panjandrum

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The Word of the Day for September 11 is:

panjandrum   \pan-JAN-drum\   noun
     : a powerful personage or pretentious official

Example sentence:
     After years of expanding his vocabulary and perfecting his word play 
strategies, Uncle Ira considers himself to be a panjandrum in the world of 
SCRABBLE players.

Did you know?
     "Panjandrum" looks like it might be a combination of Latin and Greek 
roots, but in fact it is a nonsense word coined by British actor and playwright 
Samuel Foote around 1755. According to the _Oxford English Dictionary_, Foote 
made up a line of gibberish to "test the memory of his fellow actor Charles 
Macklin, who had asserted that he could repeat anything after hearing it once." 
Foote's made-up line was, "And there were present the Picninnies, and the 
Joblillies, and the Garyulies and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little 
round button at the top." Some 75 years after this, Foote's passage appeared in 
a book of stories for children by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It 
took another quarter century before English speakers actually incorporated 
"panjandrum" into their general vocabulary.