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copacetic: msg#00001culture.language.word-of-the-day
**************************************************************** Gearing up for back-to-school? Be sure to check out our line of updated age-specific school references! http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?scholref.htm **************************************************************** The Word of the Day for September 2 is: copacetic \koh-puh-SET-ik\ adjective : very satisfactory Example sentence: The star receiver had openly criticized his coach for benching him last week, but today he told reporters that everything is now copacetic between them. Did you know? Theories about the origin of "copacetic" abound. The tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson believed he had coined the word as a boy in Richmond, Virginia. When patrons of his shoeshine stand would ask, "How's everything this morning?" he would reply, "Oh jes' copasetic, boss; jes' copasetic." But the word was current in Southern Black English perhaps as early as 1880, so it seems unlikely that Robinson (born in 1878) could have invented the term. Another explanation is that the word is from the Hebrew phrase "kol be sedher," meaning "everything is in order." Possibly it was coined by Harlem blacks working in Jewish businesses. This explanation does not account for the word's popularity among Southern blacks, however. Ultimately, the origin of "copacetic" remains a mystery. |
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