It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 29th.

Today's word is caged, spelled C-A-D-G-E.

Caj is a verb. To cage something is to persuade someone to give it to you for free. Caj can also mean to

take use or borrow something without acknowledgement. Here's the word used in a sentence from the

press and journal of Scotland. How could a convenient route between housing estates and friends' homes

be an issue? Let me explain. It was all Sherlock

Holmes's fault. Him and his terrifying hound of the Baskervilles. There were occasions when my

imagination took over completely, and I ended up going the long way round through the busier,

better-lit roads of the village. Those beasties wouldn't

dare to come off the greens and into the gardens. I never admitted this to any of my friends,

not even those brave enough to cadge a lift from me on occasion. Long ago, peddlers traveled the

British countryside, each with a packhorse or a horse and cart,

first carrying produce from rural farms to town markets, then returning with small wares to sell to

country folk. The middle English word for such traders was cadger, Scottish dialects rendered the term as

cadger. The verb cadge was created as a back formation of

cadger, which is to say it was formed by removal of the ER suffix. At its most general,

cadger meant carrier, and the verb cadge meant to carry. More specifically, the verb meant to go about as a cadger or peddler.

By the 1800s, it was used when someone who posed as a peddler turned out to be more of a beggar,

from which arose the present-day use of the verb cad for the actions of trying to get something for free by persuading or imposing on another person. With your word of the verb cage for the actions of trying to get something for free by persuading or imposing

on another person. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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