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A.Word.A.Day--hootenanny

Happy 2007! This is an odd year, so we start with some odd-looking words. Add these oddball words to your lexicon to bring some color. The odds are you'll enjoy using them to amuse your friends or to solve crossword puzzles (that is if you are a cruciverbalist, which is a very odd word).

hootenanny (HOOT-nan-ee) noun

1. An informal performance by folk singers, often involving the audience.

2. A thingamajig: an unidentified or unnamed object or gadget.

[Of unknown origin. Earlier a hootenanny implied a thingamajig; eventually the term took its new sense of a performance of folk singing. It's said that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.]

-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)

"The yearly high-end hootenanny brings 22 singers to the stage of Place des Arts, each eager to show you what he or she is made of." A Selection of Today's Events; The Gazette (Montreal, Canada); Dec 3, 2006.

X-Bonus