Zowie

zowie \ ZOW-ee\ interjection

: — used to express astonishment or admiration especially in response to something sudden or speedy (less commonly today than previously)

EXAMPLES

Did you see the race? Zowie! That was some fast bicycling!

"Zowie! It's almost February of your junior year! Can you believe it? Because college admissions officers are super-interested in this pa...rticular year, think about ways you can really shine in academics and extracurricular activities."

— Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, The Huffington Post, January 28, 2014

DID YOU KNOW?

The word "zowie" was inspired by the sound of a speeding vehicle—a new phenomenon when the word entered the lexicon in 1902, the year before the Ford Motor Company sold its first car. It wasn't until the 1930s and 40s, though, that "zowie" really picked up the pace. "Zowie" isn't one of a kind.

The British interjection "pip-pip," used to say "goodbye," dates to around the same time and is thought to be imitative of a bicycle or car horn. And "toodle-oo" (a word that sees some use on the American side of the Atlantic though it is more common in British English) shares the same meaning and hypothetical origin.

Charlatan

charlatan \ SHAHR-luh-tun \ noun

1: a pretender to medical skill : quack
2: one making usually showy pretenses to knowledge or ability : fraud, faker

EXAMPLES

Even though the psychic seemed to know a lot of information about Irving's life, Irving was still convinced that the guy was a charlatan who made some lucky guesses.

"I've been reading the tabloids for 40 years! ... And I've been fascinated by charlatans and fakers and sociopaths for as long as I've been alive."

— Jean Hanff Korelitz, quoted in Newsday (New York), April 6, 2014

DID YOU KNOW?

In medieval times, people claiming medical skills they did not have roamed throughout Italy, selling "medicine" that was often completely without worth. Many of these pretenders reputedly came from a village called Cerreto, and as a result, "cerretano" (meaning "inhabitant of Cerreto") became an epithet for a quack physician. In addition, these frauds used a practiced patter to attract customers, rather like the chatter of a circus barker. The Italian word for "chatter" is "ciarlare," and chattering was so associated with the "cerretano" that the spelling of the word shifted to "ciarlatano." By the early 17th century, we had anglicized the Italian word to "charlatan" and adopted it as our own.

Augur

augur \ AW-gur \ verb

1: to foretell (something) or to predict the future especially from omens
2: to give promise of : presage

From the Latin

EXAMPLES:

The state's new first-time home-buyer program augurs a healthy jump in home sales this year. ...

"The good news for our area in 2015 is that El Niños usually translate into milder winters for those in the northern part of the United States. It also augurs well for drought-stricken California, which will have a 60 percent chance of double its average rainfall. "

— The Daily Star (Oneonta, New York), March 12, 2014

DID YOU KNOW?

Auguring is what augurs did in ancient Rome. These were official diviners whose function it was, not to foretell the future, but to divine whether the gods approved of a proposed undertaking, such as a military move. These augurs did so by various means, among them observing the behavior of birds and examining the intestines of sacrificed animals. Nowadays, the intransitive verb sense of "foretell" is often used with an adverb, such as "well," as in our second example above.

"Augur" comes from Latin and is related to the Latin verb "augēre," which means "to increase" and is the source of "augment," "auction," and "author."