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'If you look up curmudgeon in Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, you will find the following in parentheses before the definition: "It is a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur mechant, Fr. an unknown correspondent." Coeur means 'heart', and mechant means 'bad'. Dr. Johnson had apparently lost track of who had given him this etymology, and the "Fr." stands for 'from'. However, a man named John Ash published a New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language in 1775 in which he took Dr. Johnson's "Fr." to mean 'French' and, knowing no French, provided the etymology "from Fr. coeur 'unknown', mechant 'correspondent'." An embarrassing lexicographical moment. Whoever Johnson's "unknown correspondent" was, there is no evidence to support 'bad heart' as a source for curmudgeon. '-Georgia@RandomHouse.....................................................They may not have had teh Intarweb back then, but even today an enterprising scholar can read a book on etymology and be inspired by one with a printing error- in this case, one which changed 'mechant' to 'machant,' 'villainous' to 'chewing'. Since my francais was not enough to catch it when I made an art project out of it, or when we decided to call the band that it... that's okay. For a couple of 'unknown correspondents' it probably works just fine. --Jess