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The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Friday 26 May 2017

Word To Use Today: scuppet.

Scuppet is a deeply satisfying word which rhymes with puppet and muppet and so promises good things.

What's a scuppet

Well, sadly, nothing quite as much fun as a muppet or puppet. A scuppet is a shovel. It can be a hand-held iron one like this early American scuppet, which was used for digging fortifications, or there are speciality scuppets for shovelling hops. A hop scuppet is a bit like a tray on a pole, with the rectangular shovelling bit made of hessian, but any straight-sided shovel with the edges turned upwards can be a scuppet.

Even if you have no particular plans today for digging fortifications or moving heaps of hops, then the word scuppet can be used as a verb, and the great thing is that it makes the task sound easy and fun. You might scuppet some flour into a bowl, or some compost onto the garden, or some chips (you call them fries in America, I understand) onto a plate.

Best of all, if you're headed for the seaside, you could take a bucket and scuppet and build some castles on the sand.

File:Sand Castle.JPG
photo by Orkedshafika

Word To Use Today: scuppet. This word was scopette in Middle English, and probably means little scoop. Scoop comes from the Middle Dutch word schōpe.


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