The Words of the Week - Oct. 9
Dictionary lookups from the gas station, the pumpkin patch, and Sweden
‘Dog’s breakfast’
It’s unclear what happened to make dog’s breakfast a top lookup this week, but that’s what the numbers gave us.
This was no dog’s breakfast. On the contrary, the messages were quite clear.
—Matthew Bishop, The Observer (London), 4 Oct. 2026
We define dog’s breakfast as “a confused mess or mixture.” Since the late 19th century, the expression has been chiefly used in British English for a distasteful, inedible mess or mixture, literally and figuratively. A couple etymologies for the expression have been served up: it could be an allusion to a culinary effort that results in something that is only fit for the consumption of one’s four-legged companion, or to the fact that dogs’ meals in the past (before canned and packaged dog food) were a mess of leftover “people” food. But, honestly, the connection between a dog and breakfast isn’t at all clear since a dog’s breakfast is usually the same as its lunch and dinner.
‘Gall’
Lookups for galled, the past participle of the verb gall, were high on Thursday morning.
Joe Burrow gave reporters a pretty funny moment when a question about Cincinnati's latest loss included the word “galled.” Burrow stopped almost immediately and asked what the reporter meant. When the phrase was repeated—“Galled you”—the Bengals quarterback admitted he had never heard the term before. His solution? Bring out the dictionary. “I don't know that one. You'll have to bring the Websters out,” Burrow said.
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To gall someone, according to the relevant definition of the verb gall, is to irritate or vex them. The word comes from the Middle English gallen, which in part comes from the noun galle (“a sore on the skin”) and in part from the Middle French galer, “to scratch, rub.”
‘Oeuvre’
Oeuvre became a top lookup on Thursday owing to its use by the Nobel Prize committee in announcing the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Nobel committee awarded Anne Carson the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
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We define oeuvre as “a substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer.” The word is a borrowing from French, in which it means, literally, “work.”
‘Diesel’
The price of diesel is high, and so are lookups for diesel.
Wars have severely disrupted the global energy industry, and limitations on supplies of produced diesel have caused per-gallon prices to spike to unprecedented levels.
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The relevant sense of diesel, short for diesel fuel, is defined as “a heavy mineral oil used as fuel in diesel engines.” Diesel can also refer to such an engine, or to a vehicle driven by a diesel engine. The word comes from the surname of German engineer Rudolf Diesel, who in 1897 demonstrated a 25-horsepower, four-stroke, single vertical cylinder compression engine. The high efficiency of Diesel’s engine, together with its comparative simplicity of design, made it an immediate commercial success.
‘Pumpkin’
Fall is in the air, and with it a healthy harvest of lookups for pumpkin.
Classic Bolognese, with its multi-hour cook time, can be truly remarkable, if you ever have a stretch to make it. In this version, a scoop of canned pumpkin purée is the head-turning ingredient that gives it full-blown flavor and body, without the wait …
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We define the relevant sense of pumpkin as “a fruit of any of various cultivars of herbaceous plants (Cucurbita pepo, C. maxima, C. moschata, C. ficifolia, and C. argyrosperma) of the gourd family that is typically round and orange but may be another color or shape, that has a hard usually smooth skin with shallow longitudinal grooves, and that is grown for ornamental use or for its fibrous pale flesh used especially in baking or as feed for livestock.” Pumpkin is an alteration of an earlier word, pumpion, which can be traced ultimately to the Greek adjective pepōn, meaning “ripened.”
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Frankenstein’
Some think use of Frankenstein should be restricted to referring to someone who has created a monster, others think it’s just fine to refer to a monster this way, and many of each of these feel quite passionate on the subject; still others don’t really think about it one way or another. Here is what our Dictionary of English Usage has to say on the matter:
For sheer triviality, few subjects can top the question of whether it is all right to use Frankenstein to refer to the creation, the monster, and not just to its creator.
As it happens, ‘sheer triviality’ is one of our middle names, so we are prepared to examine this question. Frankenstein is, of course, the name of a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, published in 1818, in which is told the story of Victor Frankenstein, who artificially creates a human being (with decidedly unwelcome results). As Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who brought the monster to life, some people hold that this should be reflected in the use of the name. In the earliest cases of Frankenstein being employed figuratively (referring to an entity who is not the titular figure of the original book) it is for a creator of life, rather than the creation. It did not take long, however, for people to extend use of this name still further, and to apply it to things that have been created. A mere 16 years after the publication of the book saw writers beginning to use Frankenstein in this manner.
We provide three definitions for Frankenstein: “the title character in Mary W. Shelley's novel Frankenstein who creates a monster that ruins his life,” “a monster in the shape of a man especially in popularized versions of the Frankenstein story,” and “a monstrous creation (especially a work or agency that ruins its originator).” We added the sense of ‘monster’ to the one meaning ‘creator of monster’ in 1934; this use is hardly new and now is certainly the most common one. Yet it is not unusual to encounter those who insist that a distinction should be drawn between Frankenstein (the scientist) and Frankenstein’s monster (the scientist’s creation).
Appeals to the public are ticklish things. The public has a large body and a small soul; it is little better than a Frankenstein.
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