Word of the Day for Monday 10th March 2014
Cockalorum \kok-uh-LAWR-uhm, -LOHR-\, noun:
a
self-important little man.
Meantime,
let him be foolish! "I suppose he thinks he's the grand high cockalorum!"
she told herself, chuckling.
-- Margaret Wade Campbell Deland, The Iron Woman, 1911
-- Margaret Wade Campbell Deland, The Iron Woman, 1911
His
mother was dead and he could write about her: a young woman, a girl, really,
with Sid, who was just a child, and Rose, who was even younger, emigrating from
an inhospitable Russian countryside with that youngcockalorum of a
husband--good God, was he that way even then?--to live in this alien land and
die before she was fifty.
-- Joseph Heller, Good as Gold, 1979
-- Joseph Heller, Good as Gold, 1979
This
mock Latin term is a derivative of cock, meaning "a male
chicken." It came to English in the early 1700’s.
Thanks to: www.dictionary.com
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