Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Word of the Day: jiggery-pokery


jiggery-pokery: (n.) -- deceitful or dishonest manipulation; underhand scheming or behavior; hocus-pocus, humbug, subterfuge, hanky panky, skullduggery, slickness, trickery.

Interesting tidbit: jiggery-pokery is a classic example of what’s called a double dactyl, a dactyl being a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables; it’s named after the Greek word for finger, whose joints represent the three syllables. Other examples of double dactyls are higgledy-piggledy and idiosyncrasy.

1 comment:

  1. Hah. I learned a way cooler word today whilst watching "Bambie" :
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twitterpated

    ReplyDelete

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