A Word A Day... Quotes and Other stuff...

sansculotte or sans-culotte

PRONUNCIATION:

(sanz-kyoo-LOT)



MEANING:

noun: A radical or revolutionary.



ETYMOLOGY:

From French, literally, without knee breeches. In the French Revolution, this was the aristocrats’ term of contempt for the ill-clad volunteers of the Revolutionary army who rejected knee breeches as a symbol of the upper class and adopted pantaloons. As often happens with such epithets, the revolutionaries themselves adopted it as a term of pride. Earliest documented use: 1790.



NOTES:

You don’t have to be a radical or a revolutionary to go without pants. Take part in the No Pants Subway Ride.



USAGE:

“[Steven] Pinker is not a sansculotte running amok with a box opener through handbooks. Instead he simply advocates cutting free from prescriptive ancien grammatical regimes.”

Sam Pickering; The Essence of Style; Sewanee Review (Baltimore, Maryland); Spring 2015.

descamisado

PRONUNCIATION:

(des-ka-mee-SAH-doh)



MEANING:

noun: A very poor person.



ETYMOLOGY:

From Spanish descamisado (shirtless), from des- (dis-, un-) + camisa (shirt). Earliest documented use: 1821.



NOTES:

Over the years, the term has been applied to various people, such as a revolutionary in the Spanish Revolution
of 1820-23 and a supporter of Argentinian President Juan Perón.



USAGE:

“Oscar and Jesse James walked past cardboard and blanket in a dry outflow wall-pipe, which was some descamisado’s home.”

Robert Newman; The Fountain at the Center of the World; Soft Skull Press; 2004.

bloody shirt

PRONUNCIATION:

(BLUHD-ee shuhrt)



MEANING:

noun: A symbol used to incite people to partisan outrage or animosity.



ETYMOLOGY:

The term is typically used as “to wave the bloody shirt” and alludes to the literal or metaphorical symbol of a supposed injury that needs to be avenged. Earliest documented use: 1586.



NOTES:

In modern times, masks are apparently the new bloody shirt.



USAGE:

“His impeachment would be a bloody shirt that Republicans would wave to justify their intransigence for decades to come.”

Geoffrey Kabaservice; Removing Trump Wouldn’t ‘Overturn’ 2016; The Washington Post; Feb 2, 2020.

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg



They have been around for thousands of years. They are called fairy tales, even though most don’t have any fairies. Nor do they have anything to do with fairs. The term comes to us from French conte de fées (fairy tales). French fairy tales apparently did include fairies.



A better term might be folk tales that include talking animals with a sprinkling of magic and enchantment. We have the term “fairy-tale ending” which implies a happily-ever-after, but what we have these days is really a sanitized version of the stories. Originally, fairy tales rarely had a fairy-tale ending, a reflection of hard life in those days.



After years of telling and retelling, these stories have left a mark on the language. Many of the characters have stepped out from the pages of the books and walked into the language. This week we’ll meet five terms coined after fairy-tale characters.


Goldilocks

PRONUNCIATION:

(GOL-dee-lahks)



MEANING:

adjective: Just right; a happy medium; optimal; not at either extreme.



ETYMOLOGY:

After Goldilocks, a golden-haired girl in the fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. In the story, she visits a bear house and chooses Baby Bear’s chair, bed, and porridge because they are just right. Papa Bear’s porridge is too hot, Mama Bear’s too cold, for example. Earliest documented use: 1949. The story was first published in 1837. The earliest documented use in the literal sense of the word is from 400 years earlier.



USAGE:

NOTES: Trespass much? What would have happened if, instead of Goldilocks, the protagonist was a boy named Dreadlocks? Share on our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org.

The word is often seen in astronomy, as the Goldilocks zone, meaning an area that’s at just the right distance from a star for a planet there to support life.



USAGE:

“‘That’s our Goldilocks locomotive,’ Executive Director Mark Bassett says. ‘No. 93 is too big for what we do, and it’s a gas guzzler. No. 40 is too small for what we do. No. 81 is in the middle. It should be just right.’”

Jim Wrinn; Five Ways Nevada Northern Highballs History; Trains (Milwaukee, Wisconsin); Jul 2020.



“Swirling around a red-dwarf star about 110 light-years away from Earth the distant world sits in a so-called Goldilocks zone -- not close enough to its host star to be too hot and not far enough away to be too cold -- that could allow liquid water to flow across its surface.”

Blue World; The Economist (London, UK); Sep 14, 2019.



See more usage examples of Goldilocks in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

Cinderella

PRONUNCIATION:

(sin-duh-REL-luh)



MEANING:

noun:

1. One who deserves success or recognition, but instead suffers from neglect or obscurity.

2. One who achieves sudden triumph or recognition, especially after a long period of neglect or obscurity.



ETYMOLOGY:

After Cinderella, the fairy-tale character who is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters. With a little help from a fairy godmother, she attends a royal ball thrown by a prince. Ultimately, she marries the prince and lives happily ever after. What’s behind the name Cinderella? It’s a pseudo-translation of the French name of the girl, Cendrillon, from cendre (cinder), perhaps an allusion to her day-to-day existence, tending to the fireplace and hearth, and as a result she has cinders all over her. It may also be a hint to the hidden spark in her otherwise dismal life. Earliest documented use: 1840.



USAGE:

“Perhaps because dentistry is the Cinderella of the public health system, receiving little attention, these problems have been allowed to persist.”

Paul Cullen; Grindingly Slow Progress on Inquiry into Children’s Orthodontic Damage; Irish Times (Dublin); Apr 2, 2019.



“The Badgers are the Cinderella of the Final Four thanks to toppling a national championship winner.”

Ben Steele; Sconnie Final Four Is Set; Green Bay Press Gazette (Wisconsin); Apr 1, 2020.



See more usage examples of Cinderella in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

ugly duckling

PRONUNCIATION:

(UHG-lee DUHK-ling)



MEANING:

noun: One that seems unattractive or unpromising at first but has great potential and later turns out to be quite attractive or successful.



ETYMOLOGY:

From the protagonist of the story “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen, in which a young bird believes himself to be a duck and is unhappy because he doesn’t look like a duck, only to later learn that (spoiler alert) he is a beautiful swan. Earliest documented use: 1877.



USAGE:

“Nearly every transport advocacy group in Melbourne bemoans a lack of investment in our bus network. The ugly duckling of the transport network, and a mode that fails to attract attention on the front pages of newspapers, it is perhaps the cheapest and most obvious way to tackle congestion.”

Stuart James; Fork in Road for Public Transport Solutions; Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia); May 21, 2020.



See more usage examples of ugly duckling in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.