Items filtered by date: Friday, 23 July 2010

Even more so than our last "Word for Thought", copacetic, the origins of the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for March 26th are Hebraic.  The word was shibboleth.

1 : catchword, slogan 2 : a widely held belief or truism 3 : a custom or usage regarded as distinctive of a particular group

Whoah, dude!  The Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for March 23rd was, like, wayyy cool.  It was, uh... uh...

Oh, yeah... copacetic!  \koh-puh-SET-ik\

That means "very satisfactory", dude.  Sweeeet.

OK, yes, the word is often associated with "dudes" from the valley because of its prevalent use during various movies of the 80's and early 90's but its use in America goes back to the 1920's and the early jazz era.