Word of the Day

[grit]

oddly enough, here is an old photo which fell out of the dictionary where the listing for pooka was marked:

[grit]

and this one was neatly tucked under the "stor...s"

[grit]

I can haz gerbil?

[grit]

Word of the Day
Thursday, 17 January, 2008AD

prolegomena, noun, plural of pro•le•gom•e•non
\pro-li-GA-me-nuh\

1. A preliminary discussion, especially a formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret a work of considerable length or complexity.
2. Prefatory remarks or observations.

“What Marsden has done, by painstaking attention to his writings in the context of his life and times, is to give us the prolegomena to any future intellectual biography of Jonathan Edwards.”
- George McKenna, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, “First Things”, October 2003.

“The Old and New Testament are viewed as the prolegomena to the real thing, the spirituality advanced by the Quran.”
- Joshua M. Landis, Islamic Education in Syria: Undoing Secularism, November 2003.

“This area is sometimes called "theological prolegomena," a term which designates those things which must be "said before" theology may be done…Whatever may be said on behalf of this procedure, a "Van Tillian theologian" will wish to guard strongly against any implication that "prolegomena" is some kind of autonomous rational activity which precedes the believer's submission of his mind to God's Word. "Prolegomena" must be just as subject to Scripture as any area of theology -- especially so, since prolegomena so greatly influences every phase of theological thinking.”
- John M. Frame, Van Til: the Theologian, Pilgrim Publishing Co., 1976.
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ETYMOLOGY: Greek, from neuter present passive participle of prolegein, to say beforehand : pro-, before + legein, to say.

[grit]

Word of the Day
Friday, 18 January, 2008AD

homologumena

\hoh-moh-luh-GOO-muh-nuh, -GYOO- \, noun (used with a singular verb )

Those books of the New Testament generally held as authoritative and canonical or universally acknowledged by the early church; - distinguished from antilegomena (contradicted or disputed, literally spoken against).

“As those books of the New Testament that the early church universally recognized as apostolic, the homologoumena contain all essential Christian doctrine…”
- F. Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Volume I, Concordia Publishing House, 1950.

“La question du modèle de l’ecclésiologie des homologoumena a été affrontée dans un précédent article sur lequel les réflexions qui suivent s’appuieront et qu’elles supposeront connu.”
- Jean-Noël ALETTI, Biblica 85 (2004)

“Lutheran theologians like to make a distinction between the books of the New Testament which were unanimously received as canonical in the early church (the so-called Homologoumena or undisputed books) and the books which were disputed by some (the Antilegomena). In this class of 'disputed books' are the Epistle to the Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and the Revelation of John. These books are considered to be canonical in modern Lutheran churches, with the caveat that they are not quite on the same level as the other books as complete expressions of evangelical truth, and should be used with care.”
- Michael D. Marlowe, “Luther's Treatment of the 'Disputed Books' of the New Testament”, 2001-2007.
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Origin: Gk. homologoûmena, neut. pl. pass. prp. of homologeǐn to agree to, allow
(homologoumena - spoken as one)

[grit]

Word of the Day
Saturday, 19 January, 2008AD

gomenasai

\Go-me-nah-sai\

1. adjective. Correctly Romanized as Gomen nasai; Japanese: ごめんなさい; Translated: "I'm sorry". Gomen means "sorry", and nasai is a modifier meaning "humbly"; thus, “humbly sorry”, as a more formal or emphatic conveyance of gomen. An "I" and "am" are implied.

2. noun. "Gomenasai", is a ballad by t.A.T.u., a Russian pop-rock duet (Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova) who became the most successful international recording act exported from Russia. It is their third single from their album, Dangerous and Moving (2005), and also features Richard Carpenter (of The Carpenters fame).

go = ご
me = め
n = ん

na = な
sa = さ
i = い

Gomen nasai till the end
I never needed a friend
Like I do now
– from “Gomenasai” lyrics by t.A.T.u., Universal Music, 2005.

“And, although I hadn’t done anything, it still never hurts to use it. To everyone I knew and loved, gomenasai. ‘I’m sorry.’” - Liz's Dystopia, 2006, FictionPress.
_________________
Japanese: gomen nasai (ごめんなさい), Latin: Ignosce mihi, French: Je suis desolée, Spanish: Lo siento! ¡Perdón! ¡Perdone! , Dutch: het spijt me, Italian: Sono spiacente, Afrikaans: Jammer!, Arabic (Egyptian): aasif/a - m/f ( آسف! ), Swahili: Samehani, Hindi: Mujhe maaf karo, Polish: Przepraszam, Russian: Prastite (Простите), Hebrew: slicha ( סליחה ), Chinese (Cantonese): deuim̀jyuh ( 對唔住 ), German: Es tut mir leid! Entschuldigung! Ich bedaure!, Swedish: Förlåt!, Greek: Signómi (Συγνώμη), Irish (Gaelic): Gabh mo leiscéal! Tá brón orm!, Scottish (Gaelic): Gabh mo leisgeul! Tha mi duilich! Scots: Sairy!, Welsh: Mae'n ddrwg da fi/gen i!, English: Forgive me

[grit]

Word of the Day
Sunday, 20 January, 2008AD

bard
\bärd\

noun.

1. One of an ancient Celtic order of minstrel poets who composed and recited verses celebrating the legendary exploits of chieftains and heroes.
2. A poet, especially a lyric poet.
3. A piece of armor used to protect or ornament a horse.
4. Bard or Bard of Avon (capped as formal reference). William Shakespeare

verb.

Southern colloquialism in past tense of the infinitive "to borrow." usage: "My brother bard my pickup truck."

“Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.”
- COLERIDGE, Fancy in Nubibus.

“Oh! blame not the bard.”
- Sir Thomas More Chancellor of England

“ A Druid in training must be a bard before he is a priest, for music is one of the keys to the laws of the universe.”
- Marion Zimmer Bradley

"If you think all this Shakespeare stuff is "too much of a good thing" (from As You Like It) that will vanish "into thin air" (from The Tempest), don't worry — the Bard will be around for more than "the livelong day" (from Julius Caesar)."
- John Doyle & Ray Lischner, Shakespeare For Dummies.

"If'n you try an' move that horsie that-a-way one more time, I'm a-gonna take my rook and knock his bard clear off." - um... grit, heated chess match honoring Bobby Fischer.
______________________

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English barde, from Irish and Scottish Gaelic bard, from Welsh bardd, from Old French, from Old Italian barda, from Arabic barda‘a, packsaddle, from Persian pardah.

[grit]

Word of the Day
Monday, 21 January, 2008AD

floccinaucinihilipilification (or variously floccipaucinihilipilification)

\flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-KEY-shuh n\ or
\FLOK-sih-noh-see-NEE-hee-lee-PEE-lih-fih-KAY-shun \, noun.

The term, famously used as an example of a very long word*, means the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation. It's actually an aggregate of Latin forms:
"flocci" is from the Latin floccus, which means "fleece" and is related to the verb floccipendo which means, literally, "to give the value of a bit of fleece" or "to take lightly."
"nauci" is a word meaning "few" or "almost nothing."
"nihil," like in anihilation, is the Latin word for "nothing."
"pili" is the plural form of the word pilus, the Latin word for "small hair," but in this case meaning a “bit or a whit” or a "trifle."

Back in the eighteenth century, Eton College had a grammar book which listed a set of words from Latin which all meant “of little or no value”. In order, those were flocci, nauci, nihili, and pili. As a learned joke, somebody put all four of these together and then stuck –fication on the end to make a noun for the act of deciding that something is totally and absolutely valueless, or literally, "the making light of a few trifles of nothing."

It's actually one letter longer than the next most commonly referred to long word, antidisestablishmentarianism, the ideology of being against the dissolution of the Church of England.


"I loved him for nothing so much as his floccinaucinihilipilification of money."
-William Shenstone, Letters

"They must be taken with an air of contempt, a floccinaucinihilipilification of all that can gratify the outward man."
-Sir Walter Scott, Journal

"I note your distress at my floccinaucinihilipilification of the CTBT."
- US Senator, Jesse Helms, referring to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(use of the term has actually been quite popular in the Washington political scene)

"Yes, my apparent floccinaucinihilipilification of both you and your canine companion was meant to be stupendously supercilious."
- anonymous sesquipedalian person

*Of course, the word can then be edited to form verbs, like floccinaucinihilipilificate, and adjectives, like floccinaucinihilipilificatious, or even other nouns, like floccinaucinihilipilificatism.
_______________________

Etymology: 1735–45; < L floccī + naucī + nihilī + pilī all meaning “of little or no value, trifling” + -fication.

[Augustine2004]

I hope that as time goes on ever fewer people will indulge in floccinaucinihilipilification of your contributions to this thread.

[grit]

Oh lookie! we have a reader! My diaphanous contributions ARE being cerebrally masticated unfloccinaucinihilipilificationously!

[grit]

Word of the Day
Tuesday, 22 January, 2008AD

jo

\jō\ , noun

1. chiefly Scottish : beloved one; darling; dear; sweetheart.

2. A jō (杖:じょう) is an approximately four-foot (1.28 meters) long wooden staff used in certain Japanese martial arts and by some Japanese police forces. The martial art of wielding the jō is called jōjutsu or jōdō. Also, aiki-jō is a set of techniques in aikido which uses the jō to illustrate aikido's principles with a weapon.

“And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.”
- traditional Scottish ballad, John Anderson, My Jo, Robert Burns

“Whatrax my Jo, I ken your coptan.”
- Scottish proverb, A Collection of Scotch Proverbs, Pappity Stampoy

“Shimizu [Takaji (1898-1978)] became resident jojutsu instructor to the Japanese police force in 1931 and a special police unit, 'tokubetsu keibitai,' was formed to be trained by him in the use of the weapon. The use of jo by the police became known as keijo-jutsu. In Tokyo he opened the Mumon (No Gate) Dojo where he taught police and military officers, and soon his student numbers began to grow.”
- Seishinkan Society, "History of the Japanese Staff - Bo and Jo"

“Jo! Beware mossy jo’s jo mossy jo jo”
- more grit, by grit, in buttered grit


“Please don’t pull your jo on Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds.”
- famous gritism, by grit, in an accumulation of grit stuff

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Etymology: var. of joy

[grit]

still catching up a bit as a newbie...

Word of the Day
Sunday, 3 February, 2008AD (a day leap past Ground Hog Day, or Goundhog day, depending on how one prefers their rodent)

1-2-3 Molinas

\wuhn – too – thrē – moh-lee-nuhs\ ,noun, adjective, adverb (all in the indecisive yet philosophically astute declension)

1. An expression of condition descriptive of theological wallflowers caught in a very respectful attempt at reconciling two divergent traditions of Christian thought by smashing together God’s sovereign omniscient will (Calvinism) with man’s free will (Arminianism), and thus creating a third harmonious though slightly left of center divine knowabiliwill called Middle Knowledge (which apparently worked very well for combining Mary and Magdalene into Marlena, and seemed a very valiant and worthy Jesuit postulation).

“It's see no, speak no, hear no evil about us”, ‘cause “there's got to be someone we can trust out here among us [1-2-3 Molinas]” - Jakob Dylan, Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse, 1996 Interscope Records
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Etymology: “I gotta make a lot of decisions in my life every day, like everybody else, and sometimes you feel like you got three different people [when] you're making choices and you don't know which one's speaking to you on which day. - The Album Network, December 19, 1997 - article121997.htm

[grit]

Word of the Day
Monday, 4 February, 2008AD

suppurate


\SUHP-yuh-rayt\ or \ˈsə-pyə-ˌrāt\ , intransitive verb

1. To produce or secrete pus.

"Simple Sophie has brought this suppurating carbuncle on the face of public life to the boil."
- Paul Routledge; Why We Must Axe the Royals; The Mirror (London); Apr 10, 2001.

"Well, indubitably the 2008 Superbowl will suppurate even the Christian masses from heavenly devotion."
- anonymous pastoral acrimoanimity, 3 February 2008

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Etymology: Middle English suppuraten, from Latin suppuratus, past participle of suppurare, from sub- + pur- (pus)

[grit]

Word of the Day
SuperTuesday, 5 February, 2008AD

oquassa

\oh-kwas-uh, oh-kwah-suh \, noun

1. a small, handsome, dark-blue brook trout, Salvelinus oquassa, found in the Rageley Lakes in western Maine (as well as other rumoured locales). Also called 'blueback trout'.

“The oquassa can detect as little as one-billionth of one gram of a pesticide pollutant in a liter of water.”
– an un-sourced French study of trout skills.


“Oquassa tickling is the art of rubbing the underbelly of a web host using ones fingers. If done properly, the trout will go into a trance-like state after a minute or so, and can then easily be induced into theological conundrums. In Scotland the technique is more often called "guddling" or sometimes "ginniling". The practice is currently illegal under most circumstances in Britain.”
– um, I’m protecting all my sources. on this entry

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ETYMOLOGY: After Lake Oquassa, a lake of western Maine.

[grit]

WORD OF THE DAY
Wednesday, 6 February, 2008AD

mugwumpery, from mugwump, often Mugwump

\mug'wump'er•y\ noun.


1. a. Independent or especially neutral thoughts or acts, especially pertaining to politics.

b. Indecisive thoughts (so thus, inactivity), esp. pertaining to politics, and often regarding an issue considered controversial. It usu. means one who stays neutral and votes for no party.

c. a non-comformist

(compare 2008 American presupertuessence)

2. a. 1884 Republican political activist’s act of bolting from the Republican Party to support Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in a refusal to validate candidate James G. Blaine due to associations with financial corruption.
Charles Anderson Dana, the colorful newspaperman and editor of the New York Sun, is said to have given the Mugwumps their political moniker. Dana made the term plural and derided them as amateurs and public moralists.
During the 1884 campaign, they were often portrayed as "fence-sitters," with part of their body on the side of the Democrats and the other on the side of the Republicans. (chiefly illustrated as a male bird of colourful plumage with his "mug" on one side of the fence, and his "wump" on the other.) Angry Republicans sometimes hinted they were homosexual.

b. Republican reformation or general, esp. political, reform activity. In U.S. political slang mugwump came to mean any independent voter; the term was later adopted in England.
(see, perhaps, Boll Weevil Blue Dawg Democrats)

3. a. Musical styling of the Mamas & Papas prior to adopting their more popular moniker. Members of the group performed under that name, Mugwumps, and one can hear the name mentioned in their song Creeque Alley.

b. Specific or general deep down musical funkiness usu. personified by a small gnome, troll, or wizard.

4. An unexplained scientific phenomenon typically affecting biological organisms in entropy or otherwise approaching their mid-life cycle. In humans, usually demarked by an ordinary or unappealing appearance (chiefly regarding women, or men if they are short) of a broad face, a dumpy and sagging body, increased breast size, and strange inexplicable hair growth or displacement.

5. Activities of the "MacIntosh Users' Group", using MUGWUMPS as an acronym.

“I was a mugwump. We, the mugwumps, a little company made up of the unenslaved of both parties, the very best men to be found in the two great parties--that was our idea of it--voted sixty thousand strong for Mr. Cleveland in New York and elected him. Our principles were high, and very definite. We were not a party; we had no candidates; we had no axes to grind. Our vote laid upon the man we cast it for no obligation of any kind. By our rule we could not ask for office; we could not accept office. When voting, it was our duty to vote for the best man, regardless of his party name. We had no other creed. Vote for the best man--that was creed enough.”
- Mark Twain's Autobiography (North American Review, Dec. 21, 1906)

“Now, people don't like that, particularly the higher you go in the power pyramid, the less they like it. Whether they're Republicans, Democrats, mugwumps or what have you, they don't like it.

If you believe as I do, and as many reporters do -- and Woodward and Bernstein, you know, in their core, they believe it -- that news is what somebody, somewhere, doesn't want you to know that the public needs to know. All the rest is just advertising, just to paraphrase what some Canadian press baron said.”
- Dan Rather, CNN LARRY KING LIVE, Aired June 2, 2005 - 22:00 ET

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ETYMOLOGY: From the Massachusett Algonquian: great chief, from mogki great + -omp man; mugguomp, mummugguomp, war leader, person of importance, kingpin.