This week’s theme
Words coined after animals

This week’s words
cynical
lemming
serpentine
jackrabbit
chevachee

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(LEM-ing)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Any of various small, thickset, short-tailed, furry rodents.
2. One who mindlessly conforms or follows, especially toward disaster.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Norwegian and Danish lemming, from Old Norse lómundr/læmingi/læmingr. Earliest documented use: 1607.

NOTES:

Lemmings do not go lemming. It’s a myth that lemmings jump off a cliff into water in an act of mass suicide. It was popularized by the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness. For more, see here and here.

USAGE:

“Lucy ... had an almost inexplicably strong following among the big-platinumblonde-acid-wash-jean lemmings of Southeast High School.”
Ron Bahar; The Frontman; SparkPress; 2018.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: