Word of the Day

: January 7, 2011

dander

noun DAN-der

What It Means

1 : dandruff; specifically : minute scales from hair, feathers, or skin that may be allergenic

2 : anger, temper

dander in Context

"That sort of arrogance really gets my dander up!" exclaimed Janice.

"As regulars of this column are well aware, nothing gets my dander and bad cholesterol up more than hearing ill-informed people echo the idea that modern commercial aircraft are all but completely automated, with pilots on hand merely as a backup." -- From a column by Patrick Smith in Salon, November 16, 2010

Did You Know?

How did "dander" acquire its "temper" sense? Etymologists have come up with a few possibilities, but nothing is known for sure. Some experts have proposed, tongue-in-cheek, that the meaning stems from the image of an angry person tearing out his or her hair by the fistful, scattering dandruff in the process. Some think it may come from a West Indian word "dander," which refers to a kind of ferment and suggests "rising" anger (in English, "ferment" can mean either "an agent capable of causing fermentation" or "a state of unrest or excitement"). Yet another proposed possibility is that the anger sense was imported to America by early Dutch colonists and is from their phrase "op donderen," meaning "to burst into a sudden rage."