brusque

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The Word of the Day for December 30 is: 

brusque   \BRUSK\   adjective
          1 : markedly short and abrupt 
    *2 : blunt in manner or speech often to the point of ungracious harshness 

Example sentence:
          Her brusque manner, often mistaken by others as unfriendliness, is 
actually caused by extreme shyness.

Did you know?
          We borrowed "brusque" from French in the 1600s. The French, in turn, 
had borrowed it from Italian, where it was spelled "brusco" and meant "tart." 
And the Italian term came from "bruscus," the Medieval Latin name for 
butcher's-broom, a shrub whose bristly leaf-like twigs have long been used for 
making brooms. English speakers initially used "brusque" to refer to a tartness 
in wine, but  the word soon came to denote a harsh and stiff manner -- which is 
just what you might expect of a word bristling with associations to stiff, 
scratchy brooms. 





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