This week’s theme
Words made with animal parts

This week’s words
dogleg
stickybeak


Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle The Pine Tree at Saint Tropez
🌍	Langitude Trace babel home

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(STIK-ee-beek)

MEANING:

noun:	1. An overly inquisitive person.
	2. An inquisitive look or inspection.
verb intr.:	To pry or snoop.

ETYMOLOGY:

From stick, from Old English stician (to pierce or thrust) + beak (slang for a human nose). Earliest documented use: 1914.

NOTES:

If you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, you might expect to be called a stickynose. English took the more colorful route and gave us stickybeak, using beak as slang for the human nose. Its two crisp k sounds make it doubly satisfying. The term is more common in Australia and New Zealand, but judging by the vocabulary, there is no shortage of nosy people anywhere: English also has nosy parker, prodnose, busybody, quidnunc, and yenta.

USAGE:

“Well, the next day Maureen said she was going over to say hello. To tell you the truth, Mo wanted to have a bit of a stickybeak, curious to see how they were settling in.”
Yasmine Gooneratne; A Change of Skies; Picador Australia; 1991.

“McIntire County was a bona fide mob of stickybeaks putting their noses where they didn’t belong.”
Winter Austin; Sins of the Father; Crimson Romance; 2016.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: