Pronounced: teh-LOOR-ick, adj
Notes: This is another word that I didn’t know, but after seeing the origin, it made sense
Yesterday’s phrase
The phrase scare quote refers to “the quotation marks around a word or phrase to indicate said phrase is incorrect, nonstandard, or ironic”.
First usage
This word came into English in the 1950s
Background / Comments
Our phrase was coined by a philosopher: G. E. M. Anscombe. For an example of scare quotes, consider the following: My attention kept wanting to wander as Bob shared ‘interesting’ facts from his life. Scare quotes are used in writing; the equivalent of scare quotes in speaking is “air quotes”.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 