1/17/2024 0 Comments Dead as a dodo meaning![]() ![]() But it’s the phrase dead as a dodo that resonates most strongly nowadays, and serves also as a reminder of a unique creature now lost. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter about someone who ‘had been a dodo’ about something. In any case, from the late 19thC the word was applied to people thought to be stupid or behaving stupidly: F. The dodo seems to have got its name from either Portuguese doudo ‘foolish, simple’ or Dutch dodoor ‘sluggard’ alternatively it may be onomatopoeic, mimicking the bird’s call ( PDF). ![]() In The dodo is dead, long live the dodo, I reflect on dodo the word and dodo the bird, now sadly extinct but with an afterlife of sorts in literature (such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – a line from which gave this blog its name) and in expressions like dead as a dodo: This supplies enough information and context to understand the word’s recent extension, and is infinitely more helpful than complaining about it or rejecting it as wrong. In a video about awesome, for example, Scott Thornbury points to the Dictionary’s secondary meaning for the word, which defines it as ‘extremely good’, labels it ‘informal’, and says it is ‘used mainly by young people’. This month Macmillan Dictionary introduced its Real Vocabulary series, which assesses word use based on the evidence of usage rather than myth, hearsay, and pet preference. Words change, and that’s OK looks at a new series by Macmillan on word use and language change, and concludes that – despite what language cranks would have you believe – etymology is not the boss of meaning: I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. ![]()
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