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Jul 27, 2018
This week’s theme
Tosspot words

This week’s words
shunpike
jerkwater
catchpenny
cutpurse
scapegrace

scapegrace
“There, but for the help of Bob, goes Grace.”

This week’s comments
AWADmail 839

Next week’s theme
Words that appear to be coined by flipping the letter p
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

scapegrace

PRONUNCIATION:
(SKAYP-grays)

MEANING:
noun:
A scoundrel; a mischievous person.

ETYMOLOGY:
Describing one who has supposedly escaped the grace of god. Earliest documented use: 1809.

USAGE:
“Scrope Berdmore Davies was a perfect specimen of his time and station: a rogue, a rakehell, a scapegrace, and a scofflaw, but in no wise a cad, a bounder, a cutpurse, or a poltroon.”
Doug Fetherling; High Life in Low Resorts with Byron and the Boys; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Jul 10, 1982.

See more usage examples of scapegrace in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Euphemism is a euphemism for lying. -Bobbie Gentry, singer and songwriter (b. 27 Jul 1944)

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