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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."
Examples of lagniappe in a Sentence
Joshua Carlucci, Southern Living, 14 Oct. 2024
Certainly pet-store pricing isn’t always top of mind: Some parrot burglars seem to burgle parrots as an afterthought, or lagniappe.
—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
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
Cite this Entry
“Lagniappe.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lagniappe. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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lagniappe
noun
American French
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