I was just reading something a little while ago and came across a very interesting word. The phrase went something like "... perambulate the muck and mire..." Perhaps I don't read enough (or it could be the NyQuil), but "perambulate" struck me as such a seldom used, four-dollar word that I laughed. But because of Latin, I didn't have to give the meaning of the word a second thought.

My use of the slang term, "four-dollar word," here got me thinking about what Prof. M said recently about strange English idiomatic expressions. So I looked it up on the internet to see if I could discover where "four-dollar word" comes from. Lo and behold, I found a very amusing article, printed in The Boston Globe, if anyone is interested.

~Rachael