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May 14, 2004

This week's theme
Words to describe people

This week's words
polyhistor
heteroclite
apostate
polyvalent
clodhopper

This week’s comments
AWADmail 122

Next week’s theme
Words about relations

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clodhopper

noun:
1. A clumsy, awkward fellow.
2. A strong, heavy work shoe.

[Apparently modeled after grasshopper: clod + hopper.]

"They (drugs) cannot make a champion athlete out of a clodhopper. Winners still need the legs, the lungs and, above all, the heart to succeed."
Mick Hume; Let's Inject Some Sense into This; The Times (London, UK); Oct 27, 2003.

"Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree--and there will be one."
Aldo Leopold; conservationist (1887-1948).

See more usage examples of clodhopper in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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