Hello hello, loquacious listeners, and welcome to An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. I certainly hope today’s word does not apply to you, or anyone else you may happen to come across, for today’s word is: snollygoster.

Snollygoster, rather simply means a shrewd or unprincipled person, especially a politician but can be further described as ‘a fellow who who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by sheer force of monumental talknophical assumancy.’ I told you you didn’t want to be today’s word.

The origin of ‘snollygoster’ is unknown, though the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it may be linked to ‘snallygaster’, which some people suppose dervies from the German 'schneller Geister’, which literally means ‘a quick ghost’. Snallygaster comes from American Folklore, and is a dragon-like beast said to inhabit Central Maryland, the Washington DC metro area, and particularly the Middletown area of Frederick County, Maryland. It is described as half-reptile, half-bird with a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth, occasionally with octopus-like tentacles. It swoops silently from the sky to pick up and carry off its victims. So, exactly like a politician, yes?

Returning back to ‘snollygoster’, the first written evidence of the word is from 1846, however it’s noted that it was popularised by Georgian democrat, H. J. W. Ham, who travelled the United States of America in the 1890s with a speech called ‘The Snollygoster in Politics’. Mr Ham defined a snollygoster as ‘one with an unquenchable thirst for office with neither the power to get it nor the ability to fill it.’ The use of snollygoster began to fade after this time, with one notable exception. American President Harry Truman used it in a speech in 1952, saying ‘I wish some of these snollygosters would read the New Testament and perform accordingly’, though his understanding of the term is questionable.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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