Two weeks ago Steve Scalise was an obscure member of the rank and file in Congress. Last week he made the successful ascent to the top three of the Republican leadership.  The five-year representative from the First District in Louisiana won a first ballot election to become the House Whip.
How did he make the move? Scalise did it by personifying a term from his home state called lagniappe. Pronounced lan-yap, it's the practice of doing the little extra. It's that something extra that's thrown in for good measure. A practice that Mark Twain was so enamored with that he called it, "a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get." The creole word, according to Merriam-Webster, comes from the Spanish meaning "the gift" or Quechua for "something added."