Thursday, January 27, 2011


Word of the Day for Thursday, January 27, 2011
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jobbery \JOB-uh-ree\, noun:
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The conduct of public or official business for the sake of improper private gain.
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The B.O. and his liberal cohorts embody the very essence of the most distasteful aspects of the word jobbery!
--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog
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To a large portion of the people who frequent Washington or dwell there, the ultra fashion, the shoddy, the jobbery are as utterly distasteful as they would be in a refined New England City.-- Mark Twain, The gilded age and later novels
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Casting about for some way of breaking through this vicious circle, he saw but one expedient - to wit, some great service to be rendered to the government, or some profitable bit of jobbery.-- Honoré de Balzac, The Unconscious Mummers
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Jobbery combines the sense of job and robbery and reflects the historically negative connotation of job, whose definition may derive from gob, as in "a mass or lump."

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