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Feb 1, 2023
This week’s theme
Words with multiple meanings

This week’s words
churl
dickey
dingbat
decollate
lave

dingbat
Dingbat (characters)
Image: Google

dingbat
Dingbat (building)
Photo: Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

dingbat

PRONUNCIATION:
(DING-bat)

MEANING:
noun:1. An eccentric or crazy person.
 2. An ornamental typographical symbol, such as ✲, ❏, ☛, ♥.
 3. An object, such as a brick, used as a missile.
 4. A gadget or an object whose name is unknown or forgotten. Aka, thingamajig, gizmo, etc.
 5. A two- to three-story boxy apartment building with parking spaces directly under it.
adjective:Eccentric or crazy.

ETYMOLOGY:
Origin unknown. Earliest documented use: 1838.

USAGE:
“In Arizona, for example, Mr McCain faces a tough primary battle against a dingbat [J.D. Hayworth] who frets about man-on-horse nuptials.”
United States: The Anti-Crist; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 3, 2010.

“When something blows, you don’t muck around trying to find one transistor or whatever the little dingbat is.”
Poul Anderson; Tales of the Flying Mountains; Collier; 1971.

“’It wasn’t an awareness of its seismic vulnerability that stopped the expansion of dingbats. It was more to do with the price of land,’ Hess said.”
Rosanna Xia & Jon Schleuss; Many Buildings Likely Need Quake Retrofit; Los Angeles Times; Apr 16, 2016.

See more usage examples of dingbat in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When you turn the corner / And you run into yourself / Then you know that you have turned / All the corners that are left. -Langston Hughes, poet and novelist (1 Feb 1902-1967)

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