1.03.2009

A silver lining

I was reading through the feeds in my Google Reader account that I have tagged 'word nerds' and came across yesterday's OED Word of the Day: argentine.

That's right. Lower case a.

Lower case argentine, I came to learn, means silver, material simulating silver, or made or or containing silver. This is not to be confused with Argentine people of Argentina, even though Argentina got its name from the Latin argentum, meaning silver. And it's never to be confused with Argentinian, because Argentinian is not really the way to refer to people from Argentina.

I've always enjoyed saying Argentine out loud. Something about the soft 'g' coming after the r, perhaps. However, I will be saying argentine from now on.

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