Wednesday's words often have their origin in not just something that encapsulates my life at the moment, but a word that plagues my inner dialogue, or one that tickles my fancy. Today's word is a tickler.
As I looked out over the yard strewn with storm-littered tree shrapnel, I found myself exclaiming (inside my head), "Look at all this flim-flammery!" (Inside my head because no one was there to listen and also because I wasn't quite sure of my word usage, despite the exclamation.)
And then, I knew that today's word would have to be flim-flammery. Except... that's not a word. It turns out my inner dialogue does not have an inner dictionary at its inner disposal. And I dressed the word up in a hyphen and suffix for fun. It also turns out that I didn't really know what it meant. Not exactly anyway. I thought it referred to a mess, a jumble of mixed up stuff...
Here is the real meaning, per dictionary.com, whose name seems too simple to be the authoritative giver of word meanings...
flim·flam
[flim-flam] noun, verb, -flammed, -flam·ming.noun
1.
a trick or deception, especially a swindle or confidencegame involving skillful persuasion or clever manipulation ofthe victim.
2.
a piece of nonsense; twaddle; bosh.
flim-flammery is a good word. It sounds better than "junk" or "stuff". So I will use it. Thanks for making new words for me to use. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou could say Irene pulled a flim-flam on you. Or she flim-flammed you. Haha, that's a great word!
ReplyDeleteNina says "flim-flamming on the jim-jam" all the time. I've heard it. :)
ReplyDelete