putative

Pronounced: PYOO-tuh-tihv, adj

Notes: I confused this word with punitive

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Yesterday’s word

The word crackjaw means, as an adjective, “hard to pronounce”. As a noun, it refers to “a word or phrase that is hard to pronounce”

First Usage

This word has been around since the mid-1800s

Background / Notes

There are many ways to indicate a long word or a rare word. There are inkhorn words; difficult words; stately language; a sesquipedalian; and here we have crackjaw… The idea being that to pronounce such difficult or long words, one would crack one’s jaw. Our word comes from (as you might expect) “crack” together with “jaw”.