This week’s theme
Words with multiple meanings

This week’s words
churl
dickey
dingbat
decollate
lave

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(DING-bat)

MEANING:

noun:	1. An eccentric or crazy person.
	2. An ornamental typographical symbol, such as ✲, ❏, ☛, ♥.
	3. An object, such as a brick, used as a missile.
	4. A gadget or an object whose name is unknown or forgotten. Aka, thingamajig, gizmo, etc.
	5. A two- to three-story boxy apartment building with parking spaces directly under it.
adjective:	Eccentric or crazy.

ETYMOLOGY:

Origin unknown. Earliest documented use: 1838.

USAGE:

“In Arizona, for example, Mr McCain faces a tough primary battle against a dingbat [J.D. Hayworth] who frets about man-on-horse nuptials.”
United States: The Anti-Crist; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 3, 2010.

“When something blows, you don’t muck around trying to find one transistor or whatever the little dingbat is.”
Poul Anderson; Tales of the Flying Mountains; Collier; 1971.

“’It wasn’t an awareness of its seismic vulnerability that stopped the expansion of dingbats. It was more to do with the price of land,’ Hess said.”
Rosanna Xia & Jon Schleuss; Many Buildings Likely Need Quake Retrofit; Los Angeles Times; Apr 16, 2016.

See more usage examples of dingbat in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: