grinch

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The Word of the Day for December 25 is: 

grinch   \GRINCH\   noun
          : killjoy, spoilsport 

Example sentence:
          Our team had improved significantly over the past week, but the 
grinches were still pointing out that we were more than ten games out of first 
place.

Did you know?
          When Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, wrote the children's 
book _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ in 1957, he probably had no idea that in 
20 years "grinch" would enter the general lexicon of English. Like Charles 
Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge (whose name has become synonymous with "miser"), the 
Grinch changes his ways by the story's end, but it's the unreformed character 
who "hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!" who sticks in our minds. The 
ill-natured Grinch, with his heart "two sizes too small," provides us with a 
lively symbol of someone we love to hate, and his name has thus come to refer 
to any disgruntled grump who ruins the pleasure of others.





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