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Word of the Day for Tuesday, March 8, 2011puckish \PUHK-ish\, adjective: Whimsical; mischievous; impish. Superficially obnoxious, his friendly, puckish manner endeared him to those who relished the intensity of turn-of-the-century bohemian New York. To his credit he exhibits on occasion a puckish humor. Commenting on elementary reasoning abilities of chimpanzees engaged in experiments, he says they may "be wondering whether people have the capacity for reason, and if so, why they need help from apes to solve such simple problems. It happens that I had recently read an article on wordplay in the Smithsonian magazine in which the author asserted that some puckish soul had once sent a letter addressed, with playful ambiguity, to HILL JOHN MASS and it had gotten there after the postal authorities had worked out that it was to be read as "John Underhill, Andover, Mass." (Get it?) Puckish comes from Puck, the name of a mischievous sprite in English folklore, from Middle English pouke, "goblin," from Old English puca. | |||||||||
 Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom?Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges | |||||||||
  What is the name of the dot over "j" and "i," and why do we use them?While many languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, add specific accents to the letters or characters throughout their alphabet - the English alphabet has only two letters that include a diacritic dot. This a mark added to a letter that is meant to signal a change in either the sound or meaning of a character.... | |||||||||
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