Word of the Week #6

Some of you may have read the title of this post and went "What?!? We just read a 'Word of the Week' post two seconds ago, and now I am going to read another one!"

That's right. You did just read a Word of the Week post. And if you continue to read this post you will read another Word of the Week post. You see, last week Spadoodles put up a wonderful post on my birthday and made an executive decision that she wouldn't post anything on Monday. (An apology will come.) As far as I can tell, that means you, our readers, have been deprived of a additional word for your vocabulary list.

To fix this dilemma I have decided to give you two posts today. Hope you like both of them.

fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:
1. (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.

2. Interchangeable.

3. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Usually used in the plural.

"People think this tax is for Social Security. But tax monies are really fungible. They get raided all the time."
-- Eugene Ludwig, "Motivated to Work," interview by Kerry A. Dolan", Forbes, March 20, 2000

"The setting is Ireland in the 1950's, but, a cynical reader might reflect, this sort of fiction is so common that the characters will be completely fungible."
-- Susan Isaacs, "Three Little Girls From School", New York Times, December 30, 1990

"Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies."
-- Edward Craig (general editor), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Fungible comes from Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi (vice), "to perform (in place of)."

By the way, some of you may be wondering about the photo at the top of this post. You know, the one with the muffins. Well I thought that I would let everyone know that it has nothing to do with the actual content of the post.