The word for today is…
panjandrum (noun):
1- a pompous self-important official or person of rank
2 – Secret WWII rocket propelled rolling bomb project designed to be used at beach assaults. It was an abject failure and was never deployed in action.
Source : Interesting literature.com; Youtube
Etymology : One of the many benefits of being WOTD collator (I really enjoy doing it) is that I can choose which word we have a look at and I get to do this hundreds of times a year. I have also awarded myself the privilege of starting a WOTD tradition. On the birthday of my commencement as panjandrum of WOTD, we are, every year, going to have the first word I posted – and it is still my favourite. So, happy second birthday to me.
Panjandrum is a made up word with no ‘proper’ roots. It was introduced in 1775 by actor and dramatist Samuel Foote (1720-77) in a piece of nonsense prose reportedly penned to fool a colleague (Charles Macklin an Irish actor who lived to be 106, a degree of longevity virtually unknown in the 18th century) who claimed that he could repeat anything after hearing it once.
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. ‘What! no soap?’ So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. Whether Macklin succeded in this challenge is not recorded.
In the twentieth century, the term The Great Panjandrum was used to describe a large experimental rocket-propelled, explosive-laden cart designed by the British military during the Second World War, introducing the phrase, and the word, to a whole new generation. Fittingly, it was a novelist, Nevil Shute, who chose the term ‘The Great Panjandrum’ for the explosive device.
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