The dictionary has the best words

While looking for something else in the P's today, I came across the entry for podunk. As in, he's from some podunk town in East Texas. I really thought this was a colloquial Southern thing used to explain that a town was a tiny ville in the middle of nowhere.

According to the illustrious American Heritage Dictiona ry (the one of record at my current place of employment, mostly because the company publishes it), it is of Algonquin origin. At one time there were two New England towns known as Podunk. The word is also supposed to be capitalized despite the fact that it is categorized as slang!

I see some irony here. How can you be unimportant by definition when there are capitalization and two different towns involved?

Yes, I am a dork.