purp
n.— «A man he owned a terrier dorg—/A bob-tailed onery cuss./And that there purp got that there man/In many an ugly muss.» —“The Fate of A Fighting Dog” by Sim Pelton Indiana Democrat (Indiana, Pa.) June 2, 1870. (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...
Eric from West Lafayette, Indiana, wonders which phrase is correct when referring to “making the grade” or “meeting expectations”: Is it cut the mustard or cut the muster? It’s the former, a reference to the strong...