A.Word.A.Day Archives from https://wordsmith.org/awad -------- Date: Mon Aug 3 12:06:02 AM EDT 2026 Subject: A.Word.A.Day--crotchet X-Bonus: What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. -P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James), novelist (3 Aug 1920-2014) Some words arrive with soap already in their mouths. Say them aloud and eyebrows rise, but look them up and the obscenity charges collapse. This week we'll meet five lexical false alarms. Their syllables may loiter near the gutter, but their meanings have clean records. All of them are actually completely safe for work. crotchet (KRAH-chit) noun 1. An eccentric opinion, preference, or habit. 2. In music, a quarter note. 3. A small hook or hooklike device or structure. [From Anglo-French crochet (small hook), diminutive of croc (hook), from Old Norse krókr (hook). Earliest documented use: c. 1427.] NOTES: Despite appearances, crotchet is not an instruction. It began as a small hook and is an etymological twin of crochet. Even crotch belongs to the same hook-and-fork family. Crotchety originally described someone given to crotchets, or eccentric notions. See usage examples in Vocabulary.com's dictionary: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/crotchet https://wordsmith.org/words/images/crotchet_large.jpg Photo: peasap https://www.flickr.com/photos/peasap/2088444066/ "All book collectors develop distinctive crotchets." Michael Dirda; How to Shop in Used Bookstores; The Washington Post; Apr 7, 2024. "Sixteen swallows do the crotchet and quaver thing on telephone wires, while three others zip through a hopeful sky." Paul Evans; An Island of Wild Life Among the Empty Pastures; The Guardian (London, UK); Sep 28, 2023. -------- Date: Tue Aug 4 12:06:02 AM EDT 2026 Subject: A.Word.A.Day--bumbaze X-Bonus: America has changed over the years. But these values my grandparents taught me -- they haven't gone anywhere. They're as strong as ever; still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what's in here. That's what matters. And that's why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That's why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That's why our military can look the way it does -- every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That's why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end. -Barack Obama, US President (b. 4 Aug 1961) This week's theme: Words that sound dirty, but aren't bumbaze (buhm-BAYZ) verb tr. To bewilder or stupefy. [Of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of Scots baze (to dismay). Earliest documented use: 1587.] NOTES: Despite the first impressions or the first syllable, no backside is involved. To be bumbazed is to have your thoughts sent into a maze without a map. "The Perplexed Player", c. 1923 https://wordsmith.org/words/images/bumbaze_large.jpg Art: Francis Coates Jones https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/objects/430 "I hate to observe devoted and intelligent men bumbazed by a bolt from the blue." Edwin Morgan; A.D.: A Trilogy on the Life of Jesus; Carcanet; 2000.