Two-Up Slamdown
26 April, 2013
This will be a Storm staged over three posts, between now and Tuesday. The winner will receive a hardback copy of The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth, the same chap I’m interviewing at the Sydney Writers' Fest.
Inspired by Anzac Day, each post will offer you a toss-up: two words (with their intriguing etymologies from Mark’s book) for you to clue. We need both definition and wordplay please. But here’s the catch – come submission time on Wednesday, you can only choose one word per post. So pick your best from each two-up round, filing your finest three.
At voting time, to make that decision critical, and strategic, we need to vote 3/1 on all six words, whether there are many in the group, or few. In the Anzac spirit, choose a fitting alias. Are we good to go? I’ll be competing too, to see if I can keep the book on my shelf. Here’s the first flip:
PARTRIDGE – heavy-bodied gamebird [From Greek perdesthai, a fart, due to the bird’s loud wingbeat.]
BUREAU – a desk; an office; a department [From Latin burra – wool, shaggy cloth – owing to cloth covering the furniture’s surface.]
May the best tosser win. Look for another round on the weekend.
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