2024-12-09
53 分钟You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I'm Grant Barrett.
And I'm Martha Barnett.
The word smarmy describes somebody, what, Grant, ingratiating, dripping with insincerity.
Unctuous.
Unctuous.
That's a good word for it.
Oily in their praise or their commentary.
Well, what I didn't know until recently is that the word smarmy may be the result of a contest.
Oh, I didn't know that either.
Yeah, this was news to me.
It turns out that in 1899,
a journal in London held a competition where they asked readers to send in new words.
And the journal put it this way.
Most families have a few pet words of homemade manufacture,
which are often far more expressive and picturesque than anything in Webster's Unabridged.
So all these readers sent in clever coinages, like one of them was screal, S-C-R-E-E-L,
and supposedly screal means to feel the sensation of hearing a knife edge squeal on a plate,
which I think is a great word.
but another reader sent in the words smarmy,