cocooning

Pronounced: kuh-KOO-ning, noun

Notes: I’m assuming the meaning of this word is a recent one

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Yesterday’s word

The word Croesus is “a very rich person”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1300s

Background / Comments

As I noted yesterday, our word breaks my usual rules: I do know the meaning of our word, having across it as the phrase “as rich as Croesus” (“filthy rich” is more common these days). But I posted our word anyway because I wanted to relate a story about this word that I enjoy. You probably know that when people hear a word or words they don’t know, they often put in a word that they do know. Children frequently do this practice, but so do adult. For example, in the song Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, some children think the line is “… he’s makin’ a list, chicken and rice…”. Likewise, in the song Winter Wonderland, some thing that the line is “…In the meadow we can build a snowman/And pretend that he is sparse and brown…”. In the book Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, there is a conversation with servants. One of them, describing a wealthy relative mangles the phrase “as rich as Croesus” to “as rich as sneezes” (well, it made me laugh). I’m always reminded of this malapropism. As you may expect, our word is capitalized because it is the name of a real person: Croesus was the king of Lydia (now part of the country of Turkey). He ruled in the 500s BC; conquered the surrounding regions, and became very wealthy, and so his name entered our language.