Pronounced: will-uh-the-WISP, noun
Notes: Do you know both the literal and figurative meanings?
Yesterday’s word
The word sansculotte (alternately spelled sans-culotte) is “a radical or revolutionary”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1700s
Background / Comments
You probably knew this word if you have studied much about the French Revolution. Our word came from (as you might think) French, where is literally means “without knee breeches” from sans- (without) and culotte (knee breeches). During the French Revolution, the aristocrats used this term contemptuously to refer the the poorly dressed volunteers of the Revolution army: they rejected knee breeches as a symbol of the upper class, and wore pantaloons instead. The revolutionaries proudly adopted the epithet and used it proudly — and that practice is not that unusual: consider Anabaptist/Baptist or Yankee.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 