WORD OF THE WEEK: Tweedy Talk

A.Word.A.Day is a site that's been around for 15 years, providing word-lovers and wannabes the world over with vocabulary-building insight in a basic, text-based fashion. ... And speaking of fashion, their featured word of choice today is "tweedy," a reference to the tweed cloth often worn by professors and scholars, both traditionally and contemporarily.

But did you know that "tweedy" doesn't have to refer to clothing? Globally, the word can reference provincial, outdoorsy types (similar to the colloquial term "granola" in the American west without the liberal political tones), as well as to those iconic scholarly types.

It probably helps to be physically wearing tweed when citing oneself as an expert if you're really looking to be called "tweedy." (AWAD references a 2003 London Times article on William Hurt as a fitting example of this.) And I wonder: Is "tweedy" in this sense synonymous with "eggheaded"? Can I be tweedy even if I have a decent fashion sense? What do you think? For more tweedy talk about words in the world's vocabulary collection, visit AWAD for yourself today. And learn something new!

(c) KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009