ext_147905 ([identity profile] prettygoodword.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] 1word1day2017-03-02 07:50 am
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Thursday word: busticate

busticate (BUS-ti-kayt) - v., to break into pieces.


While you might, quite reasonably, assume this is yet another colorful 19th-century North American coinage, formed along the lines of absquatulate by putting the Latin verbal suffix -icate on the native English bust (which is itself a variant form of burst, which dates back to Old English) -- you would be wrong if you did so. It is, in fact, a colorful early-20th-century North American coinage formed by et cetera: the earliest citation I can find is from 1906 (Eric Partridge dates it to 1915, which shows what he knows). Here's one from 1908:
We all know that there is nothing so easy to macerate, percolate, absquatulate, and totally busticate as the Ten Commandments.
The Pharmaceutical Era


---L.

[identity profile] realpestilence.livejournal.com 2017-03-02 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I wonder if it's related to rusticate or if that's a coincidence. Certainly a fine word, in any case. Makes me think of Mark Twain, for some reason.

[identity profile] sallymn.livejournal.com 2017-03-02 07:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Oooh, I like it! Thank you!
med_cat: (SH education never ends)

[personal profile] med_cat 2017-03-02 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Great word, and further words and the example :)

[identity profile] calzephyr77.livejournal.com 2017-03-03 12:59 am (UTC)(link)

I need to find ways to use this in a sentence.