Today's word at Anu Garg's A.Word.A.Day brought back a bit of my elementary-school study of New York City history. I remember New Amsterdam. I remember Peter Stuyvesant and his wooden leg. And I remember linsey-woolsey. Everyone must have been wearing it back then:
linsey-woolsey (LIN-zee WOOL-zee) noun
1. A strong, coarse fabric of wool and cotton.
2. An incongruous mix.
[From Middle English linsey (linen, or from Lindsey, a village in Suffolk, UK) + woolsey (a rhyming compound of wool).]
Though not spelled the same way, the homonymous Lindsay Woolsey is also the name of a character in the movie Auntie Mame, a publisher friend and eventual second husband of Mame Dennis Burnside.
ReplyDeleteI mean homophonous.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Norman. Homonymous sent me to Merriam-Webster online, where I found
ReplyDelete1 : AMBIGUOUS
2 : having the same designation
3 : of, relating to, or being homonyms
A new word to me.