Word - 22

FIRE - SALE \FYRE-SAIL\ adjective

: heavily discounted

Example sentence:

"As holders of mortgage-backed securities and the like revalue their assets at fire-sale prices, they are running short of capital -- which can lead to further sales and more write-downs." (The Economist, March 2008)

Did you know?

The term "fire sale" flared up in the late-19th century as the name for a sale of items damaged by fire. As you can imagine, much of the merchandise at a fire sale was sold at very low prices, which fanned the flames of the use of "fire sale" for any sale with discounted or low price tags. The extended meaning of the term sparked an adjective use that had burst into a full-blown blaze by the mid-20th century. Since then, people have embraced "fire-sale prices" in the marketplace, well aware that they won't get burned.

Word - 21

BOGART \BOH-gart\ verb

1 : bully, intimidate
*2 : to use or consume without sharing

Example sentence:
Three of the older girls bogarted the ice cream, ignoring the other campers' pleas for them to share.

Did you know?

The legendary film actor Humphrey Bogart was known for playing a range of tough characters in a series of films throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The African Queen. The men he portrayed often possessed a cool, hardened exterior that occasionally let forth a suggestion of romantic or idealistic sentimentality. Bogart also had a unique method of smoking cigarettes in these pictures -- letting the butt dangle from his mouth without removing it until it was almost entirely consumed. It is believed that this habit inspired the current meaning of "bogart," which was once limited to the phrase "Don't bogart that joint [marijuana cigarette]," as popularized by a song on the soundtrack to the film Easy Rider, among other things. Today "bogart" can be applied to hogging almost anything.