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Jun 9, 2017
This week’s theme
Nouns that became verbs

This week’s words
showboat
gaslight
degauss
Shakespeare
prodnose

I love malling
“I Love Malling”
(also, vasing, celloing, wide-stancing, and red-sweatering)
Photo: hojusaram

Let's green this city
“letsgreenthiscity”
(alsoletssaveonpunctuation)

This week’s comments
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Next week’s theme
Words borrowed from Persian
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

prodnose

PRONUNCIATION:
(PROD-nohz)

MEANING:
verb intr.: To pry.
noun: A prying person.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Prodnose, a pedantic and nosy character, who appeared in the columns of J B Morton in the Daily Express. Earliest documented use: 1954.

NOTES:
J B Morton wrote under the pen name Beachcomber. Twenty years before the word appeared in his column, the poet Dylan Thomas wrote in a letter to someone in 1934:
“I want you to think of me today ... singing as loudly as Beachcomber in a world rid of Prodnose.”

USAGE:
“The lines between government prodnosing and charitable work become ever more blurred.”
Libby Purves; Charities Must Get Back to Doing Good Works; The Times (London, UK); Dec 23, 2008.

“Now Wallace wants to take this gang of Minnesota prodnoses to the national level.”
Alexander Cockburn; Leave the Press to the Court of Public Opinion; Los Angeles Times; Dec 27, 1996.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Live and let live, be and let be, / Hear and let hear, see and let see, / Sing and let sing, dance and let dance. ... Live and let live and remember this line: / "Your bus'ness is your bus'ness and my bus'ness is mine." -Cole Porter, composer and songwriter (9 Jun 1893-1964)

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