Today's word: Jitney
As I zipped out to work the other day, my last comment to a friend before I dashed out the door was that I had to go and jump aboard the jitney. "Jitney?" he exclaimed, "what's that?"
The word apparently seems to come from slang for a nickel, a five-cent piece, the sum charged to passengers on board a small bus or car that followed a regular route. Here in the Bahamas, that's a buck 25 now, and the jitney is an often-crowded little blue bus that trundles around its regular route, delivering passengers with as much regularity as those passengers dispense their own wisdom on politics and religion.
Piping up with your own views isn't an option when these conversations start to fly, it's a requirement, before you hop off at your destination, plonk your hat on your head and amble off, with a nickel's more knowledge than when you started.
Jitney. Today's Found Word.
