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Aug 31, 2026
This week’s themeWords made with animal parts This week’s words 
A dog-leg staircase
Engraving: Andrew Bell in Encyclopædia Britannica, c. 1797 Previous week’s theme There’s a word for it Wordsmith Games
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargA few weeks ago, we featured words with animals hiding inside them. This week, the animal kingdom returns, but only in parts. Take a leg, a beak, a wing, a claw, and a heart. Stir them into English and let them simmer for a few centuries. The result is this week’s assortment of words for bends, fragility, scrawls, snooping, and cowardice. Every word this week is made with an animal body part, etymologically speaking. I avoid consuming animal products, but I make an exception for language. No animals were harmed in the making of these words. Speaking of which, last year, during a trip to India, I met Sonal, the founder and CEO of White Cub, a pioneering vegan food company. She also sent me some White Cub products to try. Sampling her delicious plant-based creations was a memorable reminder that we can leave animals whole and thriving without leaving a hole in the menu. dogleg
PRONUNCIATION:
(DOG-leg)
MEANING:
ETYMOLOGY:
From dog + leg, alluding to the angular shape of a dog’s hind leg.
Earliest documented use: 1671.
NOTES:
Bending it like Beckham is fine, but can you bend it like a dog’s
leg? The word dogleg can describe a staircase, a road, or a golf hole with
an angled fairway, and more. In traffic engineering, a dogleg intersection
is formed by two offset T-junctions. Some doglegs make a second turn and
resume a course parallel to the original one, but a single abrupt bend
also qualifies.
USAGE:
“Hinton has lived at the outer reaches of machine learning research since
an aborted attempt at a carpentry career a half century ago. After that
brief dogleg, he came back into line with his illustrious ancestors.” Craig S. Smith; Geoff Hinton, AI’s Most Famous Researcher, Warns Of ‘Existential Threat’ From AI; Forbes (Jersey City, New Jersey); May 4, 2023. See more usage examples of dogleg in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is
polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late,
that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money. -Alanis
Obomsawin, filmmaker (b. 31 Aug 1932)
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