Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday December 28, 2004

raillery

\RAY-luh-ree\, noun:
1. Good-humored banter or teasing.
2. An instance of good-humored teasing; a jest.

I moved from one knot of people to another, surrounded by a kind of envious respect because of Sophie's interest in me, although subjected to a certain mordant raillery from some of this witty company.
--Peter Brooks, World Elsewhere

Her raillery and mockery are fun -- but ultimately rather tiring, and tiresome.
--Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, "Eastward Ho!" review of Shards of Memory, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, New York Times, September 17, 1995


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Raillery is from French raillerie, from Old French railler, "to tease, to mock."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday December 29, 2004

sedition

\sih-DISH-un\, noun:
Conduct or language inciting resistance to or rebellion against lawful authority.

[M]ost of us now accept as common sense what was once prosecuted as sedition, namely Tom Paine's proposition that "the idea of hereditary legislators is as absurd as a hereditary mathematician -- as absurd as a hereditary poet laureate".
--Geoffrey Robertson, "Dumping our Queen," The Guardian, November 6, 1999

At several points in his long career, Jinnah was threatened by the British with imprisonment on sedition charges for speaking in favour of Indian home rule or rights.
--Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity

Outspoken critics of the policy have until now faced the possibility of having a charge of sedition brought against them.
--David Cohen, "Malaysian universities rejecting Chinese students," The Guardian, May 3, 2001


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Sedition comes from Latin seditio, sedition-, "a going apart," hence "revolt, insurrection," from se-, "apart" + itio, ition-, "act of going," from ire, "to go."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday December 30, 2004

riposte

\rih-POST\, noun:
1. A quick thrust given after parrying an opponent's lunge in fencing.
2. A quick and effective reply by word or act.

intransitive verb:
To make a riposte.

She had an agile, teasing sense of humor that included a sure grasp of the absurd and an instinct for punchy ripostes.
--Sally Bedell Smith, Diana in Search of Herself

It was an inelegant riposte, especially for one so quick-witted as Neumann.
--Peter Gay, My German Question

When she told him how much she hated being called an old trout, he'd riposte: "The trout is the most beautiful of fish."
--Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg


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Riposte derives from Italian risposta, "an answer," from rispondere, "to answer," from Latin respondere, "to promise in return, to answer," from re- + spondere, "to promise."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday December 31, 2004

tintinnabulation

\tin-tih-nab-yuh-LAY-shuhn\, noun:
A tinkling sound, as of a bell or bells.

One found oneself immersed in the infinitely nuanced tintinnabulations of clapping cymbal rhythms passed from one player to the next, in the barely audible, rain-like patter of drums that suddenly grew into an overwhelming mechanical onslaught.
--Tim Page, "From Japan, The Thundering Drums of Kodo," Newsday, February 24, 1995


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Tintinnabulation derives from Latin tintinnabulum "a bell," from tintinnare from tinnire, "to jingle."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday January 1, 2005

transmute

\trans-MYOOT; tranz-\, transitive verb:
To change from one nature, form, substance, or state into another; to transform.

intransitive verb:
To undergo transmutation.

[I]t now seems as if she no longer had the strength or will to transmute life into art.
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Changes Not for the Better," New York Times, February 28, 1974

Sand that once was rock becomes rock once again as it slowly sediments and compresses into layers of sandstone, which, in turn, transmute into sand.
--Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth


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Transmute is from Latin transmutare, "to change utterly," from trans-, "across" + mutare, "to change."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 2, 2004

galumph

\guh-LUHM(P)F\, intransitive verb:
To move in a clumsy manner or with a heavy tread.

Then he climbed up the little iron ladder that led to the wharf's cap, placed me once more upon his shoulders and galumphed off again.
--Alistair MacLeod, Island: The Complete Stories

Lizards patrol the . . . landscape, and giant tortoises galumph on the beaches.
--Peter M. Nichols, "Galápagos," New York Times, March 30, 2001


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Galumph is probably an alteration of gallop. It was coined by Lewis Carroll in the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday January 3, 2004

rejoinder

\rih-JOIN-dur\, noun:
An answer to a reply; or, in general, an answer or reply.

I kept looking for exceptions to his pronouncements, flaws in his reasoning, my constant rejoinders to his critical remarks being "Yes, but . . ."
--Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs

The comment immediately drew a sharp rejoinder from a friend.
--Howard W. French, "Tokyo Displays Mixed Feelings at Premiere of 'Pearl Harbor,' " New York Times, June 21, 2001

Chance on an unbelieving clod, and the ultimate rejoinder is ready at hand: "Listen, dummy, it actually happened!"
--Benjamin Cheever, "Like Watching Tennis," New York Times, August 17, 1997


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Rejoinder derives from Old French rejoindre, "to answer, rejoin," from re- + joindre, "to join," from Latin iungere, "to join."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 4, 2005

distrait

\dis-TRAY\, adjective:
Divided or withdrawn in attention, especially because of anxiety.

Yet when she stopped for a cup of coffee, finding herself too distrait to begin work, the picture was in the course of being removed from the window.
--Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly

He had painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet delicate and distrait.
--Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

Virtually nobody noticed a more private and simultaneous cameo in a little bay in West Cork: of a delicate, somewhat distrait, gentleman of middle age being swept into the turbulent waters off Kilcrohane.
--Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary," Irish Times, July 21, 1999


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Distrait is from Old French, from distraire, "to distract," from Latin distrahere, "to pull apart; to draw away; to distract," from dis- + trahere, "to draw, to pull." It is related to distraught and distracted, which have the same Latin source.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday January 5, 2005

vituperation

\vy-too-puh-RAY-shuhn, -tyoo-\, noun:
1. The act or an instance of speaking abusively to or about.
2. Sustained and severely abusive language.

It was a bitter attack on those who had sneered at his father, an astonishingly poised performance for a twenty-six-year-old, and an early demonstration of Bron's gift for vituperation.
--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Bron and His 'Affec. Papa,'" The Atlantic, May 2001

Everybody was very nice except the Liberal women -- who have a repertoire of vituperation that I cannot believe to be equalled anywhere.
--Bonnie Kime Scott (Editor), Selected Letters of Rebecca West

Ratifying Wylie's vituperations against the homemaker, feminists have scorned the domestic role and exhorted other women to join them in forsaking it as unworthy of their talents.
--F. Carolyn Graglia, Domestic Tranquility


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Vituperation comes from Latin vituperatio, from the past participle of vituperare, "to blame," from vitium, "a fault" + parare, "to prepare." The verb form is vituperate; the related adjective is vituperative. One who vituperates is a vituperator.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday January 6, 2005

lubricious

\loo-BRISH-us\, adjective:
1. Lustful; lewd.
2. Stimulating or appealing to sexual desire or imagination.
3. Having a slippery or smooth quality.

[T]he heroine, through some form of ESP, can hear, and be offended by, the lubricious speculations going on inside the heads of the men she meets.
--Philip French, "More about What Women Want," The Observer, February 4, 2001

And even if the public ate up every lubricious detail about their leaders, that same public grew offended that the news media would actually pander to their baser impulses.
--Jeff Greenfield, "Film at 11," New York Times, November 7, 1999

. . . urged women to give up their vanities, their cosmetics, and their high-heeled shoes, and to pile them on . . . bonfires next to lubricious works of art.
--Anthony Grafton, "The Varieties of Millennial Experience," The New Republic, November 1999

Here was a place where a kind of benign . . . anarchy seemed to rule, a lubricious, frictionless chaos into which one could simply disappear.
--Eugene Robinson, "On the Beach at Ipanema," Washington Post, August 1, 1999


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Lubricious derives from Latin lubricus, "slippery, smooth."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday January 7, 2005

oblation

\uh-BLAY-shuhn; oh-\, noun:
1. The act of offering something, such as worship or thanks, especially to a deity.
2. (Usually capitalized) The act of offering the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
3. Something offered in a religious rite or as a charitable gift.

There is another kind of spiritual courage as well, quieter and less celebrated, but just as remarkable: that of making each day, in its most conventional aspects -- cooking, eating, breathing -- an oblation to the absolute.
--Philip Zaleski, "A Buddhist From Dublin," New York Times, July 24, 1994

These aren't flowers randomly snatched from the garden; these are florist's flowers, purchased as an offering, an oblation.
--Carol Shields, Dressing Up for the Carnival

And that day we also celebrate the memory of his goodness in sending a star to guide the three wise men from the east to Bethlehem, that they might there worship, and present him with their oblation of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
--Izaak Walton, The lives of John Donne and George Herbert


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Oblation derives from Latin oblatio, from oblatus, past participle of offerre, "to carry to, to bring to, to offer," from ob-, "to" + ferre, "to bring."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday January 8, 2005

putsch

\PUCH ('u' as in 'push')\, noun:
(Sometimes capitalized) A secretly planned and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government.

Hitler operated from Munich where he enjoyed a fair degree of support, and it was here that his Putsch took place in an effort to seize power in Bavaria.
--Alan Jefferson, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

President Bush, underwriter of the island's nascent democracy, swiftly announced that the coup would not stand, then just as quickly receded into embarrassed silence when informed by his staff that his own crew in Port-au-Prince not only had foreknowledge of the putsch but had allowed it to advance without a word.
--Bob Shacochis, The Immaculate Invasion


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Putsch comes from German, from Middle High German, literally, "thrust."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 9, 2005

impervious

\im-PUR-vee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Not admitting of entrance or passage through; impenetrable.
2. Not capable of being harmed or damaged.
3. Not capable of being affected.

Shipboard Internet communications will not be ubiquitous for several years, in part because it is expensive and complicated to rewire ships, and in part because the companies want systems that are impervious to such potential Internet problems as hackers, software viruses and pornography.
--Peter H. Lewis, "From: Noah@Ark. Subject: Rain." New York Times, October 3, 1999

The building is tremorproof, fireproof and impervious to even the most powerful tornado.
--Michael D'Antonio, "Bunker Mentality," New York Times Magazine, March 26, 2000

He was wearing a red ronko, a "war vest," which, he said, made him impervious to bullets.
--Jeffrey Goldberg, "A Continent's Chaos," New York Times Magazine, May 21, 2000

As it turns out, digital signals are so robust and impervious to interference that the station has picked up a viewable signal 65 miles away from the tower.
--Joel Brinkley, "TV Goes Digital: Warts and Wrinkles Can't Hide," New York Times, March 3, 1997


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Impervious comes from Latin impervius, from in-, "not" + pervius, "with a way through, hence penetrable," from per-, "through" + via, "way."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday January 10, 2005

cosmopolite

\koz-MOP-uh-lyt\, noun:
1. One who is at home in every place; a citizen of the world; a cosmopolitan person.
2. (Ecology) An organism found in most parts of the world.

At first, Audubon made comparatively little impression in America, but he was an immediate success in Britain, where he presented himself alternately as a rustic backwoodsman and a sophisticated cosmopolite.
--Alan Fern, "A Great Original's Great Originals," New York Times, December 12, 1993

He was a big-city sophisticate and moved easily in international film circles but, like his exact contemporary, the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (also a globetrotting cosmopolite), Pasolini rejected the glossy consumer culture that had made him famous in favor of the standards of an earlier, more rigid and more traditional society.
--Edmund White, "Movies and Poems," New York Times, June 27, 1982

Behind the professional caution is a figure of storied warmth and charm, an American-educated cosmopolite as comfortable in the Midwest as in the Middle East.
--Paula Span , "Man of Many Worlds," Washington Post, February 28, 1998


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Cosmopolite comes from Greek kosmopolites, from kosmos, "world" + polites, "citizen," from polis, "city."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 11, 2005

quagmire

\KWAG-myr; KWOG-\, noun:
1. Soft, wet, miry land that shakes or yields under the feet.
2. A difficult or precarious position or situation; a predicament.

. . . drenching rains that reduced all the roads to quagmires.
--"The Career of a Soldier," New York Times, July 24, 1885

Slowly, inevitably, over the course of several months, Don Jaime's pupil draws him into a quagmire of plot and counterplot.
--Walter Satterthwait, "Crossing Swords," New York Times, June 6, 1999

While the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded in 1957, should have signaled the pinnacle of Camus's career, it came at a time when he was struggling in the deepening quagmire of the Algerian war.
--Isabelle de Courtivron, "Rebel Without a Cause," New York Times, December 14, 1997


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Quagmire is from quag, a dialectical variant of quake (from Old English cwacian) + mire, from Old Norse myrr, "a swamp."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday January 12, 2005

eldritch

\EL-drich\, adjective:
Strange; unearthly; weird; eerie.

In the eldritch light of evening in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the eye plays tricks on the brain.
--Thom Stark, "Something's Burning," Boardwatch, November 2000

The immitigable mountains and their stark, eldritch trees; coasts where earth abruptly snapped off, never to be continued, or beaches which gnawed it to bright dust and sucked it gently away. . . .
--Carolyn Kizer, "A Childhood South of Nowhere," New York Times, April 9, 1989


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Eldritch perhaps derives from a Middle English word meaning "fairyland," from Middle English elf, "elf" (from Old English aelf) + riche, "kingdom" (from Old English rice).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday January 13, 2005CE

indurate

\IN-dur-it; -dyur-\, adjective:
Physically or morally hardened; unfeeling; stubborn.

\IN-dur-ayt; -dyur-\, transitive verb:
1. To make hard; to harden.
2. To harden against; to make hardy; to habituate.
3. To make hardened; to make callous or stubborn.
4. To establish; to fix firmly.

intransitive verb:
1. To grow hard; to harden.
2. To become established or fixed.

They are completely indurate. They aren't hard-nosed; they live without any sense of malice. There is no time or need for others.
--John Stone, "Evil in the Early Cinema of Oliver Stone," Journal of Popular Film and Television, Summer 2000

First off, the avoid-terminal-prepositions rule is the invention of one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-century British preacher and indurate pedant who did things like spend scores of pages arguing for hath over the trendy and degenerate has.
--David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present," Harper's Magazine, April 2001

New findings in science point toward a buoyant view of our being: one in which life is favored, not improbable, and the universe a welcoming place, not an indurate domain.
--Gregg Easterbrook, "Science sees the light," New Republic, October 12, 1998

Only an exceptionally strong personality or a criminal indurated by bitter experience can withstand prolonged, skillful interrogation in silence.
--Charles E. O'Hara and Gregory L. O'Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation

The terrain he walked over still looked like sand, but the sand was cemented together, firm as concrete. Indurated soil.
--Geoffrey A. Landis, Mars Crossing

But "hard cheeses indurate, soft cheeses collapse." (Flaubert's Parrot). People don't change, they set in.
--Antonia Quirke, "Jack of all trades," New Statesman, October 29, 2001


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Indurate is derived from the past participle of Latin indurare, from in-, intensive prefix + durare, "to harden," from durus, "hard."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday January 14, 2005CE

slake

\SLAYK\, transitive verb:
1. To satisfy; to quench; to extinguish; as, to slake thirst.
2. To cause to lessen; to make less active or intense; to moderate; as, slaking his anger.
3. To cause (as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with water.

intransitive verb:
To become slaked; to crumble or disintegrate, as lime.

My companions never drink pure water and the . . . beer serves as much to slake their thirst as to fill their stomachs and lubricate conversation.
--Philippe Descola, The Spears of Twilight

She had the money he gave her (never enough to slake her anxieties).
--Nuala O'Faolain, Are You Somebody


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Slake comes from Middle English slaken, "to become or render slack," hence "to abate," from Old English slacian, from slæc, "slack."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday January 15, 2005CE

profuse

\pruh-FYOOS; proh-\, adjective:
1. Pouring forth with fullness or exuberance; giving or given liberally and abundantly; extravagant.
2. Exhibiting great abundance; plentiful; copious; bountiful.

Lo and behold, when the time came to pay the check, it turned out that my pants had been torn by a nail strategically located under the table. Profuse apologies and "please don't pay for this dinner" followed.
--George Lang, Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen

[T]hickets of brambles and vines grew in profuse, obscuring tangles between our house and the road.
--Reeve Lindbergh, Under a Wing


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Profuse comes from Latin profusus, past participle of profundere, "to pour forth," from pro-, "forth" + fundere, "to pour."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 16, 2005CE

hubris

\HYOO-bruhs\, noun:
Overbearing pride or presumption.

During his long tenure in the financial world, Friedman has watched dozens of his competitors' businesses killed by hubris born of success rather than by unsound business decisions or adverse market conditions.
--Lisa Endlich, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success

This is the actor's hubris, to imagine the world possessed of a single, avid eye fixed solely and always on him.
--John Banville, Eclipse

With dizzying hubris, Shelley elevated the vocation of the poet above that of priest and statesman.
--Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars


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Hubris comes from Greek hybris, "excessive pride, wanton violence."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday January 17, 2005CE

apogee

\AP-uh-jee\, noun:
1. The point in the orbit of the moon or of an artificial satellite that is at the greatest distance from the center of the earth.
2. The farthest or highest point; culmination.

But in retrospect, this period would prove to be the apogee of O'Sullivan's career, although he always felt bigger and better things were on his way.
--Edward L. Widmer, Young America

How can we suppose that science has reached its apogee in the twentieth century?
--John Maddox, What Remains To Be Discovered

Aurangzeb ended the family tradition of building architectural masterpieces that had reached its apogee when his father, Shah Jahan, built the world's most beautiful tomb, the Taj Mahal.
--Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day


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Apogee is derived from Greek apogaion, from apogaios, "situated (far) away from the earth," from apo-, "away from" + gaia, "earth."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 18, 2005CE

voluble

\VOL-yuh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Characterized by a ready flow of speech.
2. Easily rolling or turning; rotating.
3. (Botany) Having the power or habit of turning or twining.

Rostow was voluble, exuberant and full of good and sometimes foolish ideas.
--Kai Bird, The Color of Truth

Two glasses of wine made him voluble and three made him bellicose, sentimental and sometimes slurred.
--"How Nixon turned into Tricky Dicky," Daily Telegraph, March 9, 1999

He listened patiently and with quiet amusement to my enthusiasm. Indeed, this turned out to be our pattern: I, more ignorant but more voluble, would babble on, while he would offer an occasional objection or refinement.
--Phillip Lopate, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

Her tongue, so voluble and kind,
It always runs before her mind.
--Matthew Prior, "Truth and Falsehood"


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Voluble derives from Latin volubilis, "revolving, rolling, fluent," from volvere, "to roll."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday January 19, 2005CE

bibulous

\BIB-yuh-luhs\, adjective:
1. Of, pertaining to, marked by, or given to the consumption of alcoholic drink.
2. Readily absorbing fluids or moisture.

Vineyards are everywhere, especially when Felix approaches Paris, the most populous city in Christendom -- and the most bibulous too, since lousy local wine had to be drunk before it turned sour in a few months.
--Eugen Weber, "Renaissance Men," New York Times, April 13, 1997

Ever since the joys of the fermented grape were discovered, the bibulous have been waking up feeling the worse for wear.
--Sally Chatterton, "The Daily Website: www.hungover.net," Independent, September 3, 2001


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Bibulous comes from Latin bibulus, from bibere, "to drink."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday January 20, 2005CE

perfunctory

\pur-FUNGK-tuh-ree\, adjective:
1. Done merely to carry out a duty; performed mechanically or routinely.
2. Lacking interest, care, or enthusiasm; indifferent.

The city's moderate hotels, however, tend to offer minimal comforts, perfunctory service and dreary decor.
--Paula Butturini, "What's Doing in Naples," New York Times, April 14, 1996

The mainstream media's coverage of hard economic data used to be perfunctory: a spot of news about the direction of interest rates, or a calculation of how the dollar was holding up against the yen.
--Robert H. Frank, "Safety in Numbers: The wild stock market is turning us all into macroeconomic-data junkies," New York Times Magazine, November 28, 1999

His hugs, although expansive and affectionate, did not linger, seemed perfunctory.
--Susan Bordo, The Male Body


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Perfunctory derives from Late Latin perfunctorius, from Latin perfungi, "to perform fully, to get done with," from per-, "through" + fungi, "to perform."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday January 21, 2005CE

omnipresent \om-nuh-PREZ-uhnt\, adjective:
Present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous.

It was rather that myth was omnipresent; the whole people thought in this way and were long confirmed in their belief.
--Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization

But the music of Bortnyansky was exultant, and the canticles were borne aloft to God the omnipotent, the omniscient, the omnipresent.
--Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, How it All Began (translated by George Shriver)

The novella moves at a pace as sluggish as that of the omnipresent moon making its way across the limpid summer sky.
--Tobin Harshaw, "Pay the Piper," New York Times, November 14, 1999

Civilization is the preserve of the rich, with their polished cars, their locked houses and their omnipresent police force.
--Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places


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Omnipresent is from Medieval Latin omnipresens, from Latin omni-, "all" + praesens, present participle of praeesse, "to be before, to be present," from prae-, "before" + esse, "to be."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday January 22, 2005CE

forlorn

\fur-LORN; for-\, adjective:
1. Sad and lonely because deserted, abandoned, or lost.
2. Bereft; forsaken.
3. Wretched or pitiful in appearance or condition.
4. Almost hopeless; desperate.

Henry had felt guilty at abandoning his sister; he had married not once but twice, leaving Rose forlorn.
--Anita Brookner, Visitors

In these forlorn regions of unknowable dreary space, this reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.
--Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination

Bloch remembers that Stephen was a member of the Milk Squad, comprised of children who were considered to need extra nutrition, and early photographs do show him as one of the smaller boys, in the front row, looking forlorn.
--Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life


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Forlorn comes from Old English forleosan, "to abandon," from for- + leosan, "to lose."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 23, 2005CE

evince

\ih-VIN(T)S\, transitive verb:
To show in a clear manner; to manifest; to make evident; to bring to light.

The study showed that girls were better prepared for class, had better attendance records, and evinced more positive academic behavior overall.
--Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys

Though his earliest tales are little more than quick, offhand sketches seasoned with slapstick humor, his mature stories evince the psychological complexity and atmospheric detail that distinguish his best-known plays.
--"Quick Trips Through the Imagination," New York Times, July 12, 2000

Those who supported the war in Vietnam evinced no such fears and no reluctance about new adventures abroad.
--William M. Leogrande, Our Own Backyard

At no time in her life did Tina evince religious faith, and, a few years later, she would declare outright that she had "[no] belief or religion."
--Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti


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Evince is from Latin evincere, "to conquer entirely, to prevail over, to prove irresistibly," from e- (here used intensively) + vincere, "to conquer."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday January 24, 2005CE

seriatim

\sir-ee-AY-tim; -AT-im\, adverb:
In a series; one after another.

Mr. and Mrs. Kenwigs thanked every lady and gentleman, seriatim, for the favour of their company.
--Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby

Two days from the opening of the impeachment debate, gangs of television crews moved through mostly deserted corridors, doling out their 15 minutes of fame seriatim as individual lawmakers stepped up to batteries of microphones.
--New York Times, December 16, 1998

In his company one found oneself supposing, on hearing Walters handle German and Spanish, French and Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Russian, that his mind traveled from any one language to any other seriatim, because his mind worked that way, taking it all in.
--William F. Buckley Jr., "Dick Walters, R.I.P.," National Review, February 15, 2002


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Seriatim derives from the Latin series, meaning "row, chain," and is formed on the same model as verbatim ("word for word") and literatim ("letter for letter").

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 25, 2005CE

coruscate

\KOR-uh-skayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle.
2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.

They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.
--Bill Roorbach, "Big Bend," The Atlantic, March 2001

Beneath you lie two miles of ocean -- a bottomlessness, for all practical purposes, an infinity of blue. . . . A thousand coruscating shafts of sunlight probe it, illuminating nothing.
--Kenneth Brower, "The Destruction of Dolphins," The Atlantic, July 1989

What coruscating flights of language in his prose, what waterfalls of self-displaying energy!
--Joyce Carol Oates, review of A Theft, by Saul Bellow, New York Times, March 5, 1989

Whether we know or like it or not, those of us who turn our hands to this task are scribbling in a line of succession which, however uncertainly and intermittently, reaches back to the young Macaulay, who first made his public reputation as a coruscating writer in the 1820s.
--David Cannadine, "On Reviewing and Being Reviewed," History Today, March 1, 1999


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Coruscate comes from Latin coruscatus, past participle of coruscare, "to move quickly, to tremble, to flutter, to twinkle or flash." The noun form is coruscation. Also from coruscare is the adjective coruscant, "glittering in flashes; flashing."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday January 26, 2005CE

turpitude

\TUR-puh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; depravity.
2. A base act.

In the eyes of the far left, it [the 60s] is the era when revolution was at hand, only to be betrayed by the feebleness of the faithful and the trickery of the enemy; to the radical right, an era of subversion and moral turpitude.
--Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974

They based their action on a clause in the uniform player contract which says players must "conform to standards of good citizenship and good moral character" and disallows "engaging in acts of moral turpitude."
--Ira Berkow, "Go Ahead, Choke the Boss -- Only in the N.B.A.," New York Times, March 5, 1998

They were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that is, of but one thing, which was not a crime.
--Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady


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Turpitude comes from Latin turpitudo, from turpis, "foul, base."

[Em7add11]

Moral turpitude was a phrase I first read in a Bloom County comic.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Moral turpitude was a phrase I first read in a Bloom County comic.I have finally figured out the significance of your moniker. The first, minor third, fifth, dom. seventh, and eleventh of E are the names of the guitar strings.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday January 27, 2005CE

moiety

\MOY-uh-tee\, noun:
1. One of two equal parts; a half.
2. An indefinite part; a small portion or share.
3. One of two basic tribal subdivisions.

Tom divided the cake and Becky ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety.
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Cut off from news at home, fearful of a blood bath, anxious to salvage a moiety of the reform program, the Prague leadership accepted Moscow's diktat.
--Karl E. Meyer, "Pangloss in Prague," New York Times, June 27, 1993

Barunga society is sharply divided into two complementary, descent-based branches (a structure anthropologists call "moiety"), which permeate relationships, spirituality, and many other aspects of life.
--Claire Smith, "Art of The Dreaming," Discovering Archaeology, March/April 2000


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Moiety comes from Old French meitiet, from Late Latin medietas, from Latin medius, "middle."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday January 28, 2005CE

bete noire

\bet-NWAHR\, noun:
Something or someone particularly detested or avoided; a bugbear.

Even more regrettable, as far as Dame Edna is concerned, is the presence of her old bete noire, the extravagantly disgusting Sir Les Patterson.
--"The Dame's New Man," Daily Telegraph, April 18, 1998

Never an exceptional student, Andrews somehow managed to navigate the academy's rigorous courses with satisfactory grades, though all forms of mathematics were agonizing to him, remaining what he called his "bete noire" throughout life.
--Charles Gallenkamp, Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions


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Bête noire is French for "black beast."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday January 29, 2005CE

stasis

\STAY-sis; STAS-is\, noun;
plural stases \STAY-seez; STAS-eez\:
1. A state of balance, equilibrium, or stagnation.
2. Stoppage of the normal flow of a bodily fluid or semifluid.

The reality of governance was not stasis but change; institutions did not operate according to mechanical laws, they evolved organically.
--Jerry L. Mashaw, Greed, Chaos, and Governance

By the 1960s Colombia had settled into an enforced stasis, with Marxist guerrillas in the hills and jungles (modern successors to the bandido tradition) and a central government increasingly dominated by a small group of rich, elite Bogotá families, powerless to effect change and, anyway, disinclined.
--Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw

Whether trabeated, arcuated, or suspended, a structure seeks stasis by balancing forces in tension and compression.
--James F. O'Gorman, ABC of Architecture


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Stasis comes from Greek stasis, "a standing still," from histasthai, "to stand

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 30, 2005CE

extirpate

\EK-stur-payt\, transitive verb:
1. To pull up by the stem or root.
2. To destroy completely.
3. To remove by surgery.

A plant growing where it shouldn't is a weed. An object for which you have no need or sentimental attachment is garbage. Extirpate the one, toss the other.
--Philip Kennicott, "The Symphony's Misbegotten 'Moon,'" Washington Post, January 14, 2000

There had been no great missionary impulse in the Turkish incursions, no urge to extirpate the old ways.
--Fouad Ajami, "The Glory Days of the Grand Turk," New York Times, May 2, 1999

If Soviet espionage or capitalist plots against the Soviet Union are malignant growths, it requires a professional to extirpate them by methods as unkind to random bystanders as radiation may be to healthy tissue.
--Robert Leachman, "Super Thrillers and Super Powers," New York Times, February 19, 1984


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Extirpate derives from Latin ex(s)tirpare, "to tear up by the root, hence to root out, to extirpate," from ex-, "from" + stirps, "the stalk or stem or a tree or other plant, with the roots."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday January 31, 2005CE

perdurable

\pur-DUR-uh-bul; pur-DYUR-\, adjective:
Very durable; lasting; continuing long.

The idea of a classic is historically bound up with the view . . . that there are certain perdurable human truths and values, immune from geographical or historical vitiation.
--John Romano, "A Novel of Hope and Realism," New York Times, April 4, 1982

In her first book, Lisa See . . . tackles a family -- her own -- whose intricate genealogy, bravura entrepreneurship, bitter adulteries and perdurable rivalries might have intimidated a lesser chronicler into euphemism.
--Elizabeth Tallent, "Chinese Roots," New York Times, August 27, 1995

A Colombian poet's perdurable love for a woman is tested by "life's changing conditions."
--"Best Sellers List: January 1, 1989," New York Times, January 1, 1989


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Perdurable ultimately comes from Late Latin perdurabilis, from Latin perdurare, to last a long time, to endure, from per-, throughout + durare, to last.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 1, 2005CE

circumambient

\sur-kuhm-AM-bee-uhnt\, adjective:
Surrounding; being on all sides; encompassing.

The self owes its form and perhaps its very existence to the circumambient social order.
--Rom Harre, Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology

Facing reality, then, implies accepting one's essential powerlessness, yielding or adjusting to circumambient forces, taking solace in some local pattern or order that one has created and to which one has become habituated.
--Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

It's a voice that does something physical to me, that jumps out of the circumambient air and seizes hold of me like a thing that lives off the blood of other things.
--T.C. Boyle, A Friend of the Earth

Romantic love . . . rarefies lust into an angelic standoff, a fruitless longing without which our energizing circumambient dreamland of song, film and fiction would be bereft of its main topic.
--John Updike, "The Deadly Sins/Lust," New York Times, June 20, 1993


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Circumambient is from Latin circum, "around, round about, on all sides" + ambire, "to go around, to surround," from amb-, "on both sides, around" + ire, "to go."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 2, 2005CE

ukase

\yoo-KAYS; -KAYZ; YOO-kays; -kayz\, noun:
1. In imperial Russia, a published proclamation or order having the force of law.
2. Any order or decree issued by an authority; an edict.

I took a playwriting course from the noted Prof. A. M. Drummond, a huge man on crutches who right off the bat delivered a ukase never to begin a play with the telephone ringing.
--Arthur Laurents, Original Story By

This new ukase, however, ignited bureaucratic warfare and spawned rival and conflicting rules and concepts, frittering away time and effort.
--Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire


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Ukase derives from Russian ukaz, "decree," from Old Church Slavonic ukazu, "a showing, proof," from u-, "at, to" + kazati, "to point out, to show."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 3, 2005CE

discursive

\dis-KUR-siv\, adjective:
1. Passing from one topic to another; ranging over a wide field; digressive; rambling.
2. Utilizing, marked by, or based on analytical reasoning -- contrasted with intuitive.

The style is highly discursive, leap-frogging forwards and backwards across the decades, without ever sacrificing thrust or clarity.
--Nicholas Blincoe, "Spirit that speaks," The Guardian, August 21, 1999

Rather than being a limiting influence, the time restrictions seem often to have compelled ensembles and soloists to condense and distill arrangements and to edit potentially discursive solo performances.
--Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords

He is in general a discursive politician: Start him talking and you cannot get him to stop.
--Dan Balz, "President Endures Embarrassing Week," Washington Post, March 15, 1998

He is an intuitive being who can pierce to the heart of a matter without taking the circuitous route of deeper and more discursive minds.
--"1962 Man of the Year: Pope John XXIII," Time, January 4, 1963


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Discursive comes from Latin discurrere, "to run in different directions, to run about, to run to and fro," from dis-, "apart, in different directions" + currere, "to run."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 4, 2005CE

pukka
also pucka

\PUHK-uh\, adjective:
1. Authentic; genuine.
2. Good of its kind; first-class.

He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.
--Lynn Barber, "Bell, book . . . and then what?" The Observer, August 27, 2000

If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a . . . shack on the pavement but a solid construction.
--Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet


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Pukka comes from Hindi pakka, "cooked, ripe," from Sanskrit pakva-, from pacati, "he cooks."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 5, 2005CE

kvetch

\KVECH\, intransitive verb:
To complain habitually.

noun:
1. A complaint.
2. A habitual complainer.

People kvetched when someone else wouldn't relinquish his position.
--Barry Lopez, "Before the Temple of Fire." Harper's Magazine, January 1998

They begin to look like malcontents who kvetch about the weather so much that they don't notice the sun coming out.
--David Shenk, "Slamming Gates," The New Republic, January 26, 1998

Time for my biennial kvetch about the West End theatre.
--Simon Hoggart, "Hose bans, petrol mania: saying 'don't panic' always triggers chaos," The Guardian, November 4, 2000

"He's just a very up person," she says, which is odd, because he is also a big complainer, a class-A kvetch.
--Penny Wolfson, "Moonrise," The Atlantic, December 2001

He had difficulty getting American publishers for his later novels, partly because of his self-created image by then as a crusty old kvetch.
--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "What Kingsley Can Teach Martin," The Atlantic, September 2000


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Kvetch comes from Yiddish kvetshn, "to squeeze, to complain," from Middle High German quetzen, quetschen, "to squeeze."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 6, 2005CE

brio

\BREE-oh\, noun:
Enthusiastic vigor; vivacity; liveliness; spirit.

Though my judgment was no doubt affected by all the wine we'd consumed, I remember being elated by our performance that night: our inspired spur-of-the-moment dialogue, the actors fleshing out their roles with such brio.
--Gail Godwin, Evensong

For him, life must be a party, a ball, an endless carnival. Each person must invent a role for himself and play it with brio.
--Lydia Flem, Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women (Translated by Catherine Temerson)

The Internet has always been home to plenty of unvarnished brio.
--Timothy L. O'Brien, "Corporate Love Letters: Youstink.Com," New York Times, April 4, 1999


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Brio is from the Italian, ultimately of Celtic origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 7, 2005CE

importunate

\im-POR-chuh-nit\, adjective:
Troublesomely urgent; overly persistent in request or demand; unreasonably solicitous.

An emperor penguin in captivity starved to death by feeding all his rations -- about six pounds of fish daily -- to an importunate chick.
--Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Emperor's Embrace

The play is a cacophony of importunate ringing doorbells and telephones, of pleas both professional and romantic from an exasperating assortment of colleagues and admirers.
--Ben Brantley, "Present Laughter," New York Times, November 19, 1996

Jokes form a kind of currency, such that a wise-crack from the most importunate beggar may bring instant reward.
--Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious


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Importunate is derived from Latin importunus, "unsuitable, troublesome, (of character) assertive, insolent, inconsiderate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 9, 2005CE

purblind

\PUR-blynd\, adjective:
1. Having greatly reduced vision.
2. Lacking in insight or discernment.

Add to this that the work seems unsure of its audience, providing no footnotes or exact references, but concluding with a bizarre parade of bibliographical essays running to 59 pages; that it gives the date only about once every 100 pages (and then not always the right date...) and leaves us feeling as if we were wandering purblind in some deep cave.
--James R. Kincaid, "The Sum Of His Oddities," New York Times, January 13, 1991

Those changes, whose pressing necessity by the end of the 1980s was surely evident to all but the most purblind, would have taken place in any case.
--Bryan Gould, "Mandy," New Statesman, January 29, 1999

But something is fundamentally wrong at Leeds, something that even the most ardent supporters -- and other purblind apologists -- must surely come to recognise.
--Kevin Mitchell, "How Leeds lost it," The Observer, March 10, 2002

On and on the weary litany of purblind negativity proceeds.
--Eric Evans, "The Theory Man." History Today, June 1997


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Purblind derives from Middle English pur blind, "wholly blind," from pur, "pure" + blind. At one time it meant "completely blind," but it came to mean something less than completely blind.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 10, 2005CE

asseverate

\uh-SEV-uh-rayt\, transitive verb:
To affirm or declare positively or earnestly.

"But of course it is!" asseverates Herman Woodlife.
--Miles Kington, "Child slavery: the half-truth," Independent, June 12, 1998

"Castro's been known to snow people, but he didn't snow me," Mr. Weicker asseverated.
--"Fading Fidel and his gulled groupies," Washington Times, July 6, 2001

Mr. Vidal asseverates that McVeigh is "very, very bright." He writes with "perfect" spelling, punctuation and grammar.
--R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., "When grim opportunity knocks . . .," Washington Times, May 11, 2001


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Asseverate comes from Latin asseverare, "to assert seriously or earnestly," from ad- + severus, "severe, serious."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 11, 2005CE

celerity

\suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun:
Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.

Though not in the best of physical form, he was capable of moving with celerity.
--Malachy McCourt, A Monk Swimming: A Memoir

Furthermore, as is well known, computer technology grows obsolete with amazing celerity.
--Alan S. Blinder and Richard E. Quandt, "The Computer and the Economy," The Atlantic, December 1997

The lightning celerity of his thought processes took you on a kind of helter-skelter ride of surreal non-sequiturs, sudden accesses of emotion and ribald asides, made all the more bizarre for being uttered in those honeyed tones by the impeccably elegant gent before you.
--"A life full of frolics," The Guardian, May 19, 2001


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Celerity is from Latin celeritas, from celer, "swift." It is related to accelerate

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 12, 2005CE

nefarious

\nuh-FAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
Wicked in the extreme; iniquitous.

Despite involvement in protection, narcotics, strong-arm debt collecting, strikebreaking, and blackmail, among other nefarious activities, all of them professed to be a cut above mobsters in other lands.
--Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld

The liar, however, can become a truly subversive and scandalous figure, whose nefarious influence may extend far more widely than her own individual actions.
--John Forrester, Truth Games


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Nefarious is from Latin nefarius, from nefas, "that which is contrary to divine command; a crime, transgression, sin," from ne-, "not" + fas, "divine command or law."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 13, 2005CE

agitprop

\AJ-it-prop\, noun:
Propaganda, especially pro-communist political propaganda disseminated through literature, drama, music, or art.

Despite its explicit program, when the symphony was first performed in 1957 a Russian audience always on the lookout for subtexts quickly interpreted it as being about the crushed Hungarian uprising of the previous year. This officially sanctioned work of agitprop was read as an encrypted denunciation of the Soviet regime.
--Justin Davidson, "Musical Explosions, Moving and Martial," Newsday, May 22, 1999

The essay was a farewell to the men of the left, a brilliant, impassioned piece of agitprop that galvanized women in communes, bookstores, hippie coffee houses and underground newspaper offices all over the country.
--"Memoirs by women writers get personal with a host of issues, from politics to pregnancy to parent care," Washington Post, January 14, 2001

Neither writer offers a shred of evidence for her claims, which makes these books second-rate agitprop rather than "first-rate sociology."
--Kim Phillips-Fein, "Feminine Mystiquers," The Nation, March 19, 1999

. . . nationally televised agitprop designed to appear nonpartisan while actually pushing the ideology of the party in power.
--Peter Beinart, "The sleazification of an American ritual," The New Republic, February 3, 1997


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Agitprop comes from Russian, from agitatsiya, "agitation" + propaganda.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for agitprop

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 14, 2005CE

inamorata

\in-am-uh-RAH-tuh\, noun:
A woman whom one is in love with; a mistress.

Each of the gubernatorial candidates has been vying to prove that he is the least likely to take a state plane to the beach for a date with his inamorata or get involved with a struggle over how to evict his spouse from the governor's mansion.
--Gail Collins, "Uncontested Contests," New York Times, November 2, 1999

There are cynical experts on romanticism who counsel one to switch from one young inamorata to another in the nick of time.
--Paul West, Life With Swan


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Inamorata comes from Italian innamorata, feminine of innamorato, from the past participle of innamorare, "to inspire with love," from in- (from Latin) + amore, "love" (from Latin amor, from amare, "to love"). A man with whom one is in love is an inamorato.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 15, 2005CE

diffident

\DIF-uh-dunt; -dent\, adjective:
1. Lacking self-confidence; distrustful of one's own powers; timid; bashful.
2. Characterized by modest reserve; unassertive.

He lived naturally in a condition that many greater poets never had, or if they had it, were embarrassed or diffident about it: a total commitment to his own powers of invention, a complete loss of himself in his materials.
--James Dickey, "The Geek of Poetry," New York Times, December 23, 1979

This schism is embodied in Clarence's two sons: cheerful, pushy, book-ignorant Jared, a semicriminal entrepreneur who has caught "the rhythm of America to come" and for whom life is explained in brash epigrams from the trenches, versus slow, diffident Teddy, the town postman, uncomfortable with given notions of manhood, uncompetitive ("yet this seemed the only way to be an American") and disturbed that others misstate "the delicate nature of reality as he needed to grasp it for himself."
--Julian Barnes, "Grand Illusion," New York Times, January 28, 1996

Minny was too delicate and diffident to ask her cousin outright to take her to Europe.
--Brooke Allen, "Borrowed Lives," New York Times, May 16, 1999


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Diffident is from the present participle of Latin diffidere, "to mistrust, to have no confidence," from dis- + fidere, "to trust." The noun form is diffidence.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 16, 2005CE

polymath

\POL-ee-math\, noun:
A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study.

A century after Aristotle, in 240 B.C., a brilliant polymath, Eratosthenes, is appointed chief librarian of the Museum at Alexandria--the most cosmopolitan city and center of learning in the Mediterranean world.
--Alan Gurney, Below the Convergence

Alan Kay, for instance, one of the wizards of PARC and now an Apple fellow, is a polymath accomplished in math, biology, music, developmental psychology, philosophy, and several other disciplines.
--Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius

Like her literary heroine, George Eliot, Kingsolver is an old-fashioned polymath, curious about all branches of human learning.
--Sarah Kerr, "The Novel As Indictment," New York Times, October 11, 1998


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Polymath is from Greek polymathes, "having learned much," from poly-, "much" + manthanein, "to learn."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 17, 2005CE

fiduciary

\fih-DOO-shee-air-ee\, adjective:
Relating to the holding of something in trust for another.


noun:
Someone who stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in certain obligations to others; a trustee.

American capitalism relies heavily on the fiduciary duty concept to protect those who entrust their money to large and often distant corporations.
--Senator Susan Collins, Congressional Record, July 11, 2002

Corporate boards, whose members are elected by shareholders, bear the ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibility for the company's performance.
--John Maggs, "Out of the Loop," National Journal, March 9, 2002

Congress is faced with a great challenge in protecting workers who need help, while employing our fiduciary responsibility to guard the taxpayer dollar.
--Representative Jennifer Dunn, The Seattle Times, October 1, 2001

As fiduciaries, investment advisers are expected to be on the client's side of the negotiating table in any deal.
--Robert Barker, "Will the SEC Bless This Masquerade?" Business Week, March 9, 2002


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Fiduciary comes from Latin fiduciarius, from fiducia, "trust," and is related to faith and fidelity.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 18, 2005CE

perspicacity

\pur-spuh-KAS-uh-tee\, noun:
Clearness of understanding or insight; penetration, discernment.

His predictions over the years have mixed unusual aristocratic insight with devastating perspicacity.
--"Why fine titles make exceedingly fine writers," Independent, November 3, 1996

Doubtless these thumbnail sketches, like everything else Stendhal wrote, were intended ultimately to relate to his own notion of himself as a creature of invincible perspicacity and sophistication.
--Jonathan Keates, Stendhal


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Perspicacity comes from Latin perspicax, perspicac-, "sharp-sighted," from perspicere, "to look through," from per, "through" + specere, "to look."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 19, 2005CE

legerdemain

\lej-ur-duh-MAIN\, noun:
1. Sleight of hand.
2. A display of skill, trickery, or artful deception.

We are inclined to regard the treatment of [paradoxes] . . . as a mere legerdemain of words.
--Benjamin Jowett, Dialogues of Plato

Their alleged legerdemain at the blackjack table and roulette wheel of the luxurious Salle Anglaise was caught on closed-circuit television.
--"Double dealing puts Monte Carlo in a spin," Daily Telegraph, February 23, 1997

There is a certain knack or legerdemain in argument.
--Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times


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Legerdemain is from Old French leger de main, literally "light of hand": leger, "light" + de, "of" + main, "hand."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 20, 2005CE

cavalcade

\kav-uhl-KAYD; KAV-uhl-kayd\, noun:
1. A procession of riders or horse-drawn carriages.
2. Any procession.
3. A sequence; a series.

Behind him he sensed the progress of the cavalcade as one by one the carriages wheeled off the Dublin road.
--Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, Irish Revolutionary

Last week, Seoul pleaded for immediate financial assistance from the United States and Japan, following a cavalcade of bad economic news.
--Steven Butler and Jack Egan, "No magic won for Korea," U.S. News, December 22, 1997


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Cavalcade derives from Old Italian cavalcata, from cavalcare, "to go on horseback," from Late Latin caballicare, from Latin caballus, "horse."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 21, 2005CE

faineant

\fay-nay-AWN\, adjective:
Doing nothing or given to doing nothing; idle; lazy.

noun:
A do-nothing; an idle fellow; a sluggard.

Yet if nonhunters ever knew how many properly dressed, entirely palatable big-game carcasses wind up in dumpsters because someone was simply too faineant to butcher and cook and eat an animal he could find the time and energy to shoot and kill, hunting would be in even greater jeopardy than it is today.
--Thomas McIntyre, "The meaning of meat," Sports Afield, August 1, 1997

According to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Charles II was no faineant half-wit but a conscientious and reflective king.
--David Gilmour, "The falsity of 'true Spain,'" The Spectator, July 22, 2000

A faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
--Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn


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Faineant is from French, from Middle French fait, "does" + néant, "nothing."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 22, 2005CE

perforce

\pur-FORS\, adverb:
By necessity; by force of circumstance.

It will be an astonishing sight, should it come to pass, and even those of us who have followed every twist and turn of this process will perforce rub our eyes.
--"Unionists sit tight as the poker game nears its climax," Irish Times, July 10, 1999

. . . the error of supposing that, because everything indeed is not right with the world, everything must accordingly be wrong with the world; the error of supposing that, because we are plainly not a race of angels, we must perforce be a race of beasts.
--James Gardner, "Infinite Jest (book reviews)," National Review, June 17, 1996


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Perforce comes from French par force, "by force."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 23, 2005CE

mellifluous

\muh-LIF-loo-us\, adjective:
Flowing as with honey; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.

The balladeer whose mellifluous voice serenaded two generations of lovers.
--Margo Jefferson, "Unforgettable," New York Times, December 26, 1999

The tones were high-sounding, mellifluous, as if the speaker was reading from a book of old English verse while holding back any trace of sentiment or emotion.
--Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

I picked up more mellifluous words when a family friend came over to teach me some Chilean music on my guitar.
--Edward Hower, "No Frogs Allowed," New York Times, January 30, 2000


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Mellifluous comes from Latin mellifluus, from mel, "honey" + fluus, "flowing," from fluere, "to flow."

Synonyms: canorous, dulcet, melodious, sweet.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 24, 2005CE

eschew

\es-CHOO\, transitive verb:
To shun; to avoid (as something wrong or distasteful).

In high school and college the Vassar women had enjoyed that lifestyle, but afterward they had eschewed it as shallow.
--Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman

While teaching in Beijing, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang in the late 1920s, he helped launch what became known as the "new poetry" movement, which eschewed traditional forms and encouraged topics based on everyday life.
--Bruce Gilley, Tiger on the Brink

Finally, the first American diplomats . . . made a point of eschewing fancy dress, titles, entertainments, and all manner of protocol, so as to be walking, talking symbols of republican piety.
--Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State


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Eschew comes from Old French eschiver, ultimately of Germanic origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 25, 2005CE

blackguard

\BLAG-uhrd\, noun:
1. A rude or unscrupulous person; a scoundrel.
2. A person who uses foul or abusive language.

adjective:
Scurrilous; abusive; low; worthless; vicious; as, "blackguard language."

transitive verb:
To revile or abuse in scurrilous language.

Douglas was not a saint, though, so his behaviour and attitude were, as he wrote, 'neither better nor worse than my contemporaries -- that is to say, [I became] a finished young blackguard, ripe for any kind of wickedness'.
--Douglas Murray, Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas

The years, as time went on, imparted to him that peculiar majesty that white-haired blackguards, successful (and unpunished) criminals, seem generally to possess.
--Saul David, Prince of Pleasure

Monroe wondered, but did not ask, what could have driven a young lady of such fine bearing and aristocratic attraction to leave home at a tender age and follow the fortunes of a blackguard like Reynolds.
--William Safire, Scandalmonger

When we want to talk friendly with him, he will not listen to us, and from beginning to end his talk is blackguard.
--Tecumseh, quoted in Tecumseh: A Life, by John Sugden


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Blackguard is from black + guard. The term originally referred to the lowest kitchen servants of a court or of a nobleman's household. They had charge of pots and pans and kitchen other utensils, and rode in wagons conveying these during journeys from one residence to another. Being dirtied by this task, they were jocularly called the "black guard."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 26, 2005E

mulct

\MULKT\, noun:
A fine or penalty.

transitive verb:
1. To punish for an offense or misdemeanor by imposing a fine or demanding a forfeiture.
2. To obtain by fraud or deception.
3. To defraud; to swindle.
Officials repaid such loans by mulcting the public in a variety of legal and extra-legal ways.
--William H. McNeill, A World History

The fact that major corporations don't have to pay their own way, and instead are able to enlist legislators to mulct common citizens -- and businesses with more modest Washington connections -- deforms the entire political system.
--Doug Bandow, "The Bipartisan Scandal of U.S. Corporate Welfare"

State lawmakers and state courts . . . [have] ditched old common law rules so as to charge deep-pocket defendants with harms that were once considered other people's fault, thus making it thinkable to mulct automakers for the costs of drunk drivers' crashes
--Walter Olson, "Firing Squad," Reason, May 1999


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Mulct comes from Latin multa, "a fine."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 28, 2005CE

incipient

\in-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:
Beginning to exist or appear.

Also, improved diagnostic techniques can alert individuals to incipient illnesses.
--James Flanigan, "Patients' Rights and Health-Care Costs Are Expanding Together," Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1999

Shiv gradually became aware that he was onto something big, bigger than anything he had ever done before. He was nudged by an incipient awareness that perhaps it was even too big for him.
--Ken Kalfus, Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies

She sighed for him; so young, and yet so passé, and with an incipient beer belly.
--Shena MacKay, The Artist's Widow

Sir George devoted much of his energies to worrying about money and was preoccupied by thoughts of his incipient pauperdom.
--Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell


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Incipient is derived from Latin incipere, "to undertake, to begin" (literally "to take in"), from in-, "in" + capere, "to take." It is related to inception, "beginning, commencement."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 1, 2005CE

salubrious

\suh-LOO-bree-us\, adjective:
Favorable to health; promoting health; healthful.

A physician warned him his health was precarious, so Montague returned to the United States, shelved his legal ambitions and searched for a salubrious climate where he might try farming.
--"Teeing Off Into the Past At Oakhurst," New York Times, May 2, 1999

For years, her mother has maintained that the sea air has a salubrious effect on both her spirits and her vocal cords.
--Anita Shreve, Fortune's Rocks

Uptown, however, the tanners' less salubrious quarter is notorious for its stench.
--"Byzantium," Toronto Star, February 7, 1999


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Salubrious is from Latin salubris, "healthful," from salus, "health."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 2, 2005CE

fiat

\FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at\, noun:
1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order.
2. Formal or official authorization or sanction.

He found a provision in the college constitution that said there were to be no executive committees, and arguing that those stodgy impediments to serious change had grown up only by convention and tradition; he abolished them and ruled these faculty meetings by fiat, using each as an occasion to announce what he was going to do next that was sure to stir up even more resentment.
--Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Americans tend to squirm about the messiness of their two best-known trade agreements with Japan: the "voluntary limitations" that have restricted exports of Japanese cars to the United States since 1981, and the semiconductor agreement of 1986, which declared by fiat that foreign manufacturers should get 20 percent of semiconductor sales in Japan.
--James Fallows, "Containing Japan," The Atlantic, May 1989


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Fiat derives from Latin fiat, "let it be done," from fieri, "to be done."

[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."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 18, 2005CE

pecuniary

\pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\, adjective:
1. Relating to money; monetary.
2. Consisting of money.
3. Requiring payment of money.

"He lacked the finer element of conscience which looks upon Art as a sacred calling," she remembered, and because of "pecuniary necessities" he "scattered his forces in many different and unworthy directions."
--James F. O'Gorman, Accomplished in All Departments of Art

The young man of the house was absorbed in his vegetable garden and the possibilities for pecuniary profit that it held.
--Samuel Chamberlain, Clementine in the Kitchen

He sees the great pecuniary rewards and how they are gained, and naturally is moved by an impulse to obtain the same for himself.
--David J. Brewer, "The Ideal Lawyer," The Atlantic, November 1906

Over the decades, Pitt built an impressive roster of similarly well-heeled clients who stood accused by the SEC of securities fraud, misstating their finances, other pecuniary offenses.
--Jonathan Chait, "Invested Interest," The New Republic, December 17, 2001


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Pecuniary comes from Latin pecuniarius, "of money, pecuniary," from pecunia, "property in cattle, hence money," from pecu, "livestock, one's flocks and herds."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 19, 2005CE

postprandial

\post-PRAN-dee-uhl\, adjective:
Happening or done after a meal.

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.
--Mel Gussow, "The Man Who Put Horace Rumpole on the Case," New York Times, April 12, 1995

[W]hen I wake up in the morning, I can have my usual breakfast -- a slightly bizarre concoction of three kinds of cold cereal topped with grapes and a cup of decaf -- and then stagger back to bed for a postprandial snooze.
--Sylvan Fox, "It's Less Hectic Staying Put In One Place," Newsday, April 3, 1994


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Postprandial is from post- + prandial, from Latin prandium, "a late breakfast or lunch."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 20, 2005CE

spoonerism

\SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:
The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:
We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].

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Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 21, 2005CE

furbelow

\FUR-buh-low\, noun:
1. A pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment; a ruffle.
2. Something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy ornamentation.

In a season of ruffles, frills and furbelows, simple cuts in neutral shades stand out.
--"Designers Head for Neutral Territory," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1997

Gilt. Red velvet. Brocade. Flocked wallpaper. Swags, frills, furbelows and ornamentation beyond comprehension. We're talking rococo loco.
--Liz Braun, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," Ottawa Sun, April 3, 2000

It is a story that, for all its hyper-animatedness, all its flips and furbelows of style, is confusing and wearisome.
--Christine Stansell, "Details, Details," New Republic, December 10, 2001

Patience is required to get past some of the director's more baroque cinematic touches, decorating the story's dark center with visual furbelows . . . and aural gimmicks.
--Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Movies: The Evil That Men Do," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998


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Furbelow is perhaps an alteration of Provençal farbella.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 22, 2005CE

stygian (also Stygian)

\STIJ-ee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to the river Styx, the principal river of the underworld in Greek mythology; hence, hellish; infernal.
2. Dark and dismal.

Although accounts vary, that vision, both sublime and ominous, helped give birth to "Metropolis," a cinematic landmark set in a teeming, towering city of the future, an automated, urban sprawl where the wealthy live up in the heavens and the laborers toil in the steaming, Stygian depths.
--James Verniere, "Aye, robot," Boston Herald, August 23, 2002

This month NASA has selected two proposals for a mission to that tiny frozen world 3.5 billion miles away. There, the Sun is just a small stab of light in the Stygian blackness.
--Ian Brown, "The race is on to reveal Pluto's secrets," Independent, June 22, 2001

Light is funnelled into this stygian domain through the central oculus and a pair of saucer domes.
--Catherine Slessor, "Oxford ordonnance," The Architectural Review, October 1, 1994

The gleaming steel catches the sunlight, casting a play of sparkling reflections and shadows into the Stygian, subterranean depths.
--Catherine Slessor, "Bermondsey Beacon," The Architectural Review, June 1, 2000


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Stygian is from Latin Stygius, from Greek Stygios, from Styx, Styg-, "Styx."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 23, 2005CE

lumpen

\LUHM-puhn; LUM-puhn\, adjective:
1. Of or relating to dispossessed and displaced individuals, especially those who have lost social status.
2. Common; vulgar.

noun; plural lumpen, also lumpens:
A member the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum.

. . . an academic sweatshop where underpaid lumpen intellectuals slave for a pittance.
--Ashlea Ebeling, "I got my degree through e-mail," Forbes, June 16, 1997

If traditionally cricket has been the game of the elite, and football strictly for the lumpen masses, all that's changed now.
--Louisa Buck, "Fever pitch," ArtForum, October 1996

Though I appreciate that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a self-made man, having made his billions by selling the voltage of his brainpower to behemoths such as CompuServe and Yahoo!, and though I also appreciate that he has maintained his ability to mingle with the lumpen, he still is a very, very rich man.
--Sean Deveney, "Mavs make their move, but at what cost?" Sporting News, March 4, 2002

The New Russians are depicted as lumpens who have left the countryside and never fully adjusted to city life.
--Emil Draitser, "The new Russians' jokelore: Genesis and sociological interpretations," Demokratizatsiya, Summer 2001


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Lumpen is from German Lumpenproletariat, "degraded stratum of the proletariat," from Lump, "a contemptible person" (from Lumpen, "rags") + Proletariat, "proletariat," from French.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 24, 2005CE


copacetic

\koh-puh-SET-ik\, adjective:
Very satisfactory; fine.

Although all will seem copacetic on the CBS broadcast from Madison Square Garden in New York, there will be a big black cloud hanging over the glitzy proceedings.
--Patrick MacDonald, "Major labels struggling with huge slump out of tune with listeners," Seattle Times, February 20, 2003

Everything seemed copacetic until a favorite store -- the anchor of the street -- closed suddenly.
--Heidi Benson, "Yes, We Want No Banana," San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2001

Terry Glenn will return to the Patriots on Monday, but don't think that everything is copacetic as far as the oft-troubled receiver is concerned.
--Michael Felger, "Glenn out to right wrongs; Ready to return to Pats, despite 'bad blood'," Boston Herald, October 3, 2001


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[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 25, 2005CE

pestiferous

\pes-TIF-uh-ruhs\, adjective:
1. Bearing or bringing disease.
2. Infected with or contaminated by a pestilential disease.
3. Morally evil or dangerous to society; pernicious.
4. Bothersome; troublesome; annoying.

Equatorial climate and pestiferous conditions made Guayaquil such an unattractive port in the past that it was not until well into the twentieth century, when sanitary conditions were established, that it became a modern city handling extensive commerce with the rest of the world.
--Thomas E. Weil, Countries of the World

What is the most correct, the politest, the best
Way to get rid of this pestiferous unwanted 'guest'?
--James Michie, "Dear Mary," The Spectator, September 28, 1996

No matter how many times one swats at the gnat, the winged creature refuses to surrender his pestiferous activity.
--J V Fesko, "The Legacy of Old School Confession Subscription in the OPC," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, December 2003

The sentence of the court was sent to the Bishop of London and all his brethren, the suffragans of the diocese of Canterbury, as also to the Bishop of Lincoln, Wicliffe's diocesan, accompanied by the commands of Courtenay, as "Primate of all England," that they should look to it that these pestiferous doctrines were not taught in their dioceses.
--James A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism


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Pestiferous is from Latin pestifer, "pestilential," from pestis, "pestilence," + -fer, "bearing."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 26, 2005CE

luculent

\LOO-kyuh-luhnt\, adjective:
Clear; easily understood.

Yet it is always luculent, even when the concepts being expressed become somewhat sophisticated.
--Dan Schnabel, "Goodbye Descartes," American Mathematical Monthly, November 1998

From the high ground all is clear,
interpretable, luculent: this is what this means.
--Thomas Lux, The Cradle Place


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Luculent comes from Latin luculentus, from lux, luc-, "light."

Synonyms: comprehensible, crystal-clear, intelligible, unambiguous.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 27, 2005

sapid

\SAP-id\, adjective:
1. Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor.
2. Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.

Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid
--David William Cheever, "Tobacco," The Atlantic, August 1860

I've raved about the elegant and earthy lobster-and-truffle sausage, the sapid sea bass with coarse salt poached in lobster oil, and the indescribably complex and delectable ballottine of lamb stuffed with ground veal, sweet-breads and truffles.
--James Villas, "Why Taillevent thrives," Town & Country, March 1, 1998


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Sapid comes from Latin sapidus, "savory," from sapere, "to taste."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 28, 2005CE

contemn

\kuhn-TEM\, transitive verb:
To regard or treat with disdain or contempt; to scorn; to despise.

Nor, despite his seeming Jansenist severity, would Pascal contemn such pleasures. Even he, the least therapeutic writer imaginable, admits that diversions can help to heal the beset soul.
--Edward T. Oakes, "Pascal: The First Modern Christian," First Things, August 1, 1999

The spectrum of difference exhibited at these shows suggests varying relationships with the West: some artists identify with or at least acknowledge the Western tradition, some contemn it.
--Thomas McEvilley, "Arrivederci Venice," ArtForum, November 1993

We may well pity those who find themselves in disagreement, for their lot is a hard one; but some of us who now warmly support the war cannot find it in our hearts to contemn all so-called pacifists, or even those who are torn by conflicting allegiances.
--James Harvey Robinson, "The Threatened Eclipse of Free Speech," The Atlantic, December 1917


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Contemn is derived from Latin contemnere, from com-, intensive prefix + temnere, "to despise."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 29, 2005CE

aliment

\AL-uh-muhnt\, noun:
1. Something that nourishes or feeds; nutriment.
2. Something that sustains a state of mind or body; sustenance.


transitive verb:
To give nourishment to; to nourish or sustain.

Mental health depends upon gastric health. Every ailment stems from improper aliment.
--Frederick Kaufman, "Love Yourself Thin," Harper's Magazine, January 2000

Is not truth the natural aliment of the mind, as plainly as the wholesome grain is of the body?
--William Ellery Channing, "On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes: Lecture II"

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.
--James Madison, Federalist, Number 10


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Aliment is derived from Latin alimentum, from alere, "to nourish." It is related to alimony.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 30, 2005CE

temporize

TEM-puh-ryz\, intransitive verb:
1. To be indecisive or evasive in order to gain time or delay action.
2. To comply with the time or occasion; to yield to prevailing opinion or circumstances.
3. To engage in discussions or negotiations so as to gain time (usually followed by 'with').
4. To come to terms (usually followed by 'with').

The best Dukakis game plan would seem to be to take a leaf from Jesse's book: make no final deals, temporize, and talk it to death.
--John McLaughlin, "What to do with Jesse?" National Review, October 14, 1988

But when it comes to paying out claims, too many third-party providers stall, balk and temporize.
--Stacie Zoe Berg, "Rx for reluctant health insurers," Insight on the News, September 22, 1997

On the big issues, Reagan rejected the importuning of his senior aides. He refused to temporize on the 1981 tax cut that ended Jimmy Carter's stagflation. At Reykjavik in 1985, he turned down State Department advice for an arms deal and stood fast to open the way for the Soviet collapse.
--Robert Novak, "For the Great Communicator, presidency was about big dreams," Chicago Sun-Times, June 2004

The only alternative policy is to temporize, to make a series of concessions to North Korea as a way to buy time.
--Charles Krauthammer, "U.S. should appease N. Korea -- temporarily," Deseret News, March 9, 2003

In the end, the price that was paid was tragically so much higher than it would have been if the democracies had shed their illusions that they could temporize with evil.
--Mortimer B. Zuckerman, "It's time to fight back," US News & World Report, September 7, 1998


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temporize derives from Medieval Latin temporizare, "to pass the time," from Latin tempus, tempor-, "time." It is related to temporary.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 31, 2005CE

magniloquent

\mag-NIL-uh-kwent\, adjective:
Lofty or grandiose in speech or expression; using a high-flown style of discourse; bombastic.

Stevens did for American poetic language what Saul Bellow was to do for prose, extending its boundaries, taking in the magniloquent, the arcane, the plainspoken, the gaudy, the low-rent.
--Algis Valiunas, "Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose," Commentary, January 1, 1998

A feature of Young's intellectual project is to incorporate the Elizabethan delight in metaphors both decorous and indecorous, constantly embellishing her prose with a poetic juxtaposition of the grand with the prosaic, "a constant alternation of the magniloquent and the colloquial."
--Constance Eichenlaub, "Marguerite Young," Review of Contemporary Fiction, June 22, 2000

Although Napoleon presented himself as "the Enlightenment embodied, bringing rationality and justice to peoples hitherto ruled in the interests of privileged castes," and although he may even have believed to some degree in the image he presented, the reality of his rule belied the magniloquent professions of moral generosity.
--Algis Valiunas, "The ashes of Napoleon," Commentary, June 1, 2002

Shannon, doubling as NSBA's executive director over that time, has taken wicked delight in delivering new vocabulary in his sometimes magniloquent columns about the workings of local school boards.
--"Thomas A. Shannon," School Administrator, April 1996


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Magniloquent is derived from Latin magniloquentia, from magus, "great" + the present participle of loqui, "to speak."

Synonyms: ornate, florid, rich, flowery, euphuistic, sonorous.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 1, 2005CE

jape

\JAYP\, intransitive verb:
To joke; to jest.

transitive verb:
To make fun of; to mock.

noun:
1. A joke or jest.
2. A trick or prank.

One elderly Englishman, complete with tweed suit and cane, japed to a passport control officer: "We're not all hooligans you know."
--Mike Underwood, "Into the fire," Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough, England), October 13, 2003

He tried to defuse each petty crisis with a merry jape and spend each day with a life-affirming and reasonably up tempo alt. country song in his heart.
--Chris Priestley, "Payne's grey," New Statesman, November 29, 2004

The shot was more of a jape than an assassination attempt, and was rightly treated as a laugh by the press and by the Prime Minister, who carried on as if nothing had happened.
--Nick Cohen, "Daddy will stop at nothing to see you," New Statesman, November 15, 2004


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Jape comes from Middle English, probably from Old French japer, "to yap, to chatter."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 2, 2005CE

biddable

\BID-uh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Easily led or commanded; obedient.
2. Capable of being bid.

But because they are sociable, biddable, obliging, stoic and generous, most are happy to join in.
--Sue Montgomery, "The Nature of Horses," New Statesman, July 18, 1997

The chaotically organised event proved nothing more than that one charismatic individual can impose his will on a lot of biddable ones.
--Thomas Sutcliffe, "Last night's television," Independent, May 2002

Both are calm, biddable, cooperative, sensible companions.
--Bill McClure, "The right start," American Hunter, November 2003


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Biddable is from bid, which partly comes from Middle English bidden, "to ask, to command," from Old English biddan; and partly from Middle English beden, "to offer, to proclaim," from Old English beodan.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 3, 2005

cloy

\KLOY\, transitive verb:
To weary by excess, especially of sweetness, richness, pleasure, etc.

intransitive verb:
To become distasteful through an excess usually of something originally pleasing.

The opulence, the music, the gouty food -- all start to cloy my senses.
--Jeffrey Tayler, "The Moscow Rave, part two: I Have Payments to Make on My Mink," Atlantic, December 31, 1997

I use orange and lemon zest in the recipe and a drizzle of soured cream at the table to take away its tendency to cloy.
--Nigel Slater, "Cream tease," The Observer, December 14, 2003

The soft Orvieto Abboccato has just enough sweetness to please but not to cloy, a friendly character that tempts one to linger over a second glass.
--George Pandi, "Orvieto's pleasures deserve to be savored like its wine," Boston Herald, July 18, 2004


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Cloy is short for obsolete accloy, "to clog," alteration of Middle English acloien, "to lame," from Middle French encloer, "to drive a nail into," from Medieval Latin inclavare, from Latin in, "in" + clavus, "nail."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 4, 2005

amanuensis

\uh-man-yoo-EN-sis\, noun; plural amanuenses, \-seez\:
A person employed to take dictation or to copy manuscripts.

The chore of actually writing the words in the end fell to a hand-picked amanuensis.
--Austin Baer, "River of Desire," Atlantic, October 1996

On this blue day, I want to be
nothing more than an amanuensis
to the birds, transcribing all the bits
and snatches of song riding in on the wind.
--Barbara Crooker, "Transcription (Poem)," Midwest Quarterly, March 22, 2003

When it comes to literature, the French count the largest number of Nobel Prizes; their authors include one who wrote a whole book without using the letter `e' and another who, suffering from `locked-in syndrome' after a severe stroke, dictated a memoir by blinking his eye as an amanuensis read through the alphabet.
--Jonathan Fenby, France on the Brink


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Amanuensis comes from Latin, from the phrase (servus) a manu, "slave with handwriting duties," from a, ab, "by" + manu, from manus, "hand."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 5, 2005

shibboleth

\SHIB-uh-lith; -leth\, noun:
1. A word or pronunciation that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons from another.
2. A word or saying identified with a group or cause; a slogan; a catchword.
3. A saying or belief identified with a particular group and usually regarded by outsiders as meaningless or untrue.
4. A custom, practice, behavior, etc. regarded as distinctive of a particular group.

In the late '60s, however, the loud, open use of the "F" word became a true shibboleth, dividing the student radicals from the Establishment "pigs" they delighted in tweaking.
--Elizabeth Austin, "A small plea to delete a ubiquitous expletive: can't we all get along without the 'f' word?" US News & World Report, April 6, 1998

Newspapers accused the West of trying to foment anti-Russian feelings and revive the cold war, substituting the old "Soviet threat" with the new shibboleth "Russian mafia."
--Michael Satchell, "Kremlin gilt - or is it guilt?" US News & World Report, September 20, 1999

Most cases, she says, involve the charges of secular humanism -- a "shibboleth invented by far-right organizations and others who object to textbooks, library books and curriculum materials that do not promote their particular brand of religion."
--Thomas S. Elliott, "Fight heats up over censoring schoolbooks," US News & World Report, February 20, 1984

Class size is another shibboleth: First, small class sizes do not increase learning, and, second, class sizes have become quite small anyway.
--Jay Nordlinger, "The Anti-Excusers," National Review, October 27, 2003

This could not be stated, because the doctrines in the name of which the revolution was carried out -- and which, ironically enough, the revolution did so much to expose and discredit -- were too strongly ingrained as official radical shibboleths to which lip-service was still paid.
--Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality

Christmas church attendance will be the last shibboleth of Christian devotion in Europe to fall: it has a wealth of sentiment, mid-winter cheer and good tunes to keep pulling the crowds.
--Madeleine Bunting, "Paralysed by panic," Guardian, December 20, 2004


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Shibboleth is from Hebrew shibboleth, "stream, flood," from the use of this word in the Bible (Judges 12:4-6) as a test to distinguish Gileadites from Ephraimites, who could not say 'sh' but only 's' as in 'sibboleth'.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 6, 2005

complement

\KOM-pluh-muhnt\, noun:
1. Something that fills up or completes.
2. The quantity or number required to make up a whole or to make something complete.
3. One of two parts that complete a whole or mutually complete each other; a counterpart.

transitive verb:
To supply what is lacking; to serve as a complement to; to supplement.

He was four years older than Lewis, whom he had once commanded in the army; less formally educated, but with more practical experience and a steadier yet more outgoing personality -- a friend, but also a perfect complement in both training and temperament to the man who was inviting Clark to make history with him.
--Dayton Duncan, Lewis & Clark

There was also a tennis court, a riding stable, a five-car garage, and a full complement of servants.
--Carol Felsenthal, Citizen Newhouse

The two points of view are not contradictory; they complement each other.
--Feançoise Gilot, "The Maid Was Ugly, the Meals Were Bad...," New York Times, October 7, 1970

Smart, athletic, blond, with a "bubbly" -- that's the word Ed uses to describe Sue when she's not around -- personality that complements his perpetually calm outlook.
--Martin Dugard, Knockdown

The wine complemented the food perfectly.
--Mary Sheepshanks, Picking Up the Pieces


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Complement is from Latin complementum, from complere, "to fill up," from com- (intensive prefix) + plere, "to fill."

Usage note: Complement and compliment ("an expression of admiration or praise") are sometimes confused because they are pronounced the same. A good way to remember which is which is to make a connection between the spelling of complement and complete.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 7, 2005CE

maudlin

\MAWD-lin\, adjective:
Tearfully or excessively sentimental.

The lonesome tones of Willie Nelson rise on the Texas air and roll off into the darkness, making the odd deer feel unaccountably maudlin and causing lone jackrabbits to be overcome by a sudden desire to sink a whiskey and cry into the empty glass.
--John Connolly, "Irishman's Diary," Irish Times, September 6, 1997

He was a bad drunk and became maudlin and weepy and would often have to be carried home by his friends.
--Barry Miles, Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats

A film about blindness could easily get maudlin or, at the other extreme, cynically heartless.
--Desson Howe, " 'Proof,' " Washington Post, June 5, 1992


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Maudlin is an alteration of (Mary) Magdalene, who in paintings was often represented with eyes red and swollen from weeping.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for maudlin

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 8, 2005CE

Panglossian

\pan-GLOSS-ee-uhn\, adjective:
Excessively or naively optimistic.

He is not peddling a Panglossian view of the world, or denying that there are problems that merit action.
--Jon Jewett, "Enviro-skepticism," Policy Review, December 2001/January 2002

But only the most Panglossian among us can doubt that in this fevered political climate more silencings will come.
--Gloria Cooper, "The Censors," Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2004

What we are witnessing in large part is the debris of the collapsed illusions of the 80s, when the Panglossian president's natural optimism made it impossible for him to admit that America had any problems.
--Mortimer B. Zuckerman, "The politics of trivial pursuit," US News & World Report, April 13, 1992

Despite its excesses, the French critique of the modern world -- of our varieties of bad faith, our idolatrous consumerism, and our Panglossian faith in progress and other Enlightenment values -- has helped make it possible for men and women to live examined lives.
--Jay Tolson, "The Passion of Michel Foucault," National Review, February 15, 1993

I wonder, though, if her argument does not commit her to a deep optimism about human nature which, despite its emotional pull, may strike some readers as slightly Panglossian.
--David McCabe, "Democracy on Trial," Commonweal, February 10, 1995


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Panglossian derives from Pangloss, the optimistic tutor in Voltaire's Candide.

Candide, penetrated with so much goodness, threw himself at his feet, crying, "Now I am convinced that my Master Pangloss told me truth when he said that everything was for the best in this world; for I am infinitely more affected with your extraordinary generosity than with the inhumanity of that gentleman in the black cloak and his wife."
--Voltaire, Candide

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 9, 2005CE

supervene

\soo-pur-VEEN\, intransitive verb:
1. To take place or occur as something additional, extraneous, or unexpected (sometimes followed by 'on' or 'upon').
2. To follow immediately after; to ensue.

After all, doctors outside the hospital can pick up the pieces and readmission is always possible, provided death doesn't supervene.
--Theodore Dalrymple, "How to win a million pounds," New Statesman, April 7, 2003

Sympathy will weaken; the anger of American public opinion will be uncontainable; doubt -- and the usual conflict of differing interests -- will supervene.
--"The terrible swift sword," Daily Telegraph, September 13, 2001

We must recognize that it is often unwise to change procedures long in place, lest unintended adverse consequences supervene.
--William Anderson, "It Is Ended," Weekly Standard, March 31, 2005

Perhaps it was inevitable that, after the magical extravaganza of the Eighties, a day-after-the-feast mood should supervene.
--Robert McCrum, "The Booker," The Observer, September 26, 1999


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Supervene comes from Latin supervenire, from super-, "over, above" + venire, "to come."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 10, 2005CE

hagiography

\hag-ee-OG-ruh-fee; hay-jee-\, noun:
1. Biography of saints.
2. Idealizing or idolizing biography.

She fit a type easily recognized in the annals of hagiography, and it was on that basis that claims for sainthood were made.
--Lawrence S. Cunningham, "The Voices of Gemma Galgani," Commonweal, June 6, 2003

Pearce seems to believe he needs to show us that the man was something like a saint. This turns his book into something like hagiography.
--Francis Beckett, "G K and A K," New Statesman, February 28, 1997

It is by no means a hagiography -- he is alert to, and unsparing of, Bellow's many failings as a man, a friend, a husband and a father.
--Robert Winder, "The slave of unknown masters," New Statesman, October 23, 2000


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Hagiography comes from Greek hagios, "holy" + -graphia, from graphein, "to write."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 11, 2005CE

malapropos

\mal-ap-ruh-POH\, adjective:
Unseasonable; unsuitable; inappropriate.

adverb:
In an inappropriate or inopportune manner; unseasonably.

Such malapropos wise cracks are driven home with a relentlessly upbeat soundtrack which serenades scenes of human tragedy with bouncy, Disneyesque melodies.
--Steve Rabey, "'Noah's Ark' hits bottom: Miniseries suffers from lack of accuracy," Arlington Morning News, May 2, 1999

As an on-air radio pronouncer, I am quite familiar with the hazard of opening the mouth before the brain is in gear. It is very easy to fire-off a malapropos statement in the heat of trying to make a point and the result is some funny things are said, but perhaps not meant.
--Gerry Forbes, "Foot-in-Mouth Afflictions," Calgary Sun, March 18, 2001


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Malapropos comes from French mal à propos, "badly to the purpose."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 12, 2005CE

redoubt

\rih-DOWT\, noun:
1. A small and usually temporary defensive fortification.
2. A defended position or protective barrier.
3. A secure place of refuge or defense; a stronghold.

Evicting the intruders from their mountain redoubts with ground forces alone was beginning to look like a protracted and expensive task.
--"Kashmir's violent spring," The Economist, May 29, 1999

First, Milosevic himself will be absent, apparently fearful of leaving his redoubt in Belgrade.
--"Lessons of Balkans Applied to Kosovo," New York Times, February 1, 1999


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Redoubt derives from French redoute, from Italian ridotto, from Latin reductus, "a refuge, a retreat," from reducere, "to lead or draw back," from re-, "back" + ducere, "to lead."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 13, 2005CE

detritus

\dih-TRY-tuhs\, noun;
plural detritus:
1. Loose material that is worn away from rocks.
2. Hence, any fragments separated from the body to which they belonged; any product of disintegration; debris.

The water was smooth and brown, with detritus swirling in the eddies from the increasing current.
--Gordon Chaplin, Dark Wind: A Survivor's Tale of Love and Loss

If they [flying cars] were easy to produce, we'd be walking around wearing helmets to protect us from the detritus of flying car crashes.
--Gail Collins, "Grounded for 2000," New York Times, December 7, 1999

The loose detritus of thought, washed down to us through long ages.
--H. Rogers, Essays


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Detritus derives from the past participle of Latin deterere, "to rub away, to wear out," from de-, "from" + terere, "to rub." It is related to detriment, at root "a rubbing away, a wearing away," hence "damage, harm."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 14, 2005CE

obloquy

\OB-luh-kwee\, noun:
1. Strongly condemnatory or abusive language or utterance.
2. The condition of disgrace suffered as a result of public blame, abuse, or condemnation; ill repute.

There he remained, weeping indignantly at her stream of obloquy, bitterly ashamed of his tears, until it was time for supper.
--Jonathan Keates, Stendhal

Once installed in office he earned near-universal obloquy by pushing through the biggest tax increase in the state's history.
--Dan Seligman, "The Taxophiliacs," Forbes, February 5, 2001

For Britain to have made a last imperial stand on the shores of the South China Sea would have risked local calamity and international obloquy.
--Christopher Patten, East and West


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Obloquy derives from Latin obloqui, "to speak against," from ob-, "against" + loqui, "to speak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 15, 2005CE

extant

\EK-stunt; ek-STANT\, adjective:
Still existing; not destroyed, lost, or extinct.

Why, then, did the joint House-Senate committee insert a maximum? The lack of extant records of the committee's deliberations requires us to speculate.
--Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights

The fossil record shows clearly that ancient life was very different from extant life.
--Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle


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Extant comes from Latin exstare, "to stand out, to project, hence to be prominent, to be visible, to exist," from ex-, "out" + stare, "to stand."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 16, 2005CE

arbitrage

\AR-buh-trahzh\, noun:
The nearly simultaneous purchase of a good or asset in one market where the price is low, and sale of the same good or asset in another market where the price is higher.

If the market exchange rate deviates from par, there is opportunity for arbitrage by exchanging the cheaper currency for gold, shipping the gold to the other country, converting the gold into the other currency, and converting the proceeds into the cheaper currency on the market.
--Milton Friedman, Money Mischief

There are undoubtedly many arbitrage opportunities, where price transparency has failed to bring about price harmonisation.
--Nunzio Quacquarelli, "Euro optimism," Guardian, May 28, 2002


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Arbitrage comes from the French, from Latin arbitrari, "to pass judgment," from arbiter, "witness, arbitrator, judge." One who practices arbitrage is an arbitrageur.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 17, 2005CE

panegyric

\pan-uh-JIR-ik; -JY-rik\, noun:
1. A lofty, formal composition or speech in praise of someone or something.
2. Formal or elaborate praise.

It was a panegyric, a set piece praising the emperor just short of calling him a god -- Rome was nominally Christian by then.
--Robert Allen, "The confessions of St. Augustine," National Review, January 11, 1985

The final section [of the poem] . . . so impressed one Catholic cleric of the 'old Faith' that he wrote an unabashed panegyric to the poet.
--Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand

Whether the thematics revolve around love, death, pain, and/or the struggle of existence, or panegyrics to life and to God, the swirling energetic patterns inherent in her words take on biblical power and grandeur.
--Bettina L. Knapp, "World Literature in Review," World Literature Today, January 1, 1997

That's all very persuasive, but it's not going to make me jump out of bed at five any more than a panegyric by a white water lily on the splendors of the morning is going to make the evening primrose transplant itself in Linnaeus's 6:00 A.M. flower bed.
--"Night Owl Philonoe," American Scholar, Winter 1999


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Panegyric comes from Latin panegyricus, from Greek panegyrikos, "of or for a public assembly," from panegyris, "public assembly," from pan-, "all" + agyris, "assembly."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for panegyric

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 18, 2005CE

masticate

\MAS-tih-kayt\, transitive verb:
1. To grind or crush with or as if with the teeth in preparation for swallowing and digestion; to chew; as, "to masticate food."
2. To crush or knead (rubber, for example) into a pulp.

intransitive verb:
To chew food.

Honestly, folks, the people at the next table ordered the same dish, and I watched as a young couple tried in vain to masticate those fossilized pieces of "toast."
--Pat Bruno, "Hits and misses," Chicago Sun-Times, June 2002

Their powerful jaws allow hyenas to masticate not only flesh and entrails, but bones, horns, and even the teeth of their prey.
--Sam Tauschek, "A Hyena is no laughing matter," Sports Afield, May 2001

In 1820, Thomas Hancock invented a machine that could masticate, mix and soften rubber.
--Rikki Lamba, "Effect of carbon black on dynamic properties," Rubber World, April 1, 2000

At restaurants the Hamnelier (swine server) would bring out your entree, cut your first bite using special tongs and a pig sticker (sorry) and proffer it to your lips. You would sniff, suck, masticate, savor and swallow.
--Baxter Black, "'The Other White Meat' Develops Snob Appeal," Denver Rocky Mountain News, September 20, 1998


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Masticate comes from the past participle of Late Latin masticare, "to chew," from Greek mastichan, "to gnash the teeth." The noun form is mastication.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 19, 2005CE

fettle

\FET-l\, noun:
A state or condition of fitness or order; state of mind; spirits -- often used in the phrase "in fine fettle."

Aside from the problems with her voice . . . Miss Garland was in fine fettle last night.
--Vincent Canby, "Judy Garland Sets the Palace Alight," New York Times, August 1, 1967

Back in 1987, the Conservatives won a thumping majority in a June general election, primarily because the economy was seen by grateful voters to be in fine fettle.
--Larry Elliott, "Danger of a recurring nightmare," The Guardian, June 18, 2001

Many of the nuns were in fine fettle, even into their 80s and 90s.
--John McCrone, "Sisters of mercy," The Guardian, August 18, 2001

He seems in fine fettle when we meet, and happy to discuss the film that gave him his break.
--Charlotte O'Sullivan, "Naked ambition," The Guardian, February 7, 1999


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Fettle is from Middle English fetlen, "to set in order," originally "to gird up," from Old English fetel, "a girdle."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 20, 2005CE

cavalcade

\kav-uhl-KAYD; KAV-uhl-kayd\, noun:
1. A procession of riders or horse-drawn carriages.
2. Any procession.
3. A sequence; a series.

Behind him he sensed the progress of the cavalcade as one by one the carriages wheeled off the Dublin road.
--Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, Irish Revolutionary

Last week, Seoul pleaded for immediate financial assistance from the United States and Japan, following a cavalcade of bad economic news.
--Steven Butler and Jack Egan, "No magic won for Korea," U.S. News, December 22, 1997


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Cavalcade derives from Old Italian cavalcata, from cavalcare, "to go on horseback," from Late Latin caballicare, from Latin caballus, "horse."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 21, 2005CE

enervate

\EN-ur-vayt\, transitive verb:
1. To deprive of vigor, force, or strength; to render feeble; to weaken.
2. To reduce the moral or mental vigor of.

Beatriz de Ahumada soldiered on to produce nine more children, a tour of duty that left her enervated and worn.
--Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul

In countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Ghana I have always felt enervated by the slightest physical or mental exertion, whereas in the UK, France, Germany or the US I have always felt reinforced and stimulated by the temperate climate, not only during long stays, but even during brief travels.
--David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

The tendency of abstract thought . . . to enervate the will is one of the real dangers of the highest education.
--Mark Pattison, Suggestions on Academical Organisation

The conquerors were enervated by luxury.
--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire


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Enervate is from the past participle of Latin enervare, "to remove the sinews from, to weaken," from e-, ex-, "out of, from" + nervus, "sinew."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 22, 2005

atavism

\AT-uh-viz-uhm\, noun:
1. The reappearance in an organism of characteristics of some remote ancestor after several generations of absence.
2. One that exhibits atavism; a throwback.
3. Reversion to an earlier behavior, outlook, or approach.

Occasionally a modern whale is born having sprouted a leg or two -- a genetic throwback known as an atavism.
--Douglas H. Chadwick, "Evolution of whales," National Geographic, November 2001

Read avidly in Europe and the United States in the 1890s, The Female Offender argues that women criminals are atavisms or throwbacks to earlier evolutionary stages, marked by physical anomalies such as coarse features.
--Nicole Rafter, "Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," The Women's Review of Books, October 1, 1997

The Enlightenment was the movement of thought, starting in the late 17th century and extending as far as the 19th century with political economists such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which self-consciously set out to liberate human reason from mediaeval atavism, superstition and error.
-- Melanie Phillips, All Must Have Prizes

Nairn rejected the view of nationalist movements, purveyed by many thinkers on the liberal and Marxist left, as residues of tribal atavism.
--John Gray, "Little Scotlander," New Statesman, January 24, 2000

At best, atavism is a harmless fantasy, not sustainable with any degree of persistent realism under skies crisscrossed by satellites and jet aircraft.
--Shiva Naipaul, "Aborigines: primitive chic in Australia," New Republic, April 22, 1985

Milton obviously invokes vassalage for its suggestion of atavism, back-stepping toward feudal obligation and subjugation of individual liberty.
--Mary C. Fenton, "Hope, land ownership, and Milton's 'Paradise within,'" Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, January 2003


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Atavism comes from French atavisme, from Latin atavus, "ancestor," from atta, "daddy" + avus, "grandfather." The adjective form is atavistic /at-uh-VIS-tik/.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 23, 2005CE

rara avis

\RAIR-uh-AY-vis\, noun;
plural rara avises \RAIR-uh-AY-vuh-suhz\ or rarae aves \RAIR-ee-AY-veez\:
A rare or unique person or thing.

He was, after all, that rara avis, a Jewish Catholic priest with a wife and children.
--Jeremy Sams, "Lorenzo the magnificent," Independent, May 16, 2000

"First of all," Arthur said, "Jack is that rara avis among Ivy League radicals, a birthright member of the proletariat."
--Charles McCarry, Lucky Bastard

Rara avis. You'd have to go far and wide to find someone like that, especially in these times.
--Andrew Holleran, In September, the Light Changes


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Rara avis is Latin for "rare bird."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 24, 2005CE

euphonious

\yoo-FOH-nee-uhs\, adjective:
Pleasing or sweet in sound; smooth-sounding.

She combines alliteration and deft word choices with the grace of an oral storyteller, creating euphonious and precise sentences that are perfect for reading aloud.
--Amy L. Cohn, "Children's Books," New York Times, March 10, 1991

Einstein originally proposed the more appropriate (but less euphonious) title of "theory of invariants" for his work, but gave up pushing for it when "relativity" caught the public's imagination.
--James Trefil, "The Most Beautiful Theories Are The Truest," New York Times, October 5, 1986

In the first draft, their names had been alphabetized, but during a speech session Rosenman and Sherwood suddenly perceived the more euphonious sequence of Martin, Barton, and Fish.
--Carol Gelderman, All the Presidents' Words

Early in life, on the basis of my easy grasp of biological nomenclature and what I consider aesthetic reasons -- all those euphonious names -- I resolved to be a medical doctor.
--Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings, 1985-2000


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Euphonious comes from Greek euphonos, "sweet-voiced," from eu-, "well" (hence "sweetly") + phonos, from phone, "voice, sound." The noun form is euphony.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 25, 2005CE

scintilla

\sin-TIL-uh\, noun:
A tiny or scarcely detectable amount; the slightest particle; a trace; a spark.

In victory, they must hold on to at least a scintilla of humility, lest they get too cocky -- and ripe for a takedown.
--Bill Breen, "'We are literally trying to stop time,'" Fast Company, May 2000

"I bear her not one scintilla of ill will," he said.
--Sarah Lyall, "That Harriman Book," New York Times, May 4, 1994

There was never a scintilla of doubt, or a hint of equivocation, in Michael about his commitment to the party.
--"Ferris's decency and sense of fun recalled," Irish Times, March 23, 2000


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Scintilla is from Latin scintilla, "a spark, a glimmer, a faint trace." Also from scintilla is the verb scintillate, "to sparkle."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 26, 2005CE

matutinal

\muh-TOOT-n-uhl\, adjective:
Relating to or occurring in the morning; early.

Get up early and wash your face in the matutinal May Day dew; it will make your skin beautiful and your heart pure.
--Ray Murphy, "Hurray, Hurray the Month of May," Boston Globe, April 28, 1988

We had to rehearse at an hour at which no actor or actress has been out of bed within the memory of man; and we sardonically congratulated one another every morning on our rosy matutinal looks and the improvement wrought by our early rising in our health and characters.
--George Bernard Shaw, "The Author's Apology," Mrs. Warren's Profession

Harry Truman, was -- like Winston Churchill -- known to take a matutinal shot of whisky. He did it after his regular very vigorous early-morning walk.
--R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., "Plainly presidential," The Washington Times, January 18, 2002


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Matutinal is from Late Latin matutinalis, from Latin matutinus, "early in the morning; pertaining to the morning."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 27, 2005CE

detritus

\dih-TRY-tuhs\, noun;
plural detritus:
1. Loose material that is worn away from rocks.
2. Hence, any fragments separated from the body to which they belonged; any product of disintegration; debris.

The water was smooth and brown, with detritus swirling in the eddies from the increasing current.
--Gordon Chaplin, Dark Wind: A Survivor's Tale of Love and Loss

If they [flying cars] were easy to produce, we'd be walking around wearing helmets to protect us from the detritus of flying car crashes.
--Gail Collins, "Grounded for 2000," New York Times, December 7, 1999

The loose detritus of thought, washed down to us through long ages.
--H. Rogers, Essays


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Detritus derives from the past participle of Latin deterere, "to rub away, to wear out," from de-, "from" + terere, "to rub." It is related to detriment, at root "a rubbing away, a wearing away," hence "damage, harm."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 28, 2005CE

pusillanimous

\pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs\, adjective:
Lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.

Evil, unspeakable evil, rose in our midst, and we as a people were too weak, too indecisive, too pusillanimous to deal with it.
--Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary," Irish Times, October 20, 1999

Under the hypnosis of war hysteria, with a pusillanimous Congress rubber-stamping every whim of the White House, we passed the withholding tax.
--Vivien Kellems, Toil, Taxes and Trouble

You are now anxious to form excuses to yourself for a conduct so pusillanimous.
--Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

Holding's refusal to engage in debate before a live audience lends credence to the pusillanimous "No Link" nickname.
--Me, On-line

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Pusillanimous comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, from Latin pusillus, "very small, tiny, puny" + animus, "soul, mind."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 29, 2005CE

extol

\ik-STOHL\, transitive verb:
To praise highly; to glorify; to exalt.

The processes of nature, which most writers extol as symbols of renewal and eternal life, were always seen darkly by Kerouac.
--Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac

Let your deeds themselves praise you, for here I leave them in all their glory, lacking words to extol them.
--Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
--Arthur Christopher Benson, Song from Pomp and Circumstance by Sir Edward Elgar


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Extol derives from Latin extollere, "to lift up, praise," from ex-, "up from" + tollere, "to lift up, elevate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 1, 2005CE

palindrome

\PAL-in-drohm\, noun:
A word, phrase, sentence, or verse that reads the same backward or forward.

A few examples:
Madam, I'm Adam. (Adam's first words to Eve?)
A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama! (The history of the Panama Canal in brief.)
Able was I ere I saw Elba. (Napoleon's lament.)
Mom, Dad.

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Palindrome comes from Greek palindromos, literally "running back (again)," from palin, "back, again" + dromos, "running."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 2, 2005CE

supplicate

\SUP-luh-kayt\, intransitive verb:
To make a humble and earnest petition; to pray humbly.

transitive verb:
1. To seek or ask for humbly and earnestly.
2. To make a humble petition to; to beseech.

Lehi's list of enemies was long and broad, including not only the British and the Arabs, but respected Jewish leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, whom they dismissed as weaklings and compromisers prepared to supplicate before the aristocratic count.
--Tod Hoffman, "Count (Folke) Bernadotte's folly," Queen's Quarterly, December 22, 1996

Their ambassadors would plead, supplicate, cajole, threaten, lobby, or bribe the bureaucrats who were administering the licenses and quotas.
--Zafar U. Ahmed, "India's economic reforms," Competitiveness Review, January 1, 1999

In this formula, practitioners of religion are more or less powerless over the supernatural beings with whom they deal; they can only supplicate those beings for favours and then await their response.
--Ronald Hutton, "Paganism and Polemic," Folklore, April 2000


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Supplicate derives from the past participle of Latin supplicare, from supplex, "entreating for mercy." The noun form is supplication.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 3, 2005

labile

\LAY-byl\, adjective:
1. Open to change; apt or likely to change; adaptable.
2. Constantly or readily undergoing chemical, physical, or biological change or breakdown; unstable.

They are too open to the rest of the world, too labile, too prone to foreign influence.
--Robert Hughes, Goya

Mifflin may not have been much more labile than the people around him, but he was undoubtedly more aware of his volatility.
--"Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio," Early American Literature, January 1, 1998

Faber's prose is an amazingly labile instrument, wry and funny, never pretentious, capable of rendering the muck of a London street and the delicate hummingbird flights of thought with equal ease.
--Lev Grossman, "The Lady Is a Tramp," Time, September 16, 2002

They lock themselves in their studies and from the labile, rocking mass of thoughts and impressions they form books, which immediately become something final, irrevocable, as if frost had cut down the flowers.
--Adam Zagajewski, "History's children," New Republic, December 2, 1991


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Labile derives from Late Latin labilis, from Latin labi, "to slip."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 4, 2005CE

traduce

\truh-DOOS; -DYOOS\, transitive verb:
To expose to contempt or shame by means of false statements or misrepresentation; to represent as blamable; to vilify.

Sir Edward rang twice to stress that he had no business relationship with the family other than his consultancy, but also to vouch for the fact that they were "splendid people" who should not be traduced.
--Ian Jack, "Generous spirits, secretive souls," Independent, October 17, 1998

I sometimes wonder whether those who traduce today's television have any conception just how much is on offer to the growing number of us with multi-channel television.
--Peter Bazalgette, "Golden Age? This is it," The Guardian, November 19, 2001

The only problem is that his corrective arguments tend to traduce rationalism as the exclusive preserve of wild-eyed eggheads who only ever spin webs of marvelously useless deduction.
--Steven Poole, "Et cetera," The Guardian, June 30, 2001

Many of you, Our Leader is absolutely sure, were disgusted at the way Rupert has been traduced in the media.
--A. N. Wilson, "Modern Britain, modern kitchens! New Labour Web site number 11," Daily Telegraph, March 3, 1998


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Traduce derives from Latin traducere, "to lead across, to lead along, to display, to expose to ridicule," from trans-, "across, over" + ducere, "to lead."

Synonyms: Calumniate; vilify; defame; slander.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 5, 2005CE

claque

\KLACK\, noun:
1. A group hired to applaud at a performance.
2. A group of fawning admirers.

He cultivated the "Georgetown set" of leading journalists and columnists and had them cheering for him as if he had hired a claque.
--Theodore Draper, "Little Heinz And Big Henry," New York Times, September 6, 1992

Behind the hacks was the claque. They cheered and whooped in a vague way, like a group of restrained English persons at a Texas rodeo: "Whee! Whoooo! Polite cough!"
--Simon Hoggart, "Yee hah, chaps! It's the manifesto," The Guardian, May 11, 2001

Charles Bukowski suffers from too good a press-- a small but loudly enthusiastic claque.
--Kenneth Rexroth, "There's Poetry in a Ragged Hitch-Hiker," New York Times, July 5, 1964


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Claque comes from French, from claquer, "to clap," ultimately of imitative origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 6, 2005CE

frisson

\free-SOHN\, noun:
A moment of intense excitement; a shudder; an emotional thrill.

When we think a story hasn't been invented, there's an extra frisson in reading it.
--"Too true," Independent, April 12, 1998

As every parent knows, children have a love-hate relationship with stories about monsters. They love the frisson of hearing about such terrifying creatures as the Cyclops -- but hate to think about what they might do if they bumped into one.
--"Strange but true: One in the eye for all those Homer-phobes," Daily Telegraph, June 21, 1998

When we stopped in traffic at the Plaza de la Cibeles on the Paseo del Prado, where a grandiose 18th-century statue of the goddess of fertility poised on a chariot seemed to be waiting for the light to change, a little frisson of pleasure jolted through me, because this part of Madrid reminded me of Paris.
--"Counting Pesetas in Madrid," New York Times, March 17, 1996


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Frisson comes from the French, from Old French friçon, "a trembling," ultimately from Latin frigere, "to be cold."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 7, 2005CE

extempore

\ik-STEM-puh-ree\, adverb:
Without premeditation or preparation; on the spur of the moment.

adjective:
Done or performed extempore.
Kelso had already delivered his short paper, on Stalin and the archives, at the end of the previous day: delivered it in his trademark style--without notes, with one hand in his pocket, extempore, provocative.
--Robert Harris, Archangel

Ruskin's Oxford lecture series ended up as a dismaying mix of extempore ramblings and calculated farce.
--Valentine Cunningham, "A Victorian Renaissance Man," New York Times, May 14, 2000


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Extempore is from the Latin phrase ex tempore, "out of the time," therefore "immediately, at the very time the occasion arises."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 8, 2005CE

cosset

\KOSS-it\, transitive verb:
To treat as a pet; to treat with excessive indulgence; to pamper.

Sumner's parents, for instance, were routinely attended by butlers, maids, coachmen and grooms while little Sumner and his sister, Emily, were pampered and cosseted from infancy by nurserymaids and governesses.
--Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist

Assunta played a larger role in the lives of her children, whom she cosseted and cared for as best she could.
--Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

In these two years, Adolf lived a life of parasitic idleness -- funded, provided for, looked after, and cosseted by a doting mother, with his own room in the comfortable flat in the Humboldtstrasse in Linz, which the family had moved into in June 1905.
--Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris


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Cosset comes from the noun cosset, "a pet lamb."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 9, 2005CE

aver

\uh-VUR\,transitive verb;
Inflected forms: averred; averring:
1. To affirm with confidence; to declare in a positive manner, as in confidence of asserting the truth.
2. (Law) To assert, claim, or declare as a fact.

Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood. And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid.
--Jack London, The Sea-Wolf

Although it was not quite true, as he liked to aver, that almost forty years passed between his departure for Germany and his eventual return to Austria, he did not hurry back to Vienna after emigrating to the United States.
--Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Many companies aver that the most expedient path to bigger market share or an expanded product portfolio is through a merger or acquisition.
--Megan Santosus, "Arranged Marriage," CIO Enterprise, July 15, 1999


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Aver is from Old French-Medieval French averer, from Medieval Latin adverare, to confirm as authentic, from Latin ad-, ad- + Medieval Latin verare, from Latin verus, true. Other words deriving from verus are very, which sometimes has the sense of "true"; verify, to prove the truth of; and verdict, a decision or judgment, literally a "true-saying" (verus + dictum, saying).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 10, 2005CE

wayworn

\WAY-worn\, adjective:
Wearied by traveling.

The wayworn Battalions halt in the Avenue: they have, for the present, no wish so pressing as that of shelter and rest.
--Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution

These beautiful and verdant recesses, running through and softening the rugged mountains, were cheering and refreshing to the wayworn travellers.
--Washington Irving, Astoria


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Wayworn is way (from Old English weg) + worn (from Old English werian).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 11, 2005CE

ameliorate

\uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt\, transitive verb:
To make better; to improve.

intransitive verb:
To grow better.

Among the pressures provoking these distresses were a father's financial inadequacy and a growing awareness that, by finding employment himself, he could ameliorate the family's exiguous circumstances.
--Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography

In the socially fluid and (until the crash of 1837) economically expansive 1830s, the legislature frequently appropriated public money to investigate social problems, forestall dependency, and ameliorate human suffering.
--Elisabeth Gitter, The Imprisoned Guest


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Ameliorate is derived from Latin ad + meliorare, "to make better," from melior, "better."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 12, 2005CE

concomitant \kuhn-KOM-uh-tuhnt\, adjective:
Accompanying; attendant; occurring or existing concurrently.

noun:
Something that accompanies or is collaterally connected with something else; an accompaniment.

For a filmmaker so obsessed with these issues, it is a sad irony that his fear of things going wrong--and his concomitant mania for clockwork control--should have been a major reason for the failure of . . . his final film.
--Michiko Kakutani, "A Connoisseur of Cool Tries to Raise the Temperature," New York Times, July 18, 1999

In short, the inevitable concomitant of autocracy . . . is aggression and imperialism.
--Martin Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes


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Concomitant comes from the present participle of Latin concomitari, "to accompany," from com- (used intensively) + comitari, "to accompany," from comes, comit-, "a companion."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 13, 2005CE

triskaidekaphobia

\tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun:
A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th.

Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month.
--Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967

Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13.
--"It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday," Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996


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Triskaidekaphobia is a fairly new word (first found in print in 1911) formed from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, "thirteen" (treis, "three" + kai, "and" + deka, "ten") + phobos, "fear." The adjective form is triskaidekaphobic. One who fears the number 13 is a triskaidekaphobe or triskaidekaphobic.

There are many theories about the origin of triskaidekaphobia. In medieval Christian countries the number 13 came to be considered unlucky because there were 13 persons at the Last Supper of Christ. Fridays are also unlucky, because the Crucifixion was on a Friday. Hence a Friday falling on the thirteenth day would be regarded as especially unlucky.

Some famous triskaidekaphobes1:
Napoleon
Herbert Hoover
Mark Twain
Richard Wagner
Franklin Roosevelt

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 14, 2005CE

indolent

\IN-duh-luhnt\, adjective:
1. Avoiding labor and exertion; habitually idle; lazy; inactive.
2. Conducive to or encouraging laziness or inactivity.
3. Causing little or no pain.
4. Slow to heal, develop, or grow.

We worked very hard--at least Iris did; I was more naturally indolent.
--John Bayley, Elegy for Iris

Charles was too indolent -- he never applied himself to the business of kingship as Louis XIV did.
--John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination

There, people did as much as they chose and few ripples ever disturbed the prevailing atmosphere of indolent tranquillity.
--Rufina Philby et al., The Private Life of Kim Philby

Now, though, researchers understand that some cancers are indolent -- so indolent, in fact, that they will never grow large enough in the patient's lifetime to cause medical problems.
--Gina Kolata, "Test Proves Fruitless, Fueling New Debate on Cancer Screening," New York Times, April 9, 2002


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Indolent is from Latin in-, "not" + dolens, "hurting, suffering pain," from dolere, "to suffer pain."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 15, 2005CE

lenity

\LEN-uh-tee\, noun:
The state or quality of being lenient; mildness; gentleness of treatment; leniency.

The criminal suspect is pressured by remorse or hope of lenity or sheer despair to fess up.
--Richard A. Posner, "Let Them Talk," The New Republic, August 21, 2000

In this context, severity is justice, lenity injustice.
--Dr Anthony Daniels, "It's no way to treat a lunatic," Sunday Telegraph, December 13, 1998

. . . an excessive lenity toward criminals, which encourages crime.
--Richard A. Posner, "The Moral Minority," New York Times, December 19, 1999

And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?
--William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part III


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Lenity comes from Latin lenitas, from lenis, "soft, mild."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 16, 2005E

camarilla

\kam-uh-RIL-uh; -REE-yuh\, noun:
A group of secret and often scheming advisers, as of a king; a cabal or clique.

Mr Kiselev likened Yeltsin's entourage to a "camarilla" . . . which would turn Russia "into a gigantic banana republic corrupted from top to bottom by a rotten clique of demagogues".
--Marcus Warren, "Moguls at war over control of Kremlin," Daily Telegraph, July 23, 1999

The arrest in October 1976 of Mao's radical camarilla, the so-called Gang of Four, led by his maniacal widow, Jiang Qing, was the second "liberation," delivering the Chinese from the most extreme forms of ideological conditioning.
--Willem Van Kemenade, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc.


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Camarilla comes from Spanish, literally, "a small room," from Late Latin camera, "chamber" ("vault; arched roof" in Latin), from Greek kamara, "vault."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 17, 2005CE

ablution

\uh-BLOO-shun\, noun:
1. The act of washing or cleansing; specifically, the washing of the body, or some part of it (as in a religious rite).
2. The water used in cleansing.

Worshipers, who have performed their ablutions in the basement before entering the prayer hall, individually prepare themselves for participation in the communal worship.
--Jane I. Smith, Islam in America

There is . . . a large fountain in the center, beneath an opening in the roof through which the sun streams down to meet the rising water, so that ablutions required of worshipers before they pray can be performed inside the building.
--Mary Lee Settle, "A Sacred Spa Where Sultans Led an Empire," New York Times, July 8, 1990

He went straight to the loo to begin his usual ablutions, soaping his cheeks and neck.
--Brooks Hansen, Perlman's Ordeal

In fact, writing -- more exactly, composing in your head -- formal poetry may be recommended in solitary confinement as a kind of therapy, alongside pushups and cold ablutions.
--Joseph Brodsky, "The Writer in Prison," New York Times, October 13, 1996


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Ablution comes from Latin ablutio, from abluere, "to wash, to remove by washing, to wash away," from ab-, "away from" + luere, "to wash."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 18, 2005CE

untoward

\uhn-TORD\, adjective:
1. Not favorable or fortunate; adverse.
2. Improper; unseemly.
3. Hard to guide, work with, or control; unruly.

If a candidate drug outperforms a placebo in two independent studies, and if it does so without untoward side effects, the FDA will approve it for use.
--Gary Greenberg, "Is it prozac? Or placebo?" Mother Jones, November/December 2003

During the trip, I was virtually alone with my unarmed driver for long stretches in places where officials in the capital of Sana'a had told me abductions were likely. Yet nothing untoward happened.
--Robert D Kaplan, "'Get me to Vukovar,"' Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2004

For the vast majority of untoward behaviors labeled as mental illness, Szasz contends that they are freely chosen behaviors for which the agent must take responsibility; psychiatry tends to ascribe responsibility for only socially-approved actions.
--Richard E. Vatz, "The quandary over mental illness," USA Today, November 1, 2004

And despite your indignant protestations to the contrary, there was nothing unethical, unsafe or otherwise untoward about Gordon's pass.
--Lee Spencer, "No reason to see red over pass on yellow," Sporting News, July 7, 2003


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Untoward comes from un- + Middle English toward, from Old English toweard, "facing, imminent," from to, "to" + -weard, "-ward."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 19, 2005CE

menagerie

\muh-NAJ-uh-ree; -NAZH-\, noun:
1. A collection of wild or unusual animals, especially for exhibition.
2. An enclosure where wild or unusual animals are kept or exhibited.
3. A diverse or varied group.

No palace had such a fine menagerie, stocked with howler monkeys, hill mynahs and Moluccan cockatoos that eliminated any need for a wind-up Swiss alarm clock.
--Pogo, "Life of Pi," Reviewer's Bookwatch, October 2004

Once, when he was too ill even to visit the zoo, Gerald was provided with a sort of substitute zoo of his own by the family butler, Jomen, who modelled a whole menagerie of animals -- rhinoceros, lion, tiger, antelope -- out of red laterite clay from the garden.
--Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography

They must have been an amiable lot, however, for she was so obviously unprepared for the veritable menagerie of cabin passengers on the return voyage to New York.
--Joan Druett, Hen Frigates

Leaner organizations may not have the infrastructure or a menagerie of specialists, but they are able to offer greater personal attention, accountability and economy.
--Marc Diener, "Seeking counsel: how to find Mr. or Mrs. Right, Esq," Entrepreneur, January 2003


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Menagerie comes from French ménagerie, from Middle French, from menage, from Old French mesnage, "dwelling."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 20, 2005CE

presage

\PRES-ij\, noun:
1. An indication or warning of a future event; an omen.
2. A feeling or intuition of what the future holds.
3. Prophetic significance.
4. [Archaic] A prediction; a prognostication.

\PRES-ij; prih-SAYJ\ transitive verb:
1. To indicate or warn of beforehand; to foreshadow.
2. To have a presentiment of.
3. To predict; to foretell.

\PRES-ij; prih-SAYJ\ intransitive verb:
To make or utter a prediction.

Although the enlightenment and liberation which had been expected to come after the war had not come with victory, a presage of freedom was in the air throughout these post-war years, and it was their only historical meaning.
--Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Never before, perhaps, in the history of the world, was an hour so fateful, so full of presage, as the present. Big with starting possibilities, unfolding vistas of unimagined boldness and beauty, it speaks with a very trumpet-call of eternally recreative energy to us "upon whom the ends of the world are come."
--Clara M. Codd, Looking Forward

"It [the comet] had been there for some time," said Todd, "and for the Sherpas it presaged things not going terribly well." A superstition, yes, thought Todd, but a matter of serious concern, because the people who knew the mountain best said it mattered.
--Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt, The Climb

Earlier in the day a supply teacher I had never seen before sat down a few chairs away with the happy ostentatious sigh that invariably presages an invasion of privacy.
--Michael Foley, Getting Used to Not Being Remarkable

Warhol, a wigged-out psychic, had presaged the whole thing.
--Phoebe Hoban, Basquiat


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Presage is derived from Latin praesagium, "presentiment," from praesagus "having a presentiment," from prae-, "before" + sagus, "prophetic."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 21, 2005CE

abnegate

\AB-nih-gayt\, transitive verb:
1. To refuse or deny oneself; to reject; to renounce.
2. To give up (rights, claims, etc.); to surrender; to relinquish.

"An exaggerated veneration for an exceptional individual" will allow worshippers "to abnegate responsibility, looking to the great man for salvation or for fulfilment" that we should work out for ourselves.
--Christina Hardyment, "The intoxicating allure of great men," review of Heroes: Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen, by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Independent, October 19, 2004

Adrift and divided, lacking intelligent leadership from the White House, the members of Congress have chosen to abnegate their constitutional responsibility in the hope that the blunt, crude mechanism of Gramm-Rudman will compensate for the failure of political will.
--Evan Thomas, "'Look, Ma! No hands!'" Time, December 23, 1985

Feed no more blossoms
to the wind, abnegate the constellations,
negate the sea and what is left
of your world? What is left then?
--Alessandra Lynch, "Excommunication," American Poetry Review, July/August 2003


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Abnegate is a back-formation from abnegation, from Late Latin abnegatio, abnegation-, from Latin abnegare, "to refuse; to refute," from ab-, "away" + negare, "to deny."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 22, 2005CE

faction

\FAK-shuhn\, noun:
1. A usually contentious or self-seeking group within a larger group, party, government, etc.
2. Party strife and intrigue; internal dissension.

For most of his colleagues, Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, who had succeeded Khrushchev as First (later General) Secretary, was a far more reassuring figure -- affable, lightweight and patient in reconciling opposing factions, though skillful in outmaneuvering his political rivals.
--Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield

Leaders of the party's reform faction, decisively defeated for top posts, have not heeded the call for post-election unity.
--"El Salvador: Orthodox Faction Holds on to Power in the FMLN," NotiCen, December 6, 2001

As Madison wrote in Federalist no. 10, the purpose of the Constitution was to constrain special interest politics, or what he called "the violence of faction."
--James T. Bennett and Thomas J. Di Lorenzo, CancerScam

While Britannia Triumphans opened with a scene in which rebellious citizens of past reigns are dispelled by Heroic Virtue, faction, disorder and rebellion were much harder to deal with in British society.
--John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination


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Faction comes from Latin factio, faction-, from the past participle of facere, "to do, to make."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 23, 2005CE

pallor

\PAL-urh\, noun:
Unusual or extreme paleness.

Across the table, Joseph appeared pale, as if he never spent enough time out-of-doors on golf courses, in ballparks, or on fishing boats. He had earned this bureaucrat's pallor honestly, behind his desk, under fluorescent light, in candlelit church ceremonials.
--Eugene Kennedy, My Brother Joseph

Although we had known each other for a couple of years, I don't think that I had ever seen you by daylight before, so I was surprised by the pallor of your skin.
--David Bourdon, "A Letter to Charlotte Moorman," Art in America, June 2000


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Pallor is from Latin, from pallere, "to be pale."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 24, 2005CE

suffuse

\suh-FYOOZ\, transitive verb:
To spread through or over in the manner of fluid or light; to flush.

She gave me a long slow look, as if she were deciding something, and then she allowed herself to blush, the color suffusing her throat in a delicious mottle of pink and white.
--T. Coraghessan Boyle, T. C. Boyle Stories

Have you ever felt happiness suffuse all the cells in your body and a smile light up your face?
--Sarabjit Singh, "Queen of the Hills," India Currents, November 30, 1996

Like an angel or an earthquake, it isn't there and then it is; it doesn't steal over us and suffuse us with a festive spirit like the gradual effects of alcohol or good deeds.
--Barbara Peters Smith, "Gladness descends on her home," Sarasota Herald Tribune, December 27, 2003


Suffuse comes from the past participle of Latin suffundere, "to overspread; to suffuse," from sub-, "under" + fundere, "to pour."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 25, 2005CE

artifice

\AR-tuh-fis\, noun:
1. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity; inventiveness.
2. An ingenious or artful device or expedient.
3. An artful trick or stratagem.
4. Trickery; craftiness; insincere or deceptive behavior.

Built by design and artifice, it fell apart in confusion and chaos.
--John Gray, False Dawn

This theatricality is necessary to signal Prospero's farewell to magic, and indeed the play debates that very contrast between artifice and reality, illusion and truth.
--Amy Rosenthal, "An insubstantial pageant," New Statesman, February 3, 2003

The smoke had cleared enough for him to see bayonets flash in the distance, behind the wall, what looked like thousands of them, the wall itself appearing to rise out of the smoke as if produced by the artifice of some magician.
--Kathleen Cambor, In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden

The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species.
--Frans De Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master


Artifice comes from artificium, from artifex, artific-, "artificer, craftsman," from Latin ars, art-, "art" + facere, "to make." It is related to artificial.

[Lazy Agnostic]

ord of the Day for Thursday May 26, 2005CE

saturnine

\SAT-uhr-nyn\, adjective:
1. Born under or being under the astrological influence of the planet Saturn.
2. Gloomy or sullen in disposition.
3. Having a sardonic or bitter aspect.

His saturnine spirit appealed to younger bohemians who were anxious to make idols of an earlier generation's tormented souls, but even so, it cannot have been easy for Rothko always to be the pessimist among the optimists.
--Jed Perl, review of Mark Rothko: A Biography, by James E.B. Breslin, New Republic, January 24, 1994

A saturnine prison guard sits and broods -- and every now and then, gets up and shoots an unseen prisoner.
--John Walsh, review of The Silence Between Two Thoughts, Independent, June 11, 2004

Several others . . . echo his saturnine disposition, a gnawing sense that life itself -- certainly his own -- was a disaster waiting to happen.
--Haim Chertok, "Benjamin: A powerhouse failure," Jerusalem Post, October 1, 1999

This captures perfectly the tone of his writing: saturnine, droll, with a fascinating, deliberate bureaucratic dowdiness.
--Andrew Martin, "Class conscious," New Statesman, November 13, 2000

Ivgi, with his striking stage presence, opts for sour, saturnine irony instead of the mawkish modesty that usually colors the role.
--Naomi Doudai "Drought, what drought? It's still raining on-stage," Jerusalem Post, January 2, 1996


Saturnine comes from Saturn, in Medieval times believed to be the most remote planet from the Sun and thus coldest and slowest in its revolution.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 27, 2005CE

lionize

\LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb:
To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.

At Penn State he'd been welcomed, nurtured, lionized as a track and field star who narrowly missed making our Olympic team in the decathlon
--James Brady, Further Lane

But it is a good reason to be wary, and to pay some attention to that man behind the curtain -- or, if anyone tries to sell you one, to be cautious about lionizing "some pig" -- however terrific, radiant, and humble -- in a poke.
--Marjorie B. Garber, Symptoms of Culture

But the urge to lionize him is an indication that we live in a terrible age for pianists. There is today almost no pianist worth crossing the street for.
--Jay Nordlinger, "Curtain Calls," National Review, May 31, 1999


Lionize, comes from lion, in the sense of "a person of great interest or importance."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 28, 2005CE

finical

\FIN-ih-kuhl\, adjective:
Extremely or unduly particular in standards or taste; fastidious; finicky.

The paintings incorporate the random and arbitrary . . . within a practice that nonetheless requires finical accuracy; there is a degree of almost mindless repetition and filling in involved, but the resulting forms are unpredictable and uncategorizable.
--Barry Schwabsky, "Ingrid Calame: James Cohan Gallery," Artforum, February 1, 2004

That the director, who is known for his finical selection of stars, has zeroed in on Aamir says a great deal about his faith in the actor.
--"Images: Movie Matters," News India, November 15, 1996

Finical yet never fussy, thorough but not obsessive, Westermann the woodworker is a joy to behold.
--Mario Naves, "H. C. Westermann," New Criterion, May 1, 2002


Finical is probably derived from fine.

Synonyms: exacting, fastidious, finicky, nice, particular.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 29, 2005CE

pliant

\PLY-uhnt\, adjective:
1. Easily bent or flexed; supple; pliable; adaptable.
2. Easily influenced; yielding readily to others.

His structures are rigid in substance as well as appearance; hers are pliant in both.
--Robert Storr, "Gego's galaxies," Art in America, June 2003

They differ significantly . . . in that they are painted in the bright hues of the original toys, thus losing the vital contradiction between an obviously rigid metal surface and the sculptural illusion of pliant plastic.
--Eleanor Heartney, "Jeff Koons at Sonnabend," Art in America, May 2004

Broadly speaking, Skinner saw personality as a blank slate, pliant and ripe for conditioning.
--Andrew Stuttaford, "Chick-Tac-Toe," National Review, December 23, 2002

Her first step was to flatter her pliant husband into her way of thinking.
--Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women, edited and translated by Virginia Brown


Pliant comes from the present participle of Old French plier, "to fold, to bend," from Latin plicare. It is related to ply, "to fold over or twist together."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 30, 2005CE

dissemble

\dih-SEM-buhl\, transitive verb:
1. To hide under a false appearance; to hide the truth or true nature of.
2. To put on the appearance of; to feign.
intransitive verb:
To conceal the real fact, motives, intention, or sentiments under some pretense; to assume a false appearance; to act the hypocrite.

He was an open, candid personality who did not dissemble his thoughts, and the public respected him as a politician who was unusual in the sincerity of his views
--Robin Cook, "If John Smith were alive, imagine how different this Labour government would be," Independent, May 7, 2004

However, like that little Mexican boy, I learned to dissemble my anguish and sat as quietly as I could, hoping that no one would notice I did not like the food.
--"An acquired taste," Manila Bulletin, December 27, 2004

In the years since he joined Today in 1987, Humphrys, 61, has perfected the ability to extract truth from those who aim to dissemble.
--Tim Luckhurst, "As John Humphrys announces his retirement...," Daily Mail, May 3, 2005

While Raad often combines fact with fiction, his goal is not to trick or dissemble.
--Janet A. Kaplan, "Flirtations with evidence," Art in America, October 2004


Dissemble is ultimately derived from Latin dissimulare, "to conceal; to disguise," from dis-, intensive prefix + simulare, "to simulate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 31, 2005CE

recreant

\REK-ree-uhnt\, adjective:
1. Cowardly; craven.
2. Unfaithful; disloyal.

noun:
1. A coward.
2. An unfaithful or disloyal person.

His recreant companion disappears around the fence, but he remains, smiling affably.
--Eric J. Segal, "Norman Rockwell and the fashioning of American masculinity," Art Bulletin, December 1, 1996

To any man there may come at times a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not. . . . The open door was closed in his recreant face.
--Genie Babb, "Where the bodies are buried," Narrative, October 1, 2002

Wordsworth compares himself to a truant, a false steward, a recreant, when he does not write poetry, when poetic numbers fail to come spontaneously, when his harp is defrauded and the singer ends in silence.
--J. Douglas Kneale, "Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art," Criticism, September 22, 1996

And it appears in the way the review essay was set up: Aronson versus Miliband, the recreant versus the faithful one.
--Ronald Aronson, "Response to Victor Wallis," Monthly Review, October 1, 1996

But was it worth surrendering your religion, hence your honor, and becoming a recreant?
--Eugen Weber, "The Ups and Downs of Honor," American Scholar, January 1, 1999


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Recreant comes from Old French, from the present participle of recroire, "to yield in a trial by battle," from re-, "re-" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere.

[dizzle]

Interesting, is it related to miscreant? And does creant mean anything? I never heard of recreant before.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday June 1, 2005CE

fetter

\FET-uhr\, noun:
1. A chain or shackle for the feet; a bond; a shackle.
2. Anything that confines or restrains; a restraint.

transitive verb:
1. To put fetters upon; to shackle or confine.
2. To restrain from progress or action; to impose restraints on; to confine.

The right ankle of one, indeed, is connected with the left ankle of another by a small iron fetter.
--William Wilberforce, On the Horrors of the Slave Trade

But just let even a thumb's pressure be put upon me to tame the wild something in me, and I feel it like a fetter.
--Kahlil Gibran, quoted in Kahlil Gibran, Man and Poet, by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins

Only his hands have any action left in them. He uses them, struggling against the torpor that fetters him, to raise his rifle barrel and shoot the man in the floppy hat.
--Robert Coover, Ghost Town


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Fetter is from Middle English feter, from Old English. It is related to foot.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Interesting, is it related to miscreant? And does creant mean anything? I never heard of recreant before.
Miscreant is from Old French mescreant, present participle of mescroire, to disbelieve, from mes-, wrongly, not + croire, to believe, from Latin credo, credere. The older meaning of the word is heretic.


Recreant comes from Old French, from the present participle of recroire, "to yield in a trial by battle," from re-, "re-" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere.

Creant has the meaning of "creative" ol "formative".

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday June 2, 2005CE

tumid

\TOO-mid; TYOO-\, adjective:
1. Swollen, enlarged, or distended; as, "a tumid leg."
2. Bulging; protuberant.
3. Swelling in sound or sense; pompous; inflated; bombastic.

Oedema -- swelling of the tissues caused by fluid retention -- had left his face pouchy and tumid.
--Ian Thomson, "Bringing my father home," Independent, December 14, 2003

Give me your tumid, your sore, your glutted tummies, churning with hot dogs and ice cream...
--David Nevers, "Chicken Soup in the Melting Pot," The Record, August 27, 1994

The faults throughout are the same, a tumid style, generality of emotion, imprecision of image and no definite location of anything.
--T. S. Eliot, letter to J.V. Healy, November 22, 1932


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Tumid comes from Latin tumidus, from tumere, "to swell."

Synonyms: bloated, distended, inflated, puffed, puffy.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday June 3, 2005CE

agglomeration

\uh-glom-uh-RAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act or process of collecting in a mass; a heaping together.
2. A jumbled cluster or mass of usually varied elements.

Female biologists such as Lynn Margulis have suggested that symbiosis is the origin of complex life and that, if artificial intelligence comes about, it will do so by an agglomeration and binding up of functions, rather than through some Frankensteinian hauling down of a single power switch.
--Roz Kaveney, "The Eight Technologies of Otherness," New Statesman, January 9, 1998

Upon closer inspection, it revealed itself to be an agglomeration of differently shaped and colored prescription eyeglasses, inserted into a thin wall built in front of a window.
--Susan Harris, "Jean Shin at Frederieke Taylor," Art in America, October, 2004

On flat farmland outside the town of Paulding, Ohio, sits an agglomeration of storage tanks, conveyors and long, rotating kilns that burn 60,000 tons of hazardous waste a year.
--David Bowermaster, "The cement makers' long sweet ride," U.S. News & World Report, July 19, 1993


Agglomeration is the noun form of agglomerate, "to gather into a ball or mass," which derives from the past participle of Latin agglomerare, "to mass together; to heap up," from ad- + glomerare, "to form into a ball," from glomus, glomer-, "ball."

[dizzle]

:wow: So That's where the slang word "glom" comes from.

[Lazy Agnostic]

:wow: So That's where the slang word "glom" comes from.That would make sense.

The word glom is of Scottish origin. It comes from the Scots word glaum 'to snatch at', from Scottish Gaelic glàm 'to grab; clutch'.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday June 4, 2005CE

odium

\OH-dee-uhm\, noun:
1. Intense hatred or dislike; loathing; abhorrence.
2. The state or fact of being intensely hated as the result of some despicable action.
3. Disgrace or discredit attaching to something hated or repugnant.

At the back of the Tyn Church, we were told about the young Jesuit whose harshness earned him the odium of his congregation.
--Will Cohu, "High spirits and gloomy spectres," Sunday Telegraph, May 16, 1999

The point here is that, for all its efforts at avoiding offence, new Labour has still managed to attract the odium of the paper that regards itself as the voice of Middle England.
--"Will Mr Brown hang for a sheep or a lamb?" New Statesman, December 2, 2002

But this brought forth nothing but odium on his head, so much so that he had to backtrack soon afterwards.
--Andrew Stephen, "A nation left unprotected," New Statesman, November 5, 2001

Moralists warn against the spurious sorrow that afflicts the first-person plural of so many collective apologies: We erred, says the penitent, though he clearly intends to shift blame and odium to his fellows.
--"The Week," National Review, April 19, 2004


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Odium comes from the Latin odium, "hatred," from odisse, "to hate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday June 5, 2005CE

unfledged

\uhn-FLEJD\, adjective:
1. Lacking the feathers necessary for flight.
2. Not fully developed; immature.

It is most likely that this parrot was caught when very young, even possibly unfledged, and was totally nurtured by humans.
--D'vora Ben Shaul, "A parrot in a man's world," Jerusalem Post, June 15, 1997

Some also charge the leaders with sheltering unfledged youth from the real world or, as one public education official quoted in the Washington Post put it, "prolonging a cocoon existence."
--Helen Mondloch, "Homegrown Virtue on Campus," World and I, November 1, 2001

He is not naive, unfledged, but he is always in some way a "Johnny come lately."
--Robert Creeley, "Austerities," Review of Contemporary Fiction, March 22, 1994


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Unfledged is from obsolete fledge, "capable of flying; feathered," from Middle English flegge, from Old English -flycge.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday June 6, 2005CE

countenance

\KOWN-tuh-nuhn(t)s\, noun:
1. Appearance or expression of the face; look; aspect.
2. The face; the features.
3. An approving or encouraging look or expression.
4. Favor, good will, support; encouragement.
5. [Obsolete] Bearing; demeanor.

transitive verb:
1. To approve; to support; to encourage.
2. To tolerate or allow.

"He was not so handsome as his brother," wrote Mrs Papendiek of the Prince as he approached manhood, "but his countenance was of a sweetness and intelligence quite irresistible."
--Saul David, Prince of Pleasure

For Henry's sake she kept up appearances, had her hair done, applied discreet colours to her face, yet when she looked in the mirror, lipstick in hand, she saw a drained countenance, its expression wary, as if at any minute it might undergo disintegration, as if there were no longer any cells to separate the skin from the bone.
--Anita Brookner, Visitors

Hawthorne himself did not make the common surrender to Italy and complained of "discomfort and miseries," found the Roman winter an unadvertised blast of chills, and could not countenance nudity in sculptures.
--Elizabeth Hardwick, Sight-Readings

But this does not mean that the Serbian government was necessarily as committed to war with Austria as the Black Hand's leaders were, or that it was prepared to countenance the group's more extreme plans for fomenting cross-border, anti-Habsburg terrorism.
--Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism


Countenance comes from Middle English contenaunce, from Old French, from Latin continentia, "restraint" (literally, "way one contains oneself"), from the present participle of continere, "to hold together; to hold in; to contain," from com-, "with, together" + tenere, "to hold." It is related to contain and content, "satisfied with what one has."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday June 7, 2005CE

betimes

\bih-TYMZ\, adverb:
1. Early; in good time; before it is late.
2. At times; on occasion.
3. [Archaic] Soon; in a short time.

But it takes a piece of political theatre, like yesterday's release of the Iraq dossier, to get us out of bed betimes.
--Andrew Marr, "I couldn't have a lie-in because of the Iraq dossier," Daily Telegraph, September 25, 2002

It looks like it's trying to clear this morning, though waves of drizzle betimes pass through.
--Will Cook, "Macklin's Cross," Irish America, February 1, 2004

Some of them were poets or novelists first and critics only betimes.
--Denis Donoghue, The Practice of Reading


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Betimes is from Middle English bitimes, from bi, "by" + time, "time."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday June 8, 2005CE

glutinous

\GLOOT-nuhs\, adjective:
Of the nature of glue; resembling glue; sticky.

"What do you mean?" I said, my mouth glutinous with melted marshmallow and caramel.
--T. Coraghessan Boyle, T. C. Boyle Stories

At this point Leonardo wakes, decides the sensation is extraordinary but not death, and gazing up through the glutinous film of boiled carrot drippings, says: No, Salai will be riding a horse.
--R. M. Berry, Leonardo's Horse

Besides, the sensation of glutinous raw egg-yolk sliding down my throat like a plump mollusc would not necessarily be helpful in my current state.
--Victoria Moore, "Dog daze - young alcoholics' way of life," New Statesman, January 1, 1999


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Glutinous derives from Latin glutinosus, from gluten, glutin-, "glue."

Synonyms: adhesive, gluey, gummy, mucilaginous, viscous.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday June 9, 2005CE

durance

\DUR-uhn(t)s; DYUR-\, noun:
1. Imprisonment; confinement or restraint by or as if by force (usually used in the phrase "durance vile").
2. [Archaic] Endurance.

As any ex-con emerging from durance vile eventually realizes, things haven't remained the same on the outside while he was doing time.
--"Deri's non-comeback," Jerusalem Post, June 27, 2003

Escaping from durance vile, our hero discovers the village where his colleague parked the trusty Tiger Moth.
--Frederick Forsyth, "Impatient with The English Patient," Spectator, March 29, 1997

One is like a prisoner, without a moment's respite from durance vile.
--Leah Garrett, "Trains and Train Travel in Modern Yiddish Literature," Jewish Social Studies, January 1, 2001


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Durance is from Middle English duraunce, "duration," from Old French durance, from durer, "to last; to endure," from Latin durare.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday June 10, 2005CE

ingenuous

\in-JEN-yoo-uhs\, adjective:
1. Demonstrating childlike simplicity; innocent; naive.
2. Free from reserve, restraint, or guile; open; frank.
3. [Obsolete] Noble; honorable.

It's a bit ingenuous to offer information to a reporter with a notebook in her hand and then expect not to be quoted.
--Sadie Mah, "Quoting an interviewee," Jakarta Post, September 17, 1999

Not like World War I, where soldiers and their sweethearts courted to the strains of "Lili Marlene," and the prevailing sense of doom was misted over with ingenuous devotion to both girl and country.
--Jayne Blanchard, "War romance passionate in 'Wedding,' " Washington Time, August 13, 2004

It still has a cockeyed charm, an ingenuous optimism which, even in these dangerous times, comforts you like a lovable old teddy bear.
--"Art beat," The Press (Canterbury, New Zealand), November 29, 2003

Benson later wrote in his diary: "... a simpler, more ingenuous, more unaffected, more genuinely interested boy, I never saw."
--Peter Firstbrook, Lost on Everest


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Ingenuous comes from Latin ingenuus, "honest, freeborn," from in-, "in" + gignere, "to beget; to produce."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday June 11, 2005CE

manumit

\man-yuh-MIT\, transitive verb:
To free from slavery or servitude.

The prime reason, I suspect, will be that we don't need any liberator to manumit our "corporate slaves" because we've never had any.
--Victor S. Navasky, "Time is money," The Nation, July 17, 1989

Mobilization difficulties led the government to manumit hundreds of slaves and scores of convicts to fight at the front.
--Peter M. Beattie, "Conscription versus penal servitude," Journal of Social History, June 22, 1999

Possessed of more than one hundred slaves, Tucker resisted the appeals of relatives to manumit in his will even favored household servants.
--Christopher Doyle, "Judge St. George Tucker and the case of Tom v. Roberts," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Autumn 1998

It even seemed possible that they could improve the conditions of slaves and persuade ever more planters to manumit their bondsmen.
--Larry Gragg, "A heavenly visitation," History Today, February 1, 2002


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Manumit comes from Latin manumittere, "to emancipate a slave," from manu mittere, "to release from control," from manus, "hand" (hence "power of control") + mittere, "to let go; to send." The noun form is manumission.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday June 12, 2005CE

hermitage

\HUHR-muh-tij\, noun:
1. The habitation of a hermit or group of hermits.
2. A monastery or abbey.
3. A secluded residence; a retreat; a hideaway.
4. [Capitalized] A palace in St. Petersburg, now an art museum.

She had left her father's surviving subjects to manage as best they could and climbed even higher in search of the lonely sanctity she had always craved. Now Rose requested her to keep an eye open for the twins who would pass within a few miles of her abandoned hermitage.
--Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eater

When it grows cold, we return to the hermitage where I am ending my days.
--Christophe Bataille, Hourmaster (translated by Richard Howard)

Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world.
--Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage.
--Richard Lovelace, "To Althea, from Prison"


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Hermitage is from Old French hermitage, from heremite, "hermit," ultimately from Greek eremites, "dwelling in the desert," from eremia, "desert," from eremos, "solitary; desolate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday June 13, 2005CE

blandishment

\BLAN-dish-muhnt\, noun:
Speech or action that flatters and tends to coax, entice, or persuade; allurement -- often used in the plural.

But she had not risen at all to the law fellow's blandishments, his attempts to interest her in his ideas and persuade her to set forth her own.
--John Bayley, Elegy for Iris

And that my English-speaking victims find my blandishments so pretty, accented as they are, and yield to my soft lustrous Italian pronunciations, is a constant source of bliss for me.
--Anne Rice, Vittorio, the Vampire

Perfect, gentle reader: I will not begin this book with a tribute to your discernment, because a person of your obvious accomplishments would certainly be immune to such blandishments.
--Richard Stengel, You're Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery


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Blandishment ultimately comes from Latin blandiri, "to flatter, caress, coax," from blandus, "flattering, mild."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday June 14, 2005CE

peradventure

\puhr-uhd-VEN-chuhr; pehr-\, adverb:
[Archaic] Possibly; perhaps.

noun:
Chance, uncertainty, or doubt.

It establishes beyond any peradventure of doubt that they were all wet and all wrong in their reports about the weapons of mass destruction, the chemical weapons, the biological weapons and the coming nuclear weapons as well.
--Daniel Schorr, interview, "Weekend Edition - Saturday," with Susan Stamberg, National Public Radio, July 10, 2004

The problem with Steve is that he looks like a liar. He is what a liar ought to look like. When he's telling God's own truth, hallelujah, you are certain beyond peradventure that he is lying.
--"The journal of Lynton Charles," New Statesman, March 4, 2002

And he was, beyond peradventure, the greatest reforming Labour prime minister of the last century.
--Peter Oborne, "Mr Blair has virtually unlimited power," Spectator, June 30, 2001

But the true face of Soviet power -- and the reality of international politics -- became clear beyond peradventure before long.
--George Bailey and Brian Crozier, "Revolution against revolution," National Review, October 14, 1988


Peradventure derives from Old French per aventure, "by chance," from per, "through" (from Latin) + aventure, "chance," ultimately from the past participle of Latin advenire, "to arrive," from ad-, "to; toward" + venire, "to come." [

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday June 15, 2005CE

antiquarian

\an-tuh-KWAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:
One who collects, studies, or deals in objects or relics from the past.

adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to antiquarians or objects or relics from the past.
2 Dealing in or concerned with old or rare books.

From the depositions filed with the Loyalist Claims Commission after the Revolution, from a handful of letters gathered by an antiquarian at the beginning of the twentieth century, and from scattered court papers in scattered archives, it is possible to piece together some of the family's history.
--Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies

Except to antiquarians and preservationists, silent cinema has little presence on the cultural radar screen, its landmark films unrented on video, its iconic images spotted only as fodder for video collage on MTV.
--Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood

Indeed, the evident attention to detail and studied historicism bore the impress of Truefitt's years with the antiquarian Cottingham.
--Francis R. Kowsky, Country, Park & City

A friend of mine, the manager of an antiquarian bookshop in Leningrad in the 1960s, told me that he remembered well the twice-monthly visits of a matronly lady from the censorship bureau, who spent hours rifling through the thousands of books on his shelves, checking them against her latest copy of the Summary List (which was always being updated).
--David King, The Commissar Vanishes


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Antiquarian is from Latin antiquarius, "pertaining to antiquity," from antiquus, "ancient."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday June 16, 2005CE

naif

\nah-EEF; ny-\, adjective:
Naive.

noun:
A naive or inexperienced person.

It is only very naif critics who think that all one's influences must be contemporary.
--John Fowles, Wormholes

Their money-grubbing game: they feign a tragic past and prey on the sympathies of unsuspecting naifs, fishing for bank account numbers or photocopies of passports.
--Nathalie Atkinson, "Con heir," Toronto Life, September 1, 2003

Believing nothing, the skeptic is blind; believing everything, the naif is lame.
--"We Are All Wayfarers On the Waves of Time," Hinduism Today, November 30, 1998

But underneath their differences, they're variations on a theme: one a naif, one worldly-wise who learns from the naif.
--Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, "Torched Songs," Palm Beach Post, September 15, 2000


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Naif comes from French, from Old French naif, "naive, natural, just born," from Latin nativus, "native, rustic," literally "born, inborn, natural," from Latin nativus, "inborn, produced by birth," from natus, past participle of nasci, "to be born."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday June 17, 2005CE

altercation

\awl-tuhr-KAY-shuhn\, noun:
A heated, noisy, or angry dispute; noisy controversy or argument.

Like Epaminondas, he fought continuously with his fellow generals and was nearly court-martialed for his altercations with his superiors -- like Epaminondas he was relieved of command after his greatest victories.
--Victor Davis Hanson, The Soul Of Battle

He indulged in a heated altercation with his fellow-townsmen over some land which they thought theirs, though it was certainly his.
--Carl Van Doren, The American Novel

The professor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that young gentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers in school-time.
--William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair


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Altercation comes from Latin altercatio, altercation-, from altercari, "to dispute (with another)," from alter, "other." The verb form is altercate.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday June 18, 2005CE

quorum

\KWOR-uhm\, noun:
1. Such a number of the officers or members of any body as is legally competent to transact business.
2. A select group.

The extraordinary powers of the Senate were vested in twenty-six men, fourteen of whom would constitute a quorum, of which eight would make up a majority.
--Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction

What other quorum in American history, save those who wrote our constitution, could claim as much impact on our day-to-day lives?
--Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear


Quorum comes from the Latin quorum, "of whom," from qui, "who." The term arose from the wording of the commission once issued to justices of the peace in England, by which commission it was directed that no business of certain kinds should be done without the presence of one or more specially designated justices.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday June 19, 2005CE

gravitas

\GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:
High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

At first sight the tall, stooped figure with the hawk-like features and bloodless cheeks, the look of extreme gravitas, seems forbidding and austere, the abbot of an ascetic order, scion of an imperial family who has foresworn the world.
--John Lehmann, "T.S. Eliot Talks About Himself and the Drive to Create," New York Times, November 9, 1953

And we want to tell our readers about sharp, clever books, utterly lacking in gravitas, that we know will delight them on the beach or the bus.
--Benjamin Schwarz, "(Some of) the best books of 2001," The Atlantic, December 2001


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Gravitas is from the Latin gravitas, "heaviness, seriousness," from gravis, "heavy, serious."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday June 20, 2005CE

exigent

\EK-suh-juhnt\, adjective:
1. Requiring immediate aid or action; pressing; critical.
2. Requiring much effort or expense; demanding; exacting.

Legislative sessions are long, constituents' demands are exigent, policy problems are increasingly complicated.
--Anthony King, "Running Scared," The Atlantic, January 1997

An exception to the warrant rule was established when exigent circumstances required officials to act immediately.
--Warren Richey, "Of merchant ships and crack-sellers' cars," Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 1999

It is true that the greatest modern novels ask more of us, and of themselves as well. But within their own less exigent terms, Roth's novels amount to an impressive achievement.
--Michael Andre Bernstein, "The vivid fabrications of a great elegist," The New Republic, May 7, 2001

The purpose of the book is "to confirm the poet in a lonely and exigent task, which is all the more necessary in these times".
--Patsy McGarry, "The mad monk of the mid-west," Irish Times, December 22, 2001


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Exigent is derived from the present participle of Latin exigere, "to demand."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday June 21, 2005CE

irascible

\ih-RASS-uh-buhl\, adjective:
Prone to anger; easily provoked to anger; hot-tempered.

The lawyer described his client as an irascible eighty-two-year-old eccentric who alternated between spinning fascinating tales about her past and cussing him out.
--Jack Olsen, Hastened to the Grave

His father was an irascible and boastful bully, a heavy drinker and a gambler.
--Robin Waterfield, Prophet: The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran


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Irascible is from Latin irascibilis, "prone to anger," from ira, "anger," which is also the source of ire and irate.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday June 22, 2005CE

ineluctable

\in-ih-LUCK-tuh-buhl\, adjective:
Impossible to avoid or evade; inevitable.

. . . ineluctable as gravity.
--Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

California's vision of itself as a car culture grew out of the impracticality of mass transit in reaching most of its scenic wonders, the innate restlessness of its inhabitants and the ineluctable attraction of an open road.
--"From the Land of Private Freeways Comes Car Culture Shock," New York Times, October 16, 1997

Linnaeus' classification scheme became popular not because it captured some ineluctable truth about nature. Rather, by the botanist's own admission, the system divided species based more on intuition than science, much as an art historian might group paintings into schools.
--"Cultivating a New Tree," Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1999


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Ineluctable is from Latin ineluctabilis, from in-, "not" + eluctari, "to struggle out of, to get free from," from ex-, e-, "out of" + luctari, "to struggle."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday June 23, 2005CE

voluble

\VOL-yuh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Characterized by a ready flow of speech.
2. Easily rolling or turning; rotating.
3. (Botany) Having the power or habit of turning or twining.

Rostow was voluble, exuberant and full of good and sometimes foolish ideas.
--Kai Bird, The Color of Truth

Two glasses of wine made him voluble and three made him bellicose, sentimental and sometimes slurred.
--"How Nixon turned into Tricky Dicky," Daily Telegraph, March 9, 1999

He listened patiently and with quiet amusement to my enthusiasm. Indeed, this turned out to be our pattern: I, more ignorant but more voluble, would babble on, while he would offer an occasional objection or refinement.
--Phillip Lopate, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

Her tongue, so voluble and kind,
It always runs before her mind.
--Matthew Prior, "Truth and Falsehood"


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Voluble derives from Latin volubilis, "revolving, rolling, fluent," from volvere, "to roll."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday June 24, 2005CE

commination

\kom-uh-NAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. A denunciation.
2. A threat of punishment.

Vishnevskaya's powerful story is full of ferocious, grandly operatic comminations of vicious authorities and toadying colleagues.
--Terry Teachout, review of Galina: A Russian Story, by Galina Vishnevskaya, National Review, March 22, 1985

At last the leaders of the Democratic Party have moved decisively, hauling out their ripest comminations and hurling them at -- no, not at George Bush.
--Alexander Cockburn, "No place in the Democratic Party," The Nation, March 31, 2003

An early copy had been seen by Anne Fine, our retiring Children's Laureate, and, as one of her final acts..., she issued a commination against it in the Guardian newspaper, buttressed by many spicy quotations.
--Brian Alderson, "Message in a bottle," Horn Book Magazine, September 1, 2003


Commination is derived from Latin comminatio, commination-, from comminari, "to threaten," from com-, int[ensive prefix + minari, "to threaten."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday June 25, 2005CE

philomath

\FIL-uh-math\, noun:
A lover of learning; a scholar.

It is precisely for the philomaths that universities ought to cater.
--Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies

"It's nothing to laugh about," he says. "Strange things happen in this country -- things that philosophers and other philomaths had never dreamed of."
--Tomek Tryzna, Miss Nobody


Philomath is from the Greek philomathes, "loving knowledge," from philos, "loving, fond" + mathein, "to learn, to understand."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday June 26, 2005CE

amative

\AM-uh-tiv\, adjective:
Pertaining to or disposed to love, especially sexual love; full of love; amorous.

Theoretically, any given left-kisser should meet more right-kissers and, over an amative lifetime, or even good year in junior high, be subtly pressured to shift to the right in order to land a wet one -- or just avoid a broken nose. No?
--Donald G. McNeil, Jr., "Pucker Up, Sweetie, and Tilt Right," New York Times, February 13, 2003

In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of another nap even more often than it does to amative imaginings, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding.
--"Touch of Spring Fever Makes Whole World Kin," Science News, May 23, 1931

Well, poetry has been erotic, or amative, or something of that sort -- at least a vast deal of it has -- ever since it stopped being epic.
--Helen Deutsch, "Death, desire and translation: on the poetry of Propertius," TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993


Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love," from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday June 27, 2005CE

callow

\KAL-oh\, adjective:
Immature; lacking adult perception, experience, or judgment.

Those who in later years did me harm I describe as I knew them then, and I beg any reader to remember that, although I was hardly callow, I was not yet wise in the ways of the world.
--Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost

George Black Jr was grateful that during his protracted courtship of Betty, his future father-in-law 'bore my callow unsophistication with benign indulgence'.
--Richard Siklos, Shades of Black

They watched in awe as Revere, at first a callow and unambitious youth, began to develop into a serious young man dedicated to books and devoted to his father.
--Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Saint," New Republic, December 13, 1999


Callow is from Old English calu, "featherless, bald."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday June 28, 2005CE

woebegone

\WOE-bee-gon\, adjective:
1. Beset or overwhelmed with woe; immersed in grief or sorrow; woeful.
2. Being in a sorry condition; dismal-looking; dilapidated; run-down.

Socrates, condemned to death by the people of Athens, prepares to drink a cup of hemlock, surrounded by woebegone friends.
--Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

This woebegone lot includes Henry, a real-estate developer whose dream project has, like his marriage, slipped into bankruptcy; Henry's sister, Wiloma, who has hurled herself headlong into the arms of a New Age church to survive her own divorce; and Henry and Wiloma's decrepit Uncle Brendan, a former monk whose faith has eroded along with his health, stranding him in a nursing home.
--Jennifer Howard, review of The Forms of Water, by Andrea Barrett, New York Times, June 13, 1993

After 40 years as a producer he thinks of himself as a battered, scarred but well-armoured animal, "like an old turtle"; and if such creatures could speak they would probably sound like [him], a bit woebegone but drolly unsurprised by life's vicissitudes.
--"Time for another Hugo hit," Times (London), May 22, 2000


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Woebegone is from Middle English wo begon, from wo (from Old English wa, used to express grief) + begon, past participle of begon, "to go about, to beset," from Old English began, bigan, from bi-, "around, about" + gan, "to go."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday June 29, 2005CE

lineament

\LIN-ee-uh-muhnt\, noun:
1. One of the outlines, exterior features, or distinctive marks of a body or figure, particularly of the face.
2. A distinguishing or characteristic feature; -- usually in the plural.

If she saw herself, even in her memory, she did not see the brightness that had been hers as a wife; she saw the lined and ageing woman she had become, as if these lineaments had been waiting to emerge since her features had first been formed.
--Anita Brookner, Visitors

Biography -- and, by definition, autobiography -- is the form of the moment. In the shape of a well-lived, well-told life we can discern the lineaments of the day and even, if the life to hand signifies more than itself, the age.
--Fred Inglis, "No Discouragement: An Autobiography," New Statesman, December 6, 1996

Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it--as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.
--Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist


Lineament comes from Latin lineamentum, "feature, lineament," from linea, "line."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday June 30, 2005CE

abscond

\ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:
To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.

The criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinion: he simply wants to abscond with his money or accomplish his mercenary task in the quickest and easiest way possible so that he may reap his reward and enjoy the fruits of his labours.
--Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

Pearl, now an orphan (her father having absconded shortly after her conception), has been taken to live with her great-aunt Margaret in the north of England.
--Zoe Heller, Everything You Know


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Abscond comes from Latin abscondere, "to conceal," from ab-, abs-, "away" + condere, "to put, to place."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday July 1, 2005CE

garrulous

\GAIR-uh-lus; GAIR-yuh-\, adjective:
1. Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative.
2. Wordy.

Without saying a single word she managed to radiate disapproval . . . the air seemed to grow heavy with it and the most garrulous talker would wilt and fall silent.
--Mark Amory, Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric

He was as garrulous as a magpie.
--Ferdinand Mount, Jem (and Sam)

The garrulous ancient was for once holding his tongue.
--William Black, Madcap Violet

Crammed with gossip, anecdotes, and confessions . . ., his garrulous, untidy narratives read like a good novel.
--James Atlas, "A Modern Whitman," The Atlantic, December 1984

He took a great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal: told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated speech.
--Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion II," The Atlantic, November 1877


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Garrulous is from Latin garrulus, from garrire, "to chatter, to babble."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday July 2, 2005CE

acumen

\uh-KYOO-muhn; AK-yuh-muhn\, noun:
Quickness of perception or discernment; shrewdness shown by keen insight.

With Leo's rare combination of editorial acumen and business know-how, he might have become a publishing giant had he not permitted his drinking and gambling to hold him back.
--Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac

The family store gave him a sharp business acumen -- acquired, he would say, by manning the cash register -- that few of his rivals possessed.
--David Schiff, "Who Was That Masked Composer?" The Atlantic, January 2000


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Acumen comes from Latin acumen, "the sharp point of something; sharpness of understanding; cunning," from acuere, "to sharpen."

Synonyms: Sharpness, sagacity, perspicacity

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday July 3, 2005CE

sentient

\SEN-shee-uhnt; -tee-; -shuhnt\, adjective:
1. Capable of perceiving by the senses; conscious.
2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.

I can remember very vividly the first time I became aware of my existence; how for the first time I realised that I was a sentient human being in a perceptible world.
--Lord Berners, First Childhood

Answers to such profound questions as whether we are the only sentient beings in the universe, whether life is the product of random accident or deeply rooted law, and whether there may be some sort of ultimate meaning to our existence, hinge on what science can reveal about the formation of life.
--Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle


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Sentient comes from Latin sentiens, "feeling," from sentire, "to discern or perceive by the senses."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday July 4, 2005CE

varicolored

\VER-ih-kuh-lurd\, adjective:
Having a variety of colors; of various colors.

Where a bottleneck of sky showed between the hills, dark and light clouds lay in alternating layers like varicolored liquid that would not mix.
--William Gay, The Long Home

Along with wild hogs, cattle, horses, and dogs, the varicolored wild African jungle fowl was domesticated early in our distant ancestors' spread around the globe.
--Buff Orpingtons, "Save the chickens!" Mother Earth News, December 10, 1996


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Varicolored is from vari- (from Latin varius, "various, diversified") + colored (from Latin color, "color, tint, hue.")

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday July 5, 2005CE

nostrum

\NOS-truhm\, noun:
1. A medicine of secret composition and unproven or dubious effectiveness; a quack medicine.
2. A usually questionable remedy or scheme; a cure-all.

James is put to work at country fairs, promoting a quack nostrum for pain relief.
--Patrick McGrath, "Heart of Ice," New York Times, April 13, 1997

His hopeful message attracted an audience eager to believe he had found the nostrum for all of society's ills.
--Warren Sloat, "Looking Back at 'Looking Backward': We Have Seen the Future and It Didn't Work," New York Times, January 17, 1988

Old ladies were always offering her their advice, recommending this or that nostrum.
--Charlotte Brontë, Shirley: A Tale

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday July 6, 2005CE

rictus

\RIK-tuhs\, noun:
1. The gape of the mouth, as of birds.
2. A gaping grin or grimace.

A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.
--James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

His belly swelled grotesquely, his hands curled, his cheeks puffed out, his mouth contorted in a rictus of pain and astonishment.
--Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

Then, as the sympathy and praise engulfed him, Hector would invariably roll over onto his back, legs in the air, his mouth twisted into an otherworldly rictus.
--Bruce McCall, "Writers Who Were Really Dogs," New York Times, June 5, 1994


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Rictus is from Latin rictus, "the open mouth," from ringi, "to show the teeth."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday July 7, 2005

ameliorate

uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt\, transitive verb:
To make better; to improve.

intransitive verb:
To grow better.

Among the pressures provoking these distresses were a father's financial inadequacy and a growing awareness that, by finding employment himself, he could ameliorate the family's exiguous circumstances.
--Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography

In the socially fluid and (until the crash of 1837) economically expansive 1830s, the legislature frequently appropriated public money to investigate social problems, forestall dependency, and ameliorate human suffering.
--Elisabeth Gitter, The Imprisoned Guest


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Ameliorate is derived from Latin ad + meliorare, "to make better," from melior, "better."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday July 8, 2005CE

somnolent

\SOM-nuh-luhnt\, adjective:
1. Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep.
2. Tending to cause sleepiness or drowsiness.

[I]n his case, restrained ultimately meant boring, as the audience was lulled into a somnolent state.
--Teresa Wiltz, "The Hip, the Flip, the Flop," Washington Post, March 3, 2000

Meanwhile, many a somnolent local authority has been stirred into action by Davidson's blunt approach.
--John Lucas, "Memorials are made of these on the eve of Remembrance Sunday," Daily Telegraph, November 7, 1998

Back in the somnolent heat of Bangalore he wrote a revealing novel entitled Savrola.
--David Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service


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Somnolent is from Latin somnolentus, from somnus, "sleep." A related word is insomnia (in-, "not" + somnus).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday July 9, 2005CE

mien

\MEEN\, noun:
1. Manner or bearing, especially as expressive of mood, attitude, or personality; demeanor.
2. Aspect; appearance.

He raised and answered the question with the dispassionate mien of a professor advising a student on a course of study.
--Edith Anderson, Love in Exile

For her part, Amy soon learned to cloak her self-assurance and pride in her achievements in a modest mien.
--Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian

Here Mnemosyne shows her true face, and she is no young beauty. Not for her the unlined mien of the younger Muses.
--Vera Schwarcz, Bridge Across Broken Time

JPHolding's mien is a snotty schoolgirl mean.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mien perhaps derives from French mine, "bearing, expression," from Breton min, "beak, snout," hence "a person's face."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday July 10, 2005CE

potable

\POH-tuh-buhl\, adjective:
Fit to drink; suitable for drinking; drinkable.

noun:
A potable liquid; a beverage, especially an alcoholic beverage.

If you drink from the spring, which is shaded by a fig tree, you will supposedly feel younger and more loving. Unfortunately, you may also feel sick: the government warns that the water is not potable.
--Gene Burns, "The Stuff of Myths," The Atlantic, September 1999

The park has no showers or potable drinking water--we picked up bottled water in Kaunakakai.
--Christopher Cottrell, "Molokai's Big Empty," Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2001

He indicates the places for peculiar edibles, and exquisite potables.
--Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature

Also from California, some other off-the-beaten-path potables: the 1994 Gallo-Sonoma "Barrelli Creek" Valdiguie and the 1995 Pellegrini Carignane.
--Michael Lonsford, "Potables will suit penny-pinching buyers," Houston Chronicle, November 20, 1997


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Potable comes from Late Latin potabilis, from Latin potare, "to drink."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday July 11, 2005CE

temerarious

\tem-uh-RAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
Recklessly or presumptuously daring; rash.

Becket's slayers insist that the king had indeed authorized or directed murder, an interpretation fortified by Henry's known enmity toward the temerarious priest for protesting the subordination of ecclesiastical to secular authority.
--Bruce Fein, "Free speech or call to violence?" Washington Times, April 10, 2001

I have confessed myself a temerarious theologian, and in that passage from boyhood to manhood I ranged widely in my search for some permanently satisfying Truth.
--H. G. Wells, The New Machiavelli


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Temerarious comes from Latin temerarius, "rash," from temere, "rashly, heedlessly."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday July 12, 2005CE

introspection

\in-truh-SPEK-shuhn\, noun:
The act or process of self-examination; contemplation of one's own thoughts and feelings; a looking inward.

Bill could be harshly self-critical, while Mac -- though not oblivious of his mistakes -- had no time for introspection.
--Kai Bird, The Color of Truth

Romanes acknowledged that to interpret an animal's thought processes this way required a heavy dose of inference from our own mental patterns, which we access through introspection.
--Stephen Budiansky, If a Lion Could Talk

Religion absorbed Bailey, and following a period of intense introspection, he began a long quest to become a Congregationalist minister.
--Thomas G. Dyer, Secret Yankees


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Introspection derives from the past participle of Latin introspicere, "to look inside," from intro-, "to the inside" + specere, "to look."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday July 13, 2005CE

malfeasance

\mal-FEE-zuhn(t)s\, noun:
Wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.

But more often than not the same board members who were removed by the chancellor for malfeasance subsequently manage to get reelected in a political process that defies any form of accountability.
--Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, New Schools for a New Century

Cagney family conjecture was that Grandpop Nelson, with the temper of a dozen Furies, had likely committed some malfeasance in his native town forcing him to change his name when he left.
--John McCabe, Cagney


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Malfeasance is derived from Old French malfaisant, present participle of malfaire, "to do evil," from Latin malefacere, from male, "badly" + facere, "to do."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday July 14, 2005CE

fealty

\FEE-uhl-tee\, noun:
1. Fidelity to one's lord; the feudal obligation by which the tenant or vassal was bound to be faithful to his lord.
2. The oath by which this obligation was assumed.
3. Fidelity; allegiance; faithfulness.

He was re-elected Governor in 1855, and his administration of the State affairs, both in that and the preceding term of office, was marked by a regard for the public interest rather than party fealty.
--"Andrew Johnson Dead," New York Times, August 1, 1875

Barbour believed Christian conservatives represented a critical constituency, and he looked for opportunities to display his fealty to them.
--Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein, Storming the Gates

The aristocratic O'Sullivans were enriched in return for their promise of fealty to the mighty Democratic party and its rising new leader.
--Edward L. Widmer, Young America

Whether exploited by traditional religions or political religions, psychological totalism -- the unquestioning fealty to one God, one truth, and one right, embodied in one faith, one cause, one party -- has everywhere provided the tinder of persecution.
--Jack Beatty, "The Tyranny of Belief," The Atlantic, September 13, 2000


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Fealty comes from Old French fealté, from Latin fidelitas, "fidelity," from fidelis, "faithful," from fides, "faith," from fidere, "to trust."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday July 15, 2005CE

atelier \at-l-YAY\, noun:
A workshop; a studio.

A garage in Montparnasse served as Leo's atelier, and there he labored on his huge triptychs, mixing his paints in buckets and applying them with a kitchen mop.
--Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version

After Groton, he would attend the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, then settle in Paris, rent an atelier and paint.
--Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist

His atelier was the headquarters of a lively little cottage industry.
--Rollene W. Saal, "Listening for Voices That are Muted," New York Times, January 25, 1987


Atelier comes from French, from Old French astelier, "carpenter's shop," from astele, "splinter," from Late Latin astella, alteration of Latin astula, itself an alteration of assula, "a shaving, a chip," diminutive of assis, "board."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday July 16, 2005CE

apparition

\ap-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:
1. A ghost; a specter; a phantom.
2. The thing appearing; the sudden or unexpected appearance of something or somebody.
3. The act of becoming visible; appearance.
4. (Astronomy) The first appearance of a star or other luminary after having been invisible or obscured; -- opposed to occultation.

Boris staggers into the noblemen's council chamber, shouting at an apparition that only he can see.
--Algis Valiunas, "Immodest Ambition," Weekly Standard, June 24, 2000

Angered, the distraught apparition returned some nights later in a fresher, even more vivid dream, wearing the same ragged gown as before.
--James H. Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo

I lazily looked out the window and saw what seemed to be a comet hanging in the western sky, its bright tail calling our attention. The other children teased me as I wondered aloud how we would report this wondrous apparition.
--David H. Levy, Comets: Creators and Destroyers

Ezra Pound had a moment of recognition that inspired him to write a two-line poem "In a station at the Metro," which comprised these brief sentences: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals, on a wet, black bough."
--Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest


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Apparition derives from Latin apparitio, from apparere, from ad-, "to" + parere, "to be visible, to appear."

Synonyms: ghost, phantom, revenant, specter, wraith.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday July 17, 2005CE

propinquity

\pruh-PING-kwih-tee\, noun:
1. Nearness in place; proximity.
2. Nearness in time.
3. Nearness of relation; kinship.

Following the race he took umbrage at Stewart's rough driving so early in the day, and the propinquity of the two drivers' haulers allowed the Kid to express his displeasure up close and personal.
--Mark Bechtel, "Getting Hot," Sports Illustrated, December 6, 2000

Technologically it is the top service among the women's fighting forces, and it also has the appeal of propinquity to gallant young airmen.
--"After Boadicea -- Women at War," Time Europe, October 9, 1939

I was stunned by the propinquity of the events: I had never been in the same room with anyone who was later murdered.
--Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace

Schultz came by her position through propinquity: her husband, older by 12 years, used to play music with De Maiziere and afterward chat about politics.
--Johanna McGeary, "Challenge In the East," Time, November 8, 1990


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Propinquity derives from Latin propinquitas, from propinquus, "near, neighboring," from prope, "near."

Synonyms: proximity, vicinity, nearness.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday July 18, 2005CE

ersatz

\AIR-sahts; UR-sats\, adjective:
Being a substitute or imitation, usually an inferior one.

Meanwhile, a poor copy was erected in the courtyard; many an unsuspecting traveler paid homage to that ersatz masterpiece.
--Edith Pearlman, "Girl and Marble Boy," The Atlantic, December 29, 1999

All we can create in that way is an ersatz culture, the synthetic product of those factories we call variously universities, colleges or museums.
--Sir Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art

Then there was the sheaf of hostile letters larded with ersatz sympathy, strained sarcasm or pure spite.
--"Time for GAA to become a persuader," Irish Times, Monday, April 13, 1998


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Ersatz derives from German Ersatz, "a substitute."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday July 19, 2005CE

flummox

\FLUM-uhks\, transitive verb:
To confuse; to perplex.

And when a poll's results happen to upset the conventional wisdom, or confound the experts, or flummox the pundits, then that's a poll to remember.
--Michael Kagay, "Unexpected Results Make for Memorable Polls," New York Times, March 23, 2000

The chronological order of the Stuart, Hanover, Lancaster and Tudor British royal houses had me flummoxed.
--Sara Ivry, "Game Show Wannabe: I Coulda Been a Millionaire," New York Times, February 27, 2000

Flummoxed by the surreality of history and the mind-boggling changes unleashed by the 60's, many writers in that era became minimalists, withdrawing, turtlelike, inside their own homes and heads.
--Michiko Kakutani, "New Wave of Writers Reinvents Literature," New York Times, April 22, 2000


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The origin of flummox is unknown.

Synonyms: puzzle, baffle, bewilder, dumbfound, confound, perplex.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday July 20, 2005CE

iota

\eye-OH-tuh\, noun:
1. The ninth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding to the English i.
2. A very small quantity or degree; a jot; a bit.

Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler taught us that the Earth moves and rotates while the heavens stand still, but this did not change by one iota our direct perception that the heavens do move and that the Earth does not budge.
--Julian Barbour, The End of Time

He has not moderated his demands one iota in seven years.
--Charles Krauthammer, "The Last Deal, or No Deal," Time, July 17, 2000

I couldn't help feeling that in spite of every iota of evidence to the contrary, something was about to happen.
--Jane Smiley, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton


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Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. The word jot also derives from iota.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday July 21, 2005CE

ennui

\on-WEE\, noun:
A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.

He glanced at his heavily laden bookshelves. Nothing there appealed to him. The ennui seemed to have settled into his very bones.
--Amanda Quick, With This Ring

He was often off sick or playing hooky and suffered from a kind of ennui, a mixture of listlessness and willful melancholy.
--Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (translated by Barbara Bray)

Yet if she felt anything it was ennui, . . . the grey sky and the cold wind obliterating every impulse she might have felt to seek comfort in another climate, another landscape.
--Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly

He was ashamed and unhappy, adrift with a senseless ennui.
--Brian Moynahan, Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned


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Ennui is from the French, from Old French enui, "annoyance," from enuier, "to annoy, to bore," from the Latin phrase in odium, "in hatred or dislike."

Synonyms: tedium, boredom, listlessness, weariness.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday July 22, 2005CE

assuage

(uh-SWAYJ), verb:
1. To make milder or less severe; to reduce the intensity of; to ease; to relieve.
2. To appease; to satisfy.
3. To soothe or calm; to pacify.

His generosity toward a group of young graffiti writers was, perhaps, one way to assuage his guilt.
--Phoebe Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art

Even with the requirement of lay review boards, the code will fail to assuage concerns of the church's most vocal critics that the unseemly methods of the past won't repeat themselves.
--"Bishops take step in right direction," Chicago Sun-Times, November 15, 2002

If only she would come outside
and let us meet her--face to face;
perhaps our words could turn
her anger's tide, perhaps
we could, if not erase,
at least assuage her rage.
--Euripides, Medea, edited by David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie

In one final attempt to assuage fears, the agency claims that these audits will comprise only "1.1 percent of the total audit-related contacts planned for the year."
--Daniel J. Pilla, "IRS prepares to intensify its kinder, gentler audits," Insight on the News, April 29, 2002

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday July 23, 2005CE

regale

\rih-GAY(uh)L\, transitive verb:
1. To entertain with something that delights.
2. To entertain sumptuously with fine food and drink.

intransitive verb:
To feast.

noun:
1. A sumptuous feast.
2. A choice food; a delicacy.
3. Refreshment.

If I've been away, and the boys do remember to ask about my trip, I remark on their thoughtfulness by saying, 'Thanks for asking!' and then regale them with stories about my journey.
--Lucy Calkins, Raising Lifelong Learners: A Parent's Guide

He might also regale them with tales of how his Magic team beat Jordan's Bulls, 108-102, in Game 6 to win their four-of-seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal series before a stunned crowd of 24,332 tonight at the United Center.
--"Bulls Burst in the Air as Magic Moves On," New York Times, May 19, 1995

Levin settled his guests in the dense, cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps purposely put there for visitors to the bee-house who might be afraid of the bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to regale them with.
--Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett


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Regale comes from French régaler, "to entertain." It is related to gallant.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday July 24, 2005CE

eke

\EEK\, transitive verb:
1. To gain or supplement with great effort or difficulty -- used with 'out'.
2. To increase or make last by being economical -- used with 'out'.

When the PRI unites around a candidate and the two opposition parties divide the rest of the vote, the ruling party can usually eke out a victory.
--Mary Beth Sheridan, "PRI Wins Mexico State Governor's Race, but Loses Smaller Stronghold," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1999

Inevitably, the prodigious footnotes get in the way of what is, basically, a simple parable. Like the wide margins the publishers use to eke out a skimpy text, they make the novel seem bigger than it is.
--James MacBride "What Did Myra Want?" New York Times, February 18, 1968

Although life was hard it was not unendurable, and the rugged and resourceful villagers eked out a living on the thin crust of the soil.
--Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet

But the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies managed to eke out a gain, rising 0.04 points, to 456.55.
--Kenneth N. Gilpin, "Tuesday's Stocks: Selloff Leaves Stocks Slightly Lower," New York Times, July 7, 1999


Eke is from Old English ecan, "to increase."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday July 25, 2005CE

badinage

\bad-n-AHZH\, noun:
Light, playful talk; banter.

Ken was determined to put the cares of the world behind him and do what he loved best -- having a few celebrity friends round and enjoying an evening of anecdote and badinage over a bottle or two of vintage bubbly and some tasty cheese straws.
--Bel Littlejohn, "My moustache man," The Guardian, March 24, 2000

The badinage was inconsequential, reduced to who knew whom and wasn't the weather glorious in St. Tropez, or the Bahamas, Hawaii, or Hong Kong?
--Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Countdown


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Badinage comes from French, from badiner, "to trifle, to joke," badin, "playful, jocular."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday July 26, 2005CE

indelible

\in-DEL-uh-buhl\, adjective:
1. That cannot be removed, erased, or washed away.
2. Making marks that cannot easily be removed or erased.
3. Incapable of being forgotten; memorable.

It was part of his image, indelible as the ink stains under the breast pocket.
--Mark Childress, Gone for Good

In a sense, these years were like a blur of hunger, a time without roots or a sense of stability that made an indelible mark and colored his every move years later.
--Marcos Bretón and José Luis Villegas, Away Games

It had been an indelible performance, an astonishing display of spiritual determination; he had done nothing less than give a clinic in what set him apart from everyone else in his profession.
--David Halberstam, Playing for Keeps

Lore would have it that he lost only once before he drew an indelible lesson about gambling and life.
--Sally Denton and Roger Morris, The Money and the Power


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Indelible is from Latin indelebilis, from in-, "not" + delebilis, "that can be obliterated or destroyed," from delere, "to blot out, to efface, to destroy."

[dizzle]

Good word, I don't use that one quite often enough ---- I think perhaps if we find users using indelible in a post today that we should send them some pearls.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Here's one you don't see everyday, either.

Word of the Day for Wednesday July 27, 2005CE

volte-face

\vawlt-FAHS; vawl-tuh-\, noun:
An about-face; a reversal, as in policy or opinion.

I was eventually eased out of the organisation, but not before British policy had performed a volte-face on Cyprus, the colony had gained independence, and yesterday's political wisdoms had suddenly been repudiated.
--George Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy

In a sudden volte-face, he seemed to accept the agreement; then, when the besieged forces came out to embark, he had their barges held in port.
--Richard Eder, "Just Wild About Horatio," New York Times, November 7, 1999

[S]uddenly confronted with the imminent ruin of Angela Lyne, his former mistress, who is drinking herself to death out of loneliness, he does the first real volte-face of his life by returning to her.
--L.E. Sissman, "Evelyn Waugh: The Height of His Powers," The Atlantic, March 1972


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Volte-face comes from French, from Italian voltafaccia, from volta, "turn" + faccia, "face."

[dizzle]

LA - in a recent email (nothing to do with TWeb) to someone I had mentioned a promise that was reneged. Would it have been correct to use this word? Give me a potential sentence? (if someone is breaking a [promise, the least I can do is make them have to go to dictionary.com :grin:)

[Lazy Agnostic]

LA - in a recent email (nothing to do with TWeb) to someone I had mentioned a promise that was reneged. Would it have been correct to use this word? Give me a potential sentence? (if someone is breaking a [promise, the least I can do is make them have to go to dictionary.com )Yes, renege means to go back on a promise but also to turn down a tentative agreement. In a game such as Hearts, if one plays a non-suited card whilst holding a card of the suit led, it is called a renege.

[dizzle]

But could I use the volte-face word? It seems like a great pun to say someone did an volte-face.

[Lazy Agnostic]

But could I use the volte-face word? It seems like a great pun to say someone did an volte-face.Ah, I misread the ambiguous antecedent.

Volte-face is a turnaround of a policy or a stated preference, not from a promise. Can you explain where the pun might be? I'm not catching it.

Rahab is a great lover of puns in English; she laughs uproarisously at ones which would make a fourth-grader groan. I once made one in French and she was so proud of me.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday July 28, 2005CE

kismet

\KIZ-met; -mit\, noun:
Destiny; fate.

It's pure kismet when these two find each other.
--Janet Maslin, "'The Mighty': Talents to Make Buddies -- Walking and Wisecracking," New York Times, October 9, 1998

Winning wasn't essential, though it seemed kismet that Cone, for a second straight year, came back from injury to pitch in a game that clinched a bit of postseason bliss.
--Claire Smith, "Cone Puts the Yankees' Minds at Ease," New York Times, September 21, 1997

Applewhite's writings are heavy with kismet: he said he was visiting a hospitalized friend when Mrs. Nettles entered the room and their eyes locked in a shared recognition of esoteric secrets.
--Barry Bearak, "Eyes on Glory: Pied Pipers of Heaven's Gate," New York Times, April 28, 1997


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Kismet comes (via Turkish) from Arabic qismah, "portion, lot."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday July 29, 2005CE

refulgent

\rih-FUL-juhnt\, adjective:
Shining brightly; radiant; brilliant; resplendent.

If Moore was not quite a burned-out case, his once refulgent light flickered only dimly in his sad last years.
--Martin Filler, "The Spirit of '76," New Republic, July 9, 2001

With its improbable towers tilting against themselves and its titanium sheathing in full refulgent glow, it brings on a question that the world has not enjoyed asking itself since the first moon landings: If this is possible, what isn't?
--Richard Lacayo, "The Frank Gehry Experience," Time, June 26, 2000

To the Renaissance, they [the Middle Ages] were nothing but a dank patch of history, a barren stretch of time between luminous antiquity and an equally refulgent present.
--Justin Davidson, "On the Record," Newsday, January 19, 1997


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Refulgent comes from the present participle of Latin refulgere, "to flash back, to shine brightly," from re-, "back" + fulgere, "to shine."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday July 30, 2005CE

caesura

\sih-ZHUR-uh; -ZUR-\, noun;
plural caesuras or caesurae \sih-ZHUR-ee; -ZUR-ee\:


1. A break or pause in a line of verse, usually occurring in the middle of a line, and indicated in scanning by a double vertical line; for example, "The proper study || of mankind is man" [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man].
2. Any break, pause, or interruption.

After an inconclusive day spent discussing the caesura of "Sonnet"'s opening line, Luke and his colleagues went for cocktails at Strabismus.
--Martin Amis, Heavy Water and Other Stories

The crucial event of the Robedaux family occurs offscreen, in a narrative caesura between the film's two "acts."
--Richard Corliss, "The Patter of Little Footes," Time, May 13, 1985

Say her name today in the right circles and you'll notice a sudden intake of breath, a caesura of pure awe.
--Michael Dirda, "In which our intrepid columnist visits the Modern Language Association convention and reflects on what he found there," Washington Post, January 28, 2001

During the historical caesura between the total destruction of Aquileia and the seventh-century foundation of the city of Heraclea as the first political capital of the second Venice, the refugees lived on Grado and the other islands, just as Cassiodorus had seen them: humbly, simply, and by the toil of their hands.
--Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity


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Caesura comes from Latin caesura, "a cutting off, a division, a stop," from the past participle of caedere, "to cut."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday July 31, 2005CE

wastrel

\WAY-struhl\, noun:
1. A person who wastes, especially one who squanders money; a spendthrift.
2. An idler; a loafer; a good-for-nothing.

Horace Liveright, the book publisher of the 1920's, is usually recalled in literary memoirs as a charming wastrel, a gambler who always saw a winning bet as a chance to raise his stake in whatever game he was losing at.
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Disastrous Life of a Pioneer in Hype," New York Times, July 27, 1995

Thad risked everything, including his farm, to set Abner up in the grocery business in the town of Hargrave, only to have Abner turn wastrel and lose everything.
--John Kenny Crane, "Good Fellers," New York Times, November 15, 1992

Was her father . . . the brilliant, glamorous figure she remembered, or the alcoholic wastrel his own brother described?
--Jean Strouse, "Making the Facts Obey," New York Times, May 24, 1992


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Wastrel is from waste + -rel (as in scoundrel).

[dizzle]

ahhhh you wascally wastrel

I like it

[dizzle]

Ah, I misread the ambiguous antecedent.

Volte-face is a turnaround of a policy or a stated preference, not from a promise. Can you explain where the pun might be? I'm not catching it.

Well in this non-TWeb related incident there were certain ground rules that were in place - an event happened that was outside of those rules. The person in charge of enforcement agreed and said it would not be allowed. Then later allowed it without changing the ground rules, but apparently ignoring them.

So I can say he did a Volte-face (which is intended to be a pun on about-face) - a 180

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday August 1, 2005CE

circumlocution

\sir-kuhm-loh-KYOO-shuhn\, noun:
The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language.

Dickens gave us the classic picture of official heartlessness: the government Circumlocution Office, burial ground of hope in "Little Dorrit."
--"'Balance of Hardships,'" New York Times, September 28, 1999

In a delightful circumlocution, the Fed chairman said that "investors are probably revisiting expectations of domestic earnings growth".
--"US exuberance is proven 'irrational,'" Irish Times, October 31, 1997

Courtesies and circumlocutions are out of place, where the morals, health, lives of thousands are at stake.
--Charles Kingsley, Letters

Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
--H.W. Fowler, The King's English


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Circumlocution comes from Latin circumlocutio, circumlocution-, from circum, "around" + loquor, loqui, "to speak."

Circumlocution office is a term of ridicule for a governmental office where business is delayed by passing through the hands of different officials. It comes from Dickens' Little Dorrit:

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving--How not to do it.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday August 2, 2005CE

Zeitgeist

\TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst\, noun:
[Often capitalized] The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

The best writers of that predawn era were originals who had the zeitgeist by the tail.
--Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century

As most critics and all professors of cultural theory note, Madonna is nothing if not a skilled reader of the zeitgeist.
--Techno 'rave' just the same old Madonna, Chicago Sun-Times, March 3, 1998

Besides, the zeitgeist seems to be working against any hope of Hormel officials to limit...the usage of [the word] 'spam' on the Web.
--Gracious Concession on Internet 'Spam', New York Times, August 17, 1998

Like other figures who seem, in retrospect, to have been precociously representative of their times, Kerouac was not simply responding to the Zeitgeist, but to the peculiarly twisted facts of his own upbringing.
--Jack Kerouac: The Beat Goes On, New York Times, December 30, 1979


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Zeitgeist is from the German: Zeit, "time" + Geist, "spirit."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday August 3, 2005CE

affable

\AF-uh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Easy to speak to; receiving others kindly and conversing with them in a free and friendly manner.
2. Gracious; benign.

Nonetheless, in view of the fact that Leon stated in the warrant that I was good-looking, cheerful and affable, they exhorted me to make myself appear to be taciturn, melancholy and ugly.
--Susana Rotker (Editor), The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa De Mier

Johnny's father, while strict with his children, usually was affable and relaxed.
--Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams

There was even more joking than usual Saturday afternoon; he seemed to be in a particularly affable mood.
--"Presley Treats Fans to His Best," New York Times, July 21, 1975


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Affable is from Latin affabilis, from affari, "to speak to," from ad-, "to" + fari, "to speak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday August 4, 2005CE

parsimonious

\par-suh-MOH-nee-uhs\, adjective:
Sparing in expenditure; frugal to excess.

His mother became increasingly parsimonious over the years, and even if there were a good doctor around she did not like to pay one.
--Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life

Lehmann was famously parsimonious, and used postwar shortages as a cover for his economies.
--John Richardson, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

He was extremely parsimonious with his words, parceling them out softly in a deliberate monotone as if each were a precious gem never to be squandered.
--Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire


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Parsimonious is the adjective form of parsimony, from Latin parsimonia, "thrift, parsimony," from parsus, past participle of parcere, "to spare, to be sparing, to economize."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday August 5, 2005CE

beholden

\bih-HOHL-duhn\, adjective:
Obliged; bound in gratitude; indebted.

Kate was quite fond of him and knew he was grateful to her for all the help and hospitality she and Oliver had given him during his period of gloom and puzzlement after his wife's defection, but she did not want him to feel beholden to her.
--Mary Sheepshanks, Picking Up the Pieces

The likely new government, which draws only a negligible level of support from rural areas, will be much less beholden to the farming interests than any government in the past two decades.
--"Reforming The EU Budget," Irish Times, October 8, 1998

Peter did not intend to be beholden to any of his relatives unless they proved their worth.
--Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great


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Beholden is derived from Old English behealden, "to hold firmly," from be-, intensive prefix + healden, "to hold."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday August 6, 2005CE

waylay

\WAY-lay\, transitive verb:
1. To lie in wait for and attack from ambush.
2. To approach or stop (someone) unexpectedly.

When his mother praised certain well-behaved and neatly dressed boys in the village, Jung was filled with hate for them, and would waylay and beat them up.
--Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung

He returned to her night after night, until his brother, Frank, waylaid him one evening outside Harriet's cabin and beat him bloody.
--Lynne Olson, Freedom's Daughters

Furious and humiliated, the boy waylaid Martha after school.
--Julian Barnes, England, England

The women, who hold wicker baskets filled with flowers and incense, are out to waylay tourists and to entice them into buying the blooms and scents.
--Jacob Heilbrunn, "Mao More Than Ever," New Republic, April 21, 1997


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Waylay comes from way (from Old English weg) + lay (from Old English lecgan).

Synonyms: ambush, assail, bushwhack, set upon.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday August 7, 2005GE

castigate

\KAS-tuh-gayt\, transitive verb:
To punish severely; also, to chastise verbally; to rebuke; to criticize severely.

It was not good enough to castigate him for his sins.
--Frank Deford, "Knight is too easy a target," Sports Illustrated, May 25, 2000

Out in the world they marvelled that they were found acceptable to others, after years of being castigated as unsatisfactory, disappointing.
--Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly

Though castigated by the Catholic Church, illegitimacy was scarcely an unusual feature of Austrian country life.
--Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris

For my lack of missionary zeal, I have been castigated by a few militant atheists, who are irritated by my disinclination to try persuading people to abandon their faith that God exists (while some religious people regard me as a militant atheist intent on promoting worship of unspecified "secular idols").
--Wendy Kaminer, Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials


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Castigate comes from Latin castigare, "to purify, to correct, to punish," from castus, "pure."

Synonyms: punish, chastise, rebuke, reprove, reprimand.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday August 8, 2005CE

somniferous

\som-NIF-uhr-uhs\, adjective:
Causing or inducing sleep.

He has gone outside the usual channels of stodgy academic journals and somniferous lectures.
--David Gibson, "Separating Christ from Christianity," The Record (Bergen County, NJ), June 9, 1996

And some cities are eschewing the somniferous art museum to invent newer, hipper institutions that honor our fascination with contemporary culture: technology, space flight, and even rock 'n' roll.
--Heidi Landecker, "Art Transplant," Architecture, March 1998

Filmed on location in England and using quotes from letters and other documents of Pilgrim leaders, this video is rich in detail and information. Its major drawback--and one that may affect its effectiveness with its intended student audience--is that it's as dull as dillweed, primarily due to a somniferous narration.
--J. Carlson, "The Mayflower Pilgrims," Video Librarian, November 11, 1996


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Somniferous comes from Latin somnifer, "sleep-bringing," from somnus, "sleep" + ferre, "to bring."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday August 9, 2005CE

captious

\KAP-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Marked by a disposition to find fault or raise objections.
2. Calculated to entrap or confuse, as in an argument.

The most common among those are captious individuals who can find nothing wrong with their own actions but everything wrong with the actions of everybody else.
--"In-Closet Hypocrites," Atlanta Inquirer, August 15, 1998

Mr Bowman had, I think, been keeping Christmas Eve, and was a little inclined to be captious: at least, he was not on foot very early, and to judge from what I could hear, neither men nor maids could do anything to please him.
--M. R. James, The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories

Most authors would prefer readers such as Roiphe over captious academic critics.
--Steven Moore, "Old Flames," Washington Post, November 26, 2000

With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions.
--Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution


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Captious is derived from Latin captiosus, "sophistical, captious, insidious," from captio, "a taking, a fallacy, sophism," from capere, "to take, to seize."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday August 10, 2005CE

sojourn

\SOH-juhrn; so-JURN\, intransitive verb:
To stay as a temporary resident; to dwell for a time.

noun:
A temporary stay.

Though he has sojourned in Southwold, wandered in Walberswick, dabbled in Dunwich, ambled through Aldeburgh and blundered through Blythburgh, Smallweed has never set foot in Orford.
--Smallweed, "The trouble with hope," The Guardian, April 14, 2001

Yet he is now an accomplished student and speaker of English, a literary editor and television producer, someone who has sojourned in Paris and attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
--William H. Gass, "Family and Fable in Galilee," New York Times, April 17, 1988

As chance would have it, Degas's five-month sojourn in New Orleans coincided with an extraordinarily contentious period in the stormy political history of the city.
--Christopher Benfey, Degas in New Orleans

During that long sojourn in Sligo, from 1870 to 1874, he had lessons from a much loved nursemaid, Ellie Connolly; later he received coaching in spelling and dictation from Esther Merrick, a neighbour who lived in the Sexton's house by St John's, and who read him quantities of verse.
--R. F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life


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Sojourn comes from Old French sojorner, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin subdiurnare, from Latin sub-, "under, a little over" + Late Latin diurnus, "lasting for a day," from Latin dies, "day."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday August 11, 2005CE

nugatory

\NOO-guh-tor-ee; NYOO-\, adjective:
1. Trifling; insignificant; inconsequential.
2. Having no force; inoperative; ineffectual.

Tygiel's forte as a historian is his eye for what may appear nugatory or marginal but, when focused upon, illuminates the temper of a given moment.
--Roberto Gonzlez Echevarria, "From Ruth to Rotisserie," New York Times, July 2, 2000

Jacoby's offense was no offense -- or an error so nugatory as to demand no more than a one-sentence explanation.
--Lance Morrow, "In Boston, a Foolish Consistency of Little Minds," Time, July 19, 2000

Socialism no longer restrains; trade unions do so much less than they did; moral inhibitions over the acquisition and display of wealth are nugatory.
--John Lloyd, "If not socialism, what will persuade the rich willingly to pay more taxes to help the poor and preserve a decent society?" New Statesman, August 2, 1996


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Nugatory comes from Latin nugatorius, from nugari, "to trifle," from nugae, "jests, trifles."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday August 12, 2005CE

ubiquitous

\yoo-BIK-wih-tuhs\, adjective:
Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time.

In spite of the ubiquitous beggars, gypsies and 'naked urchins', Skopje was an attractive town in the early part of the century.
--Anne Sebba, Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image

Airborne gambling, shopping and videoconferencing may all be ubiquitous in the future.
--Peter H. Lewis, "The Cybercompanion," New York Times, February 7, 1999

Adding to my perplexity, this lack of clarity even appeared evident among the best and brightest sociologists, historians, literary scholars, art historians, those working in cultural studies, American Studies, and journalism; the problem looked to be ubiquitous.
--Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes

Before Tarzan, nobody understood just how big, how ubiquitous, how marketable a star could be.
--John Taliaferro, Tarzan Forever


Ubiquitous derives, via French, from Latin ubique, "everywhere," from ubi, "where." The noun form is ubiquity.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday August 13, 2005CE

tryst

\TRIST; TRYST\, noun:
An appointment (as between lovers) to meet; also, an appointed place or time of meeting.

intransitive verb:
To mutually agree to meet at a certain place; to keep a tryst.

And it bothers me that I begin to worry if she's planning a tryst with my handsome neighbour.
--Anita Nair, The Better Man

Having left a "Dear John" letter for her husband on the kitchen table, she set off to the airport, where she waited, and waited. Of course, Henry had entirely forgotten about the tryst, and she had to return home crestfallen.
--"The serial seducer who took Amis's wife," Times (London), May 17, 2000

Once Nick goes into the kitchen to tryst with Martha, it is Ms. Kurtz's turn to let loose with some fireworks.
--Frank Rich, Hot Seat

Scientists are hoping the cosmos will bear witness to a romantic rendezvous today as a spacecraft attempts a Valentine's Day "tryst" with an asteroid called Eros.
--Nigel Hawkes, "Eros beckons spacecraft for cosmic tryst," Times (London), February 14, 2000


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Tryst is from Middle English triste, tryste, "a station to which game was driven (in hunting)," from Old French triste, "a station to which game was driven, a watch post," probably of Scandinavian origin.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for tryst

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday August 14, 2005CE

pari passu

PAIR-ih-PASS-oo\, adverb:
At an equal pace or rate.

Expand the state and [its] destructive capacity necessarily expands too, pari passu.
--Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties

Independent hedge funds can sell their holdings in a stock all at once, but if a hedge fund is part of a mutual fund company, it generally must sell pari passu . . . with the company's mutual funds that hold the same stock, constraining flexibility.
--Geraldine Fabrikant, "Should You Bristle at These Hedges?" New York Times, November 8, 1998


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Pari passu literally means "with equal step," from Latin pari, ablative of par, "equal" + passu, ablative of passus, "step."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday August 15, 2005CE

enmity

\EN-mih-tee\, noun:
Hatred; ill will; hostile or unfriendly disposition.

I learned, of course, . . . that the flames of infatuation can quickly become ashes of enmity and contempt.
--Kathleen Norris, The Virgin of Bennington

In the course of our conversation he reverted to yesterday's aphorism about it being our joint task to guide our two peoples out of their old enmity into new amity.
--Charles Kessler (editor and translator), Berlin in Lights

There were also always those I rubbed the wrong way (sometimes to the point of outright enmity) by being too brash or too arrogant or too ambitious or too precociously successful -- or by not being inhibited or tactful enough to refrain from writing about my career.
--Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends


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Enmity derives from Old French enemistié, ultimately from Latin inimicus, "an enemy," from in-, "not" + amicus, "friend," from amare, "to love."

Synonyms: animosity, antipathy, hostility, rancor.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday August 16, 2005CE

numinous

\NOO-min-uhs; NYOO-\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to a numen; supernatural.
2. Indicating or suggesting the presence of a god; divine; holy.
3. Inspiring awe and reverence; spiritual.

Smoking is a ritual, and it has all the numinous force of a ritual.
--Thomas W. Laqueur, The New Republic, September 18, 1995

All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure, etc.
--W. H. Auden, "Secular Hobbitism" review of The Fellowship of the Ring, by J. R. R. Tolkien, New York Times

Our culture is not much concerned with the numinous, but in language we preserve many of the marks of a culture that is.
--Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say

My sense of the numinous is generally keenest upstate, in the fields and forest that surround my old schoolhouse.
--Winifred Gallagher, Working on God


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Numinous is from Latin numen, literally a "nod of the head" (as in giving a command), hence "divine power."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday August 17, 2005CE

dilatory

\DIL-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:
1. Tending to put off what ought to be done at once; given to procrastination.
2. Marked by procrastination or delay; intended to cause delay; -- said of actions or measures.

I am inclined to be dilatory, and if I had not enjoyed extraordinary luck in life and love I might have been living with my mother at that very moment, doing nothing.
--Carroll O'Connor, I Think I'm Outta Here

And what is a slumlord? He is not a man who own expensive property in fashionable neighborhoods, but one who owns only rundown property in the slums, where the rents are lowest and the where the payment is most dilatory, erratic and undependable.
--Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson


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Dilatory is from Latin dilatorius, from dilator, "a dilatory person, a loiterer," from dilatus, past participle of differre, "to delay, to put off," from dis-, "apart, in different directions" + ferre, "to carry."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday August 18, 2005CE

parley

\PAR-lee\, noun:
A conference or discussion, especially with an enemy, as with regard to a truce or other matters.

The government recognized his knack for parleying with tribes, and it sent him all over the West.
--Geoffrey O'Gara, What You See in Clear Water

Whether the Indians came out to parley or, seeing that the fort was about to fall, came out to surrender is unclear.
--Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life

In case of Servia's non-compliance with the ultimatum the army will invade the kingdom without further parley.
--"Austria Ready to Invade Servia, Sends Ultimatum," New York Times, July 24, 1914


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Parley comes from Old French parlée, from parler, "to speak," from Medieval Latin parabolare, from Late Latin parabola, "a proverb, a parable, a similitude," from Greek parabole, "a comparison, a placing beside," from paraballein, "to throw beside, hence to compare," from para-, "beside" + ballein, "to throw."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday August 19, 2005CE

ephemeral

\ih-FEM-er-ul\, adjective:
1. Beginning and ending in a day; existing only, or no longer than, a day; as, an ephemeral flower.
2. Short-lived; existing or continuing for a short time only.

In the 1980s, Lt. Col. Oliver North unwittingly proved that e-mail, so apparently ephemeral, is harder to expunge than paper documents comfortingly run through a shredder.
--Amy Harmon, "E-Mail Is Treacherous. So Why Do We Keep Trusting It?" New York Times, March 26, 2000

In "Mississippi Mermaid," the planter character played by Belmondo, a fellow who has sought a safe, permanent love, is liberated when he chooses to follow the ephemeral.
--Vincent Canby, "Truffaut's Clear-Eyed Quest." New York Times, September 14, 1975

Rather, we must separate what is ephemeral... from the things that are of lasting importance.
--Patrick Smith, Japan: A Reinterpretation


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Ephemeral derives from Greek ephemeros, from epi, upon + hemera, day.

Synonyms: passing, short-lived, transient, transitory, fugacious;

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday August 20, 2005CE

truculent

\TRUCK-yuh-luhnt\, adjective:
1. Fierce; savage; ferocious; barbarous.
2. Cruel; destructive; ruthless.

I ask whether impeachment will become still another arrow in the quiver of the warrior class of ever more truculent partisan politicians in Washington.
--"Former Watergate Prosecutors See Censure as Alternative in Clinton's Case," New York Times, December 9, 1998

...officers mistook his father's cursing and argumentative reception of five men with guns for the actions of a truculent fugitive.
--Frank J. Murray, "Media can't join police raids of homes, high court decides," Washington Times, May 25, 1999

Those bamboozled into believing palpable untruths that are recognized as such by the larger community are likely in time to develop an attitude of truculent resentment and outright paranoia rather than self-esteem.
--Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World


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Truculent derives from Latin truculentus, from trux, truc-, rough, savage, fierce

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday August 21, 2005CE

vicissitude

\vih-SIS-ih-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. Regular change or succession from one thing to another; alternation; mutual succession; interchange.
2. Irregular change; revolution; mutation.
3. A change in condition or fortune; an instance of mutability in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one condition to another).

This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty.
--Thomas Macaulay

Max had rescued his father's gold watch through every vicissitude, but as it didn't go I took it to a watchmaker.
--Edith Anderson, Love in Exile: An American Writer's Memoir of Life in Divided Berlin

It has come about that this writer, who at the beginning might have appeared in unique occupation of a marginal and peripheral world, is instead writing from the center of a historical vicissitude, utterly contemporary.
--Elizabeth Hardwic, "Meeting V. S. Naipaul"


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Vicissitude comes from Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim, in turn, probably from vices, changes.

Synonyms: alternation, inconstancy, fluctuation.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday August 22, 2005CE

schadenfreude

\SHOD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.

That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind.
--Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit

He died three years after me -- cancer too -- and at that time I was still naive enough to imagine that what the afterlife chiefly provided were unrivalled opportunities for unbeatable gloating, unbelievable schadenfreude.
--Will Self, How The Dead Live

Somewhere out there, Pi supposed, some UC Berkeley grad students must be shivering with a little Schadenfreude of their own about what had happened to her.
--Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch

The historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals in the 1936 Olympics -- has said that it "can be one of the great joys of life."
--Edward Rothstein, "Missing the Fun of a Minor Sin," New York Times, February 5, 2000


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Schadenfreude comes from the German, from Schaden, "damage" + Freude, "joy." It is often capitalized, as it is in German.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday August 23, 2005CE

tyro

\TY-roh\, noun:
A beginner in learning; a novice.

It's difficult to imagine a tyro publishing a book on medical procedures or economic theory.
--Philip Zaleski, "God Help the Spiritual Writer," New York Times, January 10, 1999

He was a sensitive, fine soul alert to the pleasures of being green, a tyro, an amateur, unwilling to close his mind before it had been tempted.
--Paul West, Sporting With Amaryllis

And, though we were mere tyros, beginners, utterly insignificant, he was invariably as kind and considerate and thoughtful, and as lavish in the gift of his time, as though he had nothing else to do.
--Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything


Tyro is from Latin tiro, "a young soldier, a recruit," hence "a beginner, a learner."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday August 24, 2005CE

expatiate

\ek-SPAY-shee-ayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To speak or write at length or in considerable detail.
2. To move about freely; to wander.

He had told her all he had been asked to tell--or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant opportunity to expatiate upon a young man's darling subject--himself.
--Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope's Year

At the midday meal on fair day, a large one (meat loaf, boiled potato, broccoli), Mrs. Lucas, married to the man with the earache, expatiates on the difficulties of caring for a parakeet her daughter has unloaded upon her and which, let out of its cage for an airing, has escaped through the door suddenly opened by Mr. Lucas.
--William H. Pritchard, Updike: America's Man of Letters

His relationship with his family was for many years an unhappy one, and he does not care to expatiate upon it.
--Barbara La Fontaine, "Triple Threat On, Off And Off-Off Broadway," New York Times, February 25, 1968


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Expatiate is from Latin expatiari, "to walk or go far and wide," from ex-, "out" + spatiari, "to walk about," from spatium, "space; an open space, a place for walking in."