Word of the Day
: April 7, 2022druthers
playWhat It Means
Druthers refers to "a free choice or preference." It is often used in the phrase if one had one's druthers.
// If I had my druthers, I'd be relaxing at the beach this weekend instead of remodeling my kitchen.
druthers in Context
"If I had my druthers, collegiate baseball wouldn't begin play until mid-March. The weather is too unpredictable in mid-February for baseball." — Terry J. Wood, The Fayetteville (Arkansas) Flyer, 15 Feb. 2022
Did You Know?
Druther is an alteration of "would rather." "Any way you druther have it, that is the way I druther have it," says Huck to Tom in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Detective. This example of metanalysis (the shifting of a sound from one element of a phrase to another) had been around for some time in everyday speech when Twain put those words in Huck's mouth. By then, in fact, druthers had already become a plural noun, so Tom could reply, "There ain't any druthers about it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers." Druthers is a dialectal term.
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Quiz
Fill in the blanks to complete a word for an established preference for something: p _ _ d _ _ _ ct _ _ n.
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