shirttail

Pronounced: SHURT-tale, noun/adj

Notes: Yes, this is the bottom part of the shirt that reaches below the waist, but what then does the adjective mean?

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Yesterday’s word

The word gadarene means “without pause or deliberation; headlong; precipitate”

First usage

Our word came into English in the 1920s

Background / Comments

I was astonished when I read that the origin of our word came from the Bible: when I saw the word, it did remind me of the Bible story about the “maniac of Gadara”, but I had no idea that it was actually the origin of the word. What happened is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke… Jesus cast demons out of some men who lived in Gadara (a town southeast of the Sea of Galilee) – the demons went into a herd of pigs that dashed down a steep place into the sea and were drowned. Our word came from that headlong dash, and is sometimes capitalized as Gadarene.