Word of the Day
malamute
noun
one of an Alaskan breed of large dogs having a dense, coarse coat, raised originally by the Inuit for drawing sleds.
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Why Dictionary.com chose malamute
More about malamute
- First recorded in 1895–1900.
- Sometimes capitalized, malamute is from the Inupiaq word malimiut.
- Malimiut is a name for the local groups of Inupiaq peoples of the Kotzebue Sound region in what is now Western Alaska, who bred such dogs.
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EXAMPLES OF MALAMUTE
- The dog was a beautiful mix of German Shepherd, Siberian Husky, and Alaskan Malamute.
- Bursting through the screen door, the malamute sprinted to greet us as we came up the walkway.
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Why Dictionary.com chose bumbershoot
More about bumbershoot
- First recorded in 1895–1900.
- The stem, bumber-, is a facetious alteration of umbrella
- The –shoot element is a respelling of the –chute element in parachute.
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EXAMPLES OF BUMBERSHOOT
- The sudden rain shower caught her off guard, so she reached for her trusty bumbershoot.
- The old man chuckled as he twirled his colorful bumbershoot on a sunny day.
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jabberwocky
noun
a playful imitation of language consisting of invented, meaningless words; nonsense; gibberish.
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Why Dictionary.com chose jabberwocky
More about jabberwocky
- Coined by Lewis Carroll in “Jabberwocky,” a poem in Through the Looking Glass (1871).
- Explained by Carroll to mean “the result of much excited and voluble discussion.”
- Formed from jabber and the Old English word wocer or wocor, “offspring, fruit.”
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EXAMPLES OF JABBERWOCKY
- The children filled the playground with their delightful jabberwocky, creating a language only they could understand.
- In her dreams, she often found herself wandering through a surreal landscape where creatures spoke in intricate jabberwocky.
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