Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 13, 2004

appellation

\ap-uh-LAY-shun\, noun:
1. The word by which a particular person or thing is called and known; name; title; designation.
2. The act of naming.

For as long as Olympia can remember, her mother has been referred to, within her hearing and without, as an invalid -- an appellation that does not seem to distress her mother and indeed appears to be one she herself cultivates.
--Anita Shreve, Fortune's Rocks

A communist or a revolutionary, for example, would likely readily accept and admit that he is in fact a communist or a revolutionary. Indeed, many would doubtless take particular pride in claiming either of those appellations for themselves.
--Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

I feel honored by yet undeserving of the appellation "novelist." I am merely a craftsperson, a cabinetmaker of texts and occasionally, I hope, a witness to our times.
--Francine Du Plessix Gray, "I Write for Revenge Against Reality," New York Times, September 12, 1982


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Appellation comes from Latin appellatio, from appellare, "to name."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 14, 2004

longueur

\long-GUR\, noun:
A dull and tedious passage in a book, play, musical composition, or the like.

One of the commentators compared my speech to one of Gladstone's which had lasted five hours. "It was not so long, but some of the speech's . . . longueurs made Gladstone seem the soul of brevity," he wrote.
--Lord Lamont of Lerwick, "Been there, done that," Times (London), March 6, 2001

If this book of 400 pages had been devoted to her alone, it would have been filled with longueurs, but as the biography of a family it has the merit of originality.
--Peter Ackroyd, review of Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections, by Frances Spalding, Times (London), June 27, 2001

This book . . . has its defects. Sometimes it loses focus (as in a longueur on Chechens living in Jordan).
--Colin Thubron, "Birth of a Hundred Nations," New York Times, November 19, 2000


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Longueur is from French (where it means "length"), ultimately deriving from Latin longus, "long," which is also the source of English long.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 15, 2004

rivulet

\RIV-yuh-lut\, noun:
A small stream or brook; a streamlet.

But Stephen speaks of water in the desert, and triumphal swelling progress: raindrop, runnel, rivulet, river, sea.
--Blake Morrison, As If

There was a rivulet of scummy water heading for his highly polished black shoe.
--Joanne Harris, Chocolat

After two minutes in the steam chamber, sweat began to flow in rivulets from every pore in my body, dripping steadily from my fingertips.
--Fen Montaigne, Reeling in Russia


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Rivulet is from Italian rivoletto, diminutive of rivolo, from Latin rivulus, diminutive of rivus, "a brook, a stream."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 16, 2004

chimera

\ky-MIR-uh\, noun:
1. (Capitalized) A fire-breathing she-monster represented as having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
2. Any imaginary monster made up of grotesquely incongruous parts.
3. An illusion or mental fabrication; a grotesque product of the imagination.
4. An individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution, produced as a result of organ transplant, grafting, or genetic engineering.

Asa Whitney, with no previous experience and having nothing but his faith and self-assurance to tell him he was not pursuing a chimera, began to outline how he would get a railroad across the vast, uninhabited middle of the American continent to the Pacific shores, where the lure of Asia beckoned, within reach.
--David Haward Bain, Empire Express

She seems to spend most of the book sobbing, throwing up and generally marinating in a stew of self-absorption while searching fruitlessly for that chimera, her true self, inexpertly aided by astrologers and new-age therapists.
--"Cutting through fantasies to crazy life," USA Today, December 2, 1999

These "chimeras" can be created because of our power--derived from the recombinant DNA technology developed in the early 1970s--to move DNA from one species to another.
--Bryan Appleyard, Brave New Worlds


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Chimera comes from Latin chimaera, from Greek chimaira "she-goat, chimera."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 17, 2004

avoirdupois

\av-uhr-duh-POIZ; AV-uhr-duh-poiz\, noun:
1. Avoirdupois weight, a system of weights based on a pound containing 16 ounces or 7,000 grains (453.59 grams).
2. Weight; heaviness; as, a person of much avoirdupois.

Claydon . . . was happy to admit that he has shed some avoirdupois.
--Mel Webb, "Claydon's loss leads to net gain," Times (London), February 18, 2000

Yet until middle age and avoirdupois overtook her, Mary was no slouch.
--John Updike, "How to Milk a Millionaire," New York Times, March 29, 1987

Tired of putting on and taking off the same five pounds? Don't delay, buy this book today -- and watch yourself shed both respectability and surplus avoirdupois!
--David Galef, "'J. Faust's Guide to Power' And Other Self-Help Classics," New York Times, December 18, 1994


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Avoirdupois is from Middle English avoir de pois, "goods sold by weight," from Old French aveir de peis, literally "goods of weight," from aveir, "property, goods" (from aveir, "to have," from Latin habere, "to have, to hold, to possess property") + de, "from" (from the Latin) + peis, "weight," from Latin pensum, "weight."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 18, 2004

machination

\mack-uh-NAY-shuhn; mash-\, noun:
1. The act of plotting.
2. A crafty scheme; a cunning design or plot intended to accomplish some usually evil end.

He was telling me how he could have married the royal princess as a reward for his bravery in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he was an infantryman in the Kaiserliche und Konigliche Austro-Hungarian army, but for the machinations of the evil Archduke somebody-or-other.
--George Lang, Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen

Alongside the various representations of sincere tears, then, are a series of representations of insincerity and emotional machination.
--Tom Lutz, Crying

To keep away from them and steer clear of their inveigling schemes and grasping machinations . . . has been my constant life-long effort.
--Jeff Stryker, "They Couldn't Resist: Oh, One Last Thing," New York Times, May 21, 2000

He declared that the tale he could tell would not be of generals or kings, for the political machinations of the great, he said, he was and had been in no position to observe.
--Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire


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Machination derives from Latin machinatio, "a contrivance, a cunning device, a machination," from machinari, "to contrive, to devise, especially to plot evil." It is related to machine, from Latin machina, "any artificial contrivance for performing work." To machinate is to devise a plot, or engage in plotting. One who machinates is a machinator.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 19, 2004

calumny

\KAL-uhm-nee\, noun:
1. False accusation of a crime or offense, intended to injure another's reputation.
2. Malicious misrepresentation; slander.

They would see to it that every suspicious whisper and outright calumny would be repeated in print, breathing fire into the growing spirit of faction.
--William Safire, Scandalmonger

They protest to him against the universal order, and then reward his kind words by calumny and accusations of . . . inhumanity and cruelty.
--Paola Capriolo, Floria Tosca

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
--Shakespeare, Hamlet


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Calumny comes, via Middle French, from Latin calumnia, from calvi, "to form intrigues, to deceive." The adjective form is calumnious.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 20, 2004

fatidic

\fuh-TID-ik\, adjective:
Of, relating to, or characterized by prophecy; prophetic.

Throughout his very considerable body of work, there is an obsession with time, with dates, with temporal coincidences, with the fatidic power of numbers over our birth and death.
--James Kirkup, "Obituary: Ernst Junger," Independent, February 18, 1998

With a fatidic clarity that comes only occasionally and only to the young, she understood that . . . this too was a sign, an omen.
--Kathleen Cambor, In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden


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Fatidic comes from Latin fatidicus, from fati- (from fatum, "fate") + -dicus (from dicere, "to say").

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 21, 2004

tatterdemalion

\tat-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn\, noun:
A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.

adjective:
Tattered; ragged.
Last time peasant blouses surfaced, in the 1960s and '70s, they were part of an epidemic of Indian bedspread dresses, homemade blue-jean skirts, Army surplus jackets, Greek bookbag purses and love beads, the whole eclectic tatterdemalion mix meant to express egalitarian sentiments and countercultural solidarity with underdogs everywhere.
--Patricia McLaughlin, "The peasant look," Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, April 25, 1999

I was expecting a wild hair, clanking jewelry, a tatterdemalion velvet cape from whose folds wafted the scent of incense, a house full of candles, dream catchers, cats, and bad art.
--David Rakoff, Fraud

To my ear, though, the prose has the tatterdemalion feel of something hooked together by commas, tacked together by periods.
--Brad Leithauser,"Capturer of Hearts," New York Times, April 7, 1996


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Tatterdemalion derives from tatter + -demalion, of unknown origin, though perhaps from Old French maillon, "long clothes, swadding clothes" or Italian maglia, "undershirt."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 22, 2004

confabulation

\kon-FAB-yuh-lay-shuhn\, noun:
1. Familiar talk; easy, unrestrained, unceremonious conversation.
2. (Psychology) A plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered.

Their sentiments were reflected neither in the elegant exchanges between the Viceroy and Secretary of State, nor in the unlovely confabulations between the Congress and the League managers.
--Mushirul Hasan, "Partition: The Human Cost," History Today, September 1997

Sigmund Freud, a stubborn, bullying interrogator of hysterical women, harangued his patients into building fantasies and traumas that fit into his grand narrative scheme, eliciting confabulations rather than actual memories.
--Jennifer Howard, "Neurosis 1990s-Style," Civilization, April/May 1997


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Confabulation comes from Late Latin confabulatio, from the past participle of Latin confabulari, "to talk together," from con-, "together, with" + fabulari, "to talk." It is related to fable, "a fiction, a tale," and to fabulous, "so incredible or astonishing as to resemble or suggest a fable."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 23, 2004

inkhorn

\INK-horn\, adjective:
Affectedly or ostentatiously learned; pedantic.

noun:
A small bottle of horn or other material formerly used for holding ink.

. . . the widespread use of what were called (dismissively, by truly learned folk) "inkhorn terms."
--Simon Winchester, "Word Imperfect," The Atlantic Monthly, May 2001

In prison he wrote the De Consolatione Philosophiae, his most celebrated work and one of the most translated works in history; it was translated . . . by Elizabeth I into florid, inkhorn language.
--The Oxford Companion to English Literature, s.v. "Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (c. 475 - 525)."


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Inkhorn derives from the name for the container formerly used (beginning in the 14th century) for holding ink, originally made from a real horn. Hence it came to refer to words that were being used by learned writers and scholars but which were unknown or rare in ordinary speech.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 24, 2004

quash

\KWOSH\, transitive verb:
1. (Law) To abate, annul, overthrow, or make void; as, "to quash an indictment."
2. To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely; as, "to quash a rebellion."

The Shelby Globe attributed her death to acute heart failure and yellow jaundice and did its best to quash a curious town rumor that had her being poisoned by eating oyster sandwiches.
--Tim Page, Dawn Powell: A Biography

The German-French entente made NATO intervention to quash the Balkan civil wars possible, and the collapse of the Soviet Union made NATO's intervention deep into the former Soviet sphere of influence permissible.
--Thomas L. Friedman, "Was Kosovo World War III?" New York Times, July 2, 1999

[The law] . . . also installed newspaper censorship, enabling the government to quash anything "calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty's forces or to assist the enemy."
--Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand


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Quash comes from Medieval French quasser, from Latin quassare, "to shake violently, to shatter," frequentative form of quatere, "to shake." Quash, "to annul," has been sense-influenced by Late Latin cassare, "to annul," from Latin cassus, "empty," whereas quash, "to crush," has been sense-influenced by squash.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 25, 2004

wiseacre

\WY-zay-kuhr\, noun:
One who pretends to knowledge or cleverness; a would-be wise person; a smart aleck.

All across the United States, journalists and other wiseacres would soon have a field day with the popular mayor's personal problems and public trials.
--Herbert Mitgang, Once Upon a Time in New York

A wiseacre on the Oakland to Los Angeles shuttle this week said the next technological leap would be implanting cell phones into people's heads. He was kidding -- we think.
--Chuck Raasch, "California is November prize for candidates," USA Today August 24, 2000


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Wiseacre comes from Middle Dutch wijssegger, "a soothsayer," from Old High German wissago, alteration of wizago, "a prophet."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 26, 2004

cacophony

\kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\, noun:
1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.
2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.

New York was then a cacophony of sounds -- a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling.
--Herbert G. Goldman, Banjo Eyes

The mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable.
--Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg


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Cacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 27, 2004

excursus

\ik-SKUR-sus\, noun:
1. A dissertation that is appended to a work and that contains a more extended exposition of some important point or topic.
2. A digression.

And the eels not only have a role in the narrator's story . . . but receive a 12-page excursus on their genesis and (as it were) life style.
--William H. Pritchard, "The Body in the River Leem," New York Times, March 25, 1984

Sometimes, however, Mr. Honan's historical digressions wander far away from Jane Austen's concerns. An excursus on George III's insanity has precious little to do with "Pride and Prejudice," the subject nominally under discussion.
--Peter Conrad, "'Beside Her Joyce Seems Innocent as Grass,'" New York Times, February 28, 1988

Perhaps the most important objection to Mr. Hughes's method is that he views structural changes in both the Western and the Communist world systems chiefly through the filter of his rebels; sometimes I would have preferred an excursus on economic issues to one on intellectual history.
--Peter Schneider, "A New Breed at the Barricades," New York Times, January 8, 1989

Somewhat sprightlier than the long chapter on Stolypin is his 80-page historical excursus about Nicholas II, the last of Russia's hereditary autocrats.
--Irving Howe, "The Great War and Russian Memory," New York Times, July 2, 1989


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Excursus comes from the past participle of Latin excurrere, "to run out," from ex-, "out" + currere, "to run."