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Feb 9, 2026
This week’s themeIs it a noun or a verb? Both! This week’s words 
Bagpipe Player, 1624
Art: Hendrick ter Brugghen Previous week’s theme Words formed in error 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargLast month I came across a word in the wild and had the rare feeling of watching a new verb being born. Not proposed, not theoretical, but already walking around, doing work. The verb was “to underbus”. “In a social media post, Hegseth similarly underbussed Bradley by wrapping him in a bear hug of blame ...” (Talking Points Memo, Permalink) We already have the phrase “to throw someone under the bus”, but the compact “to underbus” does the job with fewer moving parts. It’s efficient, vivid, and immediately understandable. Further digging showed that the verb has been around since at least 2008, but it still feels fresh, like a word that hasn’t finished unpacking yet. It’s not in the dictionaries yet, but many others are. This week we’ll feature five that began life as nouns and have since learned to act. windbag
PRONUNCIATION:
(WIND-bag)
MEANING:
noun: A person who talks pompously or excessively. verb intr.: To talk pompously or excessively. ETYMOLOGY:
From wind, from Old English wind + bag, from Old Norse baggi. Earliest documented use: noun: 1472, verb: 1885.
NOTES:
In the beginning, a windbag was literally a bag full of air,
especially the bag of a bagpipe. Soon the word was applied to anything
inflated by wind, from lungs to the throat sacs of birds to sailing ships.
Eventually, it drifted into metaphor. The OED records an early figurative
use from 1743: “Most of the bishops were hirelings, actuated and inspired much in the same manner as those wind-bags, a common musical instrument among our country people, which it is necessary to swell up, in order to make them give a sound.” The difference between a bagpipe and a windbag? The bagpipe eventually runs out of air. USAGE:
“Speakers will drone on for too long (there is nothing like the virtual
floor to put wind into the windbag).” Back to Abnormal; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 25, 2020. “As it happens, I was windbagging on the weekend about leadership, the theory of it anyway.” Jim Coyle; Civic Leadership 101: Deny, Deflect, Denounce; Toronto Star (Canada); Oct 22, 2002. See more usage examples of windbag in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made
for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for
men. -Alice Walker, poet and novelist (b. 9 Feb 1944)
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