With the help of Tom Dalzell's deliciously wicked book "The Slang of Sin" (Merriam Webster, $20), let's smoke out the origins of slang terms for marijuana.

"Reefer" first appeared in the popular song "Reefer Man," ...Read More

autodidact \aw-toh-DY-dakt\ (noun) - One who is self-taught.

"It was the abstract, acidulous work of an autodidact who had previously made a series of unusual contributions to various marginal and rarefied branches of ...Read More

spoony \SPOO-nee\ (adjective) - 1 : Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental. 2 : Foolishly or sentimentally in love.

"They were real spoony on me, but I wasn't spoony on them one bit, Eliza, at least, not in my heart, ...Read More

temerity \tuh-MER-uh-tee\ (noun) - Unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger; rashness.

"Then, he had the temerity, the ivory-tower temerity, if I may be so bold, as to suggest that there are younger, and less well-...Read More

rapine \RAP-in\ (noun) - The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of another's property by force.

"Let us look again upon mankind: interest is stull the ruling motive, and the world is yet full of fraud and ...Read More

The mail carrier was juggling a passel of parcels.

In a way, that sentence is redundant. For "passel" is a shortening of "parcel." In fact, "passel" is one of a whole passel of English words formed by dropping the "r" ...Read More