Word of the Day for Saturday, February 25, 2012
bandy \BAN-dee\,
verb:
1. To pass from one to another or back and forth; give and take.
2. To throw or strike to and fro or from side to side, as a ball in tennis.
3. To circulate freely.
adjective:
1. (Of legs) having a bend or crook outward; bowed.
noun:
1. An early form of tennis.
2. Chiefly British. (Formerly) hockey or shinny.
3. Obsolete. A hockey or shinny stick.
"I want all my clients to be like you," Peter says, which is probably not the shrewdest of comments ("client" isn't a word to bandyabout)...
-- Michael Cunningham, "By Nightfall"
He was supposedly a great cook, he would bandy about names of exotic mushrooms, but I never saw him boil an egg when I was visiting you.
-- Rick Moody, "The Mansion on the Hill,"
Though the origin of bandy is uncertain, it came into common usage in French during the rise of tennis in the 1500s, as in to bandy the ball.
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