An extra word - 05/22/02 10:38 PM
May I with humility endue AWADtalk with an extra word for today: "lagniappe"
We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi (1883), "a
word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy
word—lagniappe. . . . It is Spanish—so they said." Twain encapsulates the history of
lagniappe quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking
Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish "la napa." Twain
went on to describe how New Orleanians completed shop transactions by saying "Give me
something for a lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit of
liquorice-root, . . . a cheap cigar or a spool of thread." It took a while for lagniappe to
catch on throughout the country, but by the mid-20th century, New Yorkers and New
Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."
We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi (1883), "a
word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy
word—lagniappe. . . . It is Spanish—so they said." Twain encapsulates the history of
lagniappe quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking
Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish "la napa." Twain
went on to describe how New Orleanians completed shop transactions by saying "Give me
something for a lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit of
liquorice-root, . . . a cheap cigar or a spool of thread." It took a while for lagniappe to
catch on throughout the country, but by the mid-20th century, New Yorkers and New
Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."