One label that anyone would enjoy receiving in this weather is the label of snowbird, a northerner who moves to the warm South for winter. This word comes from the combining of snow and bird and has come to refer to humans in the metaphorical sense after being used for various birds like the junco.

A noisy, vigorous promoter or speaker is a tub-thumper; a term that has its origin in earlier times when the word tub was jocularly used for a pulpit. Just think of an impassioned preacher pounding away on his pulpit and one realises why any fervent promoter of a cause can be labelled a tub-thumper.

In the Nazi regime, soldiers wore long and sturdy leather boots that reached up to or above the knee. This association led to the usage of jackboot as an adjective for oppressive, bullying or authoritarian tactics and a noun for a person who employs such tactics.

A dish can be called toothsome, on the lines of handsome, meaning good to handle. So, something toothsome is anything good to chew. Toothsome evolved in meaning from delicious to agreeable to sexually attractive over a period of many decades.

On similar metaphorical lines, benighted refers to day being overtaken by night or darkness. As an adjective, benighted has come to be used for any person who is in a state of being intellectually, morally or socially ignorant due to lack of opportunity.

The blunderbuss, a favourite weapon of the pirates, is a short and wide-mouthed gun used to scatter shots at close range. It is a modification of the Dutch donderbus, made up of donder (thunder) and bus (gun or tube). Since the gun became notorious for its imprecise shot, i.e. blunder, English altered the word donderbus to blunderbuss, a word soon to be applied to clumsy, and blundering or insensitive persons.

A very literal adjective is pot valiant, made up of pot or vessel and valiant or courageous, meaning courage shown under the influence of hard liquor, or literally, courage that comes out of the vessel of alcohol.

This feature was published on January 29, 2005