druthers

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The Word of the Day for January 31 is: 

druthers   \DRUH-therz ("th" as in "then")\   noun, dialect
     : free choice : preference 

Example sentence:
     If Hugh had his druthers, he'd be riding in a mountain bike race this 
weekend instead of helping out at his dad's garage.

Did you know?
     "Druther" is an alteration of "would rather." "Any way you druther have 
it, that is the way I druther have it," says Huck to Tom in Mark Twain's _Tom 
Sawyer, Detective_. This example of metanalysis (the shifting of a sound from 
one constituent of a phrase to another) had likely been around for some time in 
everyday speech when Twain put those words in Huck's mouth. By then, in fact, 
"druthers" had already become a plural noun, so Tom could reply, "There ain't 
any druthers about it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers." 
"Druthers" is essentially a dialectal term and it tends to suggest an 
informality of tone, but in current use it doesn't necessarily suggest a lack 
of sophistication or education.