Kangaroo word a word that contains its antonym; for example: "covert" carries "overt", "animosity" carries "amity". Some compilers require that the letters of the joey word not be consecutive within the kangaroo word, or that the kangaroo and joey words must be etymologically unrelated. Kangaroo words were originally popularized as a word game by Ben O'Dell in an article for "The American Magazine", volume 151, during the 1950s. This was later reprinted in "the Reader's Digest". Kangaroo word A kangaroo word is a word that contains letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning. For example: the word "masculine" contains
Ascent of the A-Word the book as an "often raucously funny account of what seems to be America’s most popular insult" which manages to be neither "exceedingly snarky" nor "overly academic and pretentious". Ascent of the A-Word Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years is a 2012 book by the American linguist Geoffrey Nunberg which analyzes the history of the epithet "asshole". In "Ascent", Nunberg traces to World War II the origins of the word as an epithet, when it was used as a term of abuse for superior officers considered abusive or self-important. Following the soldiers' return home from the war,