Baksheesh

[packbat]

bak·sheesh - Persian: a payment of money as a gratuity for good service, an acknowledgement to a holy figure, or bribe to make things go quicker or easier.

Found, inexplicably, when searching for oesophagus (which, in turn, was prompted by Planet Karen). Wikipedia is both amusing and highly "non-encyclopedic".

Comments

[majoru.livejournal.com]

Hey, you don't spell like an Americian! How excellent.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Oh, my spelling is erratic in many ways. But, in this particular case, I was spelling like an American - just one curious about an unfamiliar spelling. :P

I do think that the Americans have mucked up a number of typographical rules that the British (or various others) got right, though - the placement of punctuation and quotation marks, the "e" in "judgement", et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, so quite frequently I will apply the non-US standards.

[majoru.livejournal.com]

I try, where possible, to adhere to British spelling guidelines, as I'm not even entirely happy with the sloppiness of Australian English.
I also had to look up the alternative spelling of 'judgement', I wasn't even aware your lot (and the legal system in general) use the alternate 'judgment' (which my British English spell-checker claims is incorrect).

[packbat.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I didn't know about it until last year. Funky American spellers...