• nimrod •
Printable Version Pronunciation: nim-rahd • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A great or mighty hunter, someone who loves hunting.
Notes: Today's word does not mean a silly or stupid person, a wide-spread misunderstanding emanating from Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs is wont to refer to his sometime nemesis, Elmer Fudd, as "poor little Nimrod” when Elmer is hunting him. Since Elmer is not 'vewy bwight', many have taken nimrod to mean a silly person.
In Play: Today's Good Word is an antique hunting term: "Noah Zarque is a rather dim nimrod who tracks wild animals tenaciously, even though he couldn't hit a barn with a bass fiddle, let alone a rabbit with his old blunderbuss." Did you hear about the guys who called their hunting lodge The Nimrod Club and told their wives it was a literary society? Click here to find out why it worked. (Sorry, guys, if your wives subscribe to our Good Words.)
Word History: 
The eponym of today's Good Word is Nimrod, a mighty hunter of the Old Testament, king of Shinar and a city dear to all of us, Babel. He was also the great-grandson of the original Noah (not Mr. Zarque). According to Genesis 10:9, Nimrod was a mighty hunter. The name resembles the Hebrew verb nimrodh "let us revolt" but the idea of a hunter suggests that the word comes from ancient Babylonian nimr "leopard" + rod "to subdue." (This word was a suggestion of Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, a mighty hunter of interesting words who goes by the pseudonym of The Brazilian Dude in the Agora.)
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