Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series on words I'm looking up) (plus late addendum)

cheeky

This is by no means a new one for me. Strangely, it figured prominently in one of the philosophy texts I read in college. But I'm just so flabbergasted by an AOL news headline that I simply must bat it around a bit. The headline:

Cruise passengers describe "cheeky" pirate attack

From the story:

"We didn't think they would be cheeky enough to attack a cruise ship," Wendy Armitage, of Wellington, New Zealand, told The Associated Press.

Definition:

cheeky: impertinently bold; impudent and saucy — American Heritage Dictionary

Well done, Ms. Armitage. Weird, but well done. Ah, pirates. Cheeky, spunky, frisky, sassy, saucy, Disney-approved theiving raping murderers!

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Late addendum we'll call "Words I'm Looking Up for Words I'm Looking Up."

In one of my trademark bouts of after-the-fact insecurity, I decided to look up "flabbergasted" to make sure I used it okay above. I saw this at Dictionary.com:

flabbergasted
adjective
as if struck dumb with astonishment and surprise; "a circle of policement stood dumbfounded by her denial of having seen the accident"; "the flabbergasted aldermen were speechless"; "was thunderstruck by the news of his promotion"-- WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University

I love seeing "policement" in a dictionary entry affiliated with Princeton. Now I'm truly in a state of flabbergastment. (Yes, I looked up "policement." No entry.)