Wednesday, August 1, 2012

772. Shyster lawyer

Got the idea for this one from Boulderite's last Spoonerism in his comment to PD34 posted on May 10 of this year...

An ambulance-chaser named Sam,
Used methods that weren't worth a damn.
He wasn't prestigious
Instead, was egregious.
His practice was wholly a sham.


The word 'egregious' is a derivative of the Latin root "grex, gregis" meaning "flock" so egregious means "standing out from the flock."  It has pejorated over the years so that it is now almost always used to mean "noticeably bad."  Some other English words from that root are gregarious, congregate and segregate.

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