Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 3, 2005CE

gelid

\JEL-id\, adjective:
Extremely cold; icy.

The weather is gelid on a recent Thursday night--so uninviting that it's hard to imagine anyone venturing out.
--Letta Tayler, "The Accent's on Brooklyn," Newsday, April 6, 2000

Last January a major crisis arose when the Argentine naval supply ship Bahia Paraiso foundered near an island off the Antarctic Peninsula, creating a diesel-oil spill that inflicted untold damage on the ecosystems clinging to the edges of the icy continent or swimming in its gelid seas.
--Christopher Redman Paris, "Could anything be more terrible than this silent, windswept immensity?" Time, October 23, 1989


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Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 4, 2005CE

billet

\BIL-it\, noun:
1. Lodging for soldiers.
2. An official order directing that a soldier be provided with lodging.
3. A position of employment; a job.

transitive verb:
1. To quarter, or place in lodgings.
2. To serve (a person) with an official order to provide lodging for soldiers.

intransitive verb:
To be quartered; to lodge.

When he was well enough, he was retrieved back to his billet in the American zone.
--Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War

Louisa stayed at the hospital to be near him, while the younger children were billeted at a nearby house with their Irish governess.
--Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell

We arrived jet-lagged at Tan Son Nhut airport where someone met us and hurried us off to wherever we were billeted, usually a villa on one of the wide residential boulevards that reminded everyone of a French provincial city.
--Ward Just, A Dangerous Friend


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Billet is from Medieval French billette, from Old French bullette, diminutive of bulle, "a document," from Medieval Latin bulla, "a document."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 5, 2005CE

incongruous

\in-KONG-groo-us\, adjective:
1. Lacking in harmony, compatibility, or appropriateness.
2. Inconsistent with reason, logic, or common sense.

I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common Temper of Mankind is.
--Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

She made nightdresses and petticoats in the old-fashioned mode and sold them to a shop in the market town -- one of those exclusive little shops with a single garment and something imaginatively incongruous -- a monkey's skull or an old boot -- arranged in the window.
--Alice Thomas Ellis, Fairy Tale

They made an incongruous pair as they walked on: one was slight and dapper, some thirty-five years in age, with long, clipped mustaches, and dressed in the height of modern elegance, complete with pearl buttons and gold watch chain. The other, ambling a few paces behind, was a towering fellow with grizzled mutton-chop whiskers, whose ill-fitting frock coat barely contained a barrel chest.
--Ben Macintyre, The Napoleon of Crime


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Incongruous comes from Latin incongruus, from in-, "not" + congruus, "agreeing, fit, suitable," from congruere, "to run together, to come together, to meet."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 6, 2005CE

nepotism

\NEP-uh-tiz-um\, noun:
Favoritism shown to members of one's family, as in business; bestowal of patronage in consideration of relationship, rather than of merit or of legal claim.

I got a job there as a result of my grandfather being on the board of directors -- a lesson in loyalty here, or, should I say, just plain old nepotism.
--James Carville, Stickin': The Case for Loyalty

The staff was recruited by unabashed nepotism.
--Noel Annan, Changing Enemies

Some custodians have worked their way around more recent nepotism rules by hiring each other's relatives.
--Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti, New Schools for a New Century


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Nepotism derives from Latin nepot-, nepos, "grandson, nephew." It is related to nephew, which comes from the Latin via Old French neveu.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 7, 2005CE

fey

\FAY\, adjective:
1. Possessing or displaying a strange and otherworldly aspect or quality; magical or fairylike; elfin.
2. Having power to see into the future; visionary; clairvoyant.
3. Appearing slightly crazy, as if under a spell; touched.
4. (Scots.) Fated to die; doomed.
5. (Scots.) Marked by a sense of approaching death.

. . . the former a gang of dangerous delinquents, fearless, macho, vulgar . . . , the latter a group of mischievous schoolboys, whimsical, fey, sophisticated and daringly experimental.
--Sean Kelly, "What Did You Expect, the Spanish Inquisition?" New York Times, July 25, 1999

Beneath a fey manner, his mother was highly competitive.
--Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men

Leo, suddenly fey, sports a rhinestone ascot and black velvet waistcoat, homburg and walking stick.
--Edward Karam, "Fast and louche," Times (London), March 29, 2001


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Fey comes from Middle English feye, feie, from Old English fæge, "fated to die."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 8, 2005CE

ambuscade

\AM-buh-skayd; am-buh-SKAYD\, noun:
An ambush.

transitive verb:
To attack by surprise from a concealed place; to ambush.

But so great were his fears for the army, lest in those wild woods it should fall into some Indian snare, that the moment his fever left him, he got placed on his horse, and pursued, and overtook them the very evening before they fell into that ambuscade which he had all along dreaded.
--Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington

The storm is distant, just the lights behind
The eyes are left of lightning's ambuscade.
--Peter Porter, "The Last Wave Before the Breakwater"

No more ambuscades, no more shooting from behind trees.
--William Murchison, "What the voters chose," Human Life Review, January 1, 1995


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Ambuscade comes from Middle French embuscade, from Old Italian imboscata, from past participle of imboscare, "to ambush," from in, (from Latin) + bosco, "forest," of Germanic origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 9, 2005CE

gourmand

\goor-MAHND; GOOR-mahnd; GOOR-mund\, noun:
1. One who eats to excess.
2. A lover of good food.

A gourmand who zealously avoids all exercise as "seriously damaging to one's health," he had caviar for breakfast and was now having oysters for lunch, whetted with wine, as he fueled himself for a postprandial reading at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn.
--"The Man Who Put Horace Rumpole on the Case," New York Times, April 12, 1995

Her husband was stigmatised as a 'gourmand' who excessively enjoyed 'the pleasures of the table'.
--Andrew Motion, Keats

Fifine was a frank gourmand; anybody could win her heart through her palate.
--Charlotte Brontë, Villette

Jos, that fat gourmand, drank up the whole contents of the bowl.
--William Thackeray, Vanity Fair


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Gourmand is from French gourmand, "greedy."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 10, 2005CE

lachrymose

\LAK-ruh-mohs\, adjective:
1. Given to shedding tears; suffused with tears; tearful.
2. Causing or tending to cause tears.

At the farewell party on the boat, Joyce was surrounded by a lachrymose family.
--Edna O'Brien, "She Was the Other Ireland," New York Times, June 19, 1988

I promise to do my best, and if at any time my resolution lapses, pen me a few fierce vitriolic words and you shall receive by the next post a lachrymose & abject apology in my most emotional hand writing.
--Rupert Brooke, letter to James Strachey, July 7, 1905

The game is perpetuated by the sons in a sometimes vicious sibling rivalry that inevitably subsides into lachrymose reconciliation.
--Arthur Gelb and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill: Life With Monte Cristo

Meanwhile, a lachrymose new waltz, "After The Ball Is Over," was sweeping the nation.
--Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist


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Lachrymose is from Latin lacrimosus, from lacrima, "tear."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 11, 2005CE

coquette

\koh-KET\, noun:
A woman who habitually trifles with the affections of men; a flirt.

Their love is frustrated when the orphaned Bertha is adopted by "the old lady of the near castle" and becomes "somewhat of a coquette in manner," perversely entertaining suitors but accepting none.
--Lawrence Venuti, "The Awful Crime of I. U. Tarchetti: Plagiarism as Propaganda," New York Times, August 23, 1992

She was an energetic woman, always singing, dancing, a coquette. Her flirtatiousness infuriated my father.
--William Herrick, Jumping the Line

Here sat I, a personal student of Freud, of Adler, liberators of the erotic emotions, pioneers of sexual freedom; yet the nearness of this coquette had made me awash in perplexity and perspiration.
--Leslie Epstein, Pandaemonium


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Coquette is the feminine form of French coquet, "flirtatious man," diminutive of coq, "rooster, cock." The adjective form is coquettish. The verb coquet (also coquette) means "to flirt or trifle with."

Trivia: The male version is a coquet (pronounced the same as the female version). However, this word has fallen into disuse and is now considered obsolete.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 12, 2005CE

potboiler

\POT-boi-lur\, noun:
A usually inferior literary or artistic work, produced quickly for the purpose of making money.

The play was a mixed blessing. Through it O'Neill latched on to a perennial source of income, but the promise of his youth was essentially squandered on a potboiler.
--Jane Scovell, Oona. Living in the Shadows

If reading and travel are two of life's most rewarding experiences, to combine them is heavenly. I don't mean sitting on a beach reading the latest potboiler, a fine form of relaxation but not exactly mind-expanding.
--Stephen Kinzer, "Traveling Companions," New York Times, April 19, 1998


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Potboiler comes from the phrase "boil the pot," meaning "to provide one's livelihood."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 13, 2005CE

parse

\PAHRS\, transitive verb:
1. To resolve (as a sentence) into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
2. To describe grammatically by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence.
3. To examine closely or analyze critically, especially by breaking up into components.
4. To make sense of; to comprehend.
5. (Computer Science) To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed components.

intransitive verb:
To admit of being parsed.

We must learn to parse sentences and to analyse the grammar of our text, for, as Roman Jakobson has taught us, there is no access to the grammar of poetry, to the nerve and sinew of the poem, if one is blind to the poetry of grammar.
--George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995

There are too many spots where the rhythm goes momentarily awry; where words are used with murk, sloppiness or phonetic imprecision; where sentences are so twisted around that they become hard to parse; even times where it's hard to be sure just who or what is being referred to.
--Douglas Hofstadter, "What's Gained in Translation," New York Times, December 8, 1996

The American Constitution, for example, says that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." . . . once we parse notions like "abridging" and "the freedom of speech," perhaps we will decide cases on the basis of an inquiry into two, three, or more relevant considerations.
--Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict


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Parse comes from the Latin pars (orationis), "part (of speech)."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 14, 2005CE

nimiety

\nih-MY-uh-tee\, noun:
The state of being too much; excess.

What a nimiety of . . . riches have we here! I am quite undone.
--James J. Kilpatrick, "Buckley: The Right Word," National Review, December 23, 1996

Just as daily life contains all the comforts of what one owns, there is also a natural shedding or forgetting and a natural dulling, otherwise one becomes burdened with a sense of nimiety, a sense (as Kenneth Clark put it in his autobiography) of the "too-muchness" of life.
--Nicholas Poburko, "Poetry, Past And Present: F. T. Prince's Walks in Rome," Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, January 1, 1999


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Nimiety is from Late Latin nimietas, from Latin nimius, "very much, too much," from nimis, "excessively."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 15, 2005CE

quotidian

\kwoh-TID-ee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Occurring or returning daily; as, a quotidian fever.
2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.

Erasmus thought More's career as a lawyer was a waste of a fine mind, but it was precisely the human insights More derived from his life in the quotidian world that gave him a moral depth Erasmus lacked.
--"More man than saint," Irish Times, April 4, 1998

She also had a sense of fun that was often drummed out under the dull, quotidian beats of suburban life.
--Meg Wolitzer, Surrender, Dorothy


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Quotidian is from Latin quotidianus, from quotidie, "daily," from quotus, "how many, as many, so many" + dies, "day."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 16, 2005CE

fugacious

\fyoo-GAY-shuhs\, adjective:
Lasting but a short time; fleeting.

The fugacious nature of life and time.
--Harriet Martineau, Autobiography

Tastes, smells . . . being, in comparison, fugacious.
--John Stuart Mill, Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy

When he proposed the tax in May, Altman thought it would follow the fugacious nature of some flowers: bloom quickly and die just as fast.
--Will Rodgers, "Parks proposal falls on 3-2 vote," Tampa Tribune, June 27, 2001


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Fugacious is derived from Latin fugax, fugac-, "ready to flee, flying; hence, fleeting, transitory," from fugere, "to flee, to take flight." Other words derived from the same root include fugitive, one who flees, especially from the law; refuge, a place to which to flee back (re-, "back"), and hence to safety; and fugue, literally a musical "flight."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 17, 2005CE

cabal

\kuh-BAHL; kuh-BAL\, noun:
1. A secret, conspiratorial association of plotters or intriguers whose purpose is usually to bring about an overturn especially in public affairs.
2. The schemes or plots of such an association.

intransitive verb:
To form a cabal; to conspire; to intrigue; to plot.

If you constantly disagreed with Winters, he wrote you out of his cabal, his conspiracy against the poetry establishment.
--Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs

My father always had been a collector. There were the stamps, National Geographics, scrapbooks filled with his favorite political cartoons, and booklets justifying his belief that the world was under the control of a global cabal of elites unified by such organizations as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Freemasons.
--Frederick Kempe, Father/Land

But the new world of toys is by no means simply the product of a profit-mad cabal of toy pushers discovering new ways of exploiting the child market.
--Gary Cross, Kids' Stuff

The Anti-Federalists were not simply concerned that Congress was too small relatively--too small to be truly representative of the great diversity of the nation. Congress was also too small absolutely--too small to be immune from cabal and intrigue.
--Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights


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Cabal derives from Medieval Latin cabala, a transliteration of Hebrew qabbalah, "received," hence "traditional, lore," from qabal, "to receive." The evolution in sense is: "(secret) tradition, secret, secret plots or intrigues, secret meeting, secret meeters, a group of plotters or intriguers."