Pronounced: MAHR-plot, noun
Notes: I have never run across this word
Yesterday’s word
The word pococurante means “indifferent; nonchalant”
First usage
Our word came into English in the early 1800s
Background / Comments
Our word started as a character in Voltaire’s work Candide, published in 1759. Many characters in that work were carefully named. Pococurante is an apathetic Venetian senator; the name literally means “caring little” in Italian. Three years later Laurence Sterne used Pococurante in Tristram Shandy to mean a careless person. From there it changed to be an adjective, originally spelled poco-curante.
