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Word of the Day: Bigwig
Have you ever taken some time to ponder the weirdness of humanity?
Consider this.
Most people want to be a bigwig, but at the same time, we have a distaste for those in authority and take great pleasure in watching them fail or fall from grace.
No, I don’t mean we want to wear a big wig (two words).
I used the be-verb and said we want to be a bigwig (one word).
You see, a bigwig is a person in authority.
It comes from early 1730s Britain when men with power wore white horse-hair wigs.
Judges and lawyers used to wear them in Canada too, and they were worn in British courts until 2001, I think.
Still today, in the British supreme court, lawyers wear them during criminal trials.
Anyways, the term bigwig comes from the idea that the bigger the wig someone wore, the more powerful they were.
Although almost no one wears those white horse-hair wigs today, the term bigwig is still used when referring to someone with a lot of power or authority.
I think, more often than not, it’s used as a derogatory term because, as mentioned before, the average Joe tends to dislike those in charge.
The bigwigs are the ones who make the decisions for higher taxes, more regulations, and fewer freedoms that make so many of us angry.
Have you visited a gas station recently?
If you have, you may have cursed the bigwigs who refuse to reduce the amount of taxes you pay per litre of gasoline.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.