Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Word of the day

Today (while playing freerice.com, a never-ending word quiz) I came across the adjective "macaronic." The quiz claimed it meant "a hodgepodge of two or more languages," which seemed really peculiar to me. So I looked into the matter.

Rumor (i.e. two or three websites) says the word is taken from an Italian book titled Maccharonae, which was full of half-Latin, half-Italian poetry. As near as I can tell, the book really was named after the noodle.

And there you have it.

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