This week’s theme
Dickensian eponyms

This week’s words
Podsnap
Turveydrop
Stiggins
pecksniff

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PEK-snif)

MEANING:

noun: A hypocritical person who pretends to have high moral principles.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Seth Pecksniff, a character in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit (serialized 1843-1844). Earliest documented use: 1844. The adjectival form is pecksniffian.

NOTES:

Pecksniff sounds like a man who moralizes in public and misbehaves in private. Which, spoiler alert, he does.

But Pecksniff, seriously? If a character’s name is Pecksniff, his moral downfall feels less like a character arc and more like a destiny. With a name like this, you have given them no hope. They’re doomed from page one. See nominative determinism.

It’s not just Dickens. The Harry Potter world has Voldemort (from French vol de mort: flight of death), 101 Dalmatians has Cruella de Vil, and so on. Heroes, on the other hand, get regular names like Oliver Twist or Harry Potter.

USAGE:

“But these ideological pecksniffs now face blowback from a growing ‘freedom to read’ movement, with gutsy local activists defying the screeching, self-appointed censors in communities across America.”
Joe Conason; To Fight Right-Wing Book Bans, Read Banned Books!; Creators Syndicate (Los Angeles); Oct 11, 2024.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: