WOW #67

After doing some navel-gazing recently – and cleaning out the lint – I came upon a word which rhymes with Pedant.

Fussbudget

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF FUSSBUDGET?

Fussbudget, “one who is fussy or needlessly faultfinding,” is a transparent compound of the nouns fuss “bustle, commotion” and budget “itemized list of funds or expenses.” The word entered English in the early 20th century; it became associated with the character Lucy Van Pelt in the comic strip Peanuts in the 1960s.

HOW IS FUSSBUDGET USED?

He was a fussbudget. His interest in ideas didn’t match his interest in small, and often silly, facts. Much of the time he saw neither the forest nor the trees but only a bit of the undergrowth.

I thought that I was pretty good at being a fussbudget, but the wife insists that I am a rank amateur – and not only because we just had baked beans.  She holds a Third or Fourth Black Belt in Fussbudgetry.

She has ‘color-coded, properly-filed’ lists of ways to be, and not be, a true fussbudget.  She has CDO – which is a lot like OCD, only the letters are in the correct, alphabetical order.

Well, I’m off to obsess about the word-usage or punctuation in a bunch of other people’s posts, but I’ll be back with a new post in a couple of days.  You can count on that!  I already have a timer set, to remind me.  You try to get your life in sufficient order that you show up to read it.