chumbolone
n.— «“I gave him lip service,” Doyle said. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. I don’t wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid,” Doyle said from the witness stand. There is a tasty Sicilian Easter cake called ciambellone, but Twan doesn’t look like a tasty Easter cake.» —“Playing dumb is wrong prescription” by John Kass Chicago Tribune Aug. 24, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
John Kass of the Chicago Tribune made great use – again! – of “chumbolone” in his 2/7/09 column. Very entertaining!