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Jul 10, 2020
This week’s theme
Shirts and pants as metaphors

This week’s words
redshirt
smarty-pants
sansculotte
descamisado
bloody shirt

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AWADmail 941

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Misc. words
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

bloody shirt

PRONUNCIATION:
(BLUHD-ee shuhrt)

MEANING:
noun: A symbol used to incite people to partisan outrage or animosity.

ETYMOLOGY:
The term is typically used as “to wave the bloody shirt” and alludes to the literal or metaphorical symbol of a supposed injury that needs to be avenged. Earliest documented use: 1586.

NOTES:
In modern times, masks are apparently the new bloody shirt.

USAGE:
“His impeachment would be a bloody shirt that Republicans would wave to justify their intransigence for decades to come.”
Geoffrey Kabaservice; Removing Trump Wouldn’t ‘Overturn’ 2016; The Washington Post; Feb 2, 2020.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors. -Marcel Proust, novelist (10 Jul 1871-1922)

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