perfuse

Pronounced: purr-FUSE, verb

Notes: This word didn’t mean what I was thinking

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Yesterday’s word

A Wellerism is “an expression of comparison comprising a usually well-known quotation followed by a facetious sequel”

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1800s

Background / Comments

An example would be helpful – here’s a common Wellerism: I see, said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw. When I was looking up examples, I found this one that I thought was pretty good: Remarkable, said the teacher, trying our her dry-erase board. As you can tell by the capitalization, our word comes from a person — but unlike the recent word “Lucullan” (which comes from a real person), our word comes from a fictional person. Our word comes from Sam Weller, a character in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, which was published in 1836. Both Sam Weller and his father would follow a well-known saying or phrase with an unexpected twist – humorous or punning. Shortly after the publication of the book, people began to call such statements “Wellerisms”.