A word I just learned.

A couple weeks ago I picked up John Kenneth Galbraith's classic "The Great Crash 1929," an instructive little book about history repeating itself.

My college-age daughters mock me, but I am still studying for my SATs. I look up, try to memorize and use the words I learn. Not to be a snob, but because they interest me, and often though they're esoteric, these words are better and more accurate than any other word.

One word I picked up from Galbraith is usufruct. I love it. It sounds like something a Dickens' character would do or an object one would wield. As in, "Uriah Heap picked up a usufruct and struck his adversary."

Above is how Webster's defines usufruct.

It seems to me that a lot of high-rollers have usufructed us in a pretty bad way. And I'm not sure who gave them the "legal right" but they did it nonetheless.