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Jan 28, 2014
This week's theme
Americanisms

This week's words
bloviate
skulduggery
honeyfuggle
lallygag
bumfuzzle

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

skulduggery

PRONUNCIATION:
(skuhl-DUHG-uh-ree)

MEANING:
noun: Underhand dealing: trickery, bribery, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
An American coinage, apparently from the alteration of Scots sculduddery (fornication, obscenity). Earliest documented use: 1867.

USAGE:
"In the 1980s [the Vatican Bank] was accused of involvement in financial skulduggery and responsibility for the still-mysterious death of a prominent Italian banker, Roberto Calvi."
God's Bankers; The Economist (London, UK); Jul 7, 2012.

See more usage examples of skulduggery in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A grain of poetry suffices to season a century. -José Martí, revolutionary and poet (1853-1895)

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