “lute” in Italian.
nerd glaze
Jon Stewart: “I have people who work here, in this office, who disappear for days on Game of Thrones jags, and they just come back with that sort of, ‘Can’t wait – ‘”
Peter Dinklage: “Nerd glaze.”
Jon Stewart: “You just coined something, sir. If somebody doesn’t have nerdglaze dot com right now, you have to register that.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 25, 2013
Nerd glaze is a term coined by Games of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage on a recent episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It seems to refer to an expression of daze and awe as a result of binge-watching a favorite TV show, or awe-struck fandom in general.
Tamsin: “Tikbalang. They’re forest creatures. I hunted them in the Philippines.”
“Delinquents,” Lost Girl, March 25, 2013
The tikbalang is “a creature of Philippine folklore said to lurk in the mountains and forests of the Philippines.” It’s a “tall, bony humanoid creature with disproportionately long limbs” and “the head and feet of an animal, most commonly a horse.” More Asian mythical creatures.
Trojan horse
Cam: “I hide what I want in something bigger and more expensive. Then when she rejects that, we ‘compromise’ on what I wanted all along. I call my method the Trojan horse. You know how I got Lily? I asked Mitchell for triplets.”
“The Wow Factor,” Modern Family, March 27, 2013
The Trojan horse is, in classical mythology, “a large hollow wooden horse built by Greek soldiers besieging Troy during the Trojan War, and left as a ‘gift’ when they pretended to abandon their seige.” The horse “was taken into the city by the Trojans, and Greek soldiers concealed inside came out and opened the gates to the city, enabling the capture of the city by the Greeks.”
Trojan horse has many figurative meanings, including “a subversive person or device placed within the ranks of the enemy”; in computing, “a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software”; and in business, “an offer made to lure customers, seeming like a good deal, that has the ultimate effect of extorting large amounts of money from the customer.”
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Happy April Fools’ Day! On this day that originated in the 1680s with the custom of “sending people on false errands” (or hunting the gowk, as the Scots called it), we’re rounding up our favorite fool words.
Not interested? Check out Google’s newest product instead. Happy gowk hunting!
cat’s-paw
“I see what you are after; but you’ll not wheedle me: I am no cat’s-paw.”
A cat’s-paw is “a person used by another as a dupe or tool.” The term comes from the earlier cat’s-foot, which refers to “the fable or tale of a monkey (or a fox) using the foot or paw of a cat to rake roasted chestnuts out of the burning coals,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
A cat’s-paw is also “a light breeze that ruffles small areas of a water surface,” and “a knot made by twisting a section of rope to form two adjacent eyes through which a hook is passed, used in hoisting.”
cully
“On being let in, the girls of the house flocked round Charles, whom they knew, and from the earliness of my escape, and their perfect ignorance of his ever having so much as seen me, not having the least suspicion of his being accessory to my flight, they were, in their way, making up to him; and as to his companion, they took him probably for a fresh cully.”
Cully refers to a fool or a dupe, or the act of fooling or duping. The origin of the word is uncertain. It may come from cullion, an obsolete term for “a low or despicable fellow,” as well as slang for “testicle.”
Cullion is French in origin and ultimately comes from the Latin coleus, “a leather bag, the scrotum” (see the Spanish cojones).
dotterel
“The names of various stupid birds have been used at different periods for ‘fool’ or ‘dupe’: – gull (properly a ‘young bird’ of any kind), pigeon, daw, dodo, dotterel, and rook.”
A dotterel is a kind of bird in the plover family. The word seems to come from the Middle German doten, “to be foolish” (see dotage). The bird, says the Century Dictionary, “derives its name from its apparent stupidity, or tameness, allowing itself to be easily approached and taken.” Hence, dotterel gained the meaning of a person who is easily duped.
dupe
“When Taffy turned to look for him, he was gone, without even taking the trouble to call his dupe a fool.”
Dupe, which we would have guessed came from duplicity, is thieves’ cant, possibly coming from the phrase de huppe, “of the hoopoe.” The hoopoe is “an extravagantly crested and reputedly stupid bird.” Duplicity, by the way, comes from Late Latin duplicitās, “doubleness.”
gudgeon
“The sharper then retires to his place of business and keeps a lookout for the gudgeon, who turns up soon afterward.”
Gudgeon is another dupe word based on the apparent stupidity of an animal, this time a small freshwater fish related to the carp. The gudgeon has a reputation of being easily caught and therefore used for bait. The word comes from the Latin gobios, a kind of small fish.
gull
“It should be observed, however, that ‘gull,’ a dupe, did not refer specially to the sea gull, the word having formerly meant a young bird of any kind.”
“Rook and Crook,” The Pittsburgh Press, February 7, 1913
The origin of the dupe meaning of gull has a number of possibilities. It may come from an early meaning of any “unfledged bird,” or else from gullet, with the idea of a gull being “someone who will swallow anything thrown at him,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary.
Gull helped give rise to gullibility, which is an alteration of the older cullibility. Cullibility comes from cully, which we discussed earlier. Gullible is a back-formation of gullibility.
muggins
“Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss. of 500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day–and no man ever has tried to scribble about it yet.”
According to the OED, “the surname Muggins is well attested in the names of various characters presented as foolish or easily tricked in 18th- and 19th-cent. popular and comic writing,” hence the meaning of muggins as a fool or idiot, often when ironically referring to oneself.
Muggins also refers to a children’s card game, a game of dominoes, and the act of scoring against an opponent due to the opponent’s mistake.
pigeon
“Pigeon dropper. It’s the name the Windsor Police have given to teams of two, three or four persons who conspire to dupe a ‘pigeon,’ or victim, of hard-earned cash.”
Pigeon came to mean “a simpleton to be swindled” probably due to the bird’s perceived lack of smarts. According to the Century Dictionary, a pigeon is opposed to the savvier rook, a kind of crow, which also came to mean a swindler or cheat. To pluck a pigeon means to swindle someone, says the OED.
The term stool pigeon, “a person acting as a decoy or as an informer, especially one who is a spy for the police,” comes from the hunting practice of “tying decoy pigeons to a stool to attract other pigeons.”
rabbit-sucker
“’Oh, yeah, (dropping the formality of thou art), you’re a reeky, pale-hearted rabbit-sucker,’ a student says.”
A rabbit-sucker is a suckling rabbit, therefore someone young, naive, and ripe for the picking by predators.
William Shakespeare seems to have originated the phrase in Henry IV: “Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker or a poulters hare.”
schnook
“In the seven ‘Road’ movies with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, Hope fashioned his classic persona: the cutesy coward, the bumbling braggart, the schnook who loses the girl to the debonair Crosby.”
While schnook now refers to any gullible person, the Online Etymology Dictionary says it first referred specifically to “a customer easily persuaded, a sucker.”
The word is U.S. slang that became popular in the 1940s, and either comes from the Yiddish shnuk, “snout,” or is an alteration of schmuck.
younker
“What, will you make a younker of me? shall I not take mine case in mine inn but I shall have my pocket picked?”
In addition to a dupe, younker also refers to “a young man of condition; a young gentleman or knight,” and “a young person; a lad; a youngster.”
The word probably came to mean a novice or simpleton from the idea a youngster being easily tricked and taken advantage of. The word comes from the Obsolete Dutch jonchere, “young nobleman.”
Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.
Gun Failing
NPR spoke with Katherine Connor Martin, head of U.S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press, about how gun metaphors have become embedded in the English language.
Kory Stamper discussed how the Iraq war transformed the English language, and Arika Okrent told us how the U.S. Army used Esperanto, a language of peace, as a language of war.
Jen Doll told us what the definition of marriage tells us about marriage equality, and Katy Steinmetz rounded up seven hang-ups in the language of gay rights.
At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Dorothy Zemach revealed the story behind the word wayzgoose; Gill Francis talked about weather words; Michael Rundell delved into some J.R. Ewing sayings; and Stan Carey explored some U.S. regional slang. On his own blog, Stan had fun with alternative names of the exclamation mark and asked for your suggestions.
In the week in words, Fritinancy chose fiberhood, “a neighborhood that has Internet access via fiber-optic cable,” and subtweet, short for subliminal tweet, “a tweet that refers to a person without including his or her Twitter handle; the online version of talking about someone behind his back.”
Erin McKean‘s weekly word choices included loquat, a kind of fruit; landspout, a whirling storm; ludologist, one who studies games and game-playing; and skaldic poetry, poetry of the Vikings. Erin also rounded up February’s also-rans, noteworthy words that didn’t make it into her Wall Street Journal columns.
The Word Spy spotted Proteus phenomenon, “the tendency for early findings in a new area of research to alternate between opposite conclusions”; datasexual, “a person who obsessively collects and shares data about his or her own life to improve self-knowledge and embellish self-presentation”; and crime-as-a-service, “Web-based software that enables or enhances online criminal activity.”
Meanwhile, the narcotic word of the week was sizzurp, prescription cough syrup “mixed with soda and sometimes hard candy, like Jolly Ranchers.”
We were happy to hear that landmark status is being sought for the New York Public Library’s Rose Reading room, and that the Los Angeles County Museum has made 20,000 images available for free. We’d also like to visit these weirdly specific museums and to read all these academic papers on ‘90s TV shows.
