This week’s theme
Words coined in comic strips and cartoons

This week’s words
skunkworks
sad sack
embiggen
Lower Slobbovia
cromulent

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(LOH-uhr sloh-BOH-vee-uh)

MEANING:

noun: A place regarded as isolated, underdeveloped, or unimportant.

ETYMOLOGY:

Coined by Al Capp in the comic strip Li’l Abner as the name of a fictional, perpetually snowbound, impoverished, and comically backward country. Earliest documented use: 1946.

USAGE:

“Compared to the capital of the United States, we are an embarrassment, a crying shame. True, with one-tenth the US population, we could never expect our capital to fully match Washington. But do we really have to look like the first city of Lower Slobbovia?”
Janice Kennedy; National Affirmation Is Something the Americans Do So Very Well; The Ottawa Citizen (Canada); Apr 6, 2008.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: