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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--busman's holiday There's baker's dozen and bull's eye and deadman's hand (a poker hand) and blindman's buff. Our language is sprinkled with terms coined with the formula X's Y. There are diseases and syndromes and body parts named after physicians (Parkinson's disease); there are theorems, laws, and numbers named after scientists (Avogadro's number); there are plants named after botanists (Ahnfelt's seaweed); and there are places named after explorers, though some are named after no one ("no man's land" :-). This week we'll look at five terms that follow this X's Y or "someone's something" formula, terms that are named after no one in particular. busman's holiday (BUS-manz HOL-i-day) noun A holiday spent doing things as at work. [Imagine a bus driver having a day off, 'enjoying' a bus ride and you'll have a pretty good idea of this term. Going on a long drive might be a great vacation for many of us, but not for a bus driver. Of course, when the phrase came up some 200 years ago, bus drivers had charge of horse-drawn buses. The term is sometimes seen as 'businessman's holiday'.] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus. -Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org) "Boundless energy and vaulting ambition carried Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency of France. Now that he has had just over 100 days in office (including a hyperactive busman's holiday in New Hampshire), it is a good time to take stock of where all this energy may be leading." The World According to Sarkozy; The Economist (London, UK); Aug 30, 2007. X-Bonus A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

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