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Date: | Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:18:47 -0500 |
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Thought people might enjoy this bon mot, as a holiday lagniappe. It's from
the Merrian-Webster Word of the Day list.
Terry Oggel
The Word of the Day for November 29 is:
lagniappe \LAN-yap\ (noun)
: a small gift given a customer by a merchant at the
time of a purchase; broadly : something given or obtained
gratuitously or by way of good measure
Example sentence:
The Garcia family's store always has the best holiday-
themed lagniappes; this year with a $10 purchase you receive a
snowman figurine.
Did you know?
"We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in
_Life on the Mississippi_ (1883), "a word worth traveling to
New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word --
'lagniappe'. . . . It is Spanish -- so they said." Twain
encapsulates the history of "lagniappe" quite nicely. English
speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians,
but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish word
"la napa." Twain went on to describe how New Orleanians
completed shop transactions by saying "Give me something for
lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit
of liquorice-root, . . . a cheap cigar or a spool of thread."
It took a while for "lagniappe" to catch on throughout the
country, but by the mid-20th century, New Yorkers and New
Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."
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