Today's Word "Cantankerous"
Published in Vocabulary
cantankerous \kaen-TAENG-ker-ess\ (adjective) - Quarrelsome, ill-tempered, crotchety, ornery; difficult to handle.
"And he's a cantankerous, dragon-headed, opinionated old curmudgeon, far too accustomed to getting his own way, who shouldn't be allowed outside the precincts of the Academy without a keeper and a leash." -- David Weber and Linda Evans, 'Hell's Gate'
"Cantankerous" is a cantankerous word itself. It is most probably the result of play with the word "contentious," balled up with "rancorous" and "cankerous." The same humans that created the rules of grammar that determine the correctness of our speech also police it. Sometimes we allow ourselves to violate the rules of word formation just for a laugh; gongoozler "gawker" and lollygag "piddle around" are a couple of examples. Since we have historically considered Latin an affectation of the upper classes subject to ridicule by those of us below, making these words sound Latinate adds to the humor, e.g. "discombobulate," "humongous."
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