Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Fun etymology

I ran into this bit of lightness on the Monitor that consists of words whose meaning was deduced by the author by using an extraneous knowledge of common English words, prefixes, suffixes and roots. Some of ones from this list that set me laughing were as follows:

unctuous – having the characteristics of an uncle
gyroscope – an instrument for examining sandwiches
blunderbuss – a mass transit faux pas
placebo – the site of a gazebo
quotidian – a person fond of repeating the words of famous people


Full list here.

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