druthers : M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for January 31 is:

druthers \DRUH-therz ("th" as in "then")\ noun, dialect
: free choice : preference

Example sentence:
If Hugh had his druthers, he'd be riding in a mountain bike race this weekend instead of helping out at his dad's garage.

Did you know?
"Druther" is an alteration of "would rather." "Any way you druther have it, that is the way I druther have it," says Huck to Tom in Mark Twain's _Tom Sawyer, Detective_. This example of metanalysis (the shifting of a sound from one constituent of a phrase to another) had likely been around for some time in everyday speech when Twain put those words in Huck's mouth. By then, in fact, "druthers" had already become a plural noun, so Tom could reply, "There ain't any druthers about it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about druthers." "Druthers" is essentially a dialectal term and it tends to suggest an informality of tone, but in current use it doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of sophistication or education.

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