Word of the Week! Pettifogger Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Pettifogger Richmond Writing Business-School Professor and wordsmith   Joe Hoyle asked about this term, a timely one since it got bandied about during the Senates recent impeachment trial. It dates back to the 16th Century and has a nice origin, compounding petty with the word fogger, a forgotten term that may refer to the surname of a family of wealthy mercantile bankers and venture capitalists from Augsburg, Germany. A fogger, according to that same entry, came to mean a a low-ranking lawyer who abuses the law but that usage petered out in the 19th Century. The term has a more modern synonym, shyster, that is with us still, in deed and word. For our word it seems redundant to add petty, for small,   but it accomplishes two things. First, as my students learn in the bestselling writing text,  They Say / I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, its acceptable practice, as the authors put it, to repeat oneself with a difference. Adding petty emphasizes how petty that fogger really can be. Less seriously, the compounding gives us the ability to engage in some wonderfully Southern-sounding alliterative curses, such as You, sir, are no more than a pusillanimous and picayune pettifogger plundering the public purse! How did I do? The word pettifogger had legs enough to breed what are called back formations in our language: the verb pettifog and gerund pettifogging. I guess dubious legal practices for small coin never go out of style. Perchance pettifoggery promotes puerile punditry? Okay, Ill stop. At least until next week. Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. See all of our Metaphors of the Month  here  and Words of the Week  here. Sleazy lawyer image, Reptilian courtesy of Jeremy Sternberg.