Remember the movie, “Tombstone”? There’s a scene where Val Kilmer, who plays Doc Holliday, confronts the outlaw, Johnny Ringo. Doc says, “I’m your huckleberry,” which causes Johnny Ringo to go pale as a ghost, because he knows that people don’t generally walk away from a gunfight with Doc Holliday.
But here’s the thing: that’s not what he said. The other evening, Sabine told me what he actually said, and that got me thinking about words—you know how I am with stuff related to language—and the next thing I knew I had assembled a list of words that I had never heard in my life, but that now I can’t wait to find a reason to use. Here you go.