Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Word of the day: Nowheresville

I don’t know how long the link will last, but the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day today is Nowheresville: “a largely unknown or uninteresting place, esp. a small, rural town; (also figurative) obscurity, insignificance, limbo; = Nowhereville n.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from 1917. A 1966 citation that caught my attention, from Time: “Sitting contentedly on the banks of the Illinois river in the very heartland of America, Peoria has for years been the butt of jokes, the gagman’s tag for Nowheresville.” Excuse me: Peoria is the second largest city in central Illinois (after Springfield). Nowheresville my eye.

You can subscribe to the OED Word of the Day from this page.

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