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Mark Twain's Thoughts on Lagniappe
"We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi (1883), "a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word—'lagniappe'.... It is Spanish—so they said." Twain encapsulates the history of lagniappe quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish word la ñapa. (What Twain didn't know is that the Spanish word is from Quechua, from the word yapa, meaning "something added.") Twain went on to describe how New Orleanians completed shop transactions by saying "Give me something for lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit of liquorice-root, … a cheap cigar or a spool of thread." It took a while for lagniappe to catch on throughout the country, but in time, New Yorkers and New Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."
Synonyms
Examples of lagniappe in a Sentence
Daniel Engber, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2022
In 2017 the Oscars served up an unscripted lagniappe with the flubbed Best Picture announcement.
—Brenda Cronin, WSJ, 22 Mar. 2022
Anything beyond the quarterfinals would be straight-up lagniappe.
—Jim Derry | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 25 Nov. 2020
The tradition of lagniappe in liquid form continues at Café Degas (four courses $44), which adds a glass of port.
—Ian McNulty | Staff Writer, NOLA.com, 25 Nov. 2020
Also included were two lemons and a large mandarin, a lagniappe of citrus in an otherwise greens-heavy crate.
—Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr. 2020
Murray is five foot ten and one eighth of an inch, that extra point being lagniappe thrown in by the football gods.
—Rich Cohen, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
That the club's salary cap situation also improved was lagniappe.
—Jeff Duncan, NOLA.com, 8 May 2018
Jones agreed that the bonds forged through service are a lagniappe of JAS membership.
—Carol Wolfram, NOLA.com, 2 May 2018
Dictionary Entries Near lagniappe
Cite this Entry
“Lagniappe.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lagniappe. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
lagniappe
noun
American French
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