It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 10th.

Today's word is

Today's word is full scO-S-C-A-S-C-A-P-S-C-A-P-S-C-A-P is a noun. It refers broadly to a piece of writing paper and in the U.S.

specifically to a usually 8 by 13 inch size of paper.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the New York Times by Alexandra Jacobs.

Thwarted mega mergers and private equity acquisitions, buyouts and layoffs,

self-publishing, and artificial intelligence. It's hard to find a glimmer of glamor in the book business right now.

Against this tech-inflected landscape, Thomas Harding's more than serviceable new biography of George Widenfield, long a force of letters in England

and briefly in the United States, floats as if on stained foolscap.

You'd be well within your rights to respond, surely, stained Fulskipe.

You'd be well within your rights to respond, surely, you jest, to the notion that the word

Fulski refers to a sheet of writing paper, and also specifically to a paper of approximately 8 by 13 inches similar to that of a legal

pad. After all, when Foolscap was first used in the 1500s, it referred to an actual

fool's cap. The oft-jing

headwear worn as part of a jesters motley, a sense still used today. But

we promise we do not jest. The connection between the whimsical chapeau and the paper is attributable to the former use of a watermark depicting a fool's camp that was used on long sheets of writing or printing paper.

There are various explanations for the introduction of this watermark, including the claim that

a 1648 British parliamentary group substituted it for the Royal Arms

during an exceptionally turbulent time, but such explanations remain unsupported by

historical evidence.

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

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