• comeuppance •
Printable Version Pronunciation: kêm-êp-êns • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural)
Meaning: (Slang) Just deserts (as opposed to "just desserts"), deserved punishment.
Notes: Today's, well, acceptable if not really Good Word has alternated historically with come-upping. The hyphen has had a difficult time finding its place in these words: come-up-ing, come-uppance, and come-up-ance have all been tried. Today it is either omitted altogether or placed after come. (By the way, the word deserts in the Meaning above is an old noun from the verb deserve.)
In Play: Any time you feel someone received punishment well deserved, you may call it comeuppance: "Well, that Maud Lynn Dresser got her comeuppance for attending the party so outrageously overdressed when one of her spiked heels broke and she fell into the pool." It is a slang word, however, so avoid using it in legal documents; restrict it to conversations: "You'll get your comeuppance some day for putting me through such misery!"
Word History: Today's Good Word is one that demonstrates just how outrageously English words can behave. Comeuppance has the French suffix, -ance added to very English phrase, to come up, rather than to a simple word as the grammar allows. The sense of come up in today's word is the one it has in the phrase "to come up for judgment, a case comes up (in court)". Only English allows such ridiculous abuse of itself but it does so rather regularly: stick-to-itiveness and one-upmanship are two other examples of the same grammatical travesty. Often we convert phrases to words without affixation. "You are so over-the-top," converts the phrase "over the top" into an adjective without so much as a by-your-leave, let alone a suffix.
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