Word of the day for Thursday May 4.2006Yikes!wag \WAG\, noun:
A humorous person; a wit; a joker.Wag in this sense perhaps comes from the obsolete wag-halter, "a rogue; one likely to be hanged."The master of ceremonies was one Boston, a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness.
-- Francis Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring CampYet the fate of all three reformers was more or less the same. Washington remained much as it had been before. ("Only more so," a wag might add.)
-- Jonathan Rauch, Government's EndSome wag has summed up the three laws of thermodynamics in everyday terms: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't even break even. 3. You can't get out of the game.
-- John Gribbin with Mary Gribbin, Almost Everyone's Guide to Science
Interesting though, that they didn't include the other meaning of wag, the "that which a dog does with it's tail" definition. I don't know why. Seems like a poor kind of dictionary that would leave it out.
4 comments:
Is it the Merriam-Webster dictionary???? Their def's are always bizarre.
I now love this word. Thanks for upping my smarts!
t/c
Now I have to find out what "wniniig" means. I think it's just a random group of letters but it sounds like it should have a meaning, if it doesn't have one I'll have to make it up.
Smutty? Hm. That which lies under a dog's tail when it is being wagged?
I'm not very good at this you'll have to help me.
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