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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--boodle If archaic words are the grizzled veterans of a language, slang terms are its feisty teenagers. These are words that are not afraid to experiment, twist, turn, blend, and innovate with language. Since slang is often born on the gritty streets of language, those words often don't get recorded in a birth register in the form of printed citations. So their origins are hard to pin down. We do have the origins of all of this week's slang though, as they all are based on words from foreign languages. This week let's look at slang originating in words from Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Italian. boodle (BOOD-l) noun An illegal payment, as in graft. verb intr. To take money dishonestly, especially from graft. [From Dutch boedel (property).] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus. -Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org) "100 years ago, June 2, 1905: [Several senators and representatives] were arrested yesterday on charges growing out of the alleged boodling operations in the last general assembly." Other Days; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Jun 2, 2005. X-Bonus We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

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