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May 17, 2019
This week’s theme
Portmanteaux or blend words

This week’s words
hermaphrodite
meeple
cremains
shero
prissy

This week’s comments
AWADmail 881

Next week’s theme
Tosspot words borrowed from other languages
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

prissy

PRONUNCIATION:
(PRI-see)

MEANING:
adjective: Overly prim and precise so as to appear prudish or finicky.

ETYMOLOGY:
Perhaps a blend of prim + sissy. Earliest documented use: 1894.

USAGE:
“Lucius Malfoy is the boastful and prissy aristocrat who keeps peacocks in his garden and always sits in the best box at the Quidditch World Cup.”
Janet Albrechtsen; The Trouble Is That Neither Has the Magic; The Australian (Canberra, Australia); Jul 12, 2017.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There's an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the 'Aha'. Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we're in -- the one that we think is reality. -Alan Kay, computer scientist (b. 17 May 1940)

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