• corker •
Pronunciation: kor-kêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Someone who corks bottles. 2. (Regional slang) Something that brings finality, that puts an end to a matter, that 'puts a cork in' something. 3. (Regional slang) Something excellent, outstanding in its class or category.
Notes: Today's Good Word is most common today in New England, so it is a regional slang term. It often is accompanied by a prepositional phrase beginning with of: you can tell a corker of a story or experience a corker of a storm. Any way you use it, it indicates that the noun it modifies is an outstanding example of its class.
In Play: If you travel about Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, you are apt to hear sentiments expressed like this: "I hear that the alphaDictionary Good Words are a corker of a word-of-the-day series." Well, that's the way we dream of it. "That story you told about climbing Mt. Everest was really a corker—whether it was true or not."
Word History: The word cork came to English from Spanish corcho "cork", the Spanish descendant of Latin quercus "oak". Quercus is a descendant of PIE *perkwu-/*porkwu- "oak", in which the [p] became [kw] under the influence of the [kw] in the following syllable. Since PIE [p] became [f] in Germanic languages, we would expect descendants of this same root in these languages to look like firh-, which points the finger to the ancestor of English fir. The regional use of this word, as in a corker of a day, came from the world of baseball. A corker in the 1860s was a hit that flew from the bat like the cork from a champagne bottle, usually a home run. A released champagne cork even gives a pop like a bat hitting the ball.
CORKER
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• The Good Dr. Goodword
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
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I am sure the Good Doctor is right about corker being primarily a Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire regionalism.
These are three states of the USA that I have never visited. How can I explain that this word has been in my red neck vocabulary since I was a half pint?
These are three states of the USA that I have never visited. How can I explain that this word has been in my red neck vocabulary since I was a half pint?
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
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I think I know what happened to spread the word corker. During WWII our servicemen were exposed to the cultures of people from all over the country. I believe the boys from the far northeast may have shared the word with their buddies and it caught on for some of them.
I know this happened to other words. I thought copasetic was a word peculiar to military men when I was a child. I learned it from my uncles right after WWII. Now, it seems to be remembered mostly by old veterans. I believe we have discussed copasetic on Alpha Agora before and tossed around its possible origins.
I know this happened to other words. I thought copasetic was a word peculiar to military men when I was a child. I learned it from my uncles right after WWII. Now, it seems to be remembered mostly by old veterans. I believe we have discussed copasetic on Alpha Agora before and tossed around its possible origins.
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.
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