Monday, January 13, 2014

Fwd: hurdy-gurdy: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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From: Dictionary.com <doctor@dictionary.com>
Date: 2014/1/12
Subject: hurdy-gurdy: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
To: "Hector William G." <hectorpinillos@gmail.com>

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 12, 2014

hurdy-gurdy \HUR-dee-GUR-dee, -gur-\, noun:

1. a barrel organ or similar musical instrument played by turning a crank.
2. a lute- or guitar-shaped stringed musical instrument sounded by the revolution against the strings of a rosined wheel turned by a crank.

The whole fleet of vehicles caught in the circle stops and starts to the eye-rhythm established, and a loud fairground hurdy-gurdy on the sound track synchronises all the movements into an unexpected, ravishingly beautiful and joyous merry-go-round.
-- David Bellos, Jacques Tati, 1999

The thump of rugs being beaten was sometimes joined by a hurdy-gurdy, which was painted brown and mounted on squalid cart wheels, with a circular design on its front depicting an idyllic brook…
-- Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, 1970

Hurdy-gurdy entered English in the 1740s. It is a variant of the Scots word hirdy-girdy meaning "uproar."

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