It's the word of the day for March 26th.
Today's word is zany, spelled Z-A-N-Y.
Zany is an adjective.
It describes people or things that are very strange and silly.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Parents.
The fourth and final episode centers on a birthday party for the cat in the hat.
Seeing where the clues lead, the friends embark on a joyous adventure of songs,
dances, silly challenges, and plenty of zany energy from their wacky, striped friend.
The oddballs among us are likely familiar with the word zany as an adjective, meaning eccentric.
But did you know the word originated as a noun, one that has withstood the test of time?
Zanies have been theatrical buffoons since the heyday of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte,
in which a zanni was a stock servant character,
often an intelligent and proud valet with abundant common sense and a love of practical jokes.
Zanni comes from a dialect nickname for Giovanni, the Italian form of John.
The character quickly spread throughout European theater circles,
inspiring such familiar characters as Pierrot and Harlequin.
And by the late 1500s, an anglicized version of the noun zany was introduced to English.
The adjective appeared within decades and eventually both adopted more general meanings
to refer to or describe those of us who are quipsters and weirdos.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.