{"id":2505,"date":"2025-06-12T13:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T17:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2505"},"modified":"2025-06-12T13:59:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T17:59:04","slug":"word-of-the-week-picayune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/06\/12\/word-of-the-week-picayune\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Picayune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2506\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/06\/picayune-300x160.jpg\" alt=\"Cigarette paper wrapper\" width=\"504\" height=\"269\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/06\/picayune-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2025\/06\/picayune.jpg 474w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 504px) 100vw, 504px\" \/>I love this word. I love the idea that New Orleans named a newspaper after it. There&#8217;s a Mississippi town called Picayune that I should visit, and of course I love it that Mark Twain \/ Sam Clemens used the word and has also been skewered with it. In this recent example in <em>The Atlantic <\/em>by Graeme Wood, he describes a new biography focusing on Clemens&#8217; difficult personal life and financial disasters thus: &#8220;His credulity led to misadventures the details of which are so picayune that Chernow\u2019s emphasis on them can be maddening.&#8221; No detail about Clemens&#8217; life can be maddening to me: I immediately ordered a copy of Chernow&#8217;s giant biography, <em>Mark Twain<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What makes something picayune? We have an answer! <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/dictionary\/picayune_n?tab=meaning_and_use#30503503\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED<\/a> notes a French \/ Occitan etymology but Southern US origin with an 1806 first recorded use, &#8220;One can&#8217;t buy anything [at New Orleans] for less than a six cent piece, called a picayune.&#8221; Over time, the term morphed from a small amount of money to a trifling amount to a worthless person. Thus it became a metaphor for things or people of no value.<\/p>\n<p>We can name many such persons, some with considerable influence (I don&#8217;t care for influences nor do I wish to be one). In any case, despite the rise of many picayune people and pastimes, our word continues a gradual decline in usage.<\/p>\n<p>Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image: though blocked by the picayune I.T. rules on campus, I managed to outsmart them and got this form cigarettecollector.net. I dislike cigs, but not cigars. They will yank my final stogie from my tobacco-stained, dead lips.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love this word. I love the idea that New Orleans named a newspaper after it. There&#8217;s a Mississippi town called Picayune that I should visit, and of course I love it that Mark Twain \/ Sam Clemens used the word and has also been skewered with it. In this recent example in The Atlantic &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2025\/06\/12\/word-of-the-week-picayune\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Picayune<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,40199,87406,87399,40197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-literature","category-loan-word","category-metaphor","category-vocabulary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-Ep","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2511,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505\/revisions\/2511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}