The word panjandrum has been popping up recently. I have noticed it from the pens of Andreas Whittam Smith, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Brian Sewell, Simon Hoggart and funny old Roy Greenslade.
It sounds like a proper word, one with an ancient etymology, although it is fairly widely known that it was invented in 1755 by Samuel Foote, the actor and satirist (1721–77). It came in a piece of nonsense that he invented to test a claim by the actor Charles Macklin (1699–1797) that he could repeat anything after once hearing it.
Behind the challenge was a feud that Foote had begun with Macklin in December 1754. Macklin, who had been Foote’s teacher, had set up a school of oratory, and Foote visited it to heckle him. On 16 December Foote rented the Haymarket Theatre to stage a comic lecture obviously lampooning Macklin.
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