[FM] dreadnought: M-W's Word of the Day

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 10:42:24 EDT

Howdy!  
I thought you might like to see today's "Word of the Day" 
from the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary Listserve!  Of course, 
the most well-known Dreadnought guitar is the Martin D-28. 
Pam

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Subj:   dreadnought: M-W's Word of the Day  
Date:   6/24/2002 10:04:06 PM Mountain Daylight Time    
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The Word of the Day for June 25 is:

dreadnought   \DRED-nawt\   (noun)
  1 : a warm garment of thick cloth; also : the cloth
     2 : battleship
    *3 : one that is among the largest or most powerful of its
kind

Example sentence:
     Sam would settle for no less than a dreadnought of a boom
box, which was fine with all of his friends but didn't go over
too well with his landlord.

Did you know?
     "Fear nothing" -- that's essentially what "dread" plus
"nought" means. The name might seem a strange one for a
garment, but if you consider that dreadnoughts were worn on
board ship, you can appreciate the colorful name perhaps as
much as the seafaring men must have appreciated the thick
protection. The clothes and the cloth, first called
"fearnought" in the late 18th century, came long before the
battleship. Not until 1906 did the British Navy launch the HMS
Dreadnought, the first battleship to have a main armament
consisting entirely of big guns all of the same caliber. All
ships of this type were then called "dreadnoughts." That
particular type of battleship soon became obsolete, but their
legacy lives on in the extended third sense of "dreadnought."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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