Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday August 25, 2005CE

peccadillo

\peck-uh-DIL-oh\, noun:
A slight offense; a petty fault.

No peccadillo is too trivial: we learn that the mogul once blew his top because his laundry came back starched ("'Fluff and fold!' he screamed").
--Eric P. Nash, "High Concept," New York Times, May 10, 1998

And besides, "what do they say? 'Don't judge lest you be judged.' Everybody has their peccadilloes."
-- "Tyson has a friend in his corner," Irish Times, October 21,1999

Child of a dominant mother, victim of a guilt-ridden conscience, [St. Augustine] wrote bewilderingly haunted 'Confessions,' in which infantile peccadilloes like stealing apples and adolescent fumblings with instinctive sexuality are bewailed with all the anguish of a frustrated perfectionist.
--Geoffrey Parker, "True Believers," New York Times, June 29, 1997


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Peccadillo comes from Spanish pecadillo, "little sin," diminutive of pecado, "sin," from Latin peccatum, from peccare, "to make a mistake, to err, to sin." It is related to impeccable, "without flaw or fault."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday August 26, 2005CE

bagatelle

\bag-uh-TEL\, noun:
1. A trifle; a thing of little or no importance.
2. A short, light musical or literary piece.
3. A game played with a cue and balls on an oblong table having cups or arches at one end.

Don't worry about that, a mere bagatelle, old boy!
--Eric Ellis, "Error Message," Time, February 10, 2000

You know how it often happens; these strifes and disputes frequently originate from a mere bagatelle.
--Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi

Excepting the regulars, the troops were raw as were likewise most of their officers; and this march of twenty-seven miles, which a year later would have been considered a bagatelle, was now a mighty undertaking.
--James Ford Rhodes, History of the Civil War

So if you eat at his restaurant every day -- off the menu, of course -- and slosh the grub down with a 1966 Chateau Margaux (£800-£1,000 a bottle in a restaurant), even a Ritz bill will seem a mere bagatelle.
--"Do you take cash?" The Guardian, December 23, 1999


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Bagatelle derives from Italian bagattella, "a trifling matter; a bagatelle," perhaps ultimately from Latin baca, "a berry."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday August 27, 2005CE

descant

\DES-kant\, noun:
1. (Music) (a) A melody or counterpoint sung above the plain song of the tenor. (b) The upper voice in part music.
2. A discourse or discussion on a theme.

\DES-kant; des-KANT; dis-\, intransitive verb:
1. (a) To sing or play a descant. (b) To sing.
2. To comment freely; to discourse at length.

[T]hese to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung.
--John Milton, Paradise Lost

When they start on one of their polarised descants, whether on state education, water rates, crime, the BBC or whatever, they sound like a bumble bee and a wasp fighting in a jam jar.
--Gillian Reynolds, "The biggest things to hit radio," Daily Telegraph, May 14, 1999

Mr. Ackroyd's descant on "Great Expectations" is the work of a master.
--Alison Lurie, "Hanging Out With Hogarth," New York Times, October 11, 1992

In a custom associated with Athenian gatherings but almost certainly followed elsewhere as well, a myrtle branch was passed around the room, and each of the assembled would descant as the wine flowed.
--David Barber, "Children of Orpheus," The Atlantic, June 10, 1998

The police amusingly descant on these jottings: "I can't believe he'd ever write a sentence like 'I shall be compelled to take steps to silence you!'"
--Christopher Buckley, "The Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea," New York Times, November 16, 1997


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Descant is derived from Medieval Latin discantus, "a refrain," from Latin dis- + cantus, "song," from the past participle of canere, "to sing."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday August 28, 2005CE

canorous

\kuh-NOR-uhs; KAN-or-uhs\, adjective:
Richly melodious; pleasant sounding; musical.

I felt a deep contentment listening to the meadowlark's complex melody as he sat on his bragging post calling for a mate, and the soft canorous whistle of the bobwhite as he whistled his name with intermittent lulls.
--Donna R. La Plante, "Remember When: The prairie after a spring rain," Kansas City Star, March 16, 2003

But birds that are canorous and whose notes we most commend, are of little throats, and short necks, as Nightingales, Finches, Linnets, Canary birds and Larks.
--Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica


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Canorous comes from the Latin canor, "melody," from canere, "to sing." It is related to chant, from French chanter, "to sing," ultimately from Latin canere.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday August 29, 2005CE

unctuous

\UNGK-choo-us\, adjective:
1. Of the nature or quality of an unguent or ointment; fatty; oily; greasy.
2. Having a smooth, greasy feel, as certain minerals.
3. Insincerely or excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; marked by a false or smug earnestness or agreeableness.

A warmed, crusty French roll arrives split, lightly smeared with unctuous chopped liver.
--John Kessler, "Meals To Go: Break from the routine with Hong," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 22, 1998

She recalled being offended by the "phoniness" that stemmed from the contradiction between her mother's charming, even unctuous public manner and her anger in private.
--Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan And the Making of 'The Feminine Mystique'

He approached Sean wearing a smile so unctuous it seemed about to slide right off his face.
--Naeem Murr, The Boy


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Unctuous is from Medieval Latin unctuosus, from Latin unctus, "anointed, besmeared, greasy," past participle of unguere, "to anoint, to besmear."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday August 30, 2005CE

evanescent

\ev-uh-NES-uhnt\, adjective:
Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; fleeting.

The Pen which gives. . . permanence to the evanescent thought of a moment.
--Horace Smith, Tin Trumpet

Every tornado is a little different, and they are all capricious, evanescent and hard to get a fix on.
--"Oklahoma Tornado Offers Hints of How a Killer Storm Is Born," New York Times, May 11, 1999

The accidentally famous. . . may write books, appear on talk shows, and, in so doing, attract even greater public attention. This type of celebrity status, of course, is brittle and evanescent.
--Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society


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Evanescent is from Latin evanescere, "to vanish," from e-, "from, out of" + vanescere, "to disappear," from vanus, "empty."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday August 31, 2005CE

venial

\VEE-nee-uhl\, adjective:
Capable of being forgiven; not heinous; excusable; pardonable.

Look less severely on a venial error.
--Jean Racine, Phaedra (translated by Robert Bruce Boswell)

His mistake might in other circumstances have seemed a venial one.
--Michael Knox Beran, The Last Patrician

Committing adultery was a mortal sin, while eating meat on Fridays was a venial sin.
--Sheryl McCarthy, "O'Connor Proposal for Meatless Day Is Thoughtless," Newsday, August 12, 1996


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Venial comes from Latin venia, "grace, indulgence, favor." It is not to be confused with venal, which means "capable of being bought; salable; open to bribery," and comes from Latin venum, "sale." Remember that venial, like sin, has an i in it.

Venial sins are contrasted with mortal ones.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 1, 2005CE

capacious

\kuh-PAY-shuhs\, adjective:
Able to contain much; roomy; spacious.

Litter was picked up non stop during the week (mostly by that nice governor with the capacious pockets).
--Faysal Mikdadi, "'Why shouldn't it be like this all the time?'" The Guardian, September 2, 2002

Out of those capacious receptacles he brought forth a small bottle of Scotch whiskey, a lemon, and some lump sugar.
--Ellen M. Calder, "Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman," The Atlantic, June 1907

Is it worth pointing out that the boot seems remarkably capacious for a little car?
--Giles Smith, "Er, what's the sixth gear for?" The Guardian, January 8, 2002


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Capacious is derived from Latin capax, capac-, "able to hold or contain."

Synonyms: ample, commodious, roomy, spacious, voluminous.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 2, 2005CE

trammel

\TRAM-uhl\, noun:
1. A kind of net for catching birds, fish, etc.
2. A kind of shackle used for making a horse amble.
3. Something that impedes activity, progress, or freedom, as a net or shackle.
4. An iron hook of various forms and sizes, used for handing kettles and other vessels over the fire.
5. An instrument for drawing ellipses.
6. An instrument for aligning or adjusting parts of a machine.

transitive verb:
1. To entangle, as in a net; to enmesh.
2. To hamper; to hinder the activity, progress, or freedom of.

I feel she dances a symbol of human happiness as it should be, free from unnatural trammels.
--John Sloan, quoted in New York Modern, by William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff

Is it a dull or uninstructive picture to see a whole people shaking suddenly off the trammels of reason, and running wild after a golden vision, refusing obstinately to believe that it is not real, till, like a deluded hind running after an ignis fatuus, they are plunged into a quagmire?
--Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

In fact, corporate governance is based on the belief that managers (like anyone else) work best not when their freedom is trammelled but when they are made to account for what they do with it.
--"The way ahead," The Economist, January 29, 1994

It is quite inconsistent to claim to promote an enterprise society on the one hand and to trammel it with regulations on the other.
--Sir Iain Vallance, quoted in "Stop squeezing business, CBI," by Charlotte Denny and Michael White, Guardian, May 22, 2002

And it encourages the coercive use of political power to wipe out choice, forbid experimentation, shortcircuit feedback, and trammel progress.
--Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies


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Trammel is from Old French tramail, from Late Latin tremaculum, a kind of net for catching fish, from Latin tres, "three" + macula, "a mesh."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for trammel

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 3, 2005CE

busker

\BUS-kur\, noun:
A person who entertains (as by playing music) in public places.

Jakub is a student of mathematics, a likable but callow young man who seduces a blind busker, Alzbeta, who plays for the tourists in modern Prague.
--Andrew Miller, "Waiting for Something to Happen," New York Times, October 24, 1999

When Singapore decided to legalize street performances in 1997, artists were required to audition and to donate any money collected to charity. The government recently lifted a ban on audience participation, but the streets remain largely busker-free.
--Wayne Arnold, "In Singapore, the Start-Up Dance Is Still Difficult to Do," New York Times, September 19, 1999

. . . a busker who simultaneously plays the drums, cymbals, bells and a mouth organ.
--Murray Bail, Homesickness: A Novel


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Busker is from busk, "to seek to entertain by singing and dancing," probably from Spanish buscar, "to seek."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 4, 2005CE

sybarite

\SIB-uh-ryt\, noun:
A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

This worldly cleric, nicknamed "the sybarite of Saumane", friend of Voltaire and a social luminary in Paris and Avignon, lived a high old life within the medieval fortifications of his chateau in Provence.
--"The dubious charms of Citizen Sade," Irish Times, April 17, 1999

Beneath the prudish disapproval that colored Upton Sinclair's assessment of California's wealthy sybarites was an amused astonishment at how hard they worked at having fun, at how deadly serious they were about pleasure.
--Richard White, "What California taught America," The New Republic, December 1, 1997

And when the final blessing of a perfect French cook appeared to make our domestic picture complete, we became utter sybarites, frank worshippers of the splendors of the French cuisine.
--Samuel Chamberlain, Clémentine in the Kitchen


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Sybarite is derived from Greek Sybarites, from Sybaris, an ancient Greek city noted for the luxurious, pleasure-seeking habits of many of its inhabitants.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 5, 2005CE

deride

\dih-RYD\, transitive verb:
To laugh at with contempt; to subject to ridicule or make sport of; to mock; to scoff at.

She was inclined to deride Mr. Hemingway's mania for firearms and thereby often hurt his feelings.
--"Hemingway's Prize-Winning Works Reflected Preoccupation With Life and Death," New York Times, July 3, 1961

I had no desire to endorse idiocy -- but neither could I be seen to deride a colleague.
--Michael Foley, Getting Used to Not Being Remarkable

It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.
--William Safire, "The Counter-Revolution," New York Times, May 22, 1989


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Deride comes from Latin deridere, from de-, "down from" + ridere, "to laugh." It is related to ridiculous. Derision is the act of deriding, or the state of being derided.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 6, 2005CE

cavil

\KAV-uhl\, intransitive verb:
To raise trivial or frivolous objections; to find fault without good reason.

transitive verb:
To raise trivial objections to.

noun:
A trivial or frivolous objection.

Insiders with their own strong views, after all, tend to cavil about competing ideas and stories they consider less than comprehensive.
--Laurence I. Barrett, "Dog-Bites-Dog," Time, October 30, 1989

It may seem churlish, amid the selection of so much glory, to cavil at a single omission, but I do think a great opportunity has been missed.
--Tom Rosenthal, "Rome sweet Rome," New Statesman, February 5, 2001

He was determined not to be diverted from his main pursuit by cavils or trifles.
--William Safire, Scandalmonger


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Cavil comes from Latin cavillari, "to jeer, to quibble," from cavilla, "scoffing."

Synonyms: quibble, carp, nitpick.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 7, 2005CE

farrago

\fuh-RAH-go; fuh-RAY-go\, noun;
plural farragoes:
A confused mixture; an assortment; a medley.

Ivan Illich writes "a farrago of sub-Marxist cliches, false analogies, non sequiturs, false or bent facts and weird prophesies."
--"The Paul Johnson Enemies List," New York Times, September 18, 1977

Roy Hattersley will upset much of Scotland by calling Walter Scott's lvanhoe "a farrago of historical nonsense combined with maudlin romance."
--"Literary classics panned by critics," Independent, January 18, 1999

From the moment the story of the Countess of Wessex and the Sheikh of Wapping broke, there has been a farrago of rumour, speculation and fantasy of which virtually every newspaper should be ashamed.
--Roy Greenslade, "A sting in the tale," The Guardian, April 9, 2001


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Farrago comes from the Latin farrago, "a mixed fodder for cattle," hence "a medley, a hodgepodge," from far, a kind of grain.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 8, 2005CE

demagogue

\DEM-uh-gog\, noun:
1. A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.
2. A leader of the common people in ancient times.

This was to have held a sculpture of a Roman charioteer driving four horses, but the work was never completed, leaving behind what looks like a diving board or a futurist balcony, ideally suited for a demagogue exhorting a throng below.
--Michael Z. Wise, "A Fascist Utopia Adapted for Today," New York Times, July 11, 1999

A consummate demagogue, McCarthy played upon cold war emotions and made charges so fantastic that frightened people believed the worst.
--Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy

Even when he showed his true colors as a demagogue and trickster, Stalin did so in such a crisp and weighty, confidence-inspiring manner that he bewitched not only his conversational partner but himself as well.
--Milovan Djilas, Fall of the New Class


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Demagogue derives from Greek demagogos, "a leader of the people," from demos, "the people" + agogos, "leading, one who leads," from agein, "to lead."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 9, 2005CE

quaff

\KWOFF; KWAFF\, transitive verb:
To drink with relish; to drink copiously of; to swallow in large draughts.

intransitive verb:
To drink largely or luxuriously.

noun:
A drink quaffed.

He gets drunk with his guides, makes eyes at the girls and gamely quaffs snake wine.
--Pico Iyer, "Snake Wine and Socialism," New York Times, December 15, 1991

If you were patient and kept your nose clean, you could slowly, almost effortlessly, rise from serf to squire and maybe even all the way to knight, in which case you, too, would be entitled to quaff bowl-size martinis at midday.
--Charles McGrath, "Office Romance," New York Times Magazine, March 5, 2000

Instead they consume caviar, feed off foie gras, chomp exotic cheeses, and quaff champagne.
--"Internet Shopper," Times (London), August 11, 2000


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Quaff is of unknown origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 10, 2005CE

hirsute

\HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:
Covered with hair or bristles; shaggy; hairy.

The Bear . . . makes the rounds of the clubs "disguised" in trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems) to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human.
--Richard M. Sudhalter, "'The Bear Comes Home': Composing the Words That Might Capture Jazz," New York Times, August 29, 1999

"First of all, your nose is nearly covered with your bloody moustache and your beard," Mr Gogarty replied. Mr Allen apologised for his "hirsute" appearance.
--Paul Cullen, "No ambush sprung on returning Gogarty," Irish Times, March 23, 1999

He was incredibly hirsute: there was even a thick pelt of hair on the back of his hands.
--Tama Janowitz, By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee


Hirsute comes from Latin hirsutus, "covered with hair, rough, shaggy, prickly."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 11, 2005CE

tenebrous

\TEN-uh-bruhs\, adjective:
Dark; gloomy.

He found the Earl, who is eight feet tall and has the family trait of a Cyclops eye, standing stock still, dressed from head to foot in deepest black, in one of the most tenebrous groves in all his haunted domains.
--Peter Simple, "At Mountwarlock," Daily Telegraph, March 20, 1998

We are so used to the tenebrous atmosphere that can be created in indoor theatres that it's a shock to realise that this murkiest of tragedies first saw the literal light of day at the Globe theatre.
--Paul Taylor, "Cool, calm, disconnected," Independent, June 7, 2001

And lurking behind our every move is the knowledge of our own mortality. It gives life its edgy disquiet, its tenebrous underside.
--Douglas Kennedy, "Sudden death," Independent, July 3, 1999


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Tenebrous derives from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae, "darkness."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 12, 2005CE

ostentation

\os-ten-TAY-shuhn\, noun:
Excessive or pretentious display; boastful showiness.

In a city where the wealthy are known for ostentation, many are now buying low-profile economy cars to fool kidnappers and thieves.
--Anthony Faiola, "Brazil's Elites Fly Above Their Fears," Washington Post, June 1, 2002

After his marriage, when Francis finally had enough money to indulge his tastes, his extravagance and ostentation in matters of dress frequently occasioned comment.
--Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, Hostage to Fortune

It is too early to probe the cause or say how far the staggering ostentation of the wealthy fomented the sullen disaffection of the poor.
--Stephen McKenna, Sonia

The Puritan leadership was especially distressed by the sartorial ostentation of the lower classes, who were supposed to content themselves with "raiment suitable to the order in which God's providence has placed them."
--Patricia O'Toole, Money & Morals in America: A History


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Ostentation comes from Latin ostentatio, ostentation-, from ostentare, "to display," frequentative of ostendere, "to hold out, to show," from ob-, obs-, "in front of, before," + tendere, "to stretch, to stretch out, to present."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 13, 2005CE

[B[officious[/B]

\uh-FISH-uhs\, adjective:
Marked by excessive eagerness in offering services or advice where they are neither requested nor needed; meddlesome.

Ian Holm plays a well-meaning but officious lawyer who tries to make the grieving families sue for damages.
--John Simon, "Minus Four," National Review, February 9, 1998

The guy was an officious twerp, but Luke and Pete were vagrants, and a railroad employee had the right to throw them out.
--Ken Follett, Code to Zero

"Why don't you mind your own business, ma'am?" roared Bounderby. "How dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?"
--Charles Dickens, Hard Times


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Officious comes from Latin officiosus, "obliging, dutiful," from officium, "dutiful action, sense of duty, official employment," from opus, "a work, labor" + -ficere, combining form of facere, "to do, to make." It is related to official, "of or pertaining to an office or public trust."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 14, 2005CE

afflatus

\uh-FLAY-tuhs\, noun:
A divine imparting of knowledge; inspiration.

Whatever happened to passion and vision and the divine afflatus in poetry?
--Clive Hicks, "From 'Green Man' (Ronsdale)," Toronto Star, November 21, 1999

Aristophanes must have eclipsed them . . . by the exhibition of some diviner faculty, some higher spiritual afflatus.
--John Addington Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets

The miraculous spring that nourished Homer's afflatus seems out of reach of today's writers, whose desperate yearning for inspiration only indicates the coming of an age of "exhaustion."
--Benzi Zhang, "Paradox of origin(ality)," Studies in Short Fiction, March 22, 1995


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Afflatus is from Latin afflatus, past participle of afflare, "to blow at or breathe on," from ad-, "at" + flare, "to puff, to blow." Other words with the same root include deflate (de-, "out of" + flare); inflate (in-, "into" + flare); soufflé, the "puffed up" dish (from French souffler, "to puff," from Latin sufflare, "to blow from below," hence "to blow up, to puff up," from sub-, "below" + flare); and flatulent.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 15, 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


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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.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for quorum

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 16, 2005CE

hauteur

\haw-TUR; (h)oh-\, noun:
Haughty manner, spirit, or bearing; haughtiness; arrogance.

[M]y silence, I hoped, would be taken as expressive of the hauteur of a man who was above it all -- a man with a mission, in fact, a mission authorized from somewhere on high.
--Jeffrey Tayler, Facing the Congo

Sheikhs and presidents have often heard little about the royal family's follies, and don't object to the hauteur and self-importance that remain its inextinguishable traits.
--Hugo Young, "Blair and the Queen," The Guardian, April 10, 2001

That self-deprecation and lack of hauteur are typical of the earthy style that enables Powell to get close to his troops in a way that many top brass never do.
--"Colin Powell: The master planner of Desert Shield is ready for its ultimate test," People, December 31, 1990


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Hauteur is from the French, from haut, "high," from Latin altus, "high." It is thus related to altitude.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 17, 2005CE

xenophobia

\ZEN-uh-FOE-bee-uh\, noun:
Fear or hatred of strangers, people from other countries, or of anything that is strange or foreign.

After calling for peace in 61 languages and beseeching the world to end racism and xenophobia, the pope made a surprise announcement.
--"Will the Next Pope Be Catholic?" SF Weekly, April 26, 2000

In Europe today, it is xenophobia and the political manipulation of fear of foreigners that pose the greatest threat to democracy, or at least to the quality of democracy.
--Kofi Annan, "Democracy: An international issue," UN Chronicle, June-August, 2001

The news, the incidents and accidents of everyday life, can be loaded with political or ethnic significance liable to unleash strong, often negative feelings, such as racism, chauvinism, the fear-hatred of the foreigner or, xenophobia.
--Pierre Bourdieu, On Television

In the embattled atmosphere of wartime France, Apollinaire's quenchless appetite for the new was not widely shared. Xenophobia reigned.
--Ruth Brandon, Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945


The word xenophobia was formed from the Greek elements xenos "guest, stranger, foreigner" + phobos "fear."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 18, 2005CE

bacchanalia

\bak-uh-NAIL-yuh\, noun:
1. (plural, capitalized) The ancient Roman festival in honor of Bacchus, celebrated with dancing, song, and revelry.
2. A riotous, boisterous, or drunken festivity; a revel.

Alpha Epsilon brothers began their bacchanalia with an off-campus keg party featuring "funneling," in which beer is shot through a rubber hose into the drinker's mouth.
--Adam Cohen, "Battle of the Binge," Time, September 8, 1997

This is not at all to suggest that the Revolution was a sort of non-stop bacchanalia, but that partial drunkenness was often an important component in a certain type of revolutionary excitability, particularly in meetings or committees.
--Richard Cobb, The French and Their Revolution


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Bacchanalia comes from Latin, from Bacchus, god of wine, from Greek Bakkhos. The adjective form is bacchanalian. One who celebrates the Bacchanalia, or indulges in drunken revels, is a bacchanal \BAK-uh-nuhl; bak-uh-NAL\, which is also another term for a drunken or riotous celebration.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 19, 2005CE

immure

\ih-MYUR\, transitive verb:
1. To enclose within walls, or as if within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate.
2. To build into a wall.
3. To entomb in a wall.

Not surprisingly, Sally shuddered at the thought of being immured in the black cave, to die slowly and hopelessly, far below the sunny hillside.
--Peter Pierce, "The Fiction of Gabrielle Lord," Australian Literary Studies, October 1999

True, there was a Mughal emperor in Delhi until 1857, but he was emperor in name only, the shadow of a memory, described by Lord Macaulay as 'a mock sovereign immured in a gorgeous state prison'.
--Anthony Read, The Proudest Day

When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction.
--Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon

Immured by privilege in a way of life that offered little scope, army wives were often enfeebled by boredom.
--Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant: A Biography


Immure comes from Medieval Latin immurare, from Latin in-, "in" + murus, "wall." It is related to mural, a painting applied to a wall.

Synonyms: cloister; imprison; incarcerate.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 20, 2005CE

deliquesce

\del-ih-KWES\, intransitive verb:
1. To melt away or to disappear as if by melting.
2. (Chemistry) To dissolve gradually and become liquid by attracting and absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts, acids, and alkalies.
3. To become fluid or soft with age, as certain fungi.
4. To form many small divisions or branches -- used especially of the veins of a leaf.

Now it's high summer, the very high point of the high season, and I've just struggled back from Santa Eulalia with the weekly shop, most of which has already deliquesced into an evil-smelling puddle in the back of the car.
--Paul Richardson, "A postcard from Paul Richardson," Independent, August 19, 1996

His entire countenance seems to deliquesce into a splotch of spreading goo.
--John Simon, "The Underneath," National Review, May 29, 1995

His indifference toward if not hatred for his mother deliquesced, through the writing of this book, into a recognition of his love for her.
--Leslie Schenk, "Rouge Decante," World Literature Today, June 1, 1996

The peaches, pears and grapes progressively spot, dimple, crease, wrinkle, acquire brown patches, green bloom, a fuzz of green-grey fungal filaments, deliquesce to a beige-grey Roquefort and finally compost to a browny-black goo flickering with insects.
--Christopher Hirst, "The weasel," Independent, May 11, 2002


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Deliquesce comes from Latin deliquescere, from de-, "down, from, away" + liquescere, "to melt," from liquere, "to be fluid." It is related to liquid and liquor.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 21, 2005CE

capitulate

\kuh-PICH-uh-layt\, intransitive verb:
To surrender under agreed conditions

Just before peace talks on Kosovo are due to resume, the United States and its allies are sending contradictory signals to Belgrade, making it less likely that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia will capitulate on American terms.
--Steven Erlanger, "West's Bosnia Move May Hurt Kosovo Bid," New York Times, March 7, 1999

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names.
----Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"


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Capitulate comes from Medieval Latin capitulare, "to draw up in chapters, hence to arrange conditions," from Latin capitula, "chapters." Chapter itself is related.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 22, 2005CE

adventitious

\ad-ven-TISH-uhs\, adjective:
1. Added extrinsically; not essentially inherent.
2. (Biology) Out of the proper or usual place; as, "adventitious buds or roots."

The snag is that the play's inflamed and adventitious topicality may distract people from the timelessness of its deepest concerns.
--Paul Taylor, "Afghanistan mon amour," Independent, December 15, 2001

I want first to argue that Nietzsche's contempt for democracy was an adventitious extra, inessential to his overall philosophical outlook.
--Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism"

But his posing was mostly harmless,--as superficial as the swagger and millinery of the soldier--merely adventitious to the genuine strength and gallantry underneath.
--J. F. A. Pyre, "Byron in Our Day," The Atlantic, April 1907

The trunk spores are actually adventitious roots that have erupted from the trunk in response to some stress or injury to the inner bark and are probably no reason for concern.
--Scott Aker, "Expect More Dogwood Blossoms Next Year," Washington Post, August 24, 2000


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Adventitious comes from Latin adventicius, "coming from without, from outside sources," from the past participle of advenire, "to come towards or to; (of events) to happen," from ad- "to" + venire, "to come."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 23, 2005CE
modicum

\MOD-ih-kum\, noun:
A small or moderate or token amount.

Abraham Lincoln's childhood education, conducted almost entirely by himself, with only a modicum of schooling, is one of the most familiar stories in American history.
--Douglas L. Wilson, Honor's Voice

Ruth worked in the sociology department which had a garden in an internal courtyard that gave the place a modicum of charm.
--Gillian Slovo, Every Secret Thing

While he derived a modicum of pleasure from his son's rambunctiousness, he was also disturbed by it.
--Jonah Raskin, For the Hell of It


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Modicum is from Latin modicus, "moderate," from modus, "measure."

Synonyms: small quantity, trace, hint, speck, jot, iota.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday September 24, 2005CE

fetid

\FET-id; FEE-tid\, adjective:
Having an offensive smell; stinking.

The air was fetid, heavy as the breath of a large animal.
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Bad Dreams

He grew up between the river and the vineyard-covered slopes, between the fetid smell of the tannery and the fine aroma of crushed grapes.
--Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur (translated by Elborg Forster)


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Fetid derives from Latin fetidus, from fetere, "to stink."

Synonyms: noisome, rank, rancid, smelly, stinking.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday September 25, 2005CE

gimcrack

\JIM-krak\, noun:
A showy but useless or worthless object; a gewgaw.

adjective:
Tastelessly showy; cheap; gaudy.

Yet the set is more than a collection of pretty gimcracks.
--Frank Rich, Hot Seat

In those cities most self-conscious about their claim to be part of English history, like Oxford or Bath, the shops where you could have bought a dozen nails, home-made cakes or had a suit run up, have shut down and been replaced with places selling teddy bears, T-shirts and gimcrack souvenirs.
--Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People

And as for coincidences in books -- there's something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can't help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack.
--Peter Brooks, "Obsessed with the Hermit of Croisset," New York Times, March 10, 1985


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The origin of gimcrack is uncertain. It is perhaps an alteration of Middle English gibecrake, "a slight or flimsy ornament."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday September 26, 2005

banal

\BAY-nul; buh-NAL; buh-NAHL (British)\, adjective:
Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.

Perhaps it's just the arrogant, knowing way in which reporters ask the most banal of questions.
--Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man

How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?
--Joyce Carol Oates, "Speaking of Books: The Formidable W.B. Yeats," New York Times, September 7, 1969

All that her late companions can draw from her is the banal declaration, that she "never knew what happiness was before."
--New Monthly Magazine, LIX. 458, 1840


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Banal comes from the Old French word ban, an edict, which had the adjective banal, "of or relating to compulsory feudal service," which evolved to signify "merely obligatory," hence "commonplace."

In his Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, Charles Harrington Elster notes, "Banal is a word of many pronunciations, each of which has its outspoken and often intractable proponents. Though it may pain some to hear it, let the record show that BAY-nul is the variant preferred by most authorities (including me)."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 27, 2005CE

halcyon

\HAL-see-uhn\, noun:
1. A kingfisher.
2. A mythical bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was fabled to nest at sea about the time of the winter solstice and to calm the waves during incubation.

adjective:
1. Calm; quiet; peaceful; undisturbed; happy; as, "deep, halcyon repose."
2. Marked by peace and prosperity; as, "halcyon years."

It seems to be that my boyhood days in the Edwardian era were halcyon days.
--Mel Gussow, "At Home With John Gielgud: His Own Brideshead, His Fifth 'Lear,'" New York Times, October 28, 1993

It is a common lament that children today grow up too fast, that society is conspiring to deprive them of the halcyon childhood they deserve.
--Keith Bradsher, "Fear of Crime Trumps the Fear of Lost Youth," New York Times, November 21, 1999

It was a halcyon life, cocktails and bridge at sunset, white jackets and long gowns at dinner, good gin and Gershwin under the stars.
--Elizabeth M. Norman, We Band of Angels


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Halcyon derives from Latin (h)alcyon, from Greek halkuon, "a mythical bird, kingfisher."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 28, 2005CE

adamant

\AD-uh-muhnt\, adjective:
Not capable of being swayed by pleas, appeals, or reason; not susceptible to persuasion; unyielding.

In the cabin, the skipper and Truong Hong were arguing furiously, one convinced the boat had run aground, the other adamant that it was snared in nets.
--Tran Vu, The Dragon Hunt

I pretended that nothing had happened, so adamant in my denial that my memory gradually underwent a revision.
--Chu T'ien-wen, Notes of a Desolate Man

It's amazing the ignorance--and the adamant ignorance--of so many people, people one would think might at least admit to simply not having knowledge of something.
--Ira Berkow, To the Hoop: The Seasons of a Basketball Life


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Adamant derives from Greek adamas, adamant-, "unconquerable; the hardest metal; diamond."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday September 29, 2005CE

jocund

\JOCK-uhnd; JOH-kuhnd\, adjective:
Full of or expressing high-spirited merriment; light-hearted; mirthful.

His careless manners and jocund repartees might well seem incompatible with anything serious.
--William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico

There was once a widow, fair, young, free, rich, and withal very pleasant and jocund, that fell in love with a certain round and well-set servant of a college.
--Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (translated by Thomas Shelton)

Many a glad good morrow and jocund laugh from the young folk
Made the bright air brighter.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Evangeline"


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Jocund is from Old French jocond, from Latin jucundus, "pleasant, agreeable, delightful," from juvare, "to please, to delight."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday September 30, 2005CE

segue

\SEG-way; SAYG-way\, intransitive verb:
To proceed without interruption; to make a smooth transition.

noun:
An instance or act of segueing; a smooth transition.

The gratifying thing about McCourt is that he can drop his professional character act and segue into a smart, emotionally direct conversation faster than you can say "Top o' the morning."
--"Malachy Mccourt: How a Rogue Becomes a Saint," New York Times, July 29, 1998

A melody will start innocuously enough, then segue into the inevitable buildup, with swelling strings and bursting brass.
--"Woe to Shows That Put On Operatic Airs," New York Times, July 20, 1997

Addie later recalled her host's charming segue to topics more pleasant.
--Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea


Segue is from the Italian, meaning "there follows," from seguire, "to follow," from Latin sequi.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 1, 2005CE

puerile

\PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\, adjective:
Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.

And, in one of the most puerile episodes of his adult career, he punishes his old schoolmates for being rich and vulgar by breaking into their houses to soak the labels off their boasted wine collections.
--Thomas R. Edwards, "Mordecai Richler Then and Now," New York Times, June 22, 1980

Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral . . . doing battle with the immoral.
--George F. Will, "The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism," Washington Post, April 15, 2001


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Puerile comes from Latin puerilis, from puer, "child, boy."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 2, 2005CE

nadir

\NAY-dir; nay-DIR\, noun:
1. [Astronomy]. The point of the celestial sphere directly opposite the zenith and directly below the observer.
2. The lowest point; the time of greatest depression or adversity.

Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor.
--Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full

At the nadir of every recession, business pages fill up with stories of belt-tightening families who move to Vermont and buy their food in bulk.
--Peter T. Kilborn, "Splurge," New York Times, June 21, 1998


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Nadir is derived from Arabic nazir, "opposite."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 3, 2005CE

effulgence

\i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.
--Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington, 1799

The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra.
--Washington Irving, The Alhambra

Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures.
--Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia," Time, November 17, 1986


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From Latin ex- "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 4, 2005CE

inchoate

\in-KOH-it\, adjective:
1. In an initial or early stage; just begun.
2. Imperfectly formed or formulated.

Mildred Spock believed that, at about the age of three, her children's inchoate wills were to be shaped like vines sprouting up a beanpole.
--Thomas Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life

She also had a vision, not yet articulated, an inchoate sense of some special calling that awaited her.
--Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

You take on a project because of the feeling, perhaps inchoate, that it may in some way contribute to your deeper understanding of the larger-scale research program you have chosen as your life's work.
--Christopher Scholz, Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari


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Inchoate comes from the past participle of Latin inchoare, alteration of incohare, "to begin."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday October 5, 2005CE

beneficence

\buh-NEFF-i-suhns\, noun:
1. The practice of doing good; active goodness, kindness, or charity.
2. A charitable gift or act.

Lord Jeffrey told Dickens that it [A Christmas Carol] had "prompted more positive acts of beneficence than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom since Christmas 1842."
--Roger Highfield, The Physics of Christmas

From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and beneficence and abstinence.
--Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

She had disseminated around her what seemed an involuntary aura of beneficence and goodwill.
--John Bayley, Elegy for Iris


Beneficence is from Latin beneficentia, from beneficus, "kind, generous, obliging," from bene, "well" (from bonus, "good") + facere, "to do." The adjective form is beneficent.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 6, 2005CE

sempiternal

\sem-pih-TUR-nuhl\, adjective:
Of never ending duration; having beginning but no end; everlasting; endless.

In all the works on view, Mariani conjures a sempiternal realm that exists parallel to mundane reality and which is accessible through art, reverie and the imagination.
--Gerard Mccarthy, "Carlo Maria Mariani at Hackett-Freedman," Art in America, September 1999

This is a sempiternal truth for institutions of high prestige. Someone will pay (almost) anything for Ivy-ish credentials.
--Dennis O'Brien, "A 'Necessary' of Modern Life?" Commonweal, March 28, 1997

Finally, Syon's orchards are the world as our imagination would like it to be -- not wilderness, since orchards are after all planted and cultivated by farmers, but a sempiternal and ideal region of the mind.
--Thomas L. Jeffers, "That which sustains us," Commentary, June 2002


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Sempiternal comes from Medieval Latin sempiternalis, from Latin sempiternus, a contraction of semperaeternus, from semper, "always" + aeternus, "eternal."

Synonyms: enduring, eternal, everlasting, perpetual.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 7, 2005CE

onus

\OH-nuhs\, noun:
1. A burden; an obligation; a disagreeable necessity.
2. a: A stigma. b: Blame.
3. The burden of proof.

And who knew what financial pressures he was under or how desperate was his need to shed the onus of his past?
--Richard Lingeman, "The Last Party," New York Times, April 27, 1997

The onus of leadership fell on him.
--Scott Ritter, Endgame

The critical point, however, was that the Times story freed other publications from the onus of being the first to print the gossip, and everyone felt freer to leap in.
--Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues

Nor has the onus of official displeasure fallen heavily enough upon the offenders.
--Edmund Candler, "Mahatma Ghandi," The Atlantic, July 1922

Mr. King is one of those writers who tries to fend off the onus of a cliche by admitting or underlining it.
--Richard R. Lingeman, "Something Nasty in the Tub," New York Times, March 1, 1977

Where a claimant contracted asbestosis having been exposed to asbestos dust over a period of years, approximately half of which he had spent working for the defendants, and half of which he had spent working for other employers, the onus was upon him to prove causation.
--"Claimant to prove contribution to his disability," Times (London), April 12, 2000


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Onus is adopted from Latin onus, "load, burden." The derivative Latin adjective onerosus yields English onerous, "burdensome, oppressive." The related Latin verb onerare has the compound form exonerare, "to free from (ex-) an onus or burden," which yields English exonerate, "to relieve, in a moral sense, as of a charge, obligation, or blame."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 8, 2005CE

abstemious

\ab-STEE-mee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Sparing in eating and drinking; temperate; abstinent.
2. Sparingly used or consumed; used with temperance or moderation.
3. Marked by or spent in abstinence.

They were healthy and abstemious; their chief pleasure was reading and Oliver was a life member of the London Library.
--Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney

For a man who trafficked in excess, he was surprisingly abstemious.
--Ralph Blumenthal, Stork Club

When the 1796 outbreak of yellow fever turned into an epidemic, the frightened citizens followed each preventive vogue: herb tea, cold baths, cream of tartar, vinegar, camphor and abstemious diets.
--Christina Vella, Intimate Enemies

In the clubby world of the Senate, the elder Gore was an aloof figure whose "divinity student blue" suits and abstemious habits (no cigarettes, little alcohol, and a daily swim in the Senate pool) created the aura "of a man just come from a powerful hell-and-brimstone sermon."
--Bill Turque, Inventing Al Gore: A Biography


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Abstemious comes from Latin abstemius, from ab-, abs-, "away from" + the root of temetum, "intoxicating drink."

Synonyms: abstinent, teetotal, temperate.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 9, 2005CE


cant

\KANT\, noun:
1. The idioms and peculiarities of speech in any sect, class, or occupation; jargon.
2. The use of pious words without sincerity.
3. Empty, solemn speech, implying what is not felt; insincere talk; hypocrisy.
4. A whining manner of speaking, especially of beggars.

Don Juan delighted London gossipmongers with plentiful allusions to the scandal surrounding the poet's divorce from his young wife of one year and his subsequent flight from English "hypocrisy and cant."
--Banite Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame

Underneath all the grime there was as much sentimental piety and conformist cant.
--Andrew Sarris, "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet"

...the English major from a working-class family who now and then asks a forthright question that cuts through the literary cant.
--Theodore Solotaroff, "Memoirs for Memorial Day," New York Times, May 29, 1977


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Cant ultimately derives from Latin cantus, "singing, chanting."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 10, 2005CE

laconic

\luh-KON-ik\, adjective:
Using or marked by the use of a minimum of words; brief and pithy; brusque.

Readers' reports range from the laconic to the verbose.
--Bernard Stamler, "A Brooklyncentric View of Life," New York Times, February 28, 1999

In the laconic language of the sheriff department's report, there was "no visible sign of life."
--David Wise, Cassidy's Run

There was one tiny photograph of him at a YMCA camp plus a few laconic and uninformative entries in a soldier's log from the war year, 1917-18.
--Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir


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Laconic comes, via Latin, from Greek Lakonikos, "of or relating to a Laconian or Spartan," hence "terse," in the manner of the Laconians.

Trivia: Laconia was an ancient region of southern Greece in the southeastern Peloponnesus; Sparta was the capital. Its people were noted for being warlike and disciplined, and also for the brevity of their speech.

Synonyms: concise, succinct, pithy

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 11, 2005CE

palpable

\PAL-puh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Capable of being touched and felt; perceptible by the touch; as, "a palpable form."
2. Easily perceptible; plain; distinct; obvious; readily detected; as, "palpable imposture; palpable absurdity; palpable errors."

A sense of devastation from the attacks remains palpable, but so too is a sense of rejuvenation.
--"Onwards and upwards," The Economist, May 23, 2002

Crowds at Kennedy-related sites around Washington were no larger than usual yesterday, but the emotion was palpable.
--"Grieving Public Seeks Ways to Say Goodbye to the JFK They Knew," Washington Post, July 22, 1999

The loss of potential donors because of tattoos has been palpable if not drastic, blood-center officials said.
--"Tattoo surprise: Many find body art bars them as blood donors," San Francisco Chronicle, July 19, 1999

The movie's emotional potential, lying in wait for two hours, will sneak up on viewers, hitting them with a palpable thud.
--"Crime tale told with restraint," Dallas Morning News, May 10, 1999

Andre Garner and Dan Sklar . . . have clarion voices and the kind of palpable emotional heat and fiery commitment that can transform a song into a full-fledged little drama.
--Review of "Songs for a New World," Chicago Sun-Times, December 8, 1998


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Palpable derives ultimately from Latin palpabilis, from palpare, "to touch gently."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday October 12, 2005CE

gewgaw

\G(Y)OO-gaw\, noun:
A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble.

Bidders paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless gewgaws--fake pearls, ashtrays, golf clubs--merely, one supposes, because they were touched by the hand of this celebrity of celebrities.
--Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society

At least, you're tempted until you discover that the price of this gewgaw is $175.
--Walter Shapiro, "Earn exciting prizes from the Republicans!" USA Today, March 27, 2002

Walk into almost any department store, and there it is -- along with mounds of other gimmicky gadgets and garish gewgaws that (no offense, Vanna) the world can live without.
--James A. Russell, "What the World Needs Now . . . Is Not Another Gimmicky Gadget or Worthless Doohickey," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 9, 1995


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The origin of gewgaw is uncertain.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 13, 2005CE

conurbation

\kon-uhr-BAY-shuhn\, noun:
An aggregation or continuous network of urban communities.

To live there in that great smoking conurbation rumbling with the constant thunder of locomotives, filled with the moaning of train whistles coming down the Potomac Valley, was beyond my most fevered hopes.
--Russell Baker, "Memoir of a Small-Town Boyhood," New York Times, September 12, 1982

Indeed the population in the greater London conurbation grew by 125 per cent in the period 1861 to 1911 when the population of England as a whole grew by 80 per cent.
--Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats


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Conurbation is from Latin con-, "with, together" + urbs, "city" + the suffix -ation.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 14, 2005CE

sinecure

\SY-nih-kyur; SIN-ih-\, noun:
An office or position that requires or involves little or no responsibility, work, or active service.

I was fortunate to receive the. . . offer, which in practical terms was a sinecure.
--David Freeman, One of Us

Julian Poe, a wealthy old Estonian, offers what looks like a sinecure: Bennett will live in comfort in Monte Carlo and pretend to be Poe, thus enabling Poe to fulfill his residency requirement in Monte Carlo while continuing to live in Provence without paying French taxes.
--"Eat, Drink and Be Wary," New York Times, June 9, 1996

When they married, Pu Yi was, officially, employed as a gardener at the Peking Botanical Gardens. In fact this sinecure. . . only lasted three years, during which time he did very little actual gardening.
--"Obituary: Li Shuxian," Independent, June 11, 1997


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Sinecure is from Medieval Latin sine cura, "without care (of souls)," from Latin sine, "without" + cura, "care." Originally the term signified an ecclesiastical benefice without the care of souls.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 15, 2005CE

abjure

\ab-JUR\, transitive verb:
1. To renounce under oath.
2. To renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to reject; repudiate.
3. To abstain from; to shun.

abjure, on his knees, his heretical views that the Earth moves around the Sun.
-- Alan Gurney, Below the Convergence

He closed his eyes as he raised the goblet to his lips and took a small sip of the cool liquid, and then his face paled as he understood how sublime the taste of the forbidden drink was, and how easily one might become enslaved to it. There and then he resolved to abjure it totally.
--A. B. Yehoshua, A Journey to the End of the Millennium

In the mid-1970's, a young European couple abjure middle-class comforts in favor of travel to India, where the wife, Sophie, grows disillusioned with Eastern spiritualism just as her husband, Matteo, is swept up in it.
--Laurel Graeber, "New and Noteworthy Paperbacks," New York Times, January 12, 1997


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Abjure comes from Latin abjurare, "to deny upon oath," from ab-, "away" + jurare, "to swear." It is related to jury, "a body of persons sworn to give a verdict on a given matter."

Synonyms: recant, renounce, forswear.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 17, 2005CE

aberrant

\a-BERR-unt; AB-ur-unt\, adjective:
Markedly different from an accepted norm; Deviating from the ordinary or natural type; abnormal.

The impulse toward individual expression is a recent and a possibly aberrant one in art.
--Nicholas Delbanco, "From Echoes Emerge Original Voices," New York Times, June 21, 1999

These characters are so wild and aberrant they are close to appearing lunatics.
--Bosley Crowther, "Who's Afraid of Audacity?" New York Times, July 10, 1966

But I could never accept the aberrant dictates of socialist realism which ruled out all mystery and turned literary activity into a propaganda exercise.
--Mario Vargas Llosa, Making Waves


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Aberrant comes from Latin aberro, aberrare, "to wander off, to lose one's way," from ab, "away from" + erro, errare, "to wander."

[jesusfreak]

sorry to interupt the word of the day thing but how do you guys come up with a word for pretty much everyday that must take quite a bit of serching for a word you haven't already done.

[Lazy Agnostic]

sorry to interupt the word of the day thing but how do you guys come up with a word for pretty much everyday that must take quite a bit of serching for a word you haven't already done.Dictionary.com It takes about 60 seconds.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 18, 2005CE

votary

\VOH-tuh-ree\, noun:
1. One who is devoted, given, or addicted to some particular pursuit, subject, study, or way of life.
2. A devoted admirer.
3. A devout adherent of a religion or cult.
4. A dedicated believer or advocate.

When she held out her hand to receive the glass, she had more the air of a full-grown Bacchante, celebrating the rites of Bacchus, than a votary at the shrine of Hygeia.
--Pamela Neville-Sington, Fanny Trollope

Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of "diversity" insist on absolute conformity.
--Tony Snow, "Lifestyle police: Enough already," USA Today, June 10, 1996

It must be remembered that undisguised atrocities on a stupendous scale. . . would be too strong for the stomach of even the most brutalized people, and would tend to bring war into discredit with all but its monomaniac votaries.
--"The Idea of a League of Nations," The Atlantic, February 1919


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Votary comes from Latin votum, "vow," from the past participle of vovere, "to vow, to devote." Related words include vow and vote, originally a vow, hence a prayer or ardent wish, hence an expression of preference, as for a candidate.

Synonyms: adherent, devotee, supporter.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday October 19, 2005CE

pelf

\PELF\, noun:
Money; riches; gain; -- generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten.

. . . a master manipulator who will twist and dodge around the clock to keep the privileges of power and pelf.
--Nick Cohen, "Without prejudice," The Observer, February 20, 2000

She writes about those she might have known first-hand: teenage girls cowering in bunkers . . . friends making promises they can never keep . . . rich folk fattened on wartime pelf, poor folk surviving by wit alone.
--Harriet P. Gross, "Author roots her stories in Vietnam War," Dallas Morning News, July 20, 1997

As so often happens, pelf is talking louder than principle at the Colorado legislature.
--"Legislature Goes Belly Up," Denver Rocky Mountain News, April 27, 1997

In advertising, show business, and journalism, people work themselves to the nub for glitz and glory more than for pelf.
--Ford S. Worthy, "You're Probably Working Too Hard," Fortune, April 27, 1987

Some of the rich classmates were keeping their pelf to themselves.
--Nicholas von Hoffman, "The Class of '43 Is Puzzled," The Atlantic, October 1968


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Pelf comes from Old French pelfre, "booty, stolen goods." It is related to pilfer.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 20, 2005CE

tocsin

\TOCK-sin\, noun:
1. An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm.
2. A warning.

Some of the allegations put round are so frenzied, however, that some caution should be exercised before the tocsin is rung too loudly.
--"New President of the NUS," Times (London), April 10, 1969

The first atomic bomb fell and its radioactive cloud became a tocsin for mankind.
--Herbert Mitgang, "The Bomb as Horror and Warning," New York Times, August 1, 1990

But Mr. Beckett is wise in choosing the form of the myth in which to sound his tocsin on the condition of human society.
--Brooks Atkinson, "Beckett's 'Endgame,'" New York Times, January 29, 1958


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Tocsin derives from Medieval French touquesain, from Old Provençal tocasenh, from tocar, "to touch, to strike, to ring a bell" + senh, "church bell," ultimately from Latin signum, "sign, signal."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 21, 2005CE

lexicon

\LEK-suh-kon\, noun;
plural lexicons or lexica \-kuh\:
1. A book containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words in a language with the definition of each; a dictionary.
2. The vocabulary of a person, group, subject, or language.
3. [Linguistics] The total morphemes of a language.

He thought it right in a lexicon of our language to collect many words which had fallen into disuse.
--James Boswell, Life of Johnson

There were schoolbooks for young James: Ovid, Caesar, Virgil, Terence, Greek grammar, Greek lexicon.
--Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians fled their homes during the fighting and became, in the lexicon of relief workers, IDPs, or internally displaced persons.
--"Casualties of War," Washington Post, June 15, 1999

Curse words ceased to shock; many moved into the accepted lexicon.
--Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies

"Backwardness" was a very important word in the Soviet Communist lexicon: it stood for everything that belonged to old Russia and needed to be changed in the name of progress and culture.
--Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism


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Lexicon comes from Greek lexikon, from lexikos, "of or belonging to words," from lexis, "a speaking, speech, a way of speaking, a word or phrase," from legein, "to say, to speak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 22, 2005CE

umbrage

\UHM-brij\, noun:
1. Shade; shadow; hence, something that affords a shade, as a screen of trees or foliage.
2. a. A vague or indistinct indication or suggestion; a hint.
b. Reason for doubt; suspicion.
3. Suspicion of injury or wrong; offense; resentment.

Burr finally took umbrage, and challenged him to a duel.
--Richard A. Samuelson, "Alexander Hamilton: American," Commentary, June 1999

In almost all the walks of his life, he appears to have been both astoundingly rude and genuinely astonished that anyone should take umbrage.
--Robert Winder, "A dying game," New Statesman, June 19, 2000

He had a devastating smile, which could wipe away the slightest umbrage.
--Alec Guinness, A Positively Final Appearance

The river tumbling green and white, far below me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent.
--Walt Whitman, Specimen Days & Collect


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Umbrage is derived from Latin umbra, "shade."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 23, 2005CE

orotund

\OR-uh-tuhnd\, adjective:
1. Characterized by fullness, clarity, strength, and smoothness of sound.
2. Pompous; bombastic.

"I have been cursed to stalk the night through all eternity," he went on, his voice orotund, carrying all across the playground.
--Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth

Just once he should resist citing Melville's orotund pronouncement that "genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round."
--James Atlas, "The Great Reminiscer," New York Times, September 3, 1995

. . . a down-at-heel philosopher who no longer thinks but gabs, the bore at the dinner table, growing more self-absorbed and orotund and cynical with each glass of wine.
--"Melting in Sri Lanka," New York Times, March 29, 1987


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Orotund derives from Latin ore rotundo, "with a round mouth," hence "clear, loud," from os, oris, "the mouth" + rotundus, "round." It is related to oral.

[Telleriab2]

I like this thread!

[Lazy Agnostic]

I like this thread!It was Dee Dee's idea.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 24, 2005CE

loquacious

\loh-KWAY-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Very talkative.
2. Full of excessive talk; wordy.

The meeting went on for hours, accommodating loquacious bores who were each allowed their say.
--Andrew Sullivan, "Gay Life, Gay Death," The New Republic, December 17, 1990

In drawing a sharp contrast with the loquacious Ginsburg, her new lawyers appeared for just a few moments and said virtually nothing to reporters before retreating into the building.
--Peter Baker, "Lewinsky Replaces Ginsburg," Washington Post, June 3, 1998


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Loquacious comes from Latin loquax, "talkative," from loqui, "to speak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday October 25, 2005CE

bruit

\BROOT\, transitive verb:
To report; to noise abroad.

The first originated with a professor of government who, it was bruited, had always succeeded in predicting the outcome of presidential-year elections.
--William F. Buckley, Jr., "We didn't tell you so," National Review, November 29, 2004

An attack on Iraq has been bruited about ever since President Bush invoked an axis of evil in his State of the Union address to Congress in January.
--Joyce Appleby and Ellen Carol Dubois, "Congress must reassert authority to declare war," The Record (Bergen County, NJ), September 20, 2002

Since his family was so very wealthy, having an accumulated fortune of many years, he did not have to work for a living, and thus he could -- and did -- devote himself to various and sundry dissipations and pleasures, especially drink (in fact it was widely bruited about, that in his younger years, he was alcoholic).
--Dorothy Belle Pollack, "A fairy tale for the modern day," The Record (Bergen County, NJ), September 13, 2004


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Bruit comes from Old French, from the past participle of bruire, "to roar."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday October 26, 2005CE

virago

\vuh-RAH-go; vuh-RAY-go\, noun:
1. A woman of extraordinary stature, strength, and courage.
2. A woman regarded as loud, scolding, ill-tempered, quarrelsome, or overbearing.

The intrepid heroines range from Unn the Deep Minded, the Viking virago who colonized Iceland, to Sue Hendrikson, a school dropout who became one of the great experts on amber, fossils and shipwrecks.
--Ann Prichard, "Coffee-table: Africa, cathedrals, animals, 'Sue,'" USA Today, November 28, 2001

This virago, this madwoman, finally got to me, and I was subjected to the most rude, the most shocking violence I can remember.
--José Limón, An Unfinished Memoir


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Virago comes from Latin virago, "a man-like woman, a female warrior, a heroine" from vir, "a man."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday October 27, 2005CE

mawkish

\MOCK-ish\, adjective:
1. Sickly or excessively sentimental.
2. Insipid in taste; nauseous; disgusting.

The movie's attempts to connect these out-of-body experiences with the '60s ethos of consciousness expansion are so forced that the transcendent, feel-good leaps of faith with which the story culminates seem mawkish and unearned.
--Stephen Holden, " 'Eden': Out of Step at a Prep School as a New Age Dawns." New York Times, April 3, 1998

Philadelphia Inquirer dismissed it as "a terrible play, a hopeless jumble of juvenile humor and mawkish sentimentality."
--Peter Applebome, "Blasphemy? Again? Somebody's Praying for a Hit." New York Times, October 18, 1998

Joe DiMaggio, who died this year to often mawkish eulogies and overwrought sociology, was an ancestor of the current four: driven, selfish, unidimensional in his playing days.
--Robert Lipsyte, "Time for Sports Heroes to Start Acting in a Heroic Way." New York Times, August 22, 1999


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Mawkish originally meant "maggoty" (from Middle English mawke, maggot), hence squeamish, nauseating, hence tending to render squeamish or make nauseated, especially because of excessive sentimentality.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday October 28, 2005CE

malediction

\mal-uh-DIK-shun\, noun:
A curse or execration.

There Justice Minister Bola Ige, confronted with the general incivility of local police, placed a malediction on the cads. Said the Hon. Bola Ige, "I pray that God will make big holes in their pockets."
--"Sic Semper Tyrannis! Oppressors Face People's Justice," American Spectator, May 1, 2001

A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.
--Joseph McCarthy, quoted in Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes


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Malediction comes from Latin maledictio, from maledicere, "to speak ill, to abuse," from Latin male, "badly" + dicere, "to speak, to say."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday October 29, 2005CE

susurrus

\su-SUHR-uhs\, noun:
A whispering or rustling sound; a murmur.

Still, the breeze is soothing, as is the susurrus of the branches.
--Michael Finkel, "Tree Surfing and Other Lofty Pleasures," The Atlantic, March 1998

And there came, like the dry susurrus of wind before thunder peals and lightning, a great rustle of excitement.
--Richard Whittington-Egan, "The Edwardian literary afternoon: part one," Contemporary Review, April 2000

He heard the susurrus of curtains luffed by the breeze.
--Erik Larson, Isaac's Storm


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Susurrus comes from the Latin susurrus, "a murmuring, a whispering, a humming."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday October 30, 2005CE

neophyte

\NEE-uh-fyt\, noun:
1. A new convert or proselyte.
2. A novice; a beginner in anything.

I was a complete neophyte and knew nothing about the choreographic process, but seeing the steps pour out of this man was a revelation.
--Edward Villella, "Remembering Balanchine as the Boss," New York Times, January 26, 1992

She, the neophyte, with as yet no experience of this, had settled eagerly to the task.
--Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly

As a neophyte in politics, I didn't understand that ducking the issues was the goal of most campaigns.
--Pat Schroeder, 24 Years of House Work . . . and the Place Is Still a Mess


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Neophyte comes from Late Latin neophytus, from Greek neophutos, "newly planted," from neo-, "new" + phutos, "planted," from phuein, "to grow, to bring forth."

Synonyms: novice, beginner, rookie, tyro.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday October 31, 2005CE

immolate

\IM-uh-layt\, transitive verb:
1. To sacrifice; to offer in sacrifice; to kill as a sacrificial victim.
2. To kill or destroy, often by fire.

What have I gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove, or to Neptune, or a mouse to Hecate . . . if I quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we call it; or at the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty, or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder?
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and English traits

In the city of Bhopal, police used water canon to thwart a group of Congress workers who were on the point of immolating themselves.
--Peter Popham, "Gandhi critics are expelled by party," Independent, May 21, 1999

Bowls of honey at the room's center drew random insects to immolate themselves against a nearby bug zapper.
--Carol Kino, "Damien Hirst at Gagosian," Art in America, May 2001


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Immolate comes from the past participle of Latin immolare, "to sacrifice; originally, to sprinkle a victim with sacrificial meal," from in- + mola, "grits or grains of spelt coarsely ground and mixed with salt."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday November 1, 2005CE

alpenglow

\AL-puhn-gloh\, noun:
A reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains.

In the soft alpenglow, we watch copper turn pink on the peaks above.
--Brian Payton, "A river of dreams," Boston Globe, July 25, 1999

At the Ahwahnee Hotel, guests book reservations a year in advance to watch the alpenglow off the majestic Half Dome from cozy rooms equipped with TVs and minibars.
--Jeanne McDowell, "Fighting For Yosemite's Future," Time, January 14, 1991


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Alpenglow is a partial translation of German Alpenglühen, from Alpen, "Alps" + glühen, "to glow."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday November 2, 2005CE

subfusc

\sub-FUHSK\, adjective:
Dark or dull in color; drab, dusky.

The tea-cosy, property of one Edmund Gravel -- "known as the Recluse of Lower Spigot to everybody there and elsewhere," as the book's first page informs us -- is haunted by a six-legged emcee for various "subfusc but transparent" ghosts.
--Emily Gordon, "The Doubtful Host," Newsday, November 8, 1998

Her inscrutable figure -- imposing in designer subfusc, slightly donnish, reminiscent of Vita Sackville-West, to whom she was distantly related -- baffled and intrigued some.
--Yvonne Whiteman, "Obituary: Frances Lincoln," Independent, March 6, 2001


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Subfusc comes from Latin subfuscus, "brownish, dark," from sub-, "under" + fuscus, "dark-colored."

[draoi]

Word of the Day for Sunday January 8th, 2006AD


spe·cious
adj.


Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument.
Deceptively attractive.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 12, 2006CE

eleemosynary

\el-uh-MOS-uh-ner-ee\, adjective:
1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, "an eleemosynary institution."
2. Given in charity or alms; having the nature of alms; as, "eleemosynary assistance."
3. Supported by charity; as, "eleemosynary poor."

We also need to revive the great eleemosynary institutions through which compassionate people serve those in need with both greater flexibility and discipline than government agencies are capable.
-- Clifford F. Thies, "Bring back the bridewell," The World & I, September 1, 1995

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
-- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

Like Hilda's "eleemosynary doves," these birds depend upon the Author's charity, require mothering, just as Hilda finds solace in the Virgin--"a child, lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a Mother."
-- John Dolis, "Domesticating Hawthorne: Home Is for the Birds," Criticism, Winter 2001


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The source of eleemosynary is Medieval Latin eleemosynarius, from Late Latin eleemosyna, "alms," from Greek eleemosyne, from eleemon, "pitiful," from eleos, "pity."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Below are the WOTD from while I was gone.


Word of the Day/November 2005

alpenglow: a reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains.
subfusc: dark or dull in color.
mores: customs; habits; ways.
dapple: a small contrasting blotch; also, to mark with spots.
winsome: light-hearted.
verdure: greenness.
propitious: presenting favorable circumstances.
nosegay: a bouquet.
oneiric: pertaining to or suggestive of dreams.
laudable: praiseworthy; commendable.
puissant: powerful.
diadem: a crown.
ebullient: high-spirited.
aplomb: confidence; coolness.
kobold: a kind of domestic spirit in German mythology.
prestidigitation: sleight of hand.
rubicund: inclining to redness; ruddy.
lambent: playing on the surface; flickering.
anodyne: serving to relieve pain.
ingenue: a naive girl or young woman, or an actress representing such a person.
subterfuge: a deceptive device or stratagem.
maelstrom: a large, powerful whirlpool; also, a violent, disordered, or turbulent state of affairs.
crepuscular: pertaining to twilight.
repast: a meal.
soporific: causing sleep; also, something that causes sleep.
bivouac: a usually temporary encampment; also, to encamp.
quidnunc: a gossip; a busybody.
lassitude: lack of vitality or energy.
billet-doux: a love letter.
wheedle: to entice by flattery.


Word of the Day /December 2005

alfresco: outdoors; outdoor.
redivivus: living again; revived; restored.
chagrin: acute vexation or embarrassment.
gaucherie: a socially awkward or tactless act; also, lack of tact.
panache: dash or flamboyance in manner or style.
logorrhea: excessive talkativeness.
assiduous: constant in application or attention.
sylvan: pertaining to woods or forests.
voluptuary: a person devoted to luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites.
inure: to make used to; also, to take or have effect.
auspicious: favorable; also, prosperous; fortunate.
tmesis: in grammar and rhetoric, the separation of the parts of a compound word.
carapace: a shell; a protective covering.
paladin: a champion of a cause.
hale: free from disease and weakening conditions; healthy.
sacrosanct: sacred; inviolable.
melange: a mixture.
vainglory: excessive pride or vain display.
sub rosa: secretly; privately; confidentially.
digerati: persons knowledgeable about computers.
confrere: a colleague, comrade, or intimate associate.
querulous: habitually complaining; also, expressing complaint.
vociferous: clamorous; noisy.
firmament: the sky; the heavens.
jollification: merrymaking; revelry.
benefaction: the act of conferring a benefit; also, a benefit conferred.
apposite: of striking appropriateness and relevance.
cynosure: a center of attention.
quiddity: the essence or nature of a thing.
perquisite: a benefit in addition to a salary.
Hogmanay: the name, in Scotland, for the last day of the year.


Word of the Day /January 2006

vim: energy; vigor.
plenary: full; complete.
gastronome: a lover of good food and drink.
sine qua non: an indispensable thing.
exegete: one who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.
recondite: difficult to understand.
diktat: an authoritative decree or order.
esurient: hungry; greedy.
ineffable: incapable of being expressed.
dubiety: the condition or quality of being doubtful; also, a matter of doubt.
pugilist: a boxer.
renascent: rising again into being; showing renewed vigor.
sesquipedalian: (of words) long; having many syllables.
encumbrance: a burden, impediment, or hindrance.
pugnacious: combative; quarrelsome.
capricious: whimsical; changeable.
comity: a state of mutual harmony, friendship, and respect.
quondam: former; sometime.
ergo: therefore; consequently.
susurration: a whispering; a soft murmur.
irrefragable: impossible to refute.
tutelage: guardianship; protection; also, instruction.
incommunicado: without means or right to communicate.
predilection: an established preference.
flippant: showing inappropriate levity; pert.
grandee: a man of elevated rank or station; a nobleman.
wunderkind: one who achieves success or acclaim during youth.
lucre: money; profit.
epigone: an inferior imitator.
sang-froid: coolness in trying circumstances.
consanguineous: related by blood; descended from the same ancestor


Word of the Day/February 2006

malleable: capable of being shaped; also, adaptable.
parlous: fraught with danger; hazardous.
disparate: fundamentally different; also, composed of dissimilar elements.
sapient: wise; sage; discerning.
visage: the face; also, appearance; aspect.
excoriate: to express strong disapproval of; also, to flay.
tendentious: marked by a strong tendency in favor of a particular point of view.
milieu: environment; setting.
deus ex machina: an agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an apparently insoluble difficulty.
autodidact: one who is self-taught.
stertorous: characterized by a heavy snoring or gasping sound.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 13, 2006CE

concupiscence

\kon-KYOO-puh-suhn(t)s; kuhn-\, noun:
Strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust.

The "Tretis" is an argument in favor of chastity and contrasts the "Wise Virgins" who devote themselves to God with the "Foolish Virgins" who taste "the fruits of forbidden concupiscence" and, of course, pay for it.
-- Michael Gorra, "Loved for his Diphthongs," New York Times, November 27, 1983

Within three years Rorik's queen was dead, taking with her into silence her midnight cries of release from that captivity of concupiscence which Eve's curious sin has laid upon mankind.
-- John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius


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Concupiscence is from Late Latin concupiscentia, from the present participle of Latin concupiscere, "to desire eagerly," from com-, intensive prefix + cupere, "to desire." The adjective form is concupiscent. The name of the ancient Roman god of love, Cupid, comes from the same root.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 14, 2006CE

spoony

\SPOO-nee\, adjective:
1. Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental.
2. Foolishly or sentimentally in love.

Nevertheless, because we're spoony old things at heart, we like to believe that some showbiz marriages are different.
-- Julie Burchill, "Cut!," The Guardian, February 7, 2001

So when your fervor cools, you think that this suddenly familiar and lusterless partner couldn't possibly be the one you're destined to be with; otherwise you'd still be all spoony, lovey-dovey and bewitched.
-- John Dufresne, "What's So Hot About Passion?," Washington Post, February 9, 2003

We know they aren't doing it for love, otherwise it wouldn't take $50 million to sucker them into getting spoony for a construction worker.
-- "Say it isn't so 'Joe'," USA Today, December 30, 2002


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Spoony is from the slang term spoon, meaning "a simpleton or a silly person."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 15, 2006CE

desideratum

\dih-sid-uh-RAY-tum; -RAH-\, noun;
plural desiderata:
Something desired or considered necessary.

No one in Berkeley -- at least, no one I consorted with -- thought art was for sissies, or that a pensionable job was the highest desideratum.
-- John Banville, "Just a dream some of us had," Irish Times, August 24, 1998

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.
-- Frederick Douglass, My Bondage, My Freedom

A technical dictionary . . . is one of the desiderata in anatomy.
-- Alexander Monro, Essay on Comparative Anatomy


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Desideratum is from Latin desideratum, "a thing desired," from desiderare, "to desire."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 16, 2006CE

malaise

\muh-LAYZ; -LEZ\, noun:
1. A vague feeling of discomfort in the body, as at the onset of illness.
2. A general feeling of depression or unease.

The first sign of illness is a malaise no worse than influenza.
-- Steve Jones, Darwin's Ghost

Beauty is a basic pleasure. Try to imagine that you have become immune to beauty. Chances are, you would consider yourself unwell -- sunk in a physical, spiritual, or emotional malaise.
-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest

He fell in love with Modotti's sad beauty and her indecipherable character, and he saw in her the same vague subtle malaise that made him feel like a stranger to life.
-- Pino Cacucci, Tina Modotti: A Life

Shortly after the birth of his second child, the Prince found himself in a state of malaise and dissatisfaction with life which manifested itself as a boredom with his wife, and an interest in one of the young ladies at court.
-- Andrew Crumey, Pfitz


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Malaise comes from the French, from Old French mal, "bad, ill" + aise, "comfort, ease."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 17, 2006CE

imbue

\im-BYOO\, transitive verb:
1. To tinge or dye deeply; to cause to absorb thoroughly; as, "clothes thoroughly imbued with black."
2. To instill profoundly; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.

Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings.
-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest

Along with the rest of us he would certainly applaud attempts to imbue the young with the spirit of fair play.
-- John Bryant, "Football should heed the Corinthian spirit," Times (London), February 17, 2000

He wanted to remake American cinema into a positive force for good, to imbue it with a transcendent sense of virtue and order.
-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood


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Imbue comes from Latin imbuere, "to wet, to steep, to saturate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 18, 2006CE

canard

\kuh-NAHRD\, noun:
1. An unfounded, false, or fabricated report or story.
2. A horizontal control and stabilizing surface mounted forward of the main wing of an aircraft.
3. An aircraft whose horizontal stabilizer is mounted forward of the main wing.

This is just a canard that is assumed to be true because it has been repeated so often.
-- Bruce Bartlett, "Lower Taxes Higher Revenue?," National Review, March 13, 2003

Loath as I am to resurrect the old canard accusing writers or critics who dislike a popular work of art of being jealous, in Byatt's case, it might be true.
-- Charles Taylor, "quoted in Rowling books 'for people with stunted imaginations," The Guardian, July 11, 2003

Several students say they still believe the canard that no Americans died in Bali -- in fact, six did.
-- Phil Zabriskie, "Did You Hear...?," Time Asia, February 1, 2003

Whether this was true (which seems improbable) or was one of Lawrence's numerous canards (which seems very possible), it appears that Father did intend to strike camp at some time.
-- Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In French canard means "duck" or "false news; hoax." The latter sense of the word probably comes from the phrase vendre un canard à moitié, "to half-sell a duck" -- which is to say, not to sell it at all, hence "to take in, to make a fool of."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 19, 2006CE

probity

\PRO-buh-tee\, noun:
Complete and confirmed integrity; uprightness.

Unless some light is shed on shady dealings and some probity restored, more young lives will be blighted and careers choked off.
-- Norman Lebrecht, Who Killed Classical Music?

To suggest that this exemplar of financial probity was enriching himself at public expense was to shake the very foundations of the new Republic.
-- William Safire, Scandalmonger


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Probity is from Latin probitas, from probus, "good, upright, virtuous."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 20, 2006CE

titivate

\TIT-uh-vayt\, transitive and intransitive verb:
To smarten up; to spruce up.

It's easy to laugh at a book in which the heroine's husband says to her, "You look beautiful," and then adds, "So stop titivating yourself."
-- Joyce Cohen, "review of To Be the Best, by Barbara Taylor Bradford," New York Times, July 31, 1988

In The Idle Class, when Chaplin is titivating in a hotel room, the cloth on his dressing table rides up and down, caught in the same furious gusts.
-- Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places


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Titivate is perhaps from tidy + the quasi-Latin ending -vate. When the word originally came into the language, it was written tidivate or tiddivate. The noun form is titivation.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 21, 2006CE

jovial

\JOH-vee-uhl\, adjective:
Merry; joyous; jolly; characterized by mirth or jollity.

One pupil of the sixteen-year-old Custer remembered him as "socially inclined," jovial, and full of life.
-- Louise Barnett, Touched by Fire

The Puritans took a dim view of the jovial, amiable cleric who liked to have a pot of ale at one of Purleigh's pubs.
-- Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life

He smiled, joked and at times seemed downright jovial.
-- "Piazza Booed Again (Till He Homers)," New York Times, August 22, 1998


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Jovial ultimately derives from the Latin jovialis, "of or pertaining to Jupiter." (The planet Jupiter was thought to make those born under it joyful or jovial.)

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 22, 2006CE

salutary

\SAL-yuh-ter-ee\, adjective:
1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous.
2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.

Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations -- charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs -- and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens.
-- Fareed Zakaria, "Bigger Than the Family, Smaller Than the State," New York Times, August 13, 1995

Surviving a near-death experience has the salutary effect of concentrating the mind.
-- Kenneth T. Walsh and Roger Simon, "Bush turns the tide," U.S. News, February 28, 2000

And they washed it all down with sharp red wines, moderate amounts of which are known to be salutary.
-- Rod Usher, "The Fat of the Land," Time Europe, January 8, 2000

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Salutary derives from Latin salutaris, from salus, salut-, "health."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday February 23, 2006CE

alacrity

\uh-LACK-ruh-tee\, noun:
A cheerful or eager readiness or willingness, often manifested by brisk, lively action or promptness in response.

As for his homemade meatloaf sandwich with green tomato ketchup, a condiment he developed while working in New York, I devoured it with an alacrity unbecoming in someone who gets paid to taste carefully.
-- R.W. Apple Jr., "Southern Tastes, Worldly Memories," New York Times, April 26, 2000

Arranged in long ranks, ten-, twelve-, or thirteen-year-old girls, pale and hollow-eyed, their pinned-back hair sprouting tendrils limp with perspiration, operated the machinery with such alacrity that arms and hands were a flying blur.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

So, I am sure that I was thrilled when I got the letter offering me the fellowship and equally sure that I wrote back to accept with alacrity.
-- Joan L. Richards, Angles of Reflection

Never was a sinking ship abandoned with such alacrity and unanimity, never was an experiment condemned so conclusively.
-- Ernest Gellner, The End of Utopia by Russell Jacoby


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Alacrity comes from Latin alacritas, from alacer, lively.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday February 24, 2006CE

munificent

\myoo-NIF-i-suhnt\, adjective:
Very liberal in giving or bestowing; very generous; lavish.

Another munificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable.
-- George Eliot, Letters

The fleeting movement of air inside the black tunnel before and after the passage of a train made it a source of refreshment more munificent than a roaring window air conditioner.
-- Norma Field, From My Grandmother's Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo

John Sr.'s paycheck, while hardly munificent, was steady, and frugality did the rest.
-- Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind


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Munificent is from Latin munificus, "generous, bountiful," from munus, "gift." The quality of being munificent is munificence.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday February 25, 2006CE

cogent

\KOH-juhnt\, adjective:
Having the power to compel conviction; appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.

One woman, Adrian Pomerantz, was so intelligent that the professors always lit up when Adrian spoke; her eloquent, cogent analyses forced them not to be lazy, not to repeat themselves.
-- Meg Wolitzer, Surrender, Dorothy

I suggested to the student that she take her refusal as the theme of her term paper and ponder it as carefully as possible. A few weeks later she submitted one of the most cogent, intelligent papers I have read.
-- Denis Donoghue, The Practice of Reading


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Cogent derives from Latin cogere, "to drive together, to force," from co-, "with, together" + agere, "to drive."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday February 26, 2006CE

apothegm

\AP-uh-them\, noun:
A short, witty, and instructive saying.

Nineteen Eighty-four the most contemporary novel of this year and who knows of how many past and to come, is a great examination into and dramatization of Lord Acton's famous apothegm, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
-- Mark Schorer, "When Newspeak Was New," New York Times, October 6, 1996

The rare talent of compressing a mass of profound thought into an apophthegm.
-- Henry Hart Milman, The History of Latin Christianity

The admirable Hebrew apophthegm, Learn to say I do not know.
-- Frederic Farrar, Life of St. Paul


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Apothegm comes from Greek apophthegma, from apophthengesthai, "to speak one's opinion plainly," from apo-, intensive prefix + phthengesthai, "to speak." The adjective form is apothegmatic.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday February 27, 2006CE

posit

\POZ-it\, transitive verb:
1. To assume as real or conceded.
2. To propose as an explanation; to suggest.
3. To dispose or set firmly or fixedly.

It is not necessary to posit mysterious forces to explain coincidences.
-- Bruce Martin, "Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?," Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 1998

Among other things, the researchers posit that the behavior of the muscles during laughter probably explains why phrases like "weak with laughter" pops up in many different languages.
-- "How Muscles Can Go Weak With Laughter," New York Times, September 14, 1999

Some scientists subscribe to this "catastrophic" view of evolutionary history and posit such events as meteoritic collisions with earth, viral epidemics, and explosive evolutionary changes as responsible for species extinctions in the past.
-- Noel T. Boaz Ph.D., Eco Homo


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Posit is from Latin positus, past participle of ponere, "to put, to place, to set."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 28, 2006CE

scion

\SY-uhn\, noun:
1. A detached shoot or twig of a plant used for grafting.
2. Hence, a descendant; an heir.

Convinced he was the scion of Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac, a noble Breton, he was off to do genealogical research in the Paris libraries and then to locate his ancestor's hometown in Brittany.
-- Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac

Sassoon, scion of a famously wealthy Jewish banking family, had never needed to earn his living.
-- Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand

Gates is the scion of an old, affluent Seattle family; Jobs is the adopted son of a machinist in Northern California.
-- "Steve Jobs, Hesitant Co-Founder, Makes New Commitment to Apple," New York Times, August 7, 1997


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Scion derives from Old French cion, of Germanic origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive/February 2006CE

malleable: capable of being shaped; also, adaptable.
parlous: fraught with danger; hazardous.
disparate: fundamentally different; also, composed of dissimilar elements.
sapient: wise; sage; discerning.
visage: the face; also, appearance; aspect.
excoriate: to express strong disapproval of; also, to flay.
tendentious: marked by a strong tendency in favor of a particular point of view.
milieu: environment; setting.
deus ex machina: an agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an apparently insoluble difficulty.
autodidact: one who is self-taught.
stertorous: characterized by a heavy snoring or gasping sound.
eleemosynary: relating to charity; charitable.
concupiscence: lust.
spoony: foolishly or sentimentally in love.
desideratum: something desired.
malaise: a condition of uneasiness or ill-being.
imbue: to dye; to instill profoundly.
canard: an unfounded or false report.
probity: complete and confirmed integrity.
titivate: to smarten up; to spruce.
jovial: merry; joyous; jolly.
salutary: beneficial; also, healthful.
alacrity: a cheerful readiness, willingness, or promptness.
munificent: very generous.
cogent: appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.
apothegm: a short, witty, and instructive saying.
posit: to postulate; also, to suggest.
scion: a descendant; an heir.

[dizzle]

Ohhh this list is useful. I will include this in the March newsleter.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Ohhh this list is useful. I will include this in the March newsleter.I'm glad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word of the Day for Wednesday March 1, 2006CE

doula

\DOO-luh\, noun:
A woman who assists during childbirth labor and provides support to the mother, her child and the family after childbirth.

Chris Morley launched Tender Care Doula Service in Valencia, California, seven years ago to provide nonmedical postpartum care workers (or doulas) to frazzled new moms.
-- Roy Huffman, "Healthy returns," Entrepreneur Magazine, February 1, 1996

Unlike midwives, who deliver babies and are licensed to perform medical tasks, labor doulas provide emotional and physical support to the laboring parents.
-- Stephen L. Richmond, "One Labor-Intensive Job," Time, March 12, 2001


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Doula derives from Greek doula, "servant-woman, slave," akin to hierodule.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 2, 2000CE

largess

\lar-ZHES; lar-JES; LAR-jes\, noun:
1. Generous giving (as of gifts or money), often accompanied by condescension.
2. Gifts, money, or other valuables so given.
3. Generosity; liberality.

Four years after her marriage she exclaimed giddily over her father-in-law's largess: "He has given Waldorf the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a birthday present!"
-- Stacy Schiff, "Otherwise Engaged," New York Times, March 19, 2000

The recipients of Johnson's largesse were understandably indifferent to what propelled him.
-- Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973

A swelling chorus has arisen recently to complain that the PRI has been up to its old tricks, showering voters with largesse (ranging from washing machines to bicycles and cash).
-- "Mexico's vote," Economist, June 24, 2000


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Largess is from Old French largesse, "largeness, generosity," from large, from Latin largus, "plentiful, generous."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 3, 2006CE

dilettante

\DIL-uh-tont; dil-uh-TONT; dil-uh-TON-tee; -TANT; -TAN-tee\, noun:
1. An amateur or dabbler; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
2. An admirer or lover of the fine arts.

adjective:
1. Of or characteristic of a dilettante; amateurish.

As he had put it, it was a matter of principle, not money: Mistler family trusts, over which he exercised discretionary powers, had not been established to support dilettantes or would-be litterateurs waiting for inspiration.
-- Louis Begley, Mistler's Exit

His writings, which began as a schoolboy's jottings for the amusement of classmates, continued into adulthood, although he describes his youthful work as the musings of a dilettante.
-- David Gonzalez, "Eye on the Universe: A Poet Views It All From the Bronx," New York Times, December 25, 1991

At first his colleagues tended to dismiss this witty young dilettante poet as a scientific lightweight, even if he was an agreeable addition to their dinner table.
-- "Dr Alex Comfort," Times (London), March 28, 2000

She was, in the parlance of the time, a 'sermon taster', going to any church where the preaching was supposed to be good; for a dilettante churchgoer Brighton was then an exciting place to be.
-- Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography


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Dilettante comes from the present participle of Italian delittare, "to delight," from Latin delectare, "to delight," frequentative of delicere, "to allure," from de- + lacere, "to entice."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 4, 2006CE

simulacrum

\sim-yuh-LAY-kruhm; -LAK-ruhm\, noun;
plural simulacra \sim-yuh-LAY-kruh; -LAK-ruh\:
1. An image; a representation.
2. An insubstantial, superficial, or vague likeness or semblance.

Incorporating simulacra of historic buildings and exotic landscapes the Emperor saw on his extensive travels through his dominions, the villa is high-style multiculturalism.
-- Martin Filler, New York Times, December 3, 1995

It becomes harder . . . to distinguish the genuine from its simulacrum.
-- Wayne Curtis, "The Tiki Wars," The Atlantic, February 2001

The Wilson who at last recovered some of his health was a pale simulacrum of the man he had been.
-- Louis Auchincloss, Woodrow Wilson

His radiator pipe and fire hose, for example, are like washed out ghosts of real things, waxen simulacra of themselves.
-- Harvey Blume, "Bits of Beauty," The Atlantic, June 3, 1999


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Simulacrum is from the Latin, from simulare, "to make like, to put on an appearance of," from similis, "like." It is related to simulate and similar.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 5, 2006CE

toothsome

\TOOTH-suhm\, adjective:
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.

Fleming was impressed not only by its taste but by its astonishing durability: Caudle's apple, after ten months in storage, was still toothsome and fragrant.
-- David Guterson, "The Kingdom of Apples," Harper's Magazine, October 1999

Their topic, naturally: business niches that offer toothsome opportunities and comparatively limited competition.
-- Dick Youngblood, "Business niches can be opportunities," Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 2, 2003

The myth, which Kournikova herself often takes great measures to perpetuate, is that she is an imposter on the WTA Tour, a toothsome starlet who simply uses the tennis court as a catwalk.
-- Jon Wertheim, "Any day now for Anna," Sports Illustrated, April 14, 2000


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Toothsome is derived from tooth + -some.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 6, 2006CE

countermand

\KOWN-tuhr-mand; kown-tuhr-MAND\, transitive verb:
1. To revoke (a former command); to cancel or rescind by giving an order contrary to one previously given.
2. To recall or order back by a contrary order.

noun:
1. A contrary order.
2. Revocation of a former order or command.

And given the mixed results, a constitutional amendment that could countermand both the law and the original order by Vermont's Supreme Court seems unlikely.
-- Stanley Kurtz, "Florida? Try Vermont," National Review Online, November 13, 2000

Her aunt and uncle kept hoping her father would countermand his orders since his promises to her seemed to be without effect.
-- Dumas Malone, quoted in The Long Affair, by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Based in a futuristic radar room near Dulles Airport, it has become a master center, with electronic vision that sees every airplane in the system and the authority to question and, in some circumstances, countermand decisions made by individual controllers.
-- William Langewiesche, "Slam and Jam," The Atlantic, October 1997


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Countermand derives from Old French contremander, from contre-, "counter" (from Latin contra) + mander, "to command" (from Latin mandare).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 7, 2006CE


expropriate

\ek-SPROH-pree-ayt\, transitive verb:
1. To deprive of possession.
2. To transfer (the property of another) to oneself.

Very few voters, after all, really believe Europe's new generation of social democratic leaders are wild Bolsheviks plotting to expropriate their Toyotas.
-- Fintan O'Toole, "The last gasp of social democracy," Irish Times, March 19, 1999

The Spanish constitution declared the country "a democratic republic of workers of all classes" and laid down that property might be expropriated "for social uses."
-- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent

Farmlands that had belonged to Bosnia's Muslim beys . . . and agas were expropriated without compensation and handed over to their former tenant sharecroppers.
-- Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance


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Expropriate comes from Medieval Latin expropriatus, past participle of expropriare, "to deprive of property," from Latin ex- + proprius, "one's own." The act of expropriating is expropriation. One who expropriates is an expropriator.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 8, 2006CE

perambulate

\puh-RAM-byuh-layt\, intransitive verb:
1. To walk about; to roam; to stroll; as, "he perambulated in the park."

transitive verb:
1. To walk through or over.
2. To travel over for the purpose of surveying or inspecting.

Every weekend, the police close off ten to fifteen blocks of some Manhattan avenue. The merchants line the curbs, and the New Yorkers slowly perambulate up and down.
-- Richard Brookhiser, "Island Bazaar," National Review, July 1, 2002

At Syon, we perambulate a succession of rooms of the greatest magnificence, beginning with the entrance hall, with an apse of columns -- characteristic of Adam, all dazzling whiteness.
-- A. L. Rowse, "At Home with History in London," New York Times, January 19, 1986

If you don't like boats -- and it's surprising how many people who come here don't like boats -- you can perambulate the shoreline, take a swim, sit in the lounge and read, or do nothing more than sit on the dock
-- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel

She liked to perambulate the room with a duster in her hand, with which she stopped to polish the backs of already lustrous books, musing and romancing as she did so.
-- Virginia Woolf, Night and Day


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Perambulate comes from Latin per-, "through" + ambulare, "to walk." The noun form is perambulation.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 9, 2006CE

contradistinction

\kon-truh-dis-TINK-shuhn\, noun:
Distinction by contrast; as, "sculpture in contradistinction to painting."

In the quarter-century since "Gravity's Rainbow," American novelists have increasingly fixed their boldest inventions in the past, usually their own early years or a time long before they were born -- in contradistinction to postwar writers who vigorously peeled away World War II and the social fabric of the 1950's.
-- Gary Giddins, "Escape to New York," New York Times, September 20, 1998

The music was breathing constantly, in contradistinction to the willfully suffocated feeling of most heavy music.
-- Ben Ratliff, "A Brazilian Band Emerges From the Loss of Its Leader," New York Times, July 28, 2000


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Contradistinction is contra-, from Latin contra, "against" + distinction, from Latin distinctio, from distinguere, "to distinguish."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 10, 2006CE

ululate

\UL-yuh-layt; YOOL-\, intransitive:
To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals.

He had often dreamed of his grieving family visiting his grave, ululating as only the relatives of martyrs may.
-- Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran

She wanted to be on the tarmac, to ululate and raise her hands to the heavens.
-- Deborah Sontag, "Palestinian Airport Opens to Jubilation," New York Times, November 25, 1998

She used harrowing, penetrating nasal tones and a rasp that approached Janis Joplin's double-stops; she made notes break and ululate.
-- Jon Pareles, "On the Third Day There Was Whooping and There Was Moshing," New York Times, August 18, 1998


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Ululate derives from Latin ululare, to howl, to yell, ultimately of imitative origin. The noun form is ululation; the adjective form is ululant.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 11, 2006CE

crapulous

\KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:
1. Suffering the effects of, or derived from, or suggestive of gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous stomach.
2. Marked by gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous old reprobate.

These were the dregs of their celebratory party: the half-filled glasses, the cold beans and herring, the shouts and smells of the crapulous strangers hemming them in on every side, the dead rinsed-out April night and the rain drooling down the windows.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock

The crapulous life which her future successor led.
-- Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen in the Time of George III

The new money was spent in so much riotous living, and from end to end there settled on the country a mood of fretful, crapulous irritation.
-- Stephen McKenna, Sonia


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Crapulous is from Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula, from Greek kraipale, drunkenness and its consequences, nausea, sickness, and headache.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 12, 2006CE

parvenu

\PAR-vuh-noo; -nyoo\, noun:
1. One that has recently or suddenly risen to a higher social or economic class but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class; an upstart.

adjective:
1. Being a parvenu; also, like or having the characteristics of a parvenu.

But the favourite's power and influence provoke intense ill-feeling among other courtiers, who regard him as a sinister usurping parvenu with ideas above his station, or perhaps even a sorcerer.
-- Francis Wheen, "The whole truth about Peter's friends," The Guardian, January 31, 2001

However, the Creoles, French, Spanish, and Acadians who preceded the American parvenus were deeply entrenched and incredibly snobbish and clannish in relation to outsiders.
-- Laurence Bergreen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life

When John Stewart Parnell went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1865 he found that "the sons of moneyed parvenus from the North of England tried to liken themselves to country gentlemen and succeeded in looking like stable boys."
-- J. Mordaunt Crook, The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches

The Progressives were of the educated middle class, angry at the rule of parvenu financiers and industrialists.
-- Norman Birnbaum, After Progress


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Parvenu is from the French, from the past participle of parvenir, from Latin pervenire, "to come through to, to arrive at, to reach, hence to succeed," from per, "through" + venire, "to come."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 13, 2006CE

manse

\MAN(T)S\, noun:
1. A large and imposing residence.
2. The residence of a clergyman (especially a Presbyterian clergyman).

A two-story white Greek Revival manse, with a front porch and a terrace in the back.
-- Garrison Keillor, Wobegon Boy

That Carol was a certified divorcee was one of many facts about her which failed to fit, along with her still living with her widowed father in this weird gothic Victorian manse.
-- Erik Tarloff, The Man Who Wrote the Book


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Manse comes from Medieval Latin mansa, "a dwelling," from Latin manere, "to dwell; to remain."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 14, 2006CE

uxorious

\uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:
Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive shopper she has always been.
-- Angela Huth, "All you need is love," Daily Telegraph, April 24, 1998

Flagler seems to have been an uxorious, domestic man, who liked the comfort and companionship of a wife at his side.
-- Michael Browning, "Whitehall at 100," Palm Beach Post, February 22, 2002

Fuller is as uxorious a poet as they come: hiatuses in the couple's mutual understanding are overcome with such rapidity as to be hardly worth mentioning in the first place ("How easy, this ability / To lose whatever we possess / By ceasing to believe that we / Deserve such brilliant success").
-- David Wheatley, "Round and round we go," The Guardian, October 5, 2002


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Uxorious is from Latin uxorius, from uxor, wife.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 15, 2006CE

Ides

\YDZ\, plural noun:
In the ancient Roman calendar the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.

In one measure of how fast this calendar has become in recent years, by the Ides of March 1984, seven states had held primaries, said Rhodes Cook, the author of "Race for the Presidency".
-- Robin Toner, "Both Parties Seek Ways to Tame Fast and Furious Primary Process.," New YorkTimes, January 24, 2000

Oh he is a very fast horse, and on the Ides of November you will know just how fast he is.
-- "The Aristocracy of the Democratic Party.," New York Times, November 9, 1864

A soothsayer bids you beware of the Ides of March.
-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

There is a poem inviting Philodemos to dinner which he is supposed to have written himself, and one of the other guests is Artemidorus, very likely the same son of Theopompos of Cnidos who warned Caesar about the Ides of March in 44 BC on his way to his assassination.
-- Peter Levi, Virgil: His Life and Times


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Ides comes from Latin idus, probably from an Etruscan word meaning "division" of a month.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 16, 2006CE

megalomania

\meg-uh-lo-MAY-nee-ah; -nyuh\, noun:
1. A mania for grandiose or extravagant things or actions.
2. A mental disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur.

Eighteen months generally elapse nowadays between the time a publisher accepts a manuscript and its appearance in book form -- the gestation period of an elephant. During that year and a half of waiting, a writer is visited by every emotion in the fun house, from rosy anticipation to exultation, megalomania, brooding, dread, cringing humility, avarice, guilt and, finally, stolid acceptance.
-- Phillip Lopate, "Waiting for the Book: Storms Before the Calm," New York Times, May 24, 1987

He too often allows us to laugh off notions that science might occasionally be the handmaiden of megalomania, greed, and sadism.
-- David J. Skal, Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture

Mao was a man of considerable charisma and megalomania.
-- Seth Faison, "Deng Xiaoping, Architect of Modern China, Dies at 92," New York Times, February 20, 1997

Megalomania is an occupational hazard for judges, said Prof. Paul Carrington of the Duke University Law School, noting that a trial judge inevitably has a great deal of power over everyone in the courtroom. "Judges can get awfully full of themselves," he said.
-- Neil A. Lewis, "You're Out of Order, Your Honor," New York Times, July 12, 1998

"The atmospheric level of my scholarship..."
--megalomaniac quote
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Megalomania is Scientific Latin, from the Greek elements megal-, great + mania, madness.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 17, 2006CE

verdant

\VUR-dnt\, adjective:
1. Covered with growing plants or grass; green with vegetation.
2. Green.
3. Unripe in knowledge, judgment, or experience; unsophisticated; green.

Drab in winter, then suddenly sodden with alpine runoff, the region turns dazzlingly verdant in spring.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow

Dry as the region just outside the delta may be, it would still be covered with grasses, yellowish in the dry season, verdant in the wet.
-- Niles Eldredge, Life in the Balance

I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine.
-- Henry James, "The Théâtre Français"


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Verdant comes from French verdoyant, present participle of verdoyer, "to be verdant, to grow green," from Old French verdoier, verdeier, from verd, vert, "green," from Latin viridis, "green," from virere, "to be green."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 18, 2006CE

amalgam

\uh-MAL-guhm\, noun:
1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.

In that year, Zola struck back at the novelist and critic Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, that curious amalgam of religious conservative and blasphemous melodramatist -- Zola called him a"hysterical Catholic" -- whom he had long detested for his superior bearing and his unfortunate sallies against writers Zola admired.
-- Gary B. Nash, History on Trial

The so-called "protest" literature of the thirties was often an amalgam of the private rebellion of youth with social revolt.
-- Nona Balakian, The World of William Saroyan

The governing body of college athletics is gradually extruding a regulatory text that reads like some crazed amalgam of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Uniform Commercial Code.
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania

Her vocabulary was an amalgam of slang, especially the show-business jargon of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, and a requisite amount of cultivated English.
-- James A. Drake, Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amalgam comes from Old French amalgame, from Medieval Latin amalgama, probably from Greek malagma, "emollient," from malassein, "to soften," from malakos, "soft."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 19, 2006CE

dudgeon

\DUH-juhn\, noun:
A state or fit of intense indignation; resentment; ill humor -- often used in the phrase "in high dudgeon."

Higgins was so frustrated by such a basic error that he stormed out of the arena for the mid-session interval in high dudgeon.
-- Phil Yates, "Stevens begins to feel pressure as Swail stages customary revival," Times (London), April 29, 2000

This woman is forever in a state of spiritual high dudgeon, and a list of her dislikes is as long as the Omaha phone book.
-- Jim Harrison, The Road Home

What you see, they reckon, is all there is: a media star of fading allure--and shortening temper, if his dudgeon over a television soap-opera satire about him called "How was I, Doris?" (a reference to his fourth wife) is anything to go by.
-- "Gerhard Schröder, embattled chancellor," The Economist, September 18, 1999


The origin of dudgeon is unknown.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 20, 2006CE

paragon

\PAIR-uh-gon; -guhn\, noun:
A model of excellence or perfection; as, "a paragon of beauty; a paragon of eloquence."

Even his friends and business associates, men and women alike, were paragons of health: avoiders of fatty foods, moderate drinkers, health-club habitues, lovers of cross-country skiing, weekend canoe trips, and daylong hikes in the North Woods.
-- Alvin Greenberg, How the Dead Live

Voters, if they chose, could easily convince themselves that the people running their government were faithful spouses and temperate drinkers, paragons whose public images were in perfect accord with their private behavior.
-- Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Paragon comes from Middle French, from Old Italian paragone, literally, "touchstone," from paragonare, "to test on a touchstone," from Greek parakonan, "to rub against, to sharpen," from para-, "beside" + akone, "a whetstone."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 21, 2006CE

aubade

\oh-BAHD\, noun:
A song or poem greeting the dawn; also, a composition suggestive of morning.

He was usually still awake when the birds began to warble their aubade.
-- Christopher Buckley, "What was Robert Benchley?," National Review, June 16, 1997

And there he lingered till the crowing cock...
Sang his aubade with lusty voice and clear.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emma and Eginhard


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Aubade comes from the French, from aube, dawn + the noun suffix -ade: aube ultimately derives from Latin albus, white, pale, as in "alba lux," the "pale light" of dawn.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 22, 2006CE

succor

\SUH-kuhr\, noun:
1. Aid; help; assistance; especially, assistance that relieves and delivers from difficulty, want, or distress.
2. The person or thing that brings relief.

transitive verb:
1. To help or relieve when in difficulty, want, or distress; to assist and deliver from suffering; to relieve.

In Asakusa, a crowd sought succor around an old and lovely Buddhist temple, dedicated to Kannon, goddess of mercy.
-- Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

Ever since I was five, I have inserted myself into every movie I've seen and gratefully, humbly found succor there.
-- Laurie Fox, My Sister from the Black Lagoon

There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm blast and thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor.
-- Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion," The Atlantic, November 1877

He honors the old, succors the infirm, raises the downtrodden, destroys fanaticism.
-- Alan Jolis, Love and Terror


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Succor derives from Latin succurrere, "to run under, to run or hasten to the aid or assistance of someone," from sub-, "under" + currere, "to run."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 23, 2006CE

paterfamilias
\pay-tuhr-fuh-MIL-ee-uhs; pat-uhr-; pah-\,

plural
patresfamilias
\pay-treez-; pat-reez-; pah-treez-\:noun;

The male head of a household or the father of a family.

His father served as paterfamilias to the entire García clan, dispensing money and advice to those who needed it, and the family, in turn, revered him.
-- Leslie Stainton, Lorca: A Dream of Life

Just after World War II the paterfamilias, Eric, briefly abandons his wife and children for a doomed romance in Paris.
-- John Domini, "review of Drowning, by Lee Grove," New York Times, July 21, 1991

On the face of it, Henry Spencer Ashbee was a typical middle-class Victorian: a successful businessman, a strict paterfamilias.
-- Iain Finlayson, "Victorian erotic values," Times (London), February 21, 2001


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Paterfamilias is from Latin pater, "father" + familias, "of the family or household," the archaic genitive form of familia, "family or household."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 24, 2006CE

stolid

\STOL-id\, adjective:
Having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily excited.

Normally stolid, she occasionally joined in the frequent applause and smiled along with the laughter at the high-spirited session.
-- Seth Mydans, "Indonesia Leader Imposes a Decree to Fight Removal," New York Times, July 23, 2001

The inherent irrationality of markets was first demonstrated in the 17th century, when the normally stolid Dutch population was seized by a tulip craze that caused the people to pay insane prices for a single bulb.
-- Robert Reno, "Analysis: A market that rides on bubbles," Newsday, August 7, 2002

Republicans hailed Kemp as a quick-tongued charmer who would . . . appear in attractive contrast to the stolid Al Gore.
-- James Fallows, "An Acquired Taste," The Atlantic, July 1, 2000

Ulster Protestants are a slow, stolid, quiet, decent, law-abiding people, unstylish and unfashionable.
-- John Derbyshire, "Paisley Goes to Washington," National Review, March 15, 2001


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Stolid derives from Latin stolidus, "unmoving, stupid."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday March 25, 2006CE

metier

\met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:
1. An occupation; a profession.
2. An area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.

The pairing of Maynard and Salinger -- the writer whose metier is autobiography and the writer who's so private he won't even publish -- was an unlikely one.
-- Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Cult of Joyce Maynard," New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1998

In Congress, I really found my metier. . . . I love to legislate.
-- Charles Schumer, "quoted in Upbeat Schumer Battles Poor Polls and Turnouts and His Own Image," New York Times, May 16, 1998

He is in the position of a good production engineer suddenly shunted into salesmanship. It is not his metier.
-- James R. Mursell, "The Reform of the Schools," The Atlantic, December 1939


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Metier is from the French, ultimately from Latin ministerium, "service, ministry, employment," from minister, "a servant, a subordinate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday March 26, 2006CE

bellwether

\BEL-weth-uhr\, noun:
A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.

Raised to believe they were among their generation's best and brightest, my class can be seen as a bellwether for a generation caught without a compass on the cutting edge of uncharted territory.
-- Elizabeth Fishel, Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became

Before that election, Maine's proud citizens had fancied their state to be a sort of bellwether, a notion embodied in the saying "As Maine goes, so goes the nation."
-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union


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Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, "a male sheep, usually castrated"; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday March 27, 2006CE

confluence

\KON-floo-uhn(t)s\, noun:
1. A flowing or coming together; junction.
2. The place where two rivers, streams, etc. meet.
3. A flocking or assemblage of a multitude in one place; a large collection or assemblage.

At the confluence of continents, at the narrow neck of the Nile Valley just before it spreads into the flat water-maze of the Delta, this has always been a place where elements mingle and cultures collide.
-- Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious

It's the combination of these various factors, then -- their historical confluence, if you will -- that must be held responsible for the rapid erosion of the church's authority over sexual matters since the Second Vatican Council.
-- Michael W. Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan

A remarkable confluence of technological and economic forces is enabling women to join the paid labor force around the world.
-- Helen E. Fisher, The First Sex

At the time, I did not appreciate what an unusually fortunate confluence of circumstances was reigning in the cinematic heavens; I thought it would go on forever with the same incandescence.
-- Phillip Lopate, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

Outside, about a mile below, the Monongahela River met the Allegheny and the Ohio, forming the confluence of waters upon which stood Pittsburgh.
-- Stanley Bing, Lloyd: What Happened

But it is not New-York streets built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston, -- not these that make the real estimation.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "American Civilization," The Atlantic, April 1862


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Confluence is from Latin confluens, "flowing together," from confluere, "to flow together," from con-, "with, together" + fluere, "to flow."

[dizzle]

You've got a lot of pearls - you should maybe do searches the next day on the word of the day and if someone used it well give them pearls. If you advertised that you were going to do this, you could capitalize on the pearl-coveting nature of TWeb to expand our vocabulary.

[dizzle]

If I knew I might get some pearls BTW I might make an extra effect to use the word in a post, hopefully properly.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Sorry, Dee Dee, I don't pay attention to pearls; I find them superfluous. I don't even know how to use them. It's a good idea to encourage WOTD use; go ahead and take mine for that.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 28, 2006CE

superfluous

\soo-PER-floo-us\, adjective:
More than is wanted or is sufficient; rendered unnecessary by superabundance; unnecessary; useless; excessive.
-- SUPERFLUOUSLY, adverb
-- SUPERFLUOUSNESS, noun

And it's hard to realize economies of scale without shedding superfluous jobs.
-- "The Health of Valley Hospitals: Merger of Holy Cross, Providence Made Sense but Still Caused Pain," Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1999

Power Grubs make a dead skunk smell like a rose by comparison. The 'Not for human consumption' warning is superfluous.
-- "Smelly grub a smash," Toronto Star, May 1, 1999

[E]verything superfluous is more noticeable in him [Hemmingway] than in other writers.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Gabriel Garcia Marquez Meets Ernest Hemingway," New York Times, July 26, 1981

An authority which makes all further argument or illustration superfluous.
-- E. Everett


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Superfluous comes ultimately from the Latin superfluus, from superfluo, superfluere, to overflow, from super-, over, above + fluo, fluere, to flow.

[Lazy Agnostic]

I attempted to post this earlier in the day. Don't know why it didn't take.

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 29, 2006CE

invidious

\in-VID-ee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.
2. Containing or implying a slight.
3. Envious.

But to the human hordes of Amorites -- Semitic nomads wandering the mountains and deserts just beyond the pale of Sumer -- the tiered and clustered cities, strung out along the green banks of the meandering Euphrates like a giant's necklace of polished stone, seemed shining things, each surmounted by a wondrous temple and ziggurat dedicated to the city's god-protector, each city noted for some specialty -- all invidious reminders of what the nomads did not possess.
-- Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews

In his experience people were seldom happier for having learned what they were missing, and all Europe had done for his wife was encourage her natural inclination toward bitter and invidious comparison.
-- Richard Russo, Empire Falls

The lover's obsessiveness may also take the form of invidious comparisons between himself, or herself, and the rival.
-- Ethel S. Person, "Love Triangles," The Atlantic, February 1988

For five decades, Indian liberals, and some from Europe and America, have been shaming the Western world with its commercialism, making invidious comparisons with Indian spirituality.
-- Leland Hazard, "Strong Medicine for India," The Atlantic, December 1965


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Invidious is from Latin invidiosus, "envious, hateful, causing hate or ill-feeling," from invidia, "envy," from invidere, "to look upon with the evil eye, to look maliciously upon, to envy," from in-, "upon" + videre, "to look at, to see."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday March 30, 2006CE

benignant

\bih-NIG-nuhnt\, adjective:
1. Kind; gracious.
2. Beneficial; favorable.

After the captain and ladies had sat down, the autocratic steward rang a second bell, and with a majestic wave of the hand, and a calm, benignant smile, signified his pleasure that we should sit down.
-- Sir Henry Stanley, "Grand tours - Mind your manners at the captain's table," Independent, August 18, 2002

At the meeting it was strange to see, amidst the peaceful, benignant faces, this woe-begone old man, with his thick white hair and his deeply furrowed placid cheeks, looking wistfully from one to the other, and listening anxiously, hoping some day to hear the words which should bring peace to his soul.
-- Alexander L. Kielland, Skipper Worse

Human beings . . . are forever ascribing malignant or benignant motives even to inanimate forces such as the weather, volcanoes, and internal-combustion engines.
-- Stephen Budiansky, "The Truth About Dogs," The Atlantic, July 1999


Benignant comes from the present participle of Late Latin benignare, from Latin benignus, "kind, friendly."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday March 31, 2006CE

edacious

\i-DAY-shus\, adjective:
Given to eating; voracious; devouring.

Swallowed in the depths of edacious Time.
-- Thomas Carlyle

[S]omething that... will dismay edacious lips.
-- "The late showman", Independent, August 21, 1999

Our... high-toned irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered constitutions.
-- Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm


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Edacious is from Latin edax, edac-, gluttonous, consuming, from edo, edere, to eat.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 1, 2006CE

chicanery

\shih-KAY-nuh-ree\, noun:
1. The use of trickery or sophistry to deceive (as in matters of law).
2. A trick; a subterfuge.

Wordsworth's paternal grandfather, Richard, had first come to Westmorland from South Yorkshire in 1700, to recoup his fortunes with the then baron Lonsdale, having been done out of his fortune by his own guardian's chicanery.
-- Kenneth R. Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth

True, Gramm-Rudman's deficit targets were often met only by chicanery -- by anticipating revenues and moving expenses off-budget.
-- David Frum, "Righter Than Newt", The Atlantic, March 1995

What is more, it can be deliberately adulterated by the farmer with sand, tree sap or ash, although a trained opium buyer can spot these tricks and few farmers dare resort to such chicanery.
-- Martin Booth, Opium: A History


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Chicanery comes from French chicaner, "to quibble, to use tricks," perhaps from Middle Low German schicken, "to arrange," with the sense "to arrange to one's own advantage."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 2, 2006CE

defenestrate

\dee-FEN-uh-strayt\, transitive verb:
To throw out of a window.

Some of his apparent chums . . . would still happily defenestrate him if they caught him near a window.
-- Andrew Marr, "No option bar the radical one", Independent, July 5, 1994

I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
-- Lane Smith, quoted in "Who's News", Time for Kids, September 25, 1998

A woman, driven to fury by the manner in which her lover prefers to lavish his attention on a match on the telly rather than her, starts to throw his possessions out of the window. He's finally moved to stop her when she tries to defenestrate his new Puma boots.
-- Jim White, "Budgets substantial enough to buy most of the clubs in the Endsleigh", Independent, April 6, 1996


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Defenestrate is derived from Latin de-, "out of" + fenestra, "window." The noun form is defenestration.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 3, 2006CE

martinet

\mar-t'n-ET\, noun:
1. A strict disciplinarian.
2. One who lays stress on a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods.

He is an unmitigated tyrant, a martinet, the sort of man who disapproves of his son's eating the morning oatmeal with sugar -- instead of salt, which he himself prefers.
-- David Quammen, "Punishing Natty", New York Times, April 14, 1985

His insistence on strict discipline began to earn him a reputation among his men as an unfeeling martinet.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "Still Pondering the Myth Of Custer's Last Stand", New York Times, May 28, 1996

At first, the recruits hate and fear the sergeant, but gradually they come to realize that he's been turning them into soldiers. It is the example of this unlovable martinet, not the "Good Joe" who replaces him, that will help them survive in combat.
-- Anthony Quinn, "Revolutionary Dead Ends", New York Times, April 29, 2001

Players coached by him have cursed the day they ever set sight on such a merciless martinet.
-- Gerry Thornley, "Chief architect oversees grand plan", Irish Times, February 19, 2000


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A martinet is so called after an officer of that name in the French army under Louis XIV.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive/March 2006CE

doula: a woman who assists in childbirth.
largess: generous giving; also, gifts of money or other valuables.
dilettante: an amateur; also, an admirer or lover of the fine arts.
simulacrum: a representation; an insubstantial or vague semblance.
toothsome: delicious; attractive; luscious.
countermand: to revoke (a former command) or recall by a contrary order.
expropriate: to deprive of possession; also, to transfer (property) to oneself.
perambulate: to stroll; to walk through or over.
contradistinction: distinction by contrast.
ululate: to howl; to wail.
crapulous: sick from, or marked by, excessive drinking.
parvenu: an upstart; one newly risen in class or economic status.
manse: a large and imposing residence.
uxorious: excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.
Ides: the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.
megalomania: a mental disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur.
verdant: green.
amalgam: an alloy of mercury with other metals; also, a mixture.
dudgeon: a state or fit of intense indignation.
paragon: a model of excellence or perfection.
aubade: a song greeting the dawn.
succor: aid; help; also, to help or relieve.
paterfamilias: the male head of a household; the father of a family.
stolid: unexcitable; unemotional.
metier: an occupation, especially in which one excels.
bellwether: a leader or leading indicator.
confluence: a flowing or coming together.
superfluous: more than is wanted or is sufficient.
invidious: tending to provoke envy or ill will.
benignant: kind; gracious; favorable.
edacious: given to eating.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 4, 2006CE

brummagem

\BRUHM-uh-juhm\, adjective:
Cheap and showy, tawdry; also, spurious, counterfeit.

But demanding that publishers replace their brummagem wares with books which embody Kunin's "high standards of excellence" would be a promising -- and cost-free -- way to begin.
-- Betty McCollister, "A Conspiracy of Good Intentions: America's Textbook Fiasco", Humanist, November-December, 1993

The distortions they bring on damage society and fuel defiant behavior, encouraging everything from immigrations to the Cayman Islands, to active distortions of reality through brummagem corporate filings.
-- William F. Buckley, Jr., "Reforming the Rich", National Review, January 20, 2006


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Brummagem is an alteration of Birmingham, England, from the counterfeit groats produced there in the 17th century.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 5, 2006CE

cum

\KUM; KUHM\, preposition:
With; along with; combined with; -- often used in combination.

In 1999 he finished converting an old dairy into a sort of village -- a hip warren of apartments adjoining a restaurant and bar, some art galleries, some studios, and an "e-mat" (a laundromat-cum-cybercafé).
-- Bill Donahue, "Byte, Byte, Against the Dying of the Light", The Atlantic, May 2001

Pretty soon, we're digging up the lunch, washing it off at a stand pipe and heading for the shed-cum-kitchen, where the two burners are quickly pressed into working overtime.
-- Bob Granleese, "A bumper crop", The Guardian, September 14, 2002

The memorial service cum political rally for Senator Wellstone brought the sacred low.
-- William J. Bennett, "A Party of Corruption?", National Review, November 4, 2002

Mark Humphrey, the rising star among interior designers, has created a highly-collectable dual-function, chrome and walnut candlestick-cum-rose vase.
-- Nick Pandya, "Making Christmas a one-off", The Guardian, November 2, 2002


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Cum is from the Latin cum, "with."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 6, 2006CE

hobbledehoy

\HOB-uhl-dee-hoy\, noun:
An awkward, gawky young fellow.

For early on, girls become aware -- as much from their fathers' anguished bellows of "You're not going out dressed like that, Miss" as from the buffoonish reactions of the spotty hobbledehoys at the end-of-term disco -- of the power of clothes to seduce.
-- Jane Shilling, "Soft-centred punk", Times (London), October 27, 2000

His memories, even only reveries, of incomparable women, made me feel like a hulking hobbledehoy.
-- Edith Anderson, Love in Exile

Unfortunately, they have to contend with ignorant hobbledehoys who, on seeing these rows of shingle heaps, feel compelled to jump on them.
-- Susan Campbell, "He grows seakale on the seashore", Daily Telegraph, March 27, 1999


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The origin of hobbledehoy is unknown, though it perhaps derives from hobble, from the awkward movements of a clumsy adolescent.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 7, 2006CE

fustian

\FUHS-chuhn\, noun:
1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.
2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language.

adjective:
1. Made of fustian.
2. Pompous; ridiculously inflated; bombastic.

Don't squander the court's patience puffing your cheeks up on stately bombast and lofty fustian. Speak plainly!
-- Richard Dooling, Brain Storm

His stated motive is to meet "the flood of cant, fustian and emotional nonsense which pollutes the intellectual atmosphere."
-- Walter H. Waggoner, "Joseph W. Bishop Jr., Law Professor and Author", New York Times, May 21, 1985

It would take a stout heart to read through all the loyal effusions and fustian birthday odes of the 18th-century laureates -- Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber and the rest.
-- John Gross, "In Search of a Laureate: Making Book on Britain's Next Official Poet", New York Times, July 15, 1984


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Fustian derives from Old French fustaigne, from Medieval Latin fustaneum, but its precise roots beyond that point are uncertain.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 8, 2006CE

bonhomie

\bah-nuh-MEE\, noun:
Good nature; pleasant and easy manner.

That bonhomie which won the hearts of all who knew him.
-- Washington Irving, Oliver Goldsmith

And what of the salesman's fabled bonhomie, the Willy Lomanesque emphasis on the importance of being liked?
-- "How to Manage Salespeople", Fortune, March 14, 1988

I would carefully study the exploits of positiverole models like Peter Gabriel, Jimmy Carter, and Alec Baldwin, andattempt to emulate their radiant bonhomie.
-- Joe Queenan, My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood


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Bonhomie comes from French, from bonhomme, "good-natured man," from bon, "good" (from Latin bonus) + homme, "man" (from Latin homo).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 9, 2006CE

rusticate

\RUHS-tih-kayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To go into or reside in the country; to pursue a rustic life.

transitive verb:
1. To require or compel to reside in the country; to banish or send away temporarily.
2. (Chiefly British). To suspend from school or college.
3. To build with usually rough-surfaced masonry blocks having beveled or rebated edges producing pronounced joints.
4. To lend a rustic character to; to cause to become rustic.

Ezra holds out in London, and refuses to rusticate.
-- T. S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken, "21 August 1916", The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume I, 1898-1922 edited by Valerie Eliot

For the longest time, we're stuck in a cabin hewn out of the ground in a parcel of woods as the boys hide and mend; for another, we rusticate on a farm bounded by fields that must be tilled by the hard labor of man and beast.
-- Stephen Hunter, "When Johnny Doesn't Come Marching Home", Washington Post, December 17, 1999

Czechoslovak Communists would imprison or rusticate those who had been active in the Prague Spring.
-- Charles S. Maier, Dissolution


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Rusticate comes from the past participle of Latin rusticari, "to live in the country," from rusticus, "rural, rustic," from rus, "the country."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 10, 2006CE

stripling

\STRIP-ling\, noun:
A youth in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad.

But at that time he was too young to drive a car, and I wasn't, so I took it upon myself to tell the stripling a thing or two.
-- Geoffrey Wolff, "Advice My Brother Never Took", New York Times, August 20, 1989

It is even possible that some . . . who might be thought to have a chance of election as Pope because of their youthful vigour -- by Vatican standards, a man of 60 is a stripling -- will see their chances come and go in turn.
-- Andrew Medichini, "Cardinal secrets", Times (London), January 23, 2001

There are precious few constants in the story of the yen. For a start, it is a stripling among the monies of the world, being not much more than a century old.
-- Pico Iyer, "Tacos in Kyoto, Kimonos in Peru", New York Times, April 28, 1991


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Stripling is a diminutive of strip, as if a small strip from the main stock or stem.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 11, 2006CE

panoply

\PAN-uh-plee\, noun:
1. A splendid or impressive array.
2. Ceremonial attire.
3. A full suit of armor; a complete defense or covering.

Every step taken to that end which appeases the obsolete hatreds and vanished oppressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe, which encourages nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply, is good in itself.
-- Winston Churchill, quoted in This Blessed Plot, by Hugo Young

The beige plastic bedpan that had come home from the hospital with him after his deviated-septum operation . . . now held ail his razors and combs and the panoply of gleaming instruments he employed to trim the hair that grew from the various features of his face.
-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth

To the east, out over the Ocean, the winter sky is a brilliant panoply of stars and comets, beckoning to adventurers, wise and foolish alike, who seek to divine its mysteries.
-- Ben Green, Before His Time

Labor was hard pressed to hold the line against erosion of its hard-won social wage: the panoply of government-paid benefits such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, Medicare, and Social Security.
-- Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old


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Panoply is from Greek panoplia, "a full suit of armor," from pan, "all" + hoplia, "arms, armor," plural of hoplon, "implement, weapon."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 12, 2006CE

coeval

\koh-EE-vuhl\, adjective:
1. Of the same age; originating or existing during the same period of time -- usually followed by 'with'.

noun:
1. One of the same age; a contemporary.

According to John Paul, this longing for transcendent truth is coeval with human existence: All men and women "shape a comprehensive vision and an answer to the question of life's meaning."
-- "Culture, et cetera", Washington Times, October 6, 2000

Coeval with human speech and found among all peoples, poetry appeals to our sense of wonder, to our unending quest for answers to the timeless questions of who we are and why we are.
-- Mark Mathabane, "A Poet Can Lead Us Toward Change", Newsday, January 20, 1993

Unhappily, however, the writers speak almost wholly to those who already regard Lewis as not just the coeval but the equal of T. S. Eliot, Joyce and Pound.
-- Julian Symons, "Prophecy and Dishonor", New York Times, February 10, 1985

The 1,500 years of [Barcelona's] existence had produced only five names that came easily to mind: the cellist Pau Casals, the artist Joan Miró and his somewhat tarnished coeval Salvador Dali, both of whom were still very much alive, and the dead architect Antoni Gaudí.
-- Nicholas Shrady, "Glorious in Its Very Stones", New York Times, March 15, 1992


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Coeval comes from Medieval Latin coaevus, from Latin co- + aevum, "a period of time, lifetime."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 13, 2006CE

salmagundi

\sal-muh-GUHN-dee\, noun:
1. A salad plate usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, served with oil and vinegar.
2. Any mixture or assortment; a medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.

A glance at the schedule is enough to make one feel that one would rather go out and shoot songbirds than stay in and watch the dismal salmagundi of game shows, repeats and soap operas.
-- Jane Shilling, "My brother and other animals", Daily Telegraph, August 22, 1998

What the BBC has the nerve to call Vanity Fair is a baffling salmagundi of Nineties accents, 1800s clothes, Wardour Street plotting, and a sort of language never spoken by any human being at any point in history.
-- "Stop betraying the classics", Independent, November 4, 1998


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Salmagundi comes from French salmigondis.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 14, 2006CE

desuetude

\DES-wih-tood, -tyood\, noun:
The cessation of use; discontinuance of practice or custom; disuse.

Nuns and priests abandoned the identifying attire of the religious vocation and frequently also the vocation itself, experimental liturgies celebrated more the possibility of cultural advancement than that of eternal life, and popular Marian devotions fell into desuetude.
-- Michael W. Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism

Probably only one in a hundred girls who give birth clandestinely even knows that an edict of King Henry II, now fallen into desuetude, once made their action punishable by death.
-- Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King's Midwife

Where specific restrictions on personal freedom and on communal activity had not explicitly been lifted they were allowed to fall into desuetude by default.
-- David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939

The exercise of rights which had practically passed into desuetude.
-- John Richard Green, Short History of the English People


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Desuetude comes from Latin desuetudo, "disuse," from desuescere, "to become unaccustomed," from de- + suescere, "to become used or accustomed."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 15, 2006CE

land of Nod

noun:
sleep

We were fast going off to the land of Nod, when - bang, bang, bang - on the scuttle, and "All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths.
-- Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before The Mast

For the jet-lagged insomniac, here are a few suggestions of what to do in Manhattan once the last bar has chucked you out and the land of nod seems further away than the night bus to Camberwell.
-- William Hide, "The night shift", The Guardian, February 24, 2001


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[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 16, 2006CE

hortatory

HOR-tuh-tor-ee\, adjective:
Marked by strong urging; serving to encourage or incite; as, "a hortatory speech."

He later gave up the ministry in the conviction that he could reach thousands with his beguiling pen and only hundreds with his hortatory voice.
-- Carl Van Doren, The American Novel, 1789-1939

Instead of "Home Run, Jack," the hortatory message that greets the batter at the plate is the subliminal one that surfaces: "Run Home, Jack."
-- Marjorie Garber, Symptoms of Culture

The former West German Chancellor's book . . . is a call to action, and, even in this good translation, the book relies heavily on the hortatory language of political appeals.
-- Tamar Jacoby, "Carrots and Sticks", New York Times, August 24, 1986


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Hortatory is from Latin hortatorius, from hortari, "to exhort, to incite, to encourage."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 17, 2006CE

choler

\KOLL-ur; KOLE-ur\, noun:
Irritation of the passions; anger; wrath.

And at last he seems to have found his proper subject: one that genuinely engages his intellect, truly arouses his characteristic choler and fills him with zest.
-- "Black Humor': Could Be Funnier", New York Times, January 12, 1998

I found my choler rising.
-- Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments... in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison


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Choler is from Latin cholera, a bilious disease, from Greek kholera, from khole, bile.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 18, 2006CE

expeditious

\ek-spuh-DISH-uhs\, adjective:
Characterized by or acting with speed and efficiency.

His problem was to get from Lookout Valley to Chattanooga Valley in the most expeditious way possible.
-- Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

The criminal may of course use some short-term act of violence to 'terrorize' his victim, such as waving a gun in the face of a bank clerk during a robbery in order to ensure the clerk's expeditious compliance.
-- Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism


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Expeditious is derived from Latin expeditus, "unshackled, unimpeded, ready for action," from expedire, "to free (one's feet) from a snare; hence, to get out, to set free, to get ready for action," from ex-, "out of" + pes, ped-, "foot."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 19, 2006CE

implacable

\im-PLAK-uh-bull\, adjective:
Not placable; not to be appeased; incapable of being pacified; inexorable; as, an implacable foe.

For it is my office to prosecute the guilty with implacable zeal.
-- Paola Capriolo, Floria Tosca (translated by Liz Heron)

He... then continued on up the road, his shoulders bent beneath the implacable sun.
-- Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master

She conducted her life and her work with all the steady and implacable seriousness of a steamroller.
-- "The Stein Salon Was The First Museum of Modern Art", New York Times, December 1, 1968


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Implacable ultimately comes from Latin implacabilis, from in-, not + placabilis, placable, from placo, placare, to soothe, calm, appease.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 20, 2006CE

patina

\PAT-n-uh; puh-TEEN-uh\, noun:
1. The color or incrustation which age gives to works of art; especially, the green rust which covers ancient bronzes, coins, and medals.
2. The sheen on any surface, produced by age and use.
3. An appearance or aura produced by habit, practice, or use.
4. A superficial layer or exterior.

[The ship] was sleek and black, her decks scrubbed smooth with holystones, her deckhouses glistening with the yellowed patina of old varnish.
-- Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

A patina of coal dust lies over everything.
-- "A Railroad Runs Through It," review of Stations: An Imagined Journey, by Michael Flanagan, New York Times, October 23, 1994

Rothko himself was guilty of making ponderous statements about the religious and mythic dimensions of his art; and Mrs. Ashton has adopted this clumsy impulse, laying over his work a heavy patina of commentary that seems designed to show off her own wide-ranging intellect.
-- Michiko Kakutani, review of About Rothko, by Dore Ashton, New York Times, November 7, 1983


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Patina is adopted from Italian, from Latin patina, "a dish" (from the incrustation on ancient metal plates and dishes).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 21, 2006CE

caveat

\KAY-vee-at; KAV-ee-; KAH-vee-aht\, noun:
1. (Law) A notice given by an interested party to some officer not to do a certain act until the opposition has a hearing.
2. A warning or caution; also, a cautionary qualification or explanation to prevent misunderstanding.

Two young Harvard M.B.A.'s worked up some highly optimistic projections -- with the caveat that these were speculative and should of course be tested.
-- Roy Blount Jr., "Able Were They Ere They Saw Cable", New York Times, March 9, 1986

One caveat: If you plan to travel by car in Europe, expect a serious erosion of your buying power. Gasoline costs twice as much in France as in the U.S. (and triple the U.S. price in the U.K.).
-- Lynn Woods, "Euro Trashed", Kiplinger's, November 2000

At Disney, Eisner says, adding an important caveat, "Failing is good, as long as it doesn't become a habit."
-- Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius


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Caveat comes from the Latin caveat, "let him beware," from cavere, "to beware."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 22, 2006CE

itinerant

\eye-TIN-uhr-uhnt\, adjective:
1. Passing or traveling from place to place; wandering.

noun:
1. One who travels from place to place.

Like many itinerant vendors in rural places, he was a smooth-talking purveyor of dreams along with tawdry trinkets, and Eliza responded to this romantic wanderer.
-- Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller

Molds were therefore used only for small amounts of fat, shared with neighbors at cooperative candle dippings or supplied by itinerant candlemakers who went from house to house, helping with the task.
-- Susan Strasser, Waste and Want

Even the itinerant street-vendors cease bustling about and stand still with their mobile stalls, their straps, their samples of merchandise, their mouths wide open and their heads in the air.
-- Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess

Their characters are itinerants, voyagers between lands, languages and religions.
-- Maya Jaggi, "A son of the road", The Guardian, November 16, 2002


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Itinerant derives from the present participle of Late Latin itinerari, "to make a journey," from Latin iter, itineris, "a going; a walk; a way; a journey." It is related to itinerary, "a route or proposed route of a journey."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 23, 2006CE

agog

\uh-GOG\, adjective:
Full of excitement or interest; in eager desire; eager, keen.

Kobe Bryant left the Minnesota Timberwolves agog after a series of eye-popping moves in a game last week.
-- New York Times, February 5, 1998

He was now so interested, quite so privately agog, about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up to her afterwards.
-- Henry James, The Ambassadors

By the second day he had found his sea-legs, and with hair flying and double-waistcoats flapping, he patrolled the deck agog with excitement, questioning and noting.
-- Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804-1834


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Agog derives from Middle French en gogues, "in mirth; lively."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday April 24, 2006CE

rebarbative

\ree-BAR-buh-tiv\, adjective:
Serving or tending to irritate or repel.

Over the past couple of hours a lot of rebarbative, ulcerated and embittered people had been working hard at bedding their resentments down in sensory-deprivation tanks full of alcohol.
-- Will Self, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

I still think this true, yet can't help regret the unretrievable hours lavished on so much rebarbative critical prose, convinced that the nearly impenetrable must be profound.
-- 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


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Rebarbative comes from French rébarbatif, "stern, surly, grim, forbidding," from Middle French rebarber, "to be repellent," from re- (from the Latin) + barbe, "beard" (from Latin barba).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday April 25, 2006CE

sporadic

\spuh-RAD-ik\, adjective:
Occurring singly, or occasionally, or in scattered instances.

Throughout the early years of Kelly's life, out of guilt as much as out of affection, she suspected, her father would make sporadic reappearances, make ever more incompetent attempts to be a good father to her and a good partner to her mother, before leaving again.
-- Geoff Nicholson, Female Ruins

The land is desperately overpopulated, and the thin soil is so eroded that it can only sustain scattered groups of scrawny cattle or sheep and sporadic crops of maize.
-- Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography

In most courses he received a simple Pass, a grade designed for bright students with a history of sporadic attendance or other problems.
-- Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane


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Sporadic derives from Medieval Latin sporadicus, scattered, from Greek sporadikos, from sporas, sporad-, scattered like seed.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday April 26, 2006CE

equipoise

\EE-kwuh-poiz; EK-wuh-\, noun:
1. A state of being equally balanced; equilibrium; -- as of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
2. Counterbalance.

What matters is the poetry, and the truest readings of it "are those which are sensitive to the strangeness of Marvell's genius: its delicate equipoise, held between the sensual and the abstract, its refusal to treat experience too tidily, the uncanny tremor of implication that makes the poems' lucid surfaces shimmer with a sense of something undefined and undefinable just beneath."
-- James A. Winn, "Tremors of Implication", New York Times, July 9, 2000

I cannot see how the unequal representation which is given to masses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth.
-- Edmund Burke, "Reflections on The Revolution In France"

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Haunted Houses"


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Equipoise is equi-, "equal" + poise, from Middle English poisen, "to balance, weigh," from Old French peser, pois-, ultimately from Latin pensare, "to weigh."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday April 27, 2006CE

harridan

\HAIR-uh-din\, noun:
A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.

With the insight of hindsight, I'd have liked to have been able to protect my mother from the domineering old harridan, with her rough tongue and primitive sense of justice, but I did not see it like that, then.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg

Whatever compassion we may feel towards Seraphie, charged with managing the Beyle household and provided with little in the way of emotional or material recompense, evidence scarcely softens Stendhal's portrait of an ignorant, vindictive, mean-spirited harridan.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal

Even before that, for the first year and a half, as reports and rumors seeped out that she was a harridan, yelling and throwing things at subordinates as well as at her husband and his aides, she would often think to herself, "What's going on here? Why are some of these people slandering me or my husband on a daily basis? Why is all this stuff happening?"
-- David Maraniss, "First Lady of Paradox", Washington Post, January 15, 1995

As the vulgar, scornful, desperate Martha, Miss Hagen makes a tormented harridan horrifyingly believable.
-- Howard Taubman, "The Theater: Albee's 'Who's Afraid'", New York Times, October 15, 1962


Harridan probably comes from French haridelle, "a worn-out horse, a gaunt woman."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday April 28, 2006CE

provenance

\PROV-uh-nuhn(t)s\, noun:
Origin; source.

In a world awash in information of dubious provenance, whom can you trust to tell you the truth?
-- Gerald Jonas, review of The Jazz, by Melissa Scott, New York Times, June 18, 2000

There may have been as many as one hundred antique statues of Roman provenance in the city at the time of the Fourth Crusade.
-- Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice & Antiquity

The provenance of his possessions traced back to dukes and duchesses, kings, queens, czars, emperors, and dictators.
-- John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil


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Provenance comes from French, from provenant, present participle of provenir, "to originate," ultimately from Latin provenire, from pro-, "forth" + venire, "to come."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday April 29, 2006CE

microcosm

\MY-kruh-koz-uhm\, noun:
1. A little world. Hence, man or human nature as a supposed epitome of the world or universe (compare macrocosm).
2. A smaller, representative system having analogies to a larger system.

The monarch and his followers thought of the court as a microcosm of how the kingdom ought to be, the harmonious expression of a social order centred on the monarch.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination

There is a classic Jimmy Stewart movie, Magic Town, about "Grandview," a small town in the Midwest that is a perfect statistical microcosm of the United States, a place where the citizens' opinions match perfectly with Gallup polls of the entire nation.
-- James S. Fishkin, The Voice of the People

New York saw itself as a quasi-independent political and cultural entity that was both a microcosm of and a model for the nation as a whole.
-- Robert A. M. Stern, New York 1880


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Microcosm comes from Greek mikros kosmos, "small world."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday April 30, 2006CE

gloaming

\GLOH-ming\, noun:
Twilight; dusk.

The children squealed and waved and smiled, their teeth flashing white in the gloaming.
-- Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life

It was the gloaming, when a man cannot make out if the nebulous figure he glimpses in the shadows is angel or demon, when the face of evening is stained by red clouds and wounded by lights.
-- Homero Aridjis, 1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile (translated by Betty Ferber)

Arrived at the village station on a wintry evening, when the gloaming is punctuated by the cheery household lamps, shining here and there like golden stars, through the leafless trees.
-- Margaret Sangster


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Gloaming comes from Old English glomung, from glom, "dusk."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 1, 2006CE

luminary

\LOO-muh-nair-ee\, noun:
1. Any body that gives light, especially one of the heavenly bodies.
2. A person of eminence or brilliant achievement.

Those who came to the Pyrenees sought the sublime in the mountains and the exotic in the population, drawn by the descriptions of ethnographers and literary luminaries like Vigny, Sand, Baudelaire and Flaubert.
-- Ruth Harris, Lourdes

. . .such jazz luminaries as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Louis Armstrong, and Earl Hines.
-- Daniel Mark Epstein, Nat King Cole

There's something comforting in those occasional lapses when a luminary lurches and trips over the humble stone his powerful torch somehow failed to reveal.
-- Brad Leithauser, "You Haven't Heard the Last of This", New York Times, August 30, 1998


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Luminary derives from Latin luminare, "a window," from lumin-, lumen, "light."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive/April 2006CE

chicanery: the use of trickery to deceive.
defenestrate: to throw out of a window.
martinet: a strict disciplinarian.
brummagem: cheap and showy; also, spurious.
cum: with; along with; combined with.
hobbledehoy: an awkward, gawky young fellow.
fustian: pompous or pretentious language.
bonhomie: pleasant and easy manner.
rusticate: to go or send to the country.
stripling: an adolescent youth.
panoply: a splendid or impressive array.
coeval: existing during the same period of time; also, a contemporary.
salmagundi: a mixture or assortment; also, a kind of mixed dish or salad.
desuetude: disuse.
land of Nod: sleep.
hortatory: serving to encourage or incite.
choler: anger.
expeditious: characterized by speed and efficiency.
implacable: incapable of being pacified.
patina: a superficial layer.
caveat: a warning or caution.
itinerant: traveling from place to place.
agog: in eager desire.
rebarbative: repellent; irritating.
sporadic: occuring singly, or occasionally, or in scattered instances.
equipoise: equilibrium; also, counterbalance.
harridan: a scolding, vicious woman.
provenance: origin; source.
microcosm: a smaller, representative system having analogies to a larger system.
gloaming: twilight; dusk.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 2, 2006CE

daedal

\DEE-duhl\, adjective:
1. Complex or ingenious in form or function; intricate.
2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious.
3. Rich; adorned with many things.

Most Web-site designers realize that large image maps and daedal layouts are to be avoided, and the leading World Wide Web designers have reacted to users' objections to highly graphical, slow sites by using uncluttered, easy-to-use layouts.
-- "Fixing Web-site usability", InfoWorld, December 15, 1997

He gathered toward the end of his life a very extensive collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts, and took heightened pleasure in their daedal patterns as his own strength declined.
-- Florence S. Boos, preface to The Collected Letters of William Morris

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn Of Pan"


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Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 3, 2006CE

temerity

\tuh-MER-uh-tee\, noun:
Unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger; rashness.

The elaborate caution with which the British commander now proceeded stands out in striking contrast with the temerity of his advance upon Bunker Hill in the preceding year.
-- John Fiske, "Washington's Great Campaign of 1776", The Atlantic, January 1889

When English merchants had the temerity to set up a trading post or 'factory' -- junior merchants were known as factors -- the Dutchmen defended their monopoly by massacring them.
-- Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day

Drivers with the temerity to accelerate out of turns are likely to encounter torque steer, an unsettling glitch in control as the engine fights to take charge of the steering.
-- Peter Passell, "Mitsubishi Diamante: Back From Down Under", New York Times, February 23, 1997

Throughout the anti-trust trial its executives treated the courts and the US government with sneering contempt, coupled with a ratty annoyance that any public authority should have the temerity to interfere in its business.
-- John Naughton, "Gates must not win at monopoly", The Observer, October 28, 2001


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Temerity comes from Latin temeritas, from temere, blindly, rashly.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 4, 2006CE

wag

\WAG\, noun:
A humorous person; a wit; a joker.

The master of ceremonies was one Boston, a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness.
-- Francis Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp

Yet the fate of all three reformers was more or less the same. Washington remained much as it had been before. ("Only more so," a wag might add.)
-- Jonathan Rauch, Government's End

Some wag has summed up the three laws of thermodynamics in everyday terms: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't even break even. 3. You can't get out of the game.
-- John Gribbin with Mary Gribbin, Almost Everyone's Guide to Science


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Wag in this sense perhaps comes from the obsolete wag-halter, "a rogue; one likely to be hanged."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 5, 2006CE

execrable

\EK-sih-kruh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Deserving to be execrated; detestable; abominable.
2. Extremely bad; of very poor quality; very inferior.

His human-rights record was abysmal. His relations with Washington were adversarial. He rivaled Zimbabwe's execrable Robert Mugabe for the title "Africa's Saddam."
-- James S. Robbins, "The Liberian Opportunity", National Review, July 8, 2003

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.
-- Laura Miller, "Slush, slush, sweet Stephen", Salon, July 25, 2000

Any theatergoer who has ever felt the urge to murder an actor for an execrable performance should get a kick out of two backstage mysteries that do the deed with a nice theatrical flourish.
-- Marilyn Stasio, review of The Gold Gamble, by Herbert Resnicow and Death Mask, by Jane Dentinger, New York Times, October 30, 1988

The decision to level the ancient cathedral is described candidly by one latter-day authoritative guidebook as having demonstrated "execrable taste."
-- Dick Grogan, "Pillars speak out to save cathedral", Irish Times, June 11, 1997


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Execrable derives from Latin exsecrabilis, execrabilis, from exsecrari, execrari, "to execrate, to curse," from ex-, "out of, away from, outside of" + sacer, "sacred."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 6, 2006CE

rapine

\RAP-in\, noun:
The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of another's property by force.

He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (translated by N.H. Thomson)

Extortion and rapine are poor providers.
-- Olaudah Equiano, Unchained Voices: an anthology of Black authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century

The war, proclaimed William Lloyd Garrison, was one "of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine - marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity."
-- Robert W. Johannsen, "America's Forgotten War (Mexican War, 1846-1848)", The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1996


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Rapine derives from Latin rapina, from rapere, "to seize and carry off, to snatch or hurry away," which also gives us rapid.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 7, 2006CE

pablum

\PAB-luhm\, noun:
Something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic.

I imagined his thoughts had been solely of me, that the letter would be filled with love sonnets, that it would gush with the same romantic pablum I devoured from those movie star magazines.
-- Kate Walbert, The Gardens of Kyoto

. . .the mindless pablum of celebrity journalism, the endless stories about self-promoting actors and movie stars who pretend they dislike the press.
-- Richard Stengel, "It Ain't Necessarily Bad That Nobody's Interested in Politics", Time, March 2, 2001


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Pablum comes from Pablum, a trademark used for a bland soft cereal for infants.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 8, 2006CE

aspersion

\uh-SPUR-zhuhn; -shuhn\, noun:
1. A damaging or derogatory remark; slander.
2. The act of defaming or slandering.
3. A sprinkling with water, especially in religious ceremonies.

Orley had once been forced to resign from a local men's club for casting aspersions on the character of another member's wife.
-- Thomas A. Underwood, Allen Tate: Orphan of the South

Its meetings were fiercely argumentative; members seemed to love nothing better than to cast aspersions on each other's intellect and class loyalty.
-- Glenn Frankel, Rivonia's Children


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Aspersion is from Latin aspersio, from aspergere, from ad- + spargere, "to scatter, to sprinkle, to strew."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 9, 2006CE

otiose

\OH-shee-ohs; OH-tee-\, adjective:
1. Ineffective; futile.
2. Being at leisure; lazy; indolent; idle.
3. Of no use.

Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.
-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991

Although the wild outer movements and the angular Minuet can take such clockwork precision, the Andante, with its obsessive, claustrophobic dialogues between strings and bassoons, seemed sluggish and otiose.
-- Tim Ashley, "VPO/Maazel", The Guardian, April 16, 2002

The umlaut he affected, which made no difference to the pronunciation of his name, was as otiose as a pair of strategically positioned beauty spots.
-- Peter Conrad, "Hidden shallows", New Statesman, October 14, 2002

One hazard for religions in which all professional intermediaries are dispensed with, and in which the individual is enjoined to 'work out your own salvation' and is regarded as fully capable of doing so, is that belief and practice become independent of formal organized structures which may in such a context come to be perceived as otiose.
-- Lorne L. Dawson, "The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai", Sociology of Religion, Fall 2001


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Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 10, 2006CE

turgid

\TUR-jid\, adjective:
1. Swollen, bloated, puffed up; as, "a turgid limb."
2. Swelling in style or language; bombastic, pompous; as, "a turgid style of speaking."

The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.
-- Orville Prescott, "A Literary Personality", New York Times, July 7, 1962

Brown's novels are filled with the rigged episodes of melodrama and the turgid prose that passed for elegance among the literary circles in America before Irving and Hawthorne arrived on the scene.
-- "The Battle of the Books", New York Times, July 10, 1988

Many young Libyans prefer to get their news from the Internet rather than the turgid evening news programs filled with slogans and cliches.
-- Amany Radwan, "The Weird, Wired World of Colonel Ghaddafi", Time, February 6, 2001

The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand.
-- William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals


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Turgid derives from Latin turgidus, from turgere, to swell.

[Lizard]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 10, 2006CE

turgid

\TUR-jid\, adjective:
1. Swollen, bloated, puffed up; as, "a turgid limb."
2. Swelling in style or language; bombastic, pompous; as, "a turgid style of speaking."

The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.
-- Orville Prescott, "A Literary Personality", New York Times, July 7, 1962

Brown's novels are filled with the rigged episodes of melodrama and the turgid prose that passed for elegance among the literary circles in America before Irving and Hawthorne arrived on the scene.
-- "The Battle of the Books", New York Times, July 10, 1988

Many young Libyans prefer to get their news from the Internet rather than the turgid evening news programs filled with slogans and cliches.
-- Amany Radwan, "The Weird, Wired World of Colonel Ghaddafi", Time, February 6, 2001

The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand.
-- William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals


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Turgid derives from Latin turgidus, from turgere, to swell.
My Doctor told me if I did not reduce the size of my turgid belly, my condition would only get worse.

[Lazy Agnostic]

My Doctor told me if I did not reduce the size of my turgid belly, my condition would only get worse.Your sentence implies the belly size is due to overeating, which exacerbates the condition. Turgid would describe an abdomen swollen by a disease process.

Usage tip: Males have bellies, women have tummies.

...thank you for calling and sharing...shall we take our next caller, please...

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 11, 2006CE

derogate

\DER-uh-gayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To deviate from what is expected.
2. To take away; to detract; -- usually with 'from'.

transitive verb:
1. To disparage or belittle; to denigrate.

If someone wants to derogate from that and make a choice, then they are free to do it.
-- Ciaran Fitzgerald, "Food champion'srecipe for success", Irish Times, November 13, 1998

Evidently, in Robbins's moral calculus, prostituting one's art in the name of the foremost mass murderer of modern times does not in the least derogate from one's idealism and courage.
-- Terry Teachout, "Cradle of Lies", Commentary Magazine, February 2000

Likewise, there has been a blatant attempt to distort the impact of Ronald Reagan's leadership during this period and to derogate or deny his accomplishments.
-- Edwin Meese, With Reagan

And if the other is other than us, then that otherness is either something we would like to have, so we choose to romanticize the other; or it is something we would like to leave behind, so we choose to derogate the other; or it is something we would like to keep available, so we choose to celebrate the other.
-- Richard A. Shweder, "Storytelling Among the Anthropologists", New York Times, September 21, 1986


Derogate comes from the past participle of Latin derogare, "to propose to repeal part of a law, to diminish," from de-, "away from" + rogare, "to ask, to ask the people about a law."

[Lizard]

Your sentence implies the belly size is due to overeating, which exacerbates the condition. Turgid would describe an abdomen swollen by a disease process.

:ahem: I know, it was an intential misuse meant to be humerous. I guess I failed :bawl:

Usage tip: Males have bellies, women have tummies.

...thank you for calling and sharing...shall we take our next caller, please...

Thanks.

[Lazy Agnostic]

I know, it was an intential misuse meant to be humerous. I guess I failed Well, sometimes it's difficult to tell in this medium--as with the sentence quoted above. I have no way of knowing whether your misspellings were intentional and humorous.


Thanks. No errors here. You're welcome.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 12, 2006CE

virtu

\vuhr-TOO; vir-\, noun:
1. love of or taste for fine objects of art.
2. Productions of art (especially fine antiques).
3. Artistic quality.

The Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano described these objects as "statues, pictures, tapestries, divans, chairs of ivory, cloth interwoven with gems, many-coloured boxes and coffers in the Arabian style, crystal vases and other things of this kind . . . [whose] sight . . . is pleasing and brings prestige to the owner of the house." They all spoke to the wealth, taste and virtu of their owner.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination

Divans, Persian rugs, easy chairs, books, statuary, articles of virtu and bric-a-brac are on every side, and the whole has the appearance of a place where one could dream his life away.
-- "Mark Twain's Summer Home", The New York Times, September 10, 1882


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Virtu comes from Italian virtù "virtue, excellence," from Latin virtus, "excellence, worth, goodness, virtue."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 13, 2006CE

appurtenance

\uh-PUR-tn-un(t)s\, noun:
1. An adjunct; an accessory; something added to another, more important thing.
2. [Plural]. Accessory objects; gear; apparatus.
3. [Law]. An incidental right attached to a principal property right for purposes such as passage of title, conveyance, or inheritance.

The inauguration of presidents, the coronation of monarchs, the celebration of national holidays--these events require everywhere the presence of the soldier as a "ceremonial appurtenance."
-- Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites

She began by demolishing an 18th-century Paris mansion whose wainscoting, paneling and other appurtenances she admired, instructing an architect to design a house for her that would incorporate these elements.
-- Angeline Goreau, "A Spectacular Mess of a Marriage", New York Times, August 31, 1997

Apart from sports cars, he did not have his father's passion for the appurtenances of celebrity.
-- Howard Chua-Eoan, "He Was My Hero'", Time, January 27, 1997

A few of the appurtenances of wealth are well known--the Range Rovers and Rolexes, the little Chanel purses and the personal chefs trained in the Pritikin diet.
-- Richard Lacayo, "Murder in Polo Land", Time, September 22, 1997


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Appurtenance is derived from the present participle of Late Latin appertinere, "to belong to," from Latin ad- + pertinere, "to relate to, to belong to," from per-, "through" + tenere, "to hold."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 14, 2006CE

cupidity

\kyoo-PID-uh-tee\, noun:
Eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth; greed; avarice.

Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind.
-- John Crowley, "Of Marvels And Monsters", Washington Post, October 18, 1998

At the end, all but rubbing his hands with cupidity, Rockefeller declares he will now promote abstract art--it's better for business.
-- Stuart Klawans, "Rock in a Hard Place", The Nation, December 27, 1999

This strain of cupidity sprang from the mean circumstances of his youth in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York.
-- Jack Beatty, "A Capital Life", New York Times, May 17, 1998

For such is human cupidity that we Thoroughbreds have but one chance to survive it -- to run so fast and to win so much money that we are retired in comfort in our declining days.
-- William Murray, "From the Horse's Mouth", New York Times, August 8, 1993

Myself, I have always believed that BMWs achieve their presence (and their grip on the collective imagination and cupidity of the middle classes) because they combine an athletic, masculine bulk and stance with feminine details and lines.
-- Stephen Bayley, "The evolution of the curve", Independent, October 22, 1998


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Cupidity ultimately comes from Latin cupiditas, from cupidus, "desirous," from cupere, "to desire." It is related to Cupid, the Roman god of love.

[Dr. Jack Bauer]

Word for today and for this thread:

grandiloquent

adj 1: lofty in style; "he engages in so much tall talk, one never really realizes what he is saying" [when "tall" is used as a synonym for gradiloquent]
2: puffed up with vanity; "a grandiloquent and boastful manner"; "overblown oratory"; "a pompous speech"; "pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey" - Newsweek

3: Prone to use big words at Tweb and pass it off as a legitimate thread.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 15, 2006CE

multifarious

\muhl-tuh-FAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
Having great diversity or variety; of various kinds; diversified.

She is good at constructing a long, multifarious narrative, weaving many minor stories into one, so that you are left with a sense of the fluidity and ambiguity of historical interpretation.
-- Jason Cowley, "It's bright clever... but the result is academic", The Observer, May 27, 2001

Men's opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject.
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

But as he reached the verge of the lawn and vaulted the retaining wall there, crossed the flagstone walkway and started up the steps of the ad building, the multifarious marvel of his congested brain surprised him--the apes flew right out of his head and he was thinking about California.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock


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Multifarious derives from Latin multifariam, "on many sides; in many places."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 16, 2006CE

fulsome

\FUL-sum\, adjective:
1. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities.
2. Insincere or excessively lavish; especially, offensive from excess of praise.

He recorded the event in his journal: "Long evening visit from Mr. Langtree--a fulsome flatterer."
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City

Concealed disgust under the appearance of fulsome endearment.
-- Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World


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Fulsome is from Middle English fulsom, from full + -som, "-some."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 17, 2006CE

arrant

\AR-unt\, adjective:
Thoroughgoing; downright; out-and-out; confirmed; extreme; notorious.

More deplorable is his arrant and compulsive hypocrisy . . . Under all the chest hair, he was a hollow man.
-- J. D. McClatchy, review of Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, New York Times, December 19, 1999

I think a pilot would be a most arrant coward, if through fear of bad weather he did not wait for the storm to break but sank his ship on purpose.
-- Georges Minois, History Of Suicide translated by Lydia Cochrane

The moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.
-- Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

The entire story is a load of arrant nonsense.
-- Victor Pelevin, Buddha's Little Finger translated by Andrew Bromfield


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Arrant was originally a variant spelling of errant, meaning "wandering." It was first applied to vagabonds, as an arrant (or errant) rogue or thief, and hence passed gradually into its present sense. It ultimately derives from Latin iter, "a journey."

[TuckEverlasting]

The second word for today is:

irascible

Pronunciation: i-'ra-s&-b&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French, from Late Latin irascibilis, from Latin irasci to become angry, be angry, from ira
Definition 1: marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger






In keeping with the alphabetical nature of this thread, tomorrow's word will be 'ironic'. :hehe:

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 18, 2006CE

palimpsest

\PAL-imp-sest\, noun:
1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.
2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface.

The manuscript is a palimpsest consisting of vellum leaves from which the "fluent and assured script" of the original Archimedes text and 55 diagrams had been washed or scraped off so that the surface could be used for new writings.
-- Roger Highfield, "Eureka! Archimedes text is to be sold at auction", Daily Telegraph, October 3, 1998

Each is a palimpsest, one improvisation partly burying another but leaving hints of it behind.
-- Robert Hughes, "Delight for Its Own Sake", Time, January 22, 1996

It's a mysterious many-layered palimpsest of a metropolis where generations of natives and visitors have left their mark, from Boadicea and the Romans, through the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan era to the present.
-- Philip French, "Jack the knife", The Observer, February 10, 2002


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Palimpsest is from Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsestos, "scraped or rubbed again," from palin, "again" + psen, "to rub (away)."

[Ishmael]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 18, 2006CE

palimpsest

\PAL-imp-sest\, noun:
1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.
2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface.

The manuscript is a palimpsest consisting of vellum leaves from which the "fluent and assured script" of the original Archimedes text and 55 diagrams had been washed or scraped off so that the surface could be used for new writings.
-- Roger Highfield, "Eureka! Archimedes text is to be sold at auction", Daily Telegraph, October 3, 1998

Each is a palimpsest, one improvisation partly burying another but leaving hints of it behind.
-- Robert Hughes, "Delight for Its Own Sake", Time, January 22, 1996

It's a mysterious many-layered palimpsest of a metropolis where generations of natives and visitors have left their mark, from Boadicea and the Romans, through the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan era to the present.
-- Philip French, "Jack the knife", The Observer, February 10, 2002


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Palimpsest is from Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsestos, "scraped or rubbed again," from palin, "again" + psen, "to rub (away)."


I think you owe Dee Dee an apology.

[dizzle]

I think you owe Dee Dee an apology.

:rofl:

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 19, 2006CE

spurious

\SPYUR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Not proceeding from the true or claimed source; not genuine; false.
2. Of illegitimate birth.

Some of these graves are clearly spurious and were manufactured by nineteenth-century royalists who wanted evidence of an unbroken 2,000-year-old imperial line.
-- Gale Eisenstodt, "Behind the Chrysanthemum Curtain", The Atlantic, November 1998

We need at least to separate the real issue from the spurious.
-- Eugene D. Genovese, "Getting States' Rights Right", The Atlantic, March 2001

Well, setting aside the sentimental nostalgia that elevates the "good old days" to a spurious perfection . . . the fact remains that Nellie Melba was a unique vocal phenomenon.
-- Tim Page, "For Melba a Well-Deserved Toast", Washington Post, February 9, 2003


Spurious comes from Latin spurius, "illegitimate, hence false, inauthentic."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 20, 2006CE

cognoscente

\kon-yuh-SHEN-tee; kog-nuh-; -SEN-\, noun;
plural cognoscenti \-tee\:
A person with special knowledge of a subject; a connoisseur.

However, I thought it well to acquaint myself with the latest scientific thinking, so as not to write a tale that would embarrass me among the cognoscenti.
-- Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

In the early 1600s, however, beliefs that decried curiosity and restricted information about the "secrets" of nature to a handful of cognoscenti were under attack.
-- Tom Shachtman, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

Greenspan, to his credit, tells the truth about what he does, but until now, he has done it in a way that only the cognoscenti can understand.
-- Paul Krugman, "Labor Pains", New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1999


Cognoscente derives from the Obsolete Italian, from Latin cognoscens, cognoscent-, present participle of cognoscere, "to know."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 21, 2006CE

bombinate

\BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
To buzz; to hum; to drone.

He is often drunk. His head hurts. Snatches of conversation, remembered precepts, prefigured cries of terror bombinate about his skull.
-- Elspeth Barker, "Nobs and the rabble, all in the same boat", Independent, September 22, 1996

Sometimes the computer bombinates way into the night, stops for a bit of rest, then resumes its hum at the early hours of the morning.
-- Cheryl Glenn and Robert J. Connors, New St. Martins Guide to Teaching Writing


Bombinate is from Late Latin bombinatus, past participle of bombinare, alteration of Latin bombilare, from bombus, "a boom."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 22, 2006CE

incontrovertible

\in-kon-truh-VUR-tuh-buhl\, adjective:
Too clear or certain to admit of dispute; indisputable; unquestionable.

It is in the nature of philosophical questions that they do not have final, incontrovertible answers, or, more exactly, that every answer raises new questions.
-- George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism

And although the evidence was substantial, it was not incontrovertible.
-- Al Strachan, "Phantom Goal, part 2", Toronto Sun, May 23, 1999

Despite speculation based on ancient tales and ancient art, no incontrovertible evidence has been discovered of polio's existence before the nineteenth century, at least not in its epidemic form.
-- Sherwin B. Nuland, "A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors", New Republic, October 16, 1995


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Incontrovertible is in-, "not" + controvertible, which is derived from Latin controversia, "a dispute," from controvertere, "to turn against, to turn in the opposite direction, to dispute" from contro-, "against" + vertere, "to turn." It is related to controversy.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 23, 2006CE

protean

\PRO-tee-un; pro-TEE-un\, adjective:
1. Displaying considerable variety or diversity.
2. Readily assuming different shapes or forms.

The [Broadway] musical was ceaselessly protean in these years, usually conventional but always developing convention, twisting it, replacing it.
-- Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses

Roosevelt's performance in the civil rights meeting illustrated one of the central operating principles of his protean executive style, a style that transformed the presidency, and the nation: a willingness to delay decisions, change his mind, keep his options open, avoid commitments, or even deceive people in the relentless pursuit of noble objectives.
-- William Doyle, Inside the Oval Office

He was a protean character who constantly adapted to his environment.
-- David Maraniss, The Clinton Enigma


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Protean is derived from Proteus, an ancient Greek god who had the ability to change his shape at will.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 24, 2006CE

torpid

\TOR-pid\, adjective:
1. Having lost motion or the power of exertion and feeling; numb; benumbed.
2. Dormant; hibernating or estivating.
3. Dull; sluggish; apathetic.

Canary Islanders are citizens of Spain, but geography asserts itself from time to time, as a reminder that this land will always be Africa's: the trade winds get interrupted by strong gusts from the east that bring hot dust and sometimes even torpid, wind-buffeted locusts.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Where the Map Stopped", New York Times, May 17, 1992

For more than twenty years--all my adult life--I have lived here: my great weight sunk, torpid in the heat, into this sagged chair on my rooftop patio.
-- Peggy Payne, Sister India

Some animals became torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

The debacle over signatures has roused the normally politically torpid Mayor, who dislikes pressing the flesh.
-- Jan Cienski, "Petition bungle robs Mayor of spot on ballot", National Post, July 30, 2002

It is a man's own fault . . . if his mind grows torpid in old age.
-- Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson


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Torpid comes from Latin torpidus, "numb, sluggish," from torpere, "to be sluggish, inert, or numb."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Thursday May 25, 2006CE

junta

\HUN-tuh, JUHN-tuh\, noun:
1. A governmental council or committee, especially one that rules after a revolution.
2. A closely knit group united for a common purpose and usually meeting secretly; also called a junto.

His greatest fear, said Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate and ardent foe of military rule, is that with the death of one tyrant, the world will not press for the entire junta to step aside.
-- "Nobel Winner Calls for Nigerian Ruler to Release Political Prisoners", New York Times, June 12, 1998

The Greek junta that seized power during 1967 mobilized the courts against its foes.
-- Charles S. Maier, Dissolution

Two days after the coup, the junta announced that General Videla had been designated President of the Nation.
-- Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror

Still, the resemblance to political revolution is, in important ways, only metaphorical. Computer nerds aside, there is no junta driving this process of change.
-- Andrew L. Shapiro, The Control Revolution


Junta comes from the Spanish word for "joined" (hence, a group of persons joined for a common purpose), from Latin junctus, past participle of jungere, "to join."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Friday May 26, 2006CE

variegated

\VAIR-ee-uh-gay-tid\, adjective:
1. Having marks or patches of different colors; as, "variegated leaves or flowers."
2. Varied; distinguished or characterized by variety; diversified.

We spotted variegated hollies, wild mahonia, bergenia, vinca and cotoneaster growing freely between the markers, and as we made our way up and down the fragrant paths, pausing over the monuments to the dead that nestled, neglected, in the tousled undergrowth, we felt like explorers in a haunted jungle.
-- Caroline Seebohm, "Ambushed by Brussels", New York Times, August 22, 1999

Colours range from golden yellow to blue and include conspicuously variegated examples.
-- Catherine Fieldman, "Hostas don't bear grudges", Times (London), September 2, 2000

But as no one was being hurt, you were right to sit quietly and marvel at the variegated -- and sometimes idiotic -- beliefs of humanity.
-- Randy Cohen, "What Can I Say?", New York Times Magazine, July 11, 1999


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Variegated derives from the past participle of Late Latin variegare, from Latin varius, "various" + agere, "to do, to make."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Saturday May 27, 2006CE

malcontent

\mal-kuhn-TENT; MAL-kuhn-tent\, noun:
1. One who is discontented or dissatisfied.
2. A discontented subject of a government; one who opposes an established order.

adjective:
1. Discontented; uneasy; dissatisfied.

Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house, and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.
-- Paul Auster, Timbuktu

Willy, who grew up in Brooklyn, the son of Holocaust survivors, was a malcontent in college, a rebel with "a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was."
-- Michiko Kakutani, "My Life as a Dog", New York Times, June 25, 1999

How would you like to be locked in a room for a couple of days with an irritable, depressed malcontent who also happens to be imperiously smart, bored and more than a little spoiled?
-- Robert Nathan, "Irritable, Depressed, Spoiled and Terrific", New York Times, September 26, 1993


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Malcontent is from the Old French term combining mal, "bad, ill" (from Latin malus) and content, "contained," from Latin contentus, past participle of continere, "to hold together, to contain," from con-, "with, together" + tenere, "to hold."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Sunday May 28, 2006CE

cerebration

\ser-uh-BRAY-shuhn\, noun:
The act or product of thinking; the use of the power of reason; mental activity; thought.

Generally, to the 2 1/2-year-old apple of her parents' eye, who bravely negotiates her ABC's, the recitation must seem, if anything other than pure nonsense, more like a physical task -- like rafting a river or running a steeplechase -- than cerebration.
-- Daniel Menaker, "Lletters for Yyoungsters", New York Times, November 9, 1986

Celebration of cerebration is not what the public wants. Indeed, the opposite is probably true. We are suspicious of excessive smartness.
-- David R. Slavitt, "You Can Go Holmes Again", New York Times, October 17, 1993


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Cerebration is ultimately derived from Latin cerebrum, "brain." The related verb cerebrate means "to use the power of reason; to think."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Monday May 29, 2006CE

forfend

\for-FEND\, transitive verb:
1. a. (Archaic) To prohibit; to forbid. b. To ward off; to prevent; to avert.
2. To defend; to protect; to preserve.

The Tory leader sort of wanted to say that the government should deploy the army more rapidly, but -- heaven forfend -- he didn't want to imply that it was anybody's fault that the soldiers hadn't been deployed!
-- Simon Hoggart, "A greasy whiff dispels the stench of worthiness", Guardian, March 22, 2001

If one of us is missing, heaven forfend, then the king's forces are diminished.
-- Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

The river of discovery will continue to flow without cessation, deepening our understanding of the world and enhancing our capacity to forfend calamity and live congenial lives.
-- John Maddox, What Remains To Be Discovered

In addition, to forfend direct Chinese involvement, which was extremely unlikely, the administration guaranteed the northern regime, thus removing a major deterrent.
-- Morton A. Kaplan, "Cruel Vietnam Follies", The World & I, September 1, 1995


Forfend is from Middle English forfenden, from for-, "for-" + fenden, "to ward off."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 30, 2006CE

equable

\EK-wuh-buhl; EE-kwuh-\, adjective:
1. Equal and uniform; not varying.
2. Not easily disturbed; not variable or changing -- said of the feelings, temper, etc.

An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea compared with the land, seems to extend over the greater part of the southern hemisphere; and, as a consequence, the vegetation partakes of a semi-tropical character.
-- Charles Darwin, The Voyage Of Beagle

Now, there can be no doubt that Irving . . . possesses great wit and charm, as well as a temperament that is equable, cheerful, and almost relentlessly easygoing.
-- Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends

He had an equable temperament, a straightforward Ohio friendliness, and though a national hero for his participating in the first American space flight to orbit the earth, in February 1962, he had no airs.
-- Elizabeth Drew, The Corruption of American Politics


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Equable comes from Latin aequabilis, from aequare, to make even, from aequus, even.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 31, 2006CE

pleonasm

\PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:
1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.

Dougan uses many words where few would do, as if pleonasm were a way of wringing every possibility out of the material he has, and stretching sentences a form of spreading the word.
-- Paula Cocozza, "Book review: How Dynamo Kiev beat the Luftwaffe", Independent, March 2, 2001

Such a phrase from President Nixon's era, much favored by politicians, is "at this moment in time." Presumably these five words mean "now." That pleonasm probably does little harm except, perhaps, to the reputation of the speaker.
-- Eoin McKiernan, "Last Word: Special Relationships", Irish America, August 31, 1994


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Pleonasm is from Greek pleonasmos, from pleon, "greater, more."

[TuckEverlasting]

Word of the Day, Monday, June 5, 2006

Poof

1. A whiff of smoke that stays at the scene after a magician dissapears.

2. A British derogatory term for a homosexual male.

3. A derogatory term for a Christian, usually a Creationist. Comes from the thought that everything was created as it was about ten thousand years ago, thus it would make a giant "poof!" noise such as a magician making a rabbit disappear.

Examples:

1. And, poof! Justin transformed into a frog!

2. Theonomy had a cow 'cause we unwittingly said he 'went poof'.

3. Man, that Socrates was the ultimate poof.


Now you know! :wink:

[Dr. Jack Bauer]

Tuck, please cite your source.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=poof says that the American Heritage dictionary gives "a disparaging term for an effeminate or homosexual male" as the primary definition, in fact it is the only definition at the site.

I think you mean a "puff" of smoke. But in the American (not British) dictionary, a poof is a homosexual or effeminate male.

[Spinyn00bman]

Tuck, please cite your source.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=poof says that the American Heritage dictionary gives "a disparaging term for an effeminate or homosexual male" as the primary definition, in fact it is the only definition at the site.

I think you mean a "puff" of smoke. But in the American (not British) dictionary, a poof is a homosexual or effeminate male.

Rule#5....NO POOFTERS!

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday May 25, 2007CE

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

Fix it again, Tony.
--Spyder owner

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday May 26, 2007CE

bon vivant

\bon-vee-VONT\, noun:
A person with refined and sociable tastes, especially one who enjoys fine food and drink.

For the unregenerate "peasant" (the term that he often used about his mother, whom he despised) had gone there with the successful glass distributor, shrewd investor, versatile talker, and . . . bon vivant whose motto was "The best is good enough for me."
-- Ted Solotaroff, Truth Comes in Blows

Girard is a bon vivant and intellectual while his son is a pragmatic city financier.
-- Akin Ojumu, "There's little and Lars", The Observer, May 25, 2003

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bon vivant comes from French bon, "good" (from Latin bonus) + vivant, present participle of vivre, "to live," from Latin vivere.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday May 27, 2007CE

appellation

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday May 28, 2007CE

enunciate

\ee-NUN-see-ayt; ih-\, transitive verb:
1. To utter articulately; to pronounce.
2. To state or set forth precisely or systematically.
3. To announce; to proclaim; to declare.

intransitive verb:
1. To utter words or syllables articulately.

And all agree that he was from his college days a wonderful speaker, one who enunciated clearly and crisply and never seemed to have to grope for a word.
-- Louis Auchincloss, Woodrow Wilson

John Maynard Keynes, a famous economist and outstandingly successful investor, enunciated the theory most lucidly in 1936.
-- Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street

His concern about America's incipient drift out of manufacturing was widely challenged by many feel-good commentators, who proceeded to enunciate the now widely accepted doctrine that a shift to postindustrialism would boost U.S. income growth.
-- Eamonn Fingleton, In Praise of Hard Industries

This is such an obvious, commonsensical truism that it seems almost foolish to enunciate it.
-- Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Enunciate comes from Latin enuntiare, "to tell; to disclose; to declare; to pronounce clearly," from e- + nuntiare, "to announce," from nuntius, "a messenger."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday May 29, 2007CE

fecund

\FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.

For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two every three years -- eight boys and six girls in all.
-- Saul David, Prince of Pleasure

In her first novel she portrays a lush, fecund landscape palpable in its sultriness and excess.
-- Barbara Crossette, "Seeking Nirvana", New York Times, April 29, 2001

Miss Ozick can convert any skeptic to the cult of her shrewd and fecund imagination.
-- Edmund White, "Images of a Mind Thinking", New York Times, September 11, 1983

Wainscott's book is . . . focused squarely and surely on probably the most astonishingly fecund period in American theater history, 1914-1929.
-- James Coakley, Comparative Drama

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Fecund comes from Latin fecundus, "fruitful, prolific." The noun form is fecundity.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday May 30, 2007CE

chortle

\CHOR-tl\, transitive and intransitive verb:
1. To utter, or express with, a snorting, exultant laugh or chuckle.

noun:
1. A snorting, exultant laugh or chuckle.

Benjamin himself chortled now, an odd laugh to which I grew accustomed in years to come.
-- Jay Parini, Benjamin's Crossing

Even Isaksson's stern wife, who rarely cracked a smile, chortled with glee, and Old Mothstead slapped his thighs and flapped his apron and danced around the couple, who moved in ever larger rings amongst the kegs.
-- Kerstin Ekman, Witches' Rings, translated by Linda Schenck

A nation that was used to chortling over Charlie Chaplin or rejoicing with the high-stepping Ziegfeld girls found itself drawn to this more refined, decidedly European entertainment.
-- Larry Tye, The Father of Spin

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Chortle a combination of chuckle and snort. It was coined by Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson), in Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1872.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday May 31, 2007CE

disconsolate

\dis-KON-suh-lut\, adjective:
1. Being beyond consolation; deeply dejected and dispirited; hopelessly sad; filled with grief; as, "a bereaved and disconsolate parent."
2. Inspiring dejection; saddening; cheerless; as, "the disconsolate darkness of the winter nights."

Midway through the course he came to the table with the disconsolate expression of a basketball coach whose team had just been trounced.
-- Bryan Miller, "Odd Couples Can Make Magic", New York Times, March 2, 1994

An eighteenth-century Fairfax, Thomas, lost the last of the land in the South Sea Bubble and the Fairfaxes were all but forgotten -- except for Lady Mary who was occasionally sighted, dressed all in green, disconsolate and gloomy, and occasionally with her head under her arm for good effect.
-- Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet

. . .King Midas, whose lips turn all they touch to cold, unnourishing riches, and who perishes alone and disconsolate, cut off by his wealth from the simplest necessities of life -- for bread, water, as well as his wife, his child and his little dog, all turn as he stretches towards them into the gold he thought he desired more than anything else.
-- Jane Shilling, "A golden ambivalence", Times (London), June 2, 2000

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Disconsolate comes from Medieval Latin disconsolatus, from Latin dis- + consolatus, past participle of consolari, "to console," from com-, intensive prefix + solari, "to comfort, to soothe, to relieve."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday June 1, 2007CE

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 canticleswere 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

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Saturday June 2, 2007CE

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

----------------------------------------------------------------
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
Sunday June 3, 2007CE

discomfit

\dis-KUHM-fit; dis-kuhm-FIT\, transitive verb:
1. To make uneasy or perplexed, or to put into a state of embarrassment; to disconcert; to upset.
2. To thwart; to frustrate the plans of.
3. (Archaic). To defeat in battle.

A few of Dr. Baden's anecdotes ramble pointlessly, and his gusto in describing the anatomical characteristics of exhumed bodies may discomfit the squeamish.
-- Teresa Carpenter, "Death Is Just the Beginning", New York Times, June 25, 1989

But the business of paradox is to discomfit the mind and force truths into connections that cannot be thought.
-- Lore Segal, "A Passion for Polishness", New York Times, February 18, 1990

Starr Bright was used to the attention of strangers and would have been discomfited if no one noticed her, so leggy and glamorous.
-- Joyce Carol Oates, Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon

Why were the men so discomfited, and why, in a group renowned for its openness, was there so much difficulty in speaking frankly?
-- Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf

------------------------------------------------------------
Discomfit comes from Old French desconfit, past participle of desconfire, from Latin dis- + conficere, "to make ready, to prepare, to bring about," from com- + facere, "to make."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday June 4, 2007CE

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

--------------------------------------------------------------
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
Tuesday June 5, 2007CE

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

---------------------------------------------------------------
Incipient is derived from Latin incipere, "to undertake, to begin" (literally "to take in"),

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday June 6, 2007CE

lumpen

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

noun:
1. 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

---------------------------------------------------------------
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
Thursday June 7, 2007CE

epicene

\EP-uh-seen\, adjective:
1. Having the characteristics of both sexes.
2. Effeminate; unmasculine.
3. Sexless; neuter.
4. (Linguistics) Having but one form of the noun for both the male and the female.

noun:
1. A person or thing that is epicene.
2. (Linguistics) An epicene word.

He has a clear-eyed, epicene handsomeness -- cruel, sensuous mouth; cheekbones to cut your heart on -- the sort of excessive beauty that is best appreciated in repose on a 50-foot screen.
-- Franz Lidz, "Jude Law: He Didn't Turn Out Obscure at All", New York Times, May 13, 2001

She smothers (almost literally at times) her weak, epicene son Vladimir, and is prepared to commit any crime to see him become Tsar, despite his reluctance.
-- Ronald Bergan, Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict

----------------------------------------------------------------
Epicene derives from Latin epicoenus, from Greek epikoinos, "common to," from epi-, "upon" + koinos, "common."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday June 8, 2007CE

palliate

\PAL-ee-ayt\, transitive verb:
1. To reduce in violence (said of diseases, etc.); to lessen or abate.
2. To cover by excuses and apologies; to extenuate.
3. To reduce in severity; to make less intense.

I had held a hope that she would take my class, that I would have the chance not only to cope with but to help palliate her pain.
-- Steven Polansky, "Pantalone", Harper's Magazine, February 1997

He was widely praised in both East and West as a humanitarian seeking to palliate the excesses of a cruel regime.
-- Joseph Finder, "The Trade in Spies: Not All Black or White", New York Times, June 22, 1993

The response to industrial decline was to cling even more to the British state, which had the resources to palliate its effects, and ease a transformation to a new economy -- or, indeed, as many hoped, to prop up the declining industries.
-- Allan Massie, "Scotland not so brave in push for home rule", Irish Times, September 4, 1997

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Palliate derives from Late Latin palliatus, past participle of palliare, "to cloak, to conceal," from Latin pallium, "cloak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday June 9, 2007CE

sanctum

\SANK-tum\, noun;
plural sanctums or sancta::
1. A sacred place.
2. A place of retreat where one is free from intrusion.

What's more, the babble of radios, televisions and raised voices from the other households in the condominium rarely penetrated this sanctum.
-- Tim Parks, Mimi's Ghost

Seymour has spent most of her research time in that sanctum of the professional biographer, the London Library.
-- John Mullan, "The agony and the ecstasy", The Guardian, December 23, 2000

------------------------------------------------------------
Sanctum comes from the Latin, meaning "holy, sacred, or inviolable."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday June 10, 2007CE

leitmotif

\LYT-moh-teef\, noun:
1. In music drama, a marked melodic phrase or short passage which always accompanies the reappearance of a certain person, situation, abstract idea, or allusion in the course of the play; a sort of musical label.
2. A dominant and recurring theme.

Each actor to appear on stage is accompanied by a musical phrase on the drum -- a sort of leitmotif to characterize an emotion, much like a Wagnerian drama.
-- Eleanor Blau, "Connecticut's Shakespeare", New York Times, July 9, 1982

One theme had recurred so frequently in these conversations that it had become the leitmotif of the trip.
-- Jack F. Matlock Jr., Autopsy on an Empire

As is so often the case in a crazy household . . . guilt becomes a leitmotif.
-- Frederick Busch, "My Brother, Myself", New York Times, February 9, 1997

Such sudden whims, seeming to fly in the face of conventional expectations but really motivated by profound, if unexamined, psychological needs, become a leitmotif of the novel, whose chief concern is whether people can ever claim to know themselves -- or one another -- at all.
-- Elizabeth Tallent, "Thou Shalt Settle for Less and Less'", New York Times, May 7, 1989

--------------------------------------------------------------
Leitmotif (also spelled leitmotiv) is from German Leitmotiv, "leading motif," from leiten, "to lead" (from Old High German leitan) + Motiv, "motif," from the French. It is especially associated with the operas of German composer Richard Wagner.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday June 11, 2007CE

quiescent

\kwy-ES-uhnt; kwee-\, adjective:
Being in a state of repose; at rest; still; inactive.

The solution, Dr. Wilmut discovered, was to, in effect, put the DNA from the adult cell to sleep, making it quiescent by depriving the adult cell of nutrients.
-- Gina Kolata, "Scientist Reports First Cloning Ever of Adult Mammal", New York Times, February 23, 1997

A vicious but localized Sino-Japanese war raged around the Shanghai region through much of 1932. The conflict then settled into a quiescent phase for several years.
-- David M. Kennedy, "The Horror", The Atlantic, April 1998

Have we had our day and are we . . . just carrying on after the manner of the aged, quiescent, devitalized, uncreative, desiring peace and sleep above all else?
-- Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

-------------------------------------------------------------
Quiescent derives from the present participle of Latin quiescere, to rest, from quies, rest.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday June 12, 2007CE

fulminate

\FUL-muh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To issue or utter verbal attacks or censures authoritatively or menacingly.
2. To explode; to detonate.

transitive verb:
1. To utter or send out with denunciations or censures.
2. To cause to explode.

This mass culture--global, immediate, accessible, buoyant, with shared heroes, models, and goals--is immensely intoxicating. Ayatollahs fulminate against it; dictators censor it; mandarins try to slam the door on it.
-- Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society

He lets others fulminate on his behalf while he maintains his gentlemanly demeanor.
-- Richard Sandomir, "Cablevision's Dolan Makes the Deal Only When He's Ready", New York Times, December 6, 1998

Everyone wants to be young, beautiful and rich. I don't say that scornfully: there are worse things to want to be. But that's why, for example, people don't begrudge Kate Moss how much she earns for a day's work but will fulminate over the take-home pay of some fat, old Water Board exec.
-- Nigella Lawson, "Never mind the size, just feel the price", The Observer, September 3, 2000

-------------------------------------------------------------
Fulminate comes from Latin fulminare, "to strike with lightning," from fulmen, fulmin-, "a thunderbolt."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday June 13, 2007CE

contravene

\kon-truh-VEEN\, transitive verb:
1. To act or be counter to; to violate.
2. To oppose in argument; to contradict.

In 1620 most people considered the likelihood of reversing the seasons inside a building impossible, and many deemed it sacrilege, an attempt to contravene the natural order, to twist the configuration of the world established by God.
-- Tom Shachtman, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

Anorexics, for example, clearly contravene our evolutionary dictate to eat.
-- Jerry A. Coyne, "Of Vice and Men", The New Republic, April 3, 2000

-------------------------------------------------------------
Contravene comes from Late Latin contravenire, "to oppose," from Latin contra-, "against" + venire, "to come."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday June 14, 2007CE

proselytize

\PROS-uh-luh-tyz\, intransitive verb:
1. To induce someone to convert to one's religious faith.
2. To induce someone to join one's institution, cause, or political party.

transitive verb:
1. To convert to some religion, system, opinion, or the like.

Jesuit missionaries appeared; the Japanese allowed them to proselytize.
-- Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations

It has given the world an example of what hard work can do, but in general Japan prefers to focus on its own affairs and let other countries proselytize for democracy, capitalism, communism, or whatever else they believe in.
-- James Fallows, "Containing Japan", The Atlantic, May 1989

He has a message and he wants to proselytize the whole world.
-- William Schneider, "The Republicans in '88", The Atlantic, July 1987

--------------------------------------------------------------
Proselytize is formed from proselyte, "a new convert, especially a convert to some religion or religious sect, or to some particular opinion, system, or party," from Greek proselutos, "a proselyte, a newcomer," from pros, "toward" + elutos, from eluthon, "I came."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday June 15, 2007CE


clamber

\KLAM-buhr; KLAM-uhr\, intransitive verb:
1. To climb with difficulty, or on all fours; to scramble.

noun:
1. The act of clambering.

At one point a whole horde of them fell over a shallow cliff. Plumes of red dust rose in the air as they struggled to clamber back up.
-- Thomas Beller, The Sleep-Over Artist

It was nature's deep spring of sweet water that he fell into when he was just old enough to say a few words, reaching to retrieve his only toy, a tin cup -- and somehow did not drown but clambered out in time to meet his frantic mother racing down the path.
-- Roy Reed, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal

They rowed decrepit whaleboats up and down the harbor and clambered up into the rigging of the ships.
-- Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea

He dithered for a moment, during which time Mrs Hardy, wailing like a banshee, rushed from the dining room and clambered clumsily up the stairs.
-- Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie

-------------------------------------------------------------
Clamber is from Middle English clambren, probably a modification of climben, "to climb."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday June 16, 2007CE

invective

\in-VEK-tiv\, noun:
1. An abusive expression or speech; a vehement verbal attack.
2. Insulting or abusive language.

adjective:
1. Of, relating to, or characterized by insult, abuse, or denunciatory language.

But one can also note that he chose a fitting image for himself, going out in a duel of honor, armed all over with spikes of witty invective and a specialised knowledge of insult.
-- Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933

They all seemed to be in their usual mood of precarious good humour which could splinter at any moment into invective and menacing gesture.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis, Pillars of Gold

One evening John Mitchell, slightly in his cups, let loose at Whalen with a mess of invective about writers, their inflated notion of their importance to political campaigns, and the need to keep them in their place.
-- Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat

Political satire at the expense of governments or institutions is one thing. Personal invective is another.
-- Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift: A Portrait

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Invective comes from Late Latin invectivus, "reproachful, abusive," from Latin invectus, past participle of invehi, "to inveigh against."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday June 17, 2007CE

eructation

\ih-ruhk-TAY-shuhn\, noun:
The act of belching; a belch.

Ignatius belched, the gassy eructations echoing between the walls of the alley.
-- John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

The explosion, at this distance, sounds like a faint, feeble eructation.
-- Peter Conrad, "Bangs to whimpers", The Observer, March 7, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------
Eructation comes from Latin eructatio, from eructare, from e-, "out" + ructare, "to belch."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday June 18, 2007CE

disquisition

\dis-kwuh-ZISH-uhn\, noun:
A formal discourse on a subject.

Hence, although the publisher calls Mr. Roth's work "An Essay on Evil in the Modern World," it will be found to differ materially in approach and manner of treatment from the usual disquisition on an ancient topic.
-- Percy Hutchison, "That Old Arch-Enemy of Man the Antichrist", New York Times, May 12, 1935

Gore was partial to eye-glazing disquisitions on reciprocal trade.
-- Bill Turque, Inventing Al Gore

The treatises and pamphlets of the late eighteenth century about the reform of commerce were considered, very soon, to be disquisitions of only limited and technical interest.
-- Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments

. . .a rambling disquisition, with copious historical discussion and many anecdotes.
-- James McCourt, Delancey's Way

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Disquisition comes from Latin disquisitio, from disquirere, "to inquire into, to investigate," from dis- + quaerere "to seek." It is related to inquire ("to seek into") and exquisite, which describes something that is "sought out" (ex-, "out") because of beauty, delicacy, or perfection.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday June 19, 2007CE

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
Wednesday June 20, 2007CE

agon

\AH-gahn; ah-GOHN\, noun:
A struggle or contest; conflict; especially between the protagonist and antagonist in a literary work.

Conflicts about moral claims are part of what it means to be human, and a political ideal stripped of sentimentality and the utopian temptation is one committed to the notion that political life is a permanent agon between clashing, even incompatible goods.
-- Jean Bethke Elshtain, Real Politics

It is the irresolvable love-hate agon between men and women that drives all cultures.
-- Lawrence Osborne, "False goddess", Salon, June 28, 2000

Almost every poem Auden wrote in the weeks before and after his arrival in New York portrayed the agon of an artist in combat with his gift.
-- Edward Mendelson, Later Auden

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Agon comes from Greek agon, "a struggle or contest." It is related to agony.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday June 21, 2007CE

languid

\LANG-gwid\, adjective:
1. Drooping or flagging from or as if from exhaustion; weak; weary; heavy.
2. Promoting or indicating weakness or heaviness.
3. Slow; lacking vigor or force.

Deliberately languid, slow to rise to a dignified height,his handsomely graying wavy hair perfectly combed, Floyd sitsmost of the day with his long legs sprawled under his table.
-- William S. McFeely, Proximity to Death

. . .in the languid heat of Rome, late summer, late afternoon.
-- Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein

With their strength, grace, and endurance, [they] move about naturally, freely, at a tempo determined by climate and tradition, somewhat languid, unhurried, knowing one can never achieve everything in life anyway, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?
-- Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun (translated by Klara Glowczewska)

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Languid comes from Latin languere, "to become faint or weak; to droop; to be inactive."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday June 22, 2007CE

countervail

\kown-tur-VAYL\, transitive verb:
1. To act against with equal force, power, or effect; to counteract.
2. To compensate for; to offset; to furnish or serve as an equivalent to.

intransitive verb:
1. To exert force against an opposing, often bad, influence or power.

In spite of its keel's weight, and even without the countervailing underwater resistance of its mast, Dubois's boat seemed comfortably stable upside down.
-- Derek Lundy, Godforsaken Sea

The failure also tended to countervail his undoubted gifts as an international negotiator and his achievements as Foreign Secretary.
-- Alden Whitman, "Career Built on Style and Dash Ended with Invasion of Egypt", New York Times, January 15, 1977

Until the middle of the 1920s Hook's commitment to revolutionary action and passion for philosophy acted as countervailing forces and ambitions, pulling him first one way, then the other.
-- Christopher Phelps, Young Sidney Hook

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Countervail derives from Old French contrevaloir, from contre-, "counter-" (from Latin contra, "against") + valoir, "to be worth" (from Latin valere, "to be strong, to avail").

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday June 23, 2007CE

dolorous

\DOH-luh-ruhs\, adjective:
Marked by, causing, or expressing grief or sorrow.

Climbing out on to a narrow ledge, we waving cheerily at the people passing by on the street below, until my mother was informed of our misdemeanour -- by a waitress wickedly known to great-aunt Mary, behind her table napkin, as Sourpuss for her perpetually dolorous expression -- and we were lured back inside.
-- Mary Varnham, "Voices of young and old are rarely heard", The Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), March 30, 1995

And at the centre of this intense display of devotion Carlo himself, bearing aloft the relic of the Holy Nail from the cathedral, shoeless and oblivious to his bleeding feet, walked amid a dolorous procession of penitents.
-- Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life

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Dolorous derives from Latin dolor, "pain, grief, sorrow," from dolere, "to suffer pain, to grieve."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday June 24, 2007CE

jejune

\juh-JOON\, adjective:
1. Lacking in nutritive value.
2. Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; childish.
3. Lacking interest or significance; dull; meager; dry.

Were I to make this public now, it would be dismissed as the raving of a mind at the end of its tether, unable to distinguish fiction from reality, real life from the jejune fantasies of its youth.
-- Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

By the inflection of his voice, the expression of his face, and the motion of his body, he signals that he is aware of all the ways he may be thought silly or jejune, and that he might even think so himself.
-- Jedediah Purdy, For Common Things

A while ago, Michael Kinsley wrote that Jewish Americans envied Israelis for living out history in a way that made the comfort and security of life in New York or Los Angeles seem jejune.
-- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "The Big Kibbutz", New York Times, March 2, 1997

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Jejune derives from Latin jejunus, "fasting, hence hungry, hence scanty, meager, weak."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Monday June 25, 2007CE

abstruse

\ab-STROOS; uhb-\, adjective:
Difficult to comprehend or understand.

Einstein's theories of relativity, so abstruse yet so disturbing in the popular press of the 1930s.
-- David J. Skal, Screams of Reason

One should be particularly suspicious when abstruse mathematical concepts (like the axiom of choice in set theory) that are used rarely, if at all, in physics -- and certainly never in chemistry or biology -- miraculously become relevant in the humanities or the social sciences.
-- Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense

What attracts students to the study of a foreign language is not its appearance as an abstruse code saying the very same things that are said more simply in their mother tongue, but, rather, the opening up of a new world by the foreign language.
-- Jackie-Ann Ross, "New Zealand's Educational TV"

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Abstruse comes from Latin abstrusus, past participle of abstrudere, "to push away from any place, to hide," from ab-, abs-, "away from" + trudere, "to push, to thrust."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday June 26, 2007CE

venerate

\VEN-uh-rayt\, transitive verb:
To treat someone or something with deep respect, reverence or deference; to revere.

They venerated the same saints, worshipped in the same churches, and respected a past of shared values.
-- Miranda Vickers, Between Serb and Albanian

They venerated the gods of fire and water.
-- Paul Theroux, Hotel Honolulu

The pre-eminent authority on the English language, the much-venerated Oxford English Dictionary.
-- Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

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Venerate comes from Latin veneratus, past participle of venerari, "to revere, to respect, to worship," from venus, vener-, "charm, loveliness."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday June 27, 2007CE

factious

\FAK-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Given to faction; addicted to form parties and raise dissensions, in opposition to government or the common good; turbulent; seditious; prone to clamor against public measures or men; -- said of persons.
2. Pertaining to faction; proceeding from faction; indicating, or characterized by, faction; -- said of acts or expressions; as, factious quarrels.

Despite Washington's considerable leverage with the ethnic Albanians, it was unclear whether the province's factious leadership understood the message.
-- Danica Kirka, "Rubin to Kosovars: Avoid Violence", Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2000

Many nobles sought good government, rather than being factious, and were only forced into war by the king's incompetence.
-- "Cade's Rebellion, History of United Kingdom,", Encyclopedia Britannica

Nearly four months after the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, delivered his report of possible impeachable offenses to the House, the Judiciary Committee will launch the final chapter of its factious inquiry this week, debating the merits of impeachment before taking its vote.
-- Lizette Alvarez, "Republicans Offer Clinton Lawyers 2 Days for Defense", New York Times, December 7, 1998

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Factious derives from Latin factiosus, from factio, a party, a group of people, especially a political party, faction, or side.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Thursday June 28, 2007CE

collude

\kuh-LOOD\, intransitive verb:
To act in concert; to conspire; to plot.

More perniciously still, well-heeled contributors and interest groups that seek political power routinely collude with needy office-seekers to find new paths around the hollow contribution limits.
-- Max Frankel, "You Can't Dam the Money", New York Times Magazine, February 20, 2000

Jane reflexively accommodates my fears and desires, as I do hers; together, man and wife, we collude in a mutual conspiracy to shelter and protect one another from our own and each other's inevitable and final abandonment.
-- Donald Antrim, The Verificationist

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Collude derives from Latin colludere, from con-, "together" + ludere, "to play."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday June 29, 2007CE

bifurcate

\BY-fur-kayt; by-FUR-kayt\, transitive verb:
1. To divide into two branches or parts.

intransitive verb:
1. To branch or separate into two parts.

adjective:
1. Divided into two branches or parts; forked.

There it was, a sliver of a million-dollar view: the red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge that bifurcated the waters, marking bay from ocean.
-- Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

They were strolling up the paved walk which bifurcated the rolling front lawn of her house.
-- Erik Tarloff, The Man Who Wrote the Book

Increasingly, Canadian teachers are a bifurcated group -- either relative newcomers to the profession or experienced veterans.
-- Heather-Jane Robertson, "The Devil's in the Demographics.", Phi Delta Kappan, January 1999

Peed Onk is bravura writing -- the narrative bifurcates, offering exterior realism and the interior torment of the Mother.
-- Jon Saari, "Books", Antioch Review, Spring 1999

Riven continually confronts us with . . . visual echoes of its name, such as the giant dagger thrust into the landscape at one point, or the plate-tectonic fracturing of islands out of an implied unity, or even the bifurcate wing cases of the aptly named Riven beetles.
-- Stuart Moulthrop, "Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks", Style, Summer 1999

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Bifurcate comes from the past participle of Medieval Latin bifurcare, "to divide," from Latin bifurcus, "two-pronged," from bi- + furca, "fork."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday June 30, 2007CE

convivial

\kuhn-VIV-ee-uhl\, adjective:
Relating to, occupied with, or fond of feasting, drinking, and good company; merry; festive.

The convivial atmosphere would continue on the way home, with a bag of toffees and more stories including, quite often, the story of How Grandpa Was Found.
-- "The foundling who got a life and a history", Times, January 6, 2000

He hated to drink to excess, disliked convivial entertaining and had no gift for bonhomie.
-- Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord

Young Sam, steeped in the family's endless storytelling, confessions, musings about their aspirations, and bickering about politics, seemed destined to become happy and convivial.
-- Andrew Hoffman, Inventing Mark Twain

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Convivial comes from Latin convivium, "a feast, entertainment, a banquet," from conviva, "a table-companion, a guest," from convivere, "to live with, hence to feast with," from com-, con-, with + vivere, "to live."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday July 1, 2007CE

ratiocination

\rash-ee-ah-suh-NAY-shun; rash-ee-oh-\, noun:
The process of reasoning.

For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot.
-- "People", Time, October 26, 1987

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes proved so popular that it became a given that mystery tales should include a sleuth who investigates a murder or other crime, and by virtue of intelligence, ratiocination and perseverance solves a case that initially seemed unsolvable.
-- Maxim Jakubowski, "A beginner's guide to crime fiction", The Guardian, October 29, 1999

There is no question that Joyce and Nabokov. . . brilliantly explored and expanded the limits of language and the structure of novels, yet both were led irresistibly and obsessively to cap their careers with those cold and lifeless masterpieces, "Finnegans Wake" and "Ada," more to be deciphered than read by a handful of scholars whose pleasure is strictly ratiocination.
-- "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love 'Barry Lyndon'", New York Times, January 11, 1976

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Ratiocination is from Latin rationcinatio, from ratiocinari, "to compute, to calculate, to reason," from ratio, "reckoning, calculation, reason," from reri, "to reckon, to think."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday July 2, 2007CE

fractious

\FRAK-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to cause trouble; unruly.
2. Irritable; snappish; cranky.

In Marshall's case, the experience of dealing with a clamorous band of younger siblings, earning their affection and respect while holding them to their tasks, proved remarkably useful in later years when dealing with fractious colleagues jealous of their prerogatives.
-- Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

Marcus frequently took a rod to Ambrose's back--with the predictable result of making the boy even more fractious and slow to obey.
-- Roy Morris Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company

Fractious heirs drink too much and squabble over dock space for their sailboats.
-- Marilyn Stasio, review of Stormy Weather, by Carl Hiaasen, New York Times, September 3, 1995

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Fractious is from fraction, which formerly had the sense "discord, dissension, disharmony"; it is derived from Latin frangere, "to break."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday July 3, 2007CE

carom

\KAIR-uhm\, noun:
1. A rebound following a collision; a glancing off.
2. A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively strikes two other balls on the table.

intransitive verb:
1. To strike and rebound; to glance.
2. To make a carom.

transitive verb:
1. To make (an object) bounce off something; to cause to carom.

The cart smashed into the steep hillside in explosive caroms and bounces, sending billows of dust and rock into the air.
-- Ev Ehrlich, Grant Speaks

Three blocks away, in the Rue des Jardiniers, four Moroccan children were kicking a filthy soccer ball up and down the street. It caromed off the parked cars, rolled into the gutter, was kicked again, leaving dirty blotches where it had smacked against the vehicles' fenders.
-- Philip Shelby, Gatekeeper

The anger caroms around in our psyches like jagged stones.
-- Randall Robinson, Defending the Spirit

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Carom derives from obsolete carambole, from Spanish carambola, "a stroke at billiards."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday July 4, 2007CE

phantasmagoria

\fan-taz-muh-GOR-ee-uh\, noun:
1. A shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined, as in a dream.
2. Any constantly changing scene.

. . .all combined to form a picture, like the illusory semblance of a phantasmagoria, almost leaving me in doubt whether that on which I looked were indeed reality, or the mere creation of a distempered brain.
-- Julia Pardoe, quoted in "Here's the Rub," by David Streitfeld, Washington Post, July 6, 1997

The new writings more and more take the form of apocalypses -- that is, of supernatural visions which reveal past, present and future under the guise of a phantasmagoria of symbolic persons and animals, divine and diabolical beings, celestial and infernal phenomena.
-- Edmund Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls: 1947-1969

David Nixon created this version of the fairy tale -- a phantasmagoria of grim goblins, dancing cushions, flying fish and magical mirrors -- for his former company, BalletMet Columbus, in 1997.
-- Stephanie Ferguson, "Beauty and the Beast", The Guardian, January 6, 2003

The significant items in the ensuing phantasmagoria soon appear, however -- a dry well, a house abandoned because of a series of tragedies, a so-called alley blocked at both ends, the statue of a bird looking sadly unable to fly, and the unidentified wind-up bird that creaks invisibly in a nearby tree.
-- Phoebe-Lou Adams, review of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, The Atlantic, November 1997

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Phantasmagoria is from French phantasmagorie, from phantasme, "phantasm" (from Greek, from phantazein, "to make visible," from phantos, "visible," from phainein, "to show") + -agorie, perhaps from Greek agora, "assembly."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday July 5, 2007CE

heterodox

\HET-uh-ruh-doks\, adjective:
1. Contrary to or differing from some acknowledged standard, especially in church doctrine or dogma; unorthodox.
2. Holding unorthodox opinions or doctrines.

They fight with members of other faiths, who seem to challenge their claim to a monopoly of absolute truth; they also persecute their co-religionists for interpreting a tradition differently or for holding heterodox beliefs.
-- Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History

Most of the Kurds were Sunni Muslims, but perhaps a quarter or a third adhered to heterodox varieties of Islam that preserved traces of earlier religions.
-- Susan Meisalis, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History

Moreover, heterodox behaviour -- in the form of eccentric chess moves -- was even encouraged, if it led to good results.
-- Jon Speelman, "Chess", Independent, October 24, 1998

Mr. Buckley is an American exotic of the far right, who wins some sympathy for his frankness and boldness since, in this sorry world, the heterodox are always laughed at whether right or left.
-- Richard L. Strout, "All That Is Out of Joint and Needs Setting Right", New York Times, April 28, 1963

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Heterodox comes from Greek heterodoxos, "of another opinion," from hetero-, "other" + doxa, "opinion," from dokein, "to believe."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday July 6, 2007CE

sere

\SEER\, adjective:
Dry; withered.

. . .a country that has been transformed from a place of lush abundance to a sere, mutilated, inhospitable land.
-- Zofia Smardz, "A Nice Place for Extinction", New York Times, June 15, 1997

Recent rains have done little to relieve the sere conditions.
-- Thomas Omestad, "The struggle over water", U.S. News and World Report, April 10, 2000

Mr. Campbell, a biologist, spent three seasons in the Antarctic and returned with eerily clear perceptions of that sere and uninhabitable place.
-- review of The Crystal Desert, by David G. Campbell, New York Times, December 5, 1993

There was a lavatory at the end of the garden beyond a scraggy clump of Michaelmas daisies that never looked well in themselves, always sere, never blooming, the perennial ghosts of themselves, as if ill-nourished by an exhausted soil.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg

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Sere comes from Old English sear, "dry."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday July 7, 2007CE

acclimate

\uh-KLY-mit; AK-luh-mayt\, transitive and intransitive verb:
To accustom or become accustomed to a new climate, environment, or situation.

Getting acclimated to being in the suburbs, Sally? Mrs. Westin asked.
-- Julia Slavin, The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg at the Maidstone Club and Other Stories

The Korbels did not have much time to pull their lives together and acclimate themselves to English culture.
-- Ann Blackman, Seasons of Her Life

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Acclimate is from French acclimater, from a-, "to" (from Latin ad-) + climat, "climate," from Late Latin clima, climat-, from Greek klima, "inclination; the supposed slope of the earth toward the pole; region; clime," from klinein, "to lean."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday July 8, 2007CE

didactic

\dy-DAK-tik; duh-\, adjective:
1. Fitted or intended to teach; conveying instruction; instructive; teaching some moral lesson; as, "didactic essays."
2. Inclined to teach or moralize excessively; moralistic.

The show trial may be defined as a public theatrical performance in the form of a trial, didactic in purpose, intended not to establish the guilt of the accused but rather to demonstrate the heinousness of the person's crimes.
-- Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism

In class, embarrassed girlish laughter joined the "hee-haws" of our male classmates when centerfolds appeared in the middle of medical lectures, ostensibly to add a wake-up jolt to otherwise uninspired didactic presentations.
-- Frances K. Conley M.D., Walking Out on the Boys

While Cooper offers a nice message about the demands of friendship and the need to share and be flexible, her writing is not the least bit didactic or dogmatic.
-- Stephen Del Vecchio, review of Pumpkin Soup, by Helen Cooper, Teacher Magazine, May 2000

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Didactic comes from Greek didaktikos, "skillful in teaching," from didaktos, "taught," from didaskein, "to teach, to educate."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday July 9, 2007CE

aborning

\uh-BOR-ning\, adverb:
1. While being produced or born.

adjective:
1. Being produced or born.

In universities at least as much as anywhere else, vast floods of words pour forth to no useful end. Nothing would be lost if they had died aborning.
-- Loren Lomasky, "Talking the talk: Have universities lost sight of why they exist?", Reason, May 2001

In "Base-Ball: How to Become a Player" he expounds on the importance of the sport's vital edges: pickoffs, relay throws, brushback pitches, drawing the infield in or moving it out, hit-and-run plays, signals -- all commonplace today, but in 1888 only aborning.
-- Bryan Di Salvatore, A Clever Base-Ballist

Nine months later, ABC Washington bureau chief George Watson left to join the aborning Cable News Network, taking several staffers with him.
-- Judy Flander, "Catching up with Katie Couric", Saturday Evening Post, September 1, 1992

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Aborning is derived from a-, "in the act of" + English dialect borning, "birth."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday July 10, 2007CE

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
Wednesday July 11, 2007CE

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."