Fun and Games

Sometimes when I am not doing anything else in particular, I pick up my big, old, red, worn copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (New College Edition) and open it up.  Sometimes I look at the pictures, because that's not what you are supposed to do with a dictionary.  You are supposed to look up words and their pronunciation, derivation, definition, and ...yawn.. that kind of stuff.  Okay, that yawn was a joke.  Everyone knows I love words. 

Here is something thing I found when I previously looked up the spelling of the word lagniappe for this very blog.  I knew the definition of the word (a gift that is a little something extra, given by a vendor to a customer with a purchase) and I thought it was French.  But it reminded of a Quichua word yapa that people in Ecuador use which means exactly the same thing.  In Ecuador you can ask for the yapa when you buy food at the market, for example.  So if you buy a bunch of pineapples and then you smile nicely and say "Y la yapa?" then you might get a gorgeous green avocado, too.  Or sometimes, when you are a regular customer, you don't have to ask at all.   Sometimes if you are in line to buy food you will get your yapa while you are waiting, too. 

So, back to the derivation of the word.  Lagniappe is from "Louisiana French, from American Spanish, from Quechua" according to my big red book.  What?  Hey?  How did that word from South America get to Louisiana?   That sounds like a good story waiting to be written.

Here is your yapa for the day, courtesy of this blog:
If you are bored, take your dictionary, open it up and look at a random page and see if the 2 words at the top (you know, the ones that tell you what the first and last words are on that particular page) make a humorous or interesting phrase.   Here are some of my recent favorites:

fervid feuilleton
mangy manitou
salvable samovar
field-day fight
generally genitive

Why, you are welcome!  Come back again!