madcap: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

[Dictionary.com]

	Word of the Day for Thursday, March 14, 2013 madcap \MAD-kap\, adjective: 1. wildly or heedlessly impulsive; reckless; rash: a madcap scheme. noun: 1. a madcap person. You can still see strong strains of formal qualities and madcap humor in his own work, which he began creating in 1971. -- Claudia La Rocco, "Sights in New York Like No Others," The New York Times, Dec. 14, 2012 Slothrop recognizes him on sight, Judge Hardy's freckled madcap son, three-dimensional, flesh, in a tux and am-I-losing-my-mind face. -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1995 Madcap is a portmanteau dated back to the late 1500s. The first part of this word comes from the Old High German gimeit, literally meaning "foolish" or "vain," and the second part takes a metaphorical spin on the the Late Latin cappa meaning "a hooded cloak." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom? Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges Check out the Quote of the Day ›› Lexical Investigations: Awkward A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the... Read more ›› Dictionary.com Word of the Day You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: e-dict...@googlegroups.com Subscriber since: January 06, 2008 Unsubscribe from the Word of the Day To subscribe to the Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wor...@lists.lexico.com ©2013 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to the Word of the Day can also be managed online   Tell a friend about the Word of the Day!