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Aug 10, 2018
This week’s themeWords related to veggies This week’s words olive branch cabbage pea-brained mushroom couch potato 
Photo: Bobby Acree This week’s comments AWADmail 841 Next week’s theme Words from 1984 that are now a part of the language 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargcouch potato
PRONUNCIATION:
(KAUCH puh-tay-to)
MEANING:
noun: A person who leads a sedentary life, usually watching television.
ETYMOLOGY:
Why a couch potato? Why not a couch tomato or a couch pumpkin? The term was
coined after boob tube, slang for television. One who watches a boob tube is
a boob tuber and a tuber is a potato. According to the Bon Appétit magazine,
the term was coined by Tom Iacino.
Yesterday’s couch potato is today’s mouse potato, spending time in front of
a computer screen, surfing the web. Earliest documented use: 1970s.
USAGE:
“Brooks Koepka went from US Open hero to a depressed overweight couch
potato last year.” Euan McLean; Koepka so Happy to Shape up; Daily Record (Glasgow, UK); Jun 13, 2018. See more usage examples of couch potato in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the
first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the
darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to
annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always
works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy. -Andrew Sullivan,
writer (b. 10 Aug 1963)
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