Word Woman

Welcome to another mind-bending episode of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! It's time to stretch those synapses with the Word of the Week. This week it's a Blue Light Special -- two words for the price of one:

Eponym: A person whose name has become identified with a particular object or activity.


Gerrymander: Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) was a vice-president of the United States (1813-1814) and one of the 56 men who had signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. His name is remembered today, however, for another reason. Gerry was born in Massachusetts and became governor of the state in 1810. It was during his second term of office that Gerry resorted to the device of rearranging the electoral boundaries in favor of his own party. This was not by any means a new practice, neither was it illegal; but on this occasion, the re-drawn map of a particular district happened to catch the observant eye of the famous portrait painter Gilbert Charles Stuart who was amused to notice that the outline of the district was similar to that of a salamander. He pointed out this novelty to a newspaper editor, who thought that a better description would be gerrymander - and a new word was coined. -- "A Dictionary of Eponyms", Cyril Leslie Beeching, Library Association Publishing Ltd., 1989.


Example: The senator's gerrymandering assured the passage of his bill, but made his name eponymous with corruption on Capitol Hill.