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You're listening to Away With Words,

the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. The word

smarmy describes somebody, what, grand, ingratiating, dripping with insincerity. Unctuous. That's a good word

for it. Oily in their praise or their commentary.

Well, what I didn't know until recently is that the word smarmy may be the result of a contest.

Oh, I didn't know that either.

Yeah, this was news to me. It turns out that in 1890, a journal in London held a competition where they asked readers

to send in new words. And the journal put it this way. Most families have a few pet words of

homemade manufacture, which are often far more expressive and picturesque than anything in Webster's

unabridged. So all these readers sent in

clever coinages, like one of them was Screel, S-C-R-E-E-L. And supposedly, screel means to feel the

sensation of hearing a knife-edge squeal on a plate, which I think is a great word.

Yeah. But another reader sent in the word smarmy, and they defined it as saying treakly things that do not

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