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WotD: Worrywart
Some words, such as worrywart, make no sense until you understand the background behind them.
Let’s begin with a wart, shall we?
It’s a hard growth that you can get on your body.
Often it’s on your hands or feet and comes from a virus.
You can cut them off, but they often come back because they have a root and cause lots of trouble.
A person who bothers you can also be called a wart.
Next, in 1920s America, there was a cartoon called Worry Wart (two words).
It was about a little boy who caused all kinds of mischief for the people around him.
I suppose we could say he was similar to Mark Twain’s character Tom Sawyer.
Both Worry Wart and Tom Sawyer never worried about anything.
They were, however, warts that caused everyone else much anguish and worry.
Finally, like many new words in the English language, calling someone a worrywart (one word) did not become common until after World War II.
I guess the war gave people lots to be worried about, even though there was not much sense in worrying because they couldn’t do much about things.
Add the fact that people from around the world were mixing, sharing and adopting one another’s cultures, and it’s the perfect situation for creating new words with new meanings.
I’m running out of room for today, but I have yet to explain clearly what a worrywart is.
Well, a worrywart is a person who is prone to worry excessively.
If you or someone you know worries about anything and everything, then you or they are a worrywart.
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 74.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.