Word of the Day

Monday, June 25, 2001

interlard

\in-tuhr-LARD\ , transitive verb;

To insert between; to mix or mingle; especially, to introduce something foreign or irrelevant into; as, "to interlard a conversation with oaths or allusions."

Read the full entry|See synonyms|Comment on today's word

Quotes:

Every night we lined up books on the floor, interlarding mine with his before putting them on the shelves.

-- Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

At home, she made herself understood in Friulian, but on jaunts with her mother around the village, conversations were interlarded with Italian, German, and Slovenian.

-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow

But should a grave preacher interlard his discourses with such fooleries?

-- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Origin:

Interlard comes from Middle French entrelarder, from Old French, from entre, "between" (from Latin inter-) + larder, "to lard," from larde, "lard," from Latin lardum. The original sense of the word, now obsolete, was "to place lard or bacon amongst; to mix, as fat meat with lean."