Word of the Day
cheeseparing
adjective
meanly economical; parsimonious; stingy.
More about cheeseparing
The adjective cheeseparing means “parsimonious, stingy”; as a noun, cheeseparing has the related meanings “something of little or no value; stinginess, miserliness.” The term dates from the second half of the 16th century; by 1600 Shakespeare uses the term in Henry IV Part 2 where Falstaff remarks about Justice Shallow: “… like a man made after supper of a cheese paring,” i.e., thin slices of cheese cut or pared from a larger block. This original, literal meaning is obsolete today. By 1800 cheeseparing developed the sense “something scanty, inadequate, thin,” and by the 1830s, the sense “miserly economizing; stinginess; miserliness.” The adjective sense developed in the 1850s.
how is cheeseparing used?
When it comes to public-health protections, it’s obvious which should be the guiding principle. It should not be the airlines’ cheese-paring approach to customer service: What’s the least we can get by with in normal circumstances? Instead it should be the aviation-safety question, What if?
So, when she stood at last outside the building, staring up at its facade, she felt ready to cope with anybody, including cheese-paring selfish theatre managers …
bamboozle
verb (used with object)
to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like.
More about bamboozle
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.”
how is bamboozle used?
There are many ways for marketing professionals to bamboozle customers into believing they are getting a better deal than they actually are—notable among them “as low as” pricing come-ons and offers that promise to deliver “up to” some standard of service.
You can’t even get nicer sheets by paying more—money has no meaning there. And don’t bother typing in words like “Egyptian cotton” or “thread count”—you’re just offering them more precise ways to bamboozle you.
zeugma
noun
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.
More about zeugma
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.”
how is zeugma used?
The sentence He fished for compliments and trout involves zeugma because it indicates that the word fished should be understood both metaphorically and literally.
Hilda and Graham Heap stayed at a lodge in New Zealand where one of the guest-book entries from the 1960s was: ‘Time and sand flies.’ It is a zeugma, from the Greek, ‘to yoke’, a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses.