Sunday, March 8, 2009

Lackadaisical

One of the all time best words in the English language is lackadaisical. However, it is easy to show no interest or enthusiasm for learning about the language. The term comes, courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary, from a medieval expression "alack-a-day" meaning "shame on this day." Eventually, it came to mean a person who was lazy or lacked enthusiasm, using the excuse that it was a bad day to do anything.

Some words have little or no derivation. They are coined expressions that did not come from Greek, Latin or Anglo-Saxon. If I am not lackadaisical about my efforts to sort out the English language, I will soon become so.

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