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Nov 25, 2021
This week’s theme
Toponyms from England

This week’s words
Piltdowner
Devonshire
kersey
Halifax
Aldermaston

“You have to fall in love with hanging around words.” ~John Ciardi
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Halifax

PRONUNCIATION:
(HAL-uh-faks)

MEANING:
noun: Hell.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Halifax, a town in West Yorkshire, England. Earliest documented use: 1630.

NOTES:
Halifax, a town in England, today may be known for toffee, but at one time it had a reputation for harsh punishment. Even petty crime meant being sent to the Halifax gibbet (an early form of guillotine). The poet John Taylor wrote a poem “Beggar’s Litany” (1622) that includes the line: “From Hell, Hull, and Halifax, Good Lord, deliver us!”

USAGE:
“‘In fact, you can go to Halifax for all I care.’ He spit on the floor and stomped out of the door.”
Lana Mowdy; Tara’s Forgotten Son; PublishAmerica; 2007.

See more usage examples of Halifax in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman. -Joseph Wood Krutch, writer and naturalist (25 Nov 1893-1970)

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