As a lot of this blog is about writing, I wanted to write a regular article on my favourite forgotten words. You know the type of thing, those poor lost words that sit at the back of our minds, gathering dust, having been discovered years ago in literary classics like Dickens, or Austen. They are the spices of the literary world, but I refuse to let them sit in a cupboard and be ignored until they go out of date! Let’s bring them back!
This month’s word is: HORNSWOGGLE
Hornswoggle
verb
To cheat or trick.
So when I Googled hornswoggle to get the exact dictionary meaning, I was very surprised to see it’s also the name of a pro-wrestler! I find this fact particularly excellent and if anything, it’s made me like this word even more!
Hornswoggle means to cheat or trick someone. It’s a nineteenth century word so for all of us costume drama fans we might have come across it somewhere before. I grant you, it’s not a word that you can easily get into every day conversation, but you may be able to get it into your writing somewhere. If you do manage to get it into conversation, let me know! I might send you a prize! By the way, if you want to know about the pro-wrestler instead, you can read his wiki entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornswoggle