Baksheesh
In my office we have a Word-of-the-Day contest. My stepmom gave me this great calendar (which wasn't in Spanish - haha!) with a new word for every day. So there are four others that work with me, and every day I read the word and they come up with definitions. It's kind of like a running game of Balderdash. We especially like Mondays because we get three words at once. Sometimes we are disappointed by normal words like "antic", but other days we get interesting ones like "kvell" and "poltroon".
Today's word was BAKSHEESH. It probably would have qualified for a great word of the day except that we are living in a culture where that is a constant reality.
BAKSHEESH: n., payment (as a tip or bribe) to expidite service
posted by Bequita17 @ 3/13/2006 08:40:00 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Bex,
WE HAVE THAT SAME EXACT CALENDAR SITTING ON OUR COMPUTER DESK!!! Now I feel like I'm connected with you in a small way. I thought antic was a pretty lame word of the day but it's used as an adjective. There are some lame-ola words coming up this week. :) Unfortunately we haven't been keeping tabs on our words and I've forgotten many of them. :( What do kvell and poltroon mean again?
Al - that's so cool! I'll be thinking of you during our word of the day contests!
Our favorite guess of the day for POLTROON was "a regimen of chickens ready to attack".
The official definition: POLTROON -
(noun) a spiritless coward, craven
I don't remember the guesses we had for KVELL, but they were pretty funny. Someone did correctly guess that it came from Yiddish.
The official definition: KVELL - (verb) to be extraordinarily proud (of someone), rejoice
Oh yeah, now I remember kvell. I sure didn't remember poltroon though. Wonder if the word origin comes from being a chicken . . .
Potemkin village is an ok one but I knew it already.
have a great day dear!
Nobody in our office had heard of Potemkin village today. We did have an interesting guess -
Alexander the Great had younger brother who organized some great athletic contests called the Potemkin Games, and the place where the athletes were stationed was known as the Potemkin village. However Alexander took over the idea, renaming them the Olympic games...
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