Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Candidate
The words candidate and candid share the same Latin root, candidus, meaning “bright white,” a word that also gives us the word candle. The political use came about because Roman politicians wore white togas as the color associated with honesty. Modern politics cynically provide us with a number of improbable words that mean pretty much the opposite. A shrewd unprincipled politician might be called a carpetbagger, from the cheap luggage he carried, or snollygoster, a term of murky origin but a valid Scrabble word. They are both words used to describe unscrupulous individuals. Snollygoster in particular is just one of those fun words that seems to suggest exactly what it is.
Both terms first appeared in print in Kentucky around the mid-1800s and were popularly used among southern politicians. Politics also gives us other brilliant words like throttlebottom, an inept but harmless person in public office, named after a character in a 1931 musical comedy. Mugwump, originally a Republican who refused to support the party, is said to stem from an ironic use of an Algonquin word meaning chieftain.
Other words, not necessarily of political origins but possibly applicable, sound straight out of “Alice in Wonderland”: Ninnyhammer (a simpleton or fool), bumfuzzled (to be confused), taradiddle (pretentious nonsense) and malarkey (foolish talk). All of which might give you the collywobbles or bellyache. This last one has origins from the Latin “cholera morbus,” meaning it stems from cholera, a serious disease that caused millions of painful deaths worldwide before its cause was identified. A fun word hiding dark origins.
