But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was vamoose.As raunchy as it can be at times, Urban Dictionary has gone mainstream - I mean, it’s even used in some courtrooms to define culturally acceptable slang terms. One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was vamos, which means "let's go."Ĭowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble territory - the true Wild West. With his weapon still in his grip, he leapt behind the wheel of the van, slammed it into drive, and floored it." - Raymond Khoury, The Templar Salvation, 2010 About the Word: "He raised his handgun and tried to line Reilly down its sight, but there was too much commotion around the agent and Zahed couldn't get a clean shot. In the 19th century, English speakers added the suffix -etic to bathos, the Greek word for "depth," which in English has come to mean "triteness" or "excessive sentimentalism." The result: the ideal adjective for the incredibly commonplace or the overly sentimental. People also applied that bit of linguistic transformation to coin bathetic. When English speakers turned apathy into apathetic in the 1700s, using the suffix -etic to turn the noun into the adjective, they were inspired by pathetic, the adjectival form of pathos, from Greek pathētikos. "Ironically this bloated historical drama about Hungary's failed democratic revolution of 1956 evokes nothing less than a Stalinist pageant: everyone on the right side of history is depicted as a morally enlightened superhuman, and a wash of bathetic music every few minutes is supposed to remind you how monumental the situation is." - Ben Sachs,, SeptemAbout the Word: Barnum also claimed that gumption named a particular kind of hard cider, but that sense is far from common today.Ĭharacterized by triteness or sentimentalism Example: By the 1860s, American English speakers were also using gumption to imply ambition or tenacity, but it wasn't until the early 1900s that gumption began to appear in English texts as a direct synonym of courage or get-up-and-go.Īmerican showman P.T. In its earliest uses, gumption referred to intelligence or common sense, especially when those qualities were combined with high levels of energy. The term's exact origins aren't known, but its earliest known uses are found in British and especially Scottish dialects (which also include the forms rumblegumption and rumgumption). Fu, Contra Costa (California) Times, JAbout the Word:Įnglish speakers have had gumption (the word, that is) since the early 1700s. "Plans for the relocation and expansion of Vacaville's homeless shelter have hit a snag, but it looks like a little gumption and the city's support could keep the project from derailing." - Kimberly K. This list features our Word of the Day selections from the past year that have received the most Facebook "Likes." Definition:Ĭommon sense, horse sense enterprise, initiative Example:
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