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10 Slang Words and Phrases Explained 1. Idiot Idiot originally comes from the Greek word Idiotes which was used to refer to a person who was a private individual – or more specifically, one who was so preoccupied with their own personal life that they would not take part in the democratic process. In the biblical sense, the word referred to an uneducated person. By the fourteenth century, it could also refer to a clown, a layman (non-religious), or an individual. Later, however, the Oxford English Dictionary gave it the following definition which has stuck: “A person so deficient in ment...

OPINION: According to the 11th edition of the Chambers Dictionary (2008), akimbo means “with hand on hip and elbow out”. Such a definition explains why just about the only thing that can be akimbo is arms, and until recently the word occurred almost exclusively in the phrase with arms akimbo. But more recently, usage seems to be changing. I have a citation of akimbo from 2001, where the author writes “we both sat with legs akimbo”. I can sort of see that: the knees are, presumably, sticking out in the way the elbows would in the older meaning, even if the feet are not on the hip...