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# The BFD Word of the Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/the-bfd-word-of-the-day-372/
- Published: 2021-02-01T17:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-01-31T23:46:25.000Z
- Author: David Theobald
- Tags: General, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:14

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](https://interestingliterature.com/2018/09/the-great-panjandrum-himself-nonsense-literature-before-carroll-and-lear/?ref=goodoil.news); [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cyBcGDzQzI&ref=goodoil.news)

Etymology : 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 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.*

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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