cockalorum \kok-uh-LAWR-uhm, -LOHR-\,
noun:
a self-important little man.
Meantime, let him be foolish! "I suppose he thinks he's the grand high cockalorum!" she told herself, chuckling.
-- Margaret Wade Campbell Deland, "The Iron Woman," 1911
His mother was dead and he could write about her: a young woman, a girl, really, with Sid, who was just a child, and Rose, who was even younger, emigrating from an inhospitable Russian countryside with that young cockalorum of a husband--good God, was he that way even then?--to live in this alien land and die before she was fifty.
-- Joseph Heller, "Good as Gold," 1979
This mock Latin term is a derivative of cock, meaning "a male chicken." It came to English in the early 1700s.
Dictionary.com
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Recommended Web Sites!
- Internet Public Library . The “Reading Room” is interesting. Books, magazine, journal links and much much more.
- File Extension Resource. Ever wonder what those extensions mean on a file? Check this site out for thousands of extensions, what they mean, and what programs open them
- The Purdue University Online Writing Lab ...MLA guidelines in research papers, and citing all sources from a single book to government ...
- New York Public Library's Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 640,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.