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Mar 29, 2019
This week’s themePeople who became verbs This week’s words grandisonize lynch galvanize mesmerize crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Art: Offterdinger & Zweigle, c. 1880 This week’s comments AWADmail 874 Next week’s theme Words that turn into other words when beheaded A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargCrusoe
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: A castaway; a person who is isolated or without companionship. verb intr.: To be marooned; to survive or manage through one’s ingenuity without outside help. ETYMOLOGY:
After the title character of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe.
Crusoe was a shipwrecked sailor who spent 28 years on a remote desert island.
Earliest documented use: 1888. Crusoe’s aide has also become an eponym in
the English language: man Friday.
USAGE:
“Your mad heart goes Crusoeing through all the romances ...” Arthur Rimbaud (Translation: Oliver Bernard); Collected Poems; Penguin; 1962. “The boy Jim roams the edgelands of the Thames (just as young Stevenson liked to ‘go Crusoeing’ in the wilds of Scotland).” Ian Thomson; The Old Buccaneers; Financial Times (London, UK); Mar 31, 2012. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Kindness is always fashionable. -Amelia Barr, novelist (29 Mar 1831-1919)
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