h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2016/10/03/druthers

This is a really useful word. Sometimes the "word of the day" just makes me go - that's part of my every day vocabulary, but sometimes they come up with gems like this.

It's American, but it sounds Scottish, doesn't it?

OED says it's first recorded in Tom Sawyer.

Hadn't heard that one before, but it's nice! It has three definitions in OEDILF, the best being by the unsurpassable Chris Doyle:

If hillbilly men had their druthers,
They'd spend all their days with their brothers
And cousins and kin
Drinking whiskey and gin,
And their nights with their sisters and mothers.

http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?VerseId=337411

I never heard it until I moved here and I don't hear it very often, but I have heard someone say it in a news story on NPR within the last week. Naturally, I have no idea now which story it was so that I could provide a link to the piece. Unless...

Well, either NPR haven't archived the transcript of that piece, or it hasn't been archived by the search engines I use, or I dreamed the whole thing

But it has been said many times on NPR over the years https://duckduckgo.com/?q=druthers+site%3Anpr.org

Li'l Abner had his druthers too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd9sR94iRwg

I've been reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" and they use it quite a lot in there.

If Harper Lee had had her druthers, she probably wouldn't have let them publish "Go set a watchman."