Payson Roundup | Payson, AZ

Tom Garrett 10 months, 2 weeks ago

I'm sure that you all know what an anagram is--taking the letters of a word and making a new word.

If you spell Mom backwards you have...uh, Mom.

Hm-m-m-m....

That didn't work very well.

Well, how about this one?

Fred Franz was complaining that nothing fair ever gets turned into a law when something dawned on me.

If you take awl and turn it around you get....?

And if you take an awl and turn it around you get something that will hurt you if your try to use it. In fact, looking at the way awls are made I 'd say you'd get screwed.

So now, at last, we know where the word "law" came from: It's even in my dictionary:

LAW |lô| noun 1 (often "the" law) the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and enforces by the imposition of penalties.

ORIGIN Old English awlü, from Old Norse aülur ‘a wooden handled metal tool used to create a hole by means of screw leverage action [an inclined plane wound on a cylinder]; also the use [awl-ten-ürnae] of the boot [büte], a device used to crush the bones of the foot by mean of the action of a screw powered system of metal plates, levers, and turned shafts

’ of Germanic origin and related to lay.

I knew it had to be something like that.

:-)

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Tom Garrett 10 months, 2 weeks ago

As I just told Fred, I've decided to coin a new word: awled.

awled (verb.) screwed from Eng awl, hand tool used to drill holes

1 informal: cheated or swindled. • ruined; rendered ineffective. as in "you've been awled." 2 official: dealt with by the government at any level.

awlsome/awlation/awling adj: awlsome awed feeling of having been truly awled noun: awlation the act of awling

There you go. It is now entered into the dictionary on my machine, and you have my permission to make liberal use of it.

For example, you might say, "Dealing with the IRS is like trawling for an awling."

Works for me. :-)

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