9.01.2008

Monday Word o' the day - the vain and silly man edition..

I had a cool weekend. Picked up our guests on Friday, ate and drank, went to the park on Saturday, and ate and drank, and went on a day trip to Kutna Hora yesterday, rode on a train, saw the "bone church" as it's colloquially referred to, and walked around a charming and dare I say quaint little town, and ate and drank. Oh and I took lots of photos. Both days.

A problem with this word of the day thing is that it's never updated until it's business hours wherever Dictionary.com is.. which I'd guess is California, as it's always late in the day.. so I'll pick the one I like best from the weekend.. and I do quite like this word..

fop -\FOP\, noun:
A man who is overly concerned with or vain about his dress and appearance; a dandy.

I wear ties because I don't have to, because in an increasingly dressed-down,
homogenized world, they can set you apart. I wear ties because they nurture the
inner fop. Also the outer one.-- Abbott Combes, "Secrets and Ties", New York Times
Magazine
, November 14, 1999

He's swaddled in a heavy black wool overcoat
and his shoes are silver-buckled with cap toes, the black leather well taken
care of. He's a bit of a lounge lizard, a hip-hop fop.-- Po Bronson, The
Nudist on the Late Shift

Fop comes from Middle English fop, foppe, "a fool." The adjective form is foppish.

/end w.o.t.d part..

another example of a fop in popular literature (according to myself) is Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion.. in fact, I thought of him as soon as I read the word.

Speaking of word nerding, I played boggle for the first time ever last night, and got my butt walloped.. I sucked! Unfortunately, a rather fabulous word like "fop" would be disallowed because the words have to be at least 4 letters long, but "foppish" would be just perfect, as long as all the letters are there, and they fall in the right places. I did get points for the words "frock" and "gusto", of which I was quite proud.

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