Word of the Day

: April 1, 2011

riddle

noun RID-ul

What It Means

1 : a mystifying, misleading, or puzzling question posed as a problem to be solved or guessed : conundrum, enigma

2 : something or someone difficult to understand

riddle in Context

Despite Nick's outgoing nature, he doesn't share many details about his background and personal life, so he remains something of a riddle.

"Beginning with his landmark work alongside partner Carl Bernstein on Nixon's Watergate scandal, through books on the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, [Bob] Woodward has devoted a near-40-year career to unraveling the riddle of how power works in Washington, D.C." -- From an article by Eric Deggans in Florida's St. Petersburg Times, March 16, 2011

Did You Know?

It is not unusual for words to acquire and lose meanings over time, and "riddle" is no exception. Old English speakers -- who had a variety of spellings for "riddle," including "hrædels," "redelse," and "rædelle" -- used the word as we do today to describe a question posed as a problem to be solved or guessed, but they also used it in the now obsolete senses of "counsel," "consideration," "debate," "conjecture," "interpretation," "imagination," and "example." (Not surprisingly, the Old English source of "riddle" is a cousin to Old English "rædan," meaning "to interpret.") Toward the end of the 14th century "riddle" acquired the sense of "a puzzling or perplexing thing," and in the 17th century it also came to refer to "a puzzling or enigmatic person or being."