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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 76. The word origin today is

  • slowpoke. All right. I don't know if anybody ever wondered where do we get

  • slowpoke from. Obviously it means a very slow person. We know slow. The slow makes

  • a lot of sense, but why do we say slowpoke ? I mean did we did we poke people

  • with our finger that was slow. Hey, you why are you so slow ? So anyway in this video I'm going to try to explain where slowpoke came from anyway

  • Let's take a look at the note here. If we say that someone is a slowpoke,

  • we mean that he or she is a person that moves very slowly or takes a very

  • long time to do a particular thing. I remember when I was a kid, I think kids

  • actually use it even more, but even adults do. We sometimes kind of....

  • We use it in a humorous way to tell somebody "Oh my God ! Why are you so slow ?

  • Hurry up." All right. Let's continue. The earliest known citing is from John

  • Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms.You know. like American

  • slang or idioms. Things like that, Americanisms. The British also have a

  • term slowcoach which is used in the same way. So Americans say slowpoke. The British

  • say slowcoach. Okay. Let's continue. The origin of slowpoke is believed to come

  • from an old use of the meaning of poke that is no longer used today. So that's

  • why we don't recognize it anymore. Poke used to have a meaning of to dawdle

  • away. Which means to waste time and move very slowly. So that's really where it

  • came from. Even in our present time, we still use

  • the adjective "pokey" and that could be spelt with with an "E" and without an "E."

  • Not the most common adjective, but it's we it's still in the dictionary and it is

  • still used. All right and all right. And really that also this pokey means moving

  • very slowly in an annoying way. And actually slowpoke sometimes is annoying

  • that they're moving that slowly. All right. Let's just look at three examples for

  • the way we often might hear it today. I don't want Jack to be on our team, he

  • is such a slowpoke. Yeah. This could be perfectly heard like with kids playing

  • you know, maybe they don't want a certain other kid to be on the team. You know,

  • because maybe he runs too slowly. So we often called somebody that ran too

  • slowly a slowpoke too. All right. Here's the second example. I am stuck on this single-

  • lane road. Yeah. Basically behind a driver who is a slowpoke. Okay. Yeah. We

  • sometimes all felt that way when we're driving and you have this driver in

  • front of you and he's just going at maybe below the speed limit. And maybe

  • you can't get around and you don't want to go to the other side of the road or

  • maybe there is no other side of the road. So you might hear, especially a driver

  • with road rage saying , " Oh my god ! This driver is such a slowpoke. " Okay. Good and

  • let's read the third one here. Example number three. My God ! You are a slowpoke.

  • How long is it going to take you to finish this project ? Okay. Good. Anyway, I

  • hope you got it. I hope it was clear. I hope was informative. Thank you for your time.

  • Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 76. The word origin today is

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