Pronounced: KER-uhn, noun
Notes: This is a word I both knew and didn’t know
Yesterday’s word
The word brummagem means “not genuine; spurious; cheaply showy; tawdry”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1600s
Background / Comments
Our word is an alteration of the UK city “Birmingham”. When the word first appeared, Birmingham was notorious for the counterfeit coins, so our word originally referred to forgeries or inauthentic things. In the 1800s, the city of Birmingham was a place where cheap trinkets and gilt jewelry, and our word meant something that looked showy, but was really of poor quality.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 