[Loch-Ruadh] Word of the day
Jane Sitton
jane.sitton at radioshack.com
Tue Oct 22 13:12:35 PDT 2002
The Word of the Day for October 22 is:
jackleg * \JAK-leg\ * (adjective) 1a: lacking skill or training: amateur
*b: characterized by unscrupulousness, dishonesty, or lack of professional
standards 2: makeshift
Example sentence:
There we were, stuck in Nowheresville with a jackleg mechanic who told us
he'd fix the car, but we'd have to wait a few days unless we wanted to pay
him double.
Did you know?
Don't call someone a "jackleg" unless you're prepared for them to get angry
with you. Throughout its more than 150-year-old history in English,
"jackleg" has most often been used as a term of contempt and deprecation,
particularly in reference to lawyers and preachers. Its form echoes that of
the similar "blackleg," an older term for a cheating gambler or a worker
opposed to union policies. Etymologists know that "blackleg" appeared
over a hundred years before "jackleg," but they don't have any verifiable
theories about the origin of the earlier term.
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