cantrip: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

	Word of the Day for Sunday, October 28, 2012 cantrip \KAHN-trip\, noun: 1. Chiefly Scot. A magic spell; trick by sorcery. 2. Chiefly British. Artful shamming meant to deceive. Used properly, it may be possible to drive a vampire or garou into frenzy with this cantrip. -- Steve Long, Ethan Skemp, Combat And before I knew it her arms were around me, and she smelt of lavender and delicious silk, and her voice in my ear was whispering something—a cantrip, I thought, with a twist of surprise, a cantrip, just like the days in Lansquenet—and then I looked up and it wasn’t Maman there at all. -- Joanne Harris, The Girl with No Shadow: A Novel Cantrip is of uncertain origin, but it is most likely a variation of the Old English word calcatrippe which referred to both a plant and a type of iron ball used to block calvary in warfare. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom? Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges Check out the Quote of the Day ›› How the prefix "franken-" took on a life of its own. . . As Halloween quickly approaches, Frankenstorm is sneaking up on the East Coast. Forecasters are calling the hurricane headed for New York, New Jersey, and as far inland as Ohio, "Frankenstorm" because (like the monster in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus) this storm is stitched together from three different weather systems, Hurricane... Read more ›› Dictionary.com Word of the Day You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: thokozani031@gmail.com Subscriber since: February 15, 2012 Unsubscribe from the Word of the Day To subscribe to the Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wordoftheday@lists.lexico.com ©2012 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to the Word of the Day can also be managed online   Tell a friend about the Word of the Day!