Could the word fugetaboutit -- a contraction of "forget about it" -- find
its way into dictionaries some day? It sounds unlikely, but that sort of
thing happens all the time in languages.

The everyday word "goodbye" was earlier "god be with you". By association
with greetings such as "good day", god morphed into good and the whole
phrase became goodbye. Another such term is the informal greeting "Howdy"
which in its former life was known as "How do ye?" or "How do you do?"

This week we'll look at five terms that were once longer phrases but are
now condensed.


druthers (DRUTH-uhrz) noun

   One's own way; preference.

[Plural of druther, contraction of "'d rather", as in "I/he/etc. would
rather ..."]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=druthers

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

  "If I had my druthers I would go, but I don't think I would
   a) be able to get my innings over there that I would be able
   to get here, and b) get the treatment I need."
   Rob Bradford; Road Back Unfamiliar; Boston Globe; Mar 18, 2008.

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............................................................................
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else
they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be
possible. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

Discuss this week's words on our bulletin board: http://wordsmith.org/board
Remove, change address, gift subs: http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html

Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/druthers.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/druthers.ram

Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/druthers.html

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