|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
May I with humility endue AWADtalk with an extra word for today: "lagniappe"
We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi (1883), "a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word—lagniappe. . . . It is Spanish—so they said." Twain encapsulates the history of lagniappe quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish "la napa." Twain went on to describe how New Orleanians completed shop transactions by saying "Give me something for a lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit of liquorice-root, . . . a cheap cigar or a spool of thread." It took a while for lagniappe to catch on throughout the country, but by the mid-20th century, New Yorkers and New Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,330
Members9,182
|
Most Online3,341 Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
0 members (),
1,577
guests, and
1
robot. |
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
|