This week's theme
Words with unusual arrangements of letters

This week's words
verisimilitude
syzygy
yob
kine
spendthrift

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(yob)

MEANING:

noun: A rude, rowdy youth.

ETYMOLOGY:

Coined by reversing the spelling of the word boy. Earliest documented use: 1859.

NOTES:

There are not a lot of words in the English language that are coined from the backward spelling of another word. Another example is mho, the unit of electrical conductance, coined by reversing ohm, the unit of resistance. Fiction writers sometimes come up with names for their characters by spelling another name or word backwards.

USAGE:

"Like a yob who starts a fight in a pub by saying you have spilled his pint, the Russians offered pretexts that both parties knew were ludicrous."
A.D. Miller; A First-Hand Account of Life in Modern Russia; The Guardian (London, UK); Oct 21, 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: