Saturday, June 27, 2009

Storebought

Here's a word left over from my childhood: "storebought," which we used to mean the opposite of "homemade." We might say for example, "That storebought bread will be better to make the sandwiches with, instead of the sourdough Mother just took out of the oven."

In this case we would mean the machine-sliced commercial loaf from the grocery.

But the word could be used for any commercial product chosen instead of one made by hand. As in, "She wore her storebought dress to the party because she hadn't finished hemming the dress-up skirt that she'd made from the pattern her grandmother had sent."

(These two examples of the use of this adjective are also for Wordnik .)

Mary the Trillenator

In some circles I'm known as the trillenator -- it's a word coined by a friend for me to use in an e-mail address. I like to think of myself as Mary the Trillenator, exploring the universe (at least in my imagination) and confounding the assumptions of all stick-in-the muds.

I've just offered "trillenator" as a word at the new website Wordnik .

And this post is to help clarify the meaning of my submitted word to anyone interested.

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