Hello, and welcome to the latest installment of Word Learnin', the only regular series on a baseball blog that I know of that invites the reader, and the author, to do some word learnin'. There are occasions where you might do some word learnin' reading a post that isn't a part of this series, especially when I get to talking about volcanoes, but such word learnin' is incidental, where this word learnin' is the whole point. Speaking of volcanoes, read the Eruptions blog by Erik Klemetti. Even if you don't care about volcanoes. You just don't think you care about volcanoes, because you haven't thought about it. Once you start thinking about it, of course you care about volcanoes. It's programmed into each of us to be captivated by volcanoes, dinosaurs, and fighter jets.
Today's word is "bona fides", which you'll recognize as being two words. Tricky! Today we do twice the word learnin'! You might also recognize that these words are Latin instead of English. Bona fides is a Latin phrase that we use now, or will subsequently use now. I think I use "subsequently" too much. Way to help me out, Word Learnin'. On to the definition:
1. good faith; absence of fraud or deceit; the state of being exactly as claims or appearances indicate
And the attempted example sentence, as is the custom:
One had to question the bona fides of Eric Wedge's public statement on Carlos Peguero, because you don't keep a bad player around a contending team because he looks good in batting practice.
Remember that? Remember when the Mariners had Carlos Peguero instead of Mike Carp, and Eric Wedge said that Carlos Peguero looked good in batting practice? Remember that? Last season?