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Apr 26, 2011 This week's theme Words related to clothing This week's words flathat turncoat shirty pantywaist bootstrap Make a gift that keeps on giving. A gift subscription of AWAD or give the gift of books Discuss Feedback RSS/XML A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg turncoat PRONUNCIATION: (TUHRN-koht) MEANING: noun: Someone who changes allegiance and joins the opposite side. ETYMOLOGY: The color, and especially the color of clothing, has long symbolized association with a particular cause. For example, soldiers in an army or players in a sports team don a designated color. The idea behind the word turncoat is someone switching allegiances and turning his coat inside out to hide his earlier colors. Earliest documented use: 1567. USAGE: "You could almost imagine the little turncoats from the last poster creeping off and taking up residence in another series of photographs downstairs." Julius Purcell; Faces That Cannot be Argued Away; Financial Times (London, UK); Jul 18, 2006. Explore "turncoat" in the Visual Thesaurus. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. -George Washington, 1st US president, general (1732-1799)

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