Etymology

pickwickian

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Today it means: Arbitrary or meaningless (of the usage of a word or phrase). Full definition →

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The story

From Pickwick + -ian, from The Pickwick Papers (1836) by Charles Dickens, in which members of the Pickwick Club explain away unparliamentary language as having been uttered "in the Pickwickian sense".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.