lagniappe : M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for December 14 is:

lagniappe \LAN-yap\ noun
: a small gift given a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase; broadly : something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure

Example sentence:
The Garcia family's store always has the best holiday-themed lagniappes; this year with a $20 purchase you receive a hand-painted snowman figurine.

Did you know?
"We picked up one excellent word," wrote Mark Twain in _Life on the Mississippi_ (1883), "a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word -- 'lagniappe'.... It is Spanish -- so they said." Twain encapsulates the history of "lagniappe" quite nicely. English speakers learned the word from French-speaking Louisianians, but they in turn had adapted it from the American Spanish word "la napa." Twain went on to describe how New Orleanians completed shop transactions by saying "Give me something for lagniappe," to which the shopkeeper would respond with "a bit of liquorice-root, ... a cheap cigar or a spool of thread." It took a while for "lagniappe" to catch on throughout the country, but by the mid-20th century, New Yorkers and New Orleanians alike were familiar with this "excellent word."

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