catchpenny

Pronounced: KACH-pen-ee, noun

Notes: I’ve run across this word, and had an idea of the meaning, but I wasn’t quite right

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Yesterday’s word

Curiously, the word dabster means

• an expert
• a bungler

First usage

Our word came into English in the early 1700s

Background / Comments

It is a bit odd to have a word that has such widely different meanings. Apparently, in the UK, the first definition is used most often; in the US, the second definition is used more often. Our word comes from the word dab (an expert) and -ster (a suffix meaning a person engaged in some activity; it is also used as a diminutive and as a derogatory suffix). In the now extinct comic strip User Friendly, one of the characters is called ‘Sid Dabster’.