zit

Definition: (noun) skin blemish (pimple or blackhead)

Example: After discovering a zit on her nose, Marie decided to stay home from the party and watch Titanic again.

Quote:

"I really believe in single-sex education. There are no inhibitions. You can walk to school with your zit cream on and your hair in rollers, and nobody cares."
- Reese Witherspoon

It's kind of hard to imagine Reese Witherspoon having to worry about zits, but maybe she did as a teenager. However, it's unlikely that she was ever a pizza face (a person with terrible acne).

This week's word probably got its most famous usage in the 1978 movie Animal House, about a crazy college fraternity house in the 1960s. In an especially gross (disgusting) scene, Bluto (played by the late John Belushi) asks people in the cafeteria, "See if you can guess what I am now!" Then he squeezes his cheeks to make a hardboiled egg pop out of his mouth. "A zit!" he cries. "Get it?"

A. C. Kemp | March 6, 2003


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