Week 7 - Grace Post “gewgaw”

 Gewgaw:

(noun) a showy thing, especially one that is useless or worthless. “Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws [sic] of life and the useful.” (found in a history article about Washington and Dubois)

I chose the word gewgaw because I thought it was strange and did not even seem like a real word. I liked it because it was a fun and old-timey word used mostly in the 1800s. Also once learning the definition I was able to better understand the sentence and the entire article.

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