Wednesday, November 12th, 2008...8:41 am
Learn-A-Word Wednesday: brummagem \BRUHM-uh-juhm\
adjective:
Cheap and showy, tawdry; also, spurious, counterfeit.The distortions they bring on damage society and fuel defiant behavior, encouraging everything from immigrations to the Cayman Islands, to active distortions of reality through brummagem corporate filings.
– William F. Buckley, Jr., “Reforming the Rich”, National Review, January 20, 2006Brummagem is an alteration of Birmingham, England, from the counterfeit groats produced there in the 17th century.
I mostly liked this word for the example sentence about the dubious corporate filings. Seems like everyone is lining up for money lately. The hubs We made some real bad investments. I wanna be bailed out! Don’t you?
Also, this definition and its origin made me look up “groats” which I know as food, like oat groats (which the hubs buys so I can break my arm grinding them into oatmeal). Why would someone in the 17th century pawn off fake oatmeal?
See, I’m getting smarter by the second with the weekly words….aren’t you?
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Hey, turns out there’s an online form to apply for government money. I read about it here. Yea, I got your Troubled Asset Recovery Program right here…..
Or, maybe we skip the official route and start making our own brummagem groats. What’d ya say?
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3 Comments
November 12th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I doon’t want to be bailed out exactly, just handed enough cash to be independently wealthy. No strings attached, of course, or what fun would it be>
citizen of the worlds last blog post..Lunch time.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
no, we don’t ask much.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Oooh groats, you say. I thought you said goats. And then I sat here for quite some time wondering how you get away with counterfitting a goat and what exactly a counterfit goat would look like, anyway. Not pretty, I bet. Unless a groat is just a great goat, then I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want a groat. Kind of like when something is better than good but maybe not great and at first you were going to say great, but then half way through you decided that might be a bit too enthusiastic so you decided that it’s actually just good, but your mangled word just came out as a “grood.” A grood groat.
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