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Mar 2, 2020
This week’s themeTosspot words
This week’s words
canker-blossom
Previous week’s theme
Adverbs
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargA sawbones (surgeon) and a mountebank (quack) may be poles apart, but they have something in common. Something other than medicine.
A skinflint (miser) and a spendthrift (one who is wasteful with money) also have something in common. Something other than money.
All four words are what we call tosspot words. The word tosspot literally means a drunkard, but the word itself is an example of a tosspot word.
A tosspot is a word coined by combining a verb and a noun, but the important thing is that the noun is the object of the verb. So pickpocket is a tosspot word because a pickpocket picks pockets; repairman is not, because a repairman does not repair a man, unless you call your doctor a repairman (better to call them sawbones).
This week we’ll see five tosspot words in A.Word.A.Day. What tosspot words have you coined? Share them on our website or email us at words@wordsmith.org.
canker-blossom
PRONUNCIATION:
(KANGK-uhr-blos-uhm) 
MEANING:
noun: One who destroys good things.
ETYMOLOGY:
From canker (to decay, infect, or corrupt), from Old English cancer (crab, tumor) + blossom (the mass of flowers on a plant). Earliest documented use: 1600, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
USAGE:
“Remember when Eric Clapton wasn’t such an frothy, knotty-pated, canker-blossom?”
Making a Mix - Sean Beirne; New Haven Register (Connecticut); Feb 3, 2006.
“Hermia: O me! (to Helena) You juggler! You canker-blossom!
You thief of love! What, have you come by night
And stol’n my love’s heart from him?”
William Shakespeare; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; 1600.
Making a Mix - Sean Beirne; New Haven Register (Connecticut); Feb 3, 2006.
“Hermia: O me! (to Helena) You juggler! You canker-blossom!
You thief of love! What, have you come by night
And stol’n my love’s heart from him?”
William Shakespeare; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; 1600.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit. -Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman, and reformer (2 Mar 1829-1906)
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