purp
n.— «“Wher’s y’r master, purp?”…The hount lifted his nose and howled dolefully.» —“The Sign of the Prophet” by James Ball Naylor Nebraska State Journal Feb. 16, 1902. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Chris in Omaha, Nebraska, asks about the use of the adjective husky to describe the boys’ clothing section in a department store. This coded term refers to clothes made for heavier fellows. Husky was originally a positive term connoting the...