Word of the Day

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday July 12, 2007CE

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
Friday July 13, 2007CE

triskaidekaphobia

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

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

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

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Triskaidekaphobia is from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, thirteen (treis, three + kai, and + deka, ten) + phobos, fear.

In Christian countries the number 13 was considered unlucky because there were 13 persons at the Last Supper of Christ. Fridays are also unlucky, because the Crucifixion was on a Friday. Hence a Friday falling on the thirteenth day is regarded as especially unlucky.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday July 14, 2007CE--Joyeux Quatorze Juillet, les francophones

verbose

\vuhr-BOHS\, adjective:
Abounding in words; using or containing more words than are necessary; tedious by an excess of words; wordy; as, "a verbose speaker; a verbose argument."

. . .his singular style of flattening verbose politicians with the phrase: "Will you please get to the point."
-- Paul McCann, "Pioneer of TV debate put end to deference", Times (London), August 8, 2000

One reason I admire Oscar is that he's the least verbose, if sometimes plain to the point of being uninteresting.
-- Frank Rich, "Conversations with Sondheim", New York Times Magazine, March 12, 2000

Many tombstones have inscriptions that are not only touching but also, by modern standards, verbose.
-- Francine Prose, "Entering New Castle, Del.", New York Times Magazine, February 27, 2000

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Verbose comes from Latin verbosus, from verbum, a word. Hence it is related to verbal, expressed in words.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday July 15, 2007CE

providential

\prov-uh-DEN(T)-shuhl\, adjective:
1. Of or resulting from divine direction or superintendence.
2. Occurring through or as if through divine intervention; peculiarly fortunate or appropriate.

For Boston's progressive Unitarians in this period, rejecting the Calvinism of their forebears increasingly meant opposing the old idea that suffering was inevitable, irremediable, and providential.
-- Elisabeth Gitter, The Imprisoned Guest

The laws of nature seem to have been carefully arranged so that they can be discovered by beings with our level of intelligence. That not only fits the idea of design, but it also suggests a providential purpose for humankind -- that is, to learn about our habitat and to develop science and technology.
-- Robin Collins, The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel

In the very first sentences of Mein Kampf, Adolf was to emphasize -- what became a Nazi stock-in-trade -- how providential it was that he had been born in Braunau am Inn, on the border of the two countries he saw it as his life's task to unite.
-- Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris

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Providential derives from Latin providentia, from providens, provident-, present participle of providere, literally, "to see ahead," from pro-, "forward" + videre, "to see."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday July 16, 2007CE

fructuous

\FRUHK-choo-uhs\, adjective:
Fruitful; productive.

It had by now reached much beyond even that status to appear in our minds as a place sentient, actively helping these once forlorn and homeless sailors, presenting us with fructuous soil to grow our food, bountifully adding its own edible offerings, its waters supplying us with an abundance of fish.
-- William Brinkley, Last Ship

Theory does not provide us worthy Marching orders for a fructuous future, for theory in itself tells us nothing about how and when it is applicable.
-- Sheila McNamee and Kenneth J. Gergen, Relational Responsibility

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Fructuous comes from Latin fructuosus, from fructus, "enjoyment, product, fruit," from the past participle of frui, "to enjoy."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday July 17, 2007CE

gallimaufry

\gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun:
A medley; a hodgepodge.

Today bilingual programs are conducted in a gallimaufry of around 80 tongues, ranging from Spanish to Lithuanian to Micronesian Yapese.
-- Ezra Bowen, "For Learning or Ethnic Pride?", Time, July 8, 1985

Then the speech itself, and you have to feel sorry for TQMEM [The Queen's Most Excellent Majesty] having to read out this frightful drivel, this grim gallimaufry of cliches, jargon and outright lies.
-- Simon Hoggart, "Grand tradition: Maltravers, Rouge, Garter, Skinner", The Guardian, November 27, 2003

Maran reports the daily jostlings and thrivings in a public school with 3,200 students, 185 teachers, 45 languages, a principal and five vice principals, five safety monitors, 62 sports teams and a gallimaufry of alternative programs, clubs and cliques.
-- Colman McCarthy, "A Writer Goes Back to School", Washington Post, August 20, 2001

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Gallimaufry, originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," comes from French galimafrée, from Old French, from galer, "to rejoice, to make merry" (source of English gala) + mafrer, "to eat much," from Medieval Dutch maffelen, "to open one's mouth wide."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday July 18, 2007CE

bibelot

\BEE-buh-loh\, noun:
A small decorative object without practical utility; a trinket.

An inveterate collector, Feldman purchased paintings and bibelots in quantity, often sight unseen.
-- Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe

They break in expecting to find a collection of bibelots, objets de vertu, exquisite porcelain, Elizabethan miniatures, 18th century Italian fiddles, cabinets of curiosa, shelves of first editions, rare erotic manuscripts, rooms full of exquisite things: the fine and delicate treasures of a fine and delicate creature.
-- Simon Barnes, "Villains who are wiser after the event", Times (London), January 10, 2001

Fragonard's aristocrats gamboled in high-heeled boots and feathered hats on the front faces of the maroon table lamps, curlicued gilt mirrors, inexplicable bibelots: a venetian glass lady's slipper, a floral cup and saucer stood on a shelf beside life-size heads of the Mater Dolorosa and of Jesus suffering beneath the Crown of Thorns.
-- Mary Gordon, Seeing Through Places

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Bibelot is from French, from Old French beubelot, beubelet, "a small jewel, a trinket," from a reduplication of bel, "beautiful," from Latin bellus, "pretty, handsome." It is related to bauble.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday July 19, 2007CE

tortuous

\TOR-choo-us\, adjective:
1. Marked by repeated turns and bends; as, "a tortuous road up the mountain."
2. Not straightforward; devious; as, "his tortuous reasoning."
3. Highly involved or intricate; as, "tortuous legal procedures."

. . .the tortuous, narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City.
-- Lee Hockstader, "Pope's Road to Israel Paved by Past Errors", Washington Post, March 12, 2000

The attempts to substitute machines, methods of mass production, for the slow manual labour of antiquaries and historical researchers have all broken down; we still rely on those who spend their lives in painfully piecing together their knowledge from fragments of actual evidence, obeying this evidence wherever it leads them, however tortuous and unfamiliar the pattern, or with no consciousness of any pattern at all.
-- Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History

Thus in the 1970s Terry Erwin of the Smithsonian Institution anaesthetized and then counted all the species of beetle in just one tree in Panama, perceived that the number of unknown species far outweighed the ones that had previously been identified, and through a sequence of reasoning that may seem a trifle tortuous but is widely agreed to be reasonable, calculated that the true number of all species on Earth is probably nearer to 30 million.
-- Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life

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Tortuous is from Latin tortuosus, from tortus, "a twisting," from the past participle of torquere, "to twist."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday July 20, 2007CE

nonage

\NON-ij; NOH-nij\, noun:
1. The time of life before a person becomes legally of age.
2. A period of youth or immaturity.

He was an adept in politics, even in his nonage, and an accomplished statesman before the laws regarded him as a man.
-- Anne Hamilton, The Epics of the Ton

In these journals of Thoreau's nonage, now restored to us in their full text for the first time, we walk among the young Thoreau's thoughts much more often than in the fields and woods surrounding Concord.
-- Leon Edel, "The Very Young Thoreau", New York Times, December 20, 1981

It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

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Nonage comes from non- (from Latin) + age, from Old French aage, eage, from Latin aetas, "age."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday July 21, 2007CE

sotto voce

\SAH-toh-VOH-chee\, adverb or adjective:
1. Spoken low or in an undertone, as not to be overheard.
2. (Music) In very soft tones. Used chiefly as a direction.

Behind the scenes, however, were sotto voce grumblings that Kohl was perhaps hanging on too long and that the party might be better off if he were to step aside and hand the candidacy to popular majority leader Wolfgang Schauble.
-- Jordan Bonfante, "The Challenger", Time, March 16, 1998

Say it sotto voce, they say, knowing full well that to shout about it would invite ridicule.
-- Julian Muscat, "Classic case for a change of course", Times (London), April 24, 2001

Inside the room, as she closed the door, the man winked at her: "I'm from the OSS," he said sotto voce. "I'm checking your room for 'bugs.'"
-- Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies

Occasionally, to keep us amused, he mouthed bits at us: but sotto voce, in case there was a real Dutchman within earshot.
-- John Bayley, The Red Hat

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Sotto voce is from the Italian: sotto, "under" and voce, "voice."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday July 22, 2007CE

avatar

\AV-uh-tar\, noun:
1. The incarnation of a deity -- chiefly associated in Hinduism with the incarnations of Vishnu.
2. An embodiment, as of a quality, concept, philosophy, or tradition; an archetype.
3. A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity.

In 1517, the year of their first contact, the Aztecs took the Spaniards to be avatars of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, god of learning and of wind.
-- Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend

People . . . believe he was some sort of avatar of peace and love, the ultimate hippie.
-- Edna Gundersen, "For $60, a ticket to read", USA Today, October 5, 2000

It would seem that no definitive identification can be made (Rimbaud the symbolist, the surrealist, the Bolshevik, Rimbaud the bourgeois, the crook, the pervert, Rimbaud the prophet, the superman, the mystic, Rimbaud the Catholic, the cabalist, the atheist, etc.); the latest "proved" avatar is forever recycled as evidence -- faulty or secure -- on which to base the next.
-- Richard Howard, "There Was Only One Rimbaud", New York Times, November 19, 2000

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Avatar is from Sanskrit avatara, "descent" (of a deity from heaven), from avatarati, "he descends," from ava-, "down" + tarati, "he crosses, he passes over."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday July 23, 2007CE

trenchant

\TREN-chunt\, adjective:
1. Characterized by or full of force and vigor; as, "a trenchant analysis."
2. Caustic; biting; severe; as, "trenchant criticism."
3. Distinct; clear-cut; clearly or sharply defined.

Her insistence that women's rights should be upheld universally, notwithstanding concerns about cultural diversity, led some to criticise her for being too narrowly entrenched within western liberalism, while others celebrated her trenchant defence of egalitarianism.
-- Judith Squires, "Susan Moller Okin", The Guardian, March 26, 2004

His revolutionary music, abrasive personality and trenchant writings about art and life divided the city into warring factions.
-- Jonathan Carr, Mahler: A Biography

The trenchant divisions between right and wrong, honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little scope for the unforseen.
-- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

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Trenchant comes from Old French, from the present participle of trenchier, "to cut." It is related to trench.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday July 24, 2007CE

confabulation

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday July 26, 2007CE

serendipity

\ser-uhn-DIP-uh-tee\, noun:
The faculty or phenomenon of making fortunate accidental discoveries.

Still, I was more subject to serendipity than I yet knew. Soon risk, chance, and a letter from Sir Alun Reese-Jones, the Master of Trinity, my college at Cambridge, were to set my life on an adventurous course.
-- David Freeman, One of Us

Yet even as I planned a rough route, leaving plenty of room for serendipity, I was uncomfortably aware that journeys have a way of creating their own momentum.
-- Lesley Hazleton, Driving To Detroit

There again, perhaps because of serendipity, or an especially conscientious team of doctors, it can also happen that the crucial clues are noticed and recorded for posterity.
-- Edward Hooper, The River

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The word serendipity was formed by English author Horace Walpole (1717-1797) from Serendip (also Serendib), an old name for Sri Lanka, in reference to a Persian tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "discovered, quite unexpectedly, great and wonderful good in the most unlikely of situations, places and people."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday July 27, 2007CE

coruscate

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday July 28, 2007CE

matutinal

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday July 29, 2007CE

ambuscade

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday July 30, 2007CE

punctilious

\puhnk-TIL-ee-uhs\, adjective:
Strictly attentive to the details of form in action or conduct; precise; exact in the smallest particulars.

The convert who is more punctilious in his new faith than the lifelong communicant is a familiar figure in Catholic lore.
-- Patrick Allit, Catholic Converts

Nicholas showed us his butterfly collection. He had done a splendid job of spreading them (better than I ever have, let alone at his age). I tried to impress upon him the need for punctilious labeling, a tedious business that raises a butterfly from a mere curio to a specimen of scientific value.
-- Robert Michael Pyle, ChASINg Monarchs

Cooper had always been very punctilious about observing the rules laiddown in the . . . brochure.
-- Josef Skvorecky, Two Murders in My Double Life

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Punctilious derives from Late Latin punctillum, "a little point," from Latin punctum, "a point," from pungere, "to prick."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday July 31, 2007CE

stasis

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day of the Month
July 2007CE

1. ratiocination: the process of reasoning.
2. fractious: tending to cause trouble; also, irritable.
3. carom: to strike and rebound; also, a glancing off.
4. phantasmagoria: a shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined.
5. heterodox: holding unorthodox opinions.
6. sere: dry; withered.
7. acclimate: to accustom or become accustomed to a new climate, environment, or situation.
8. didactic: conveying instruction; teaching some moral lesson.
9. aborning: (while) being produced or born.
10. pecuniary: relating to money.
11. betimes: early; also, on occasion.
12. desideratum: something desired.
13. triskaidekaphobia: fear of the number 13.
14. verbose: wordy.
15. providential: resulting from divine providence; also, peculiarly fortunate or appropriate.
16. fructuous: fruitful; productive.
17. gallimaufry: a hodgepodge.
18. bibelot: a trinket.
19. tortuous: marked by repeated turns and bends.
20. nonage: a period of youth or immaturity.
21. sotto voce: spoken low or in an undertone.
22. avatar: an incarnation.
23. trenchant: forceful and vigorous; also, caustic; also, clear-cut.
24. confabulation: familiar talk.
25. riposte: a quick and effective reply by word or act.
26. serendipity: the faculty or phenomenon of making fortunate accidental discoveries.
27. coruscate: to give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light.
28. matutinal: relating to or occurring in the morning.
29. ambuscade: an ambush; also, to ambush.
30. punctilious: precise; exact in the smallest particulars.
31. stasis: a state of balance, equilibrium, or stagnation.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday August 1, 2007CE

wayworn

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday August 2, 2007CE

brackish

\BRAK-ish\, adjective:
1. Somewhat salty.
2. Distasteful; unpalatable.

Just a few villages dot the dangerous beaches where the Sepik [River] meets the sea, a brackish zone where sharks and saltwater crocodiles lurk.
-- Dennis Lewon, "Learning to Receive", Islands

I gagged, and tasted something metallic and brackish in the back of my throat.
-- Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, It's Not About the Bike

And yet his decision still leaves that brackish aftertaste.
-- Tom Block, review of The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), Culturevulture.net

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Brackish derives from Dutch brak, "salty." It is especially used to describe a mixture of seawater and fresh water.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday August 3, 2007CE

parse

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

intransitive verb:
1. To admit of being parsed.

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday August 4, 2007CE

jeremiad

\jair-uh-MY-uhd\, noun:
A tale of sorrow, disappointment, or complaint; a doleful story; also, a dolorous or angry tirade.

This age in which leisure and letters were gilded with commerce did not see the decline and fall of art, despite the jeremiads of such artists as William Blake ('Where any view of money exists,' he prophesied, 'art cannot be carried on').
-- Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century

Johnson's jeremiad against what he sees as American imperialism and militarism exhaustively catalogs decades of U.S. military misdeeds
-- Stan Crock, review of The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, Business Week, February 2, 2004

Economics ministers in general were taken aback when a recent World Bank report -- after a year of jeremiads -- suggested the crisis was being exaggerated
-- Lance Castle, "The economic crisis revisited", Jakarta Post, April 1, 1999

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Jeremiad comes from French jérémiade, after Jérémie, Jeremiah, the prophet.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday August 5, 2007CE

nuptial

\NUHP-shuhl; -chuhl\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to marriage; done or used at a wedding; as, "nuptial rites and ceremonies."
2. Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the mating season.

noun:
1. Marriage; wedding; nuptial ceremony; -- usually used in the plural.

The couple entered the town of Chalons, stopping on the way to listen to a concert (which must have been torture for Monsieur, who had no ear for music) and then heard a nuptial blessing from the Bishop.
-- Christine Pevitt, Philippe, Duc D'Orleans

Angela remembered vividly the mild indecorousness of the occasion -- not the usual nuptial jollity, but an oddly irreverent atmosphere, light and ungrateful.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eater

The two ducks may never approach each other again, their species' habit being to put on flashy nuptial plumage and choose new partners every spring.
-- Mary Parker Buckles, Margins

As the bride and groom arrived, the city-issued clock registered five minutes to noon, just moments before the chapel would close, almost ensuring that, no matter how esteemed the couple, the nuptials would not be reported in the next day's papers.
-- Larry Tye, The Father of Spin

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Nuptial comes from Latin nuptialis, from nuptiae "marriage, wedding," from the past participle of nubere, properly, "to cover, to veil," hence, "to marry," as the head of the bride was covered with a veil.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday August 7, 2007CE

levity

\LEV-uh-tee\, noun:
1. Lightness of manner or speech, especially when inappropriate or excessive; frivolity.
2. Lack of steadiness or constancy; changeableness.

They sat there in their formal bargeman's rig . . . looking solemn: they were part of a ceremony, and levity, winking, whispering, smiling, had no place in it.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days

I must say that if the doctor was indulging in levity at my expense, it is a levity I find in the worst possible taste.
-- Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man

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Levity is from Latin levitas, from levis, "light."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday August 8, 2007CE

abed

\uh-BED\, adverb:
In bed.

When I lay abed as a boy in our ranch house, listening to those trucks growl their way up highway 281, the sound of those motors came to seem as organic as the sounds of the various birds and animals who were apt to make noises in the night.
-- Larry McMurtry, Roads: Driving America's Great Highways

-------------------------------------------------------------
Abed is the prefix a-, "in, on" (from Old English an) + bed (from Old English bedd).

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Thursday August 9, 2007CE

diaphanous

\dy-AF-uh-nuhs\, adjective:
1. Of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent.
2. Vague; insubstantial.

The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane that can't quite contain the light outside.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian

She needed more than diaphanous hope, more than I could give her.
-- Tej Rae, "One Hand Extended", Washington Post, August 12, 2001

----------------------------------------------------------
Diaphanous ultimately derives from Greek diaphanes, "showing through," from diaphainein, "to show through, to be transparent," from dia-, "though" + phainein, "to show, to appear." It is related to phantom, something apparently sensed but having no physical reality.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Friday August 10, 2007CE

aggress

\uh-GRES\, intransitive verb:
To commit the first act of hostility or offense; to make an attack.

Nagaraj can never bring himself to aggress or fight back, but he is capable of a delicious malice.
-- Julian Moynahan, "India of the Imagination. . .", New York Times, July 15, 1990

The hand . . . is the most versatile of organs. Through its agency we lift, pinch, squeeze, explore, feel, learn, discriminate, repulse, caress, aggress.
-- F. Gonzalez-Crussi, "The Hand", Washington Post, July 19, 1998

A master of drawing, Rico Lebrun, discovered that "the draftsman must aggress; only by persistent assault will the live image capitulate and give up its secret to an unrelenting line."
-- Annie Dillard, "Write Till You Drop", New York Times, May 28, 1989

------------------------------------------------------------------
Aggress is from French agresser, from Latin aggredi, aggress-, "to approach, to approach aggressively, to attack," from ad-, "to" + gradi, "to step, to walk."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday August 11, 2007CE

en masse

\en MASS; on MASS\, adverb:
All together; as a whole.

United nations personnel, including military observers, pulled out en masse from Sierra Leone's rebel-besieged capital, Freetown.
-- "United Nations personnel pull out of capital", Irish Times, January 7, 1999

Following news of her husband's demise, Mary O'Sullivan united her children in London, and in the fall of 1827 they moved en masse to New York.
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America

There was a moment of stunned silence and then frenzied applause, bellowing cheers, as the audience rose en masse from their seats.
-- Anne Edwards, Streisand: A Biography

Embittered by the spurning of his own work, he takes satisfaction in suckering the entire art world en masse, then pulling aside the curtain, exposing himself as a renegade genius and the art experts as the frauds and fools.
-- Peter Landesman, "A 20th-Century Master Scam", New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1999

--------------------------------------------------------------------
En masse comes from the French en, "in" + masse, "mass."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday August 12, 2007CE

nebbish

\NEB-ish\, noun:
A weak-willed, timid, or ineffectual person.

You used to be a nebbish, a noodle, a fool
And now you're Mr. Big Time with your own private pool.
-- Maira Kalman, Max in Hollywood, Baby

Poor Humphrey is a nebbish, a fellow whose private passivity is intended to contrast with the dramatic historic events that sweep around him.
-- Mason Buck, review of The Red Cabbage Café, by Jonathan Treitel, New York Times, February 3, 1997

He is a nebbish who might be played effectively by Woody Allen. He attracts the sympathy of lower-echelon mammals but finds it difficult to relate to dogs and human beings.
-- Evan Hunter, "American Mayhem, Soviet Intrigue", New York Times, October 9, 1983

---------------------------------------------------------------
Nebbish is from Yiddish nebekh, "poor, unfortunate," of Slavic origin.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Monday August 13, 2007CE

bellicose

\BEL-ih-kohs\, adjective:
Inclined to or favoring war or strife; warlike; pugnacious.

And John Adams insisted that where European diplomacy was secret, bellicose, and riddled with intrigue, American policy would be open, peaceful, and honest.
-- Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State

Cambodia struggled through five years of bloody civil conflict with the destructive intervention of bellicose foreign powers, four years of a genocidal revolutionary regime, then liberation through invasion and a decade of military occupation by Vietnam.
-- Henry Kamm, Cambodia: Report From a Stricken Land

Yet his undoubtedly aggressive behaviour . . . only served to further endear him to all who had dealings with him. They recognised that behind the bellicose facade, there beat a big, warm, compassionate heart.
-- "Big, warm heart behind bellicose facade", Irish Times, August 21, 1999

-------------------------------------------------------------
Bellicose is from Latin bellicosus, from bellicus, "of war," from bellum, "war."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday August 14, 2007CE

commensurate

\kuh-MEN(T)S-uhr-it; -shuhr-\, adjective:
1. Equal in measure, extent, or duration.
2. Corresponding in size or degree or extent; proportionate.
3. Having a common measure; commensurable; reducible to a common measure; as, commensurate quantities.

A new era, Hoover called it, one that was witnessing breathtaking transformations in traditional ways of life and that demanded commensurate transformations in the institutions and techniques sof government.
-- David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear

It is almost a rule: the successful American--Vanderbilt, Frick, Rockefeller, Hearst, Gates--builds himself a house commensurate with his fortune.
-- Michael Knox Beran, The Last Patrician

The Shi'a represent a plurality in Lebanon, where only in recent years they have gained a degree of political power commensurate with their numbers.
-- Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shi'a: The Forgotten Muslims

-------------------------------------------------------------
Commensurate is from Late Latin commensuratus, from Latin com-, "with, together" + Late Latin mensuratus, past participle of mensurare, "to measure," from Latin mensura, "measure."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Wednesday August 15, 2007CE

plenipotentiary

\plen-uh-puh-TEN-shee-air-ee; -shuh-ree\, adjective:
1. Containing or conferring full power; invested with full power; as, "plenipotentiary license; plenipotentiary ministers."

noun:
1. A person invested with full power to transact any business; especially, an ambassador or diplomatic agent with full power to negotiate a treaty or to transact other business.

There were two accounts, one in a news article, the second in the editorial section, telling the minihistory of Pol Pot, sometime plenipotentiary ruler of Cambodia.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., The Redhunter

At that time, Egypt was our protectorate, which meant the High Commissioner was the plenipotentiary of George V and carried independent authority.
-- David Freeman, One of Us

-------------------------------------------------------------
Plenipotentiary derives from Latin plenus, "full" + potens, "powerful."

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Thursday August 16, 2007CE

tattoo

\ta-TOO\, noun:
1. A rapid, rhythmic drumming or rapping.
2. A beat of a drum, or sound of a trumpet or bugle, giving notice to soldiers to go to their quarters at night.
3. A display of military exercises given as evening entertainment.

Joss blew out her breath, stamped her feet in a short tattoo, and sat jiggling one leg.
-- John Casey, The Half-life of Happiness

There are more golf courses per person in Naples than anywhere else in the world, and in spite of the hot, angry weather everyone around the hotel was dressed to play, their cleated shoes tapping out a clickety-clickety-clickety tattoo on the sidewalks.
-- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

With a steady tattoo of bad news beginning to offset what had been one of the most vibrant parts of the U.S. economy, "we are less optimistic than we were two months ago about the speed of the bounce back," Mr. Williams said.
-- Eduardo Porter, "California's Economic Slowdown Is Expected to Last Much Longer", Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2001

---------------------------------------------------------------
Tattoo is an alteration of earlier taptoo, from Dutch taptoe, "a tap(house)-shut," from tap, "faucet" + toe, "shut" -- meaning, essentially, that the tavern is about to shut.

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day Archive
Friday August 17, 2007CE

agitprop

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Saturday August 18, 2007CE

masticate

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

intransitive verb:
1. To chew food.

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Sunday August 19, 2007CE

temporize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lazy Agnostic]

Word of the Day
Tuesday August 21, 2007CE

indurate

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

transitive verb:
1. To make hard; to harden.
2. To harden against; to make hardy; to habituate.
3. To make hardened; to make callous or stubborn.
4. To establish; to fix firmly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[dizzle]

if anyone wants to take this over please let me know

[Scotland1960]

Dear Friend, The Word of the Day is Theology. (By the way, whoever posted that cute photo of the bulldog: it makes me laugh!)
Everything in the walk with Christ (our walk with Christ) is related to theology: what words we accept as coming from God that are Orthodox theology: correct theology.
I recommend the following sources on the internet and books to read:

"Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: What is Orthodoxy? by Fr. Victor Potapov http:// www.stjohndc.org/Russian/orthhtrdx/e_P01-Intro.HTM

ORTHODOX ENGLAND on the 'net
"From Western Civilization to Filioque Civilization" Excerpt from Volume 10 Issue 2 1st December 2006
http:// orthodoxengland.org.uk/v10i2.htm

Andreyev, I.M. (1995). ORTHODOX APOLOGETIC THEOLOGY. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. PO Box 70 Platina CA 96076

Zizioulas, John D. (1985). BEING AS COMMUNION: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

THE ORTHODOX NEW TESTAMENT. Volume I. The Gospels. Volume 2: Acts, Epistles, Revelation. Copyright 2000 Holy Apostles Convent, Post Office Box 3118, Buena Vista, CO
81211

Hill, Craig C. (2002). IN GOD's TIME: The Bible and the Future. Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Appendix: NOT LEFT BEHIND, pages 199-209.

La Due, William J. (2003).. The Trinity Guide to the Trinity. Harrsibrug, PA: Trinity Press International PO Box 1321, Harrsiburg, PA 17105

Barbero, Alessandro. (2004). CHARLEMAGNE: FATHER OF A CONTINENT. Allan Cameron, trans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. at library under DC 73 .B3613 2004

GOD BLESS AND SAVE ALL OF YOU.

SINCERELY, SCOTT R. HARRINGTON SCOTLAND1960

.

[grit]

Word of the Day
Friday 11 January, 2008AD

strategery
\struh-TEEJ-er-ee\, noun:

1. a mock-Bushism playing on the words "strategy" and "strategic" and used in a 7 October, 2000 Saturday Night Live (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/00/00adebate.phtml) sketch parodying the 2000 presidential debates in which George W. Bush (played by Will Farrell) uses the word to summarize "the best argument for his candidacy". The term satirizes Bush's propensity for mispronunciation.

2. a 'term of art' connected to political strategists of the George W. Bush White House (as in "The Department of Strategery" or the "Strategery Group"), originating from the Bush Administration's embracing of the SNL satirical introduction of the term.

3. a term now widely used in popular discourse conveying either an ill-conceived and/or poorly-executed plan of action, or in a humorously ironic sense of support admist plans which don't go according to expectations or hopes.

see also listings in wikipeadia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategery) and Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=strategery&r=f)

"Serious 'Strategery' As Rove Launches Elaborate Political Effort, Some See a Nascent Clintonian 'War Room'"
- Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Sunday, April 22, 2001

"Try to imagine, if you will, the inner sanctum of the left, the smoke-filled room where liberal senators plan their strategery. "
- Rush Limbaugh, "Harry Reid Smear Letter Postmortem", October 22, 2007

"At first, the record is baffling, but the explanation for Republican success is simple. Not only was superior "strategery" involved on the part of the minority, to borrow a word from Bush's lexicon, but equally important was Democrats' miscalculations."
-Whitney Blake, "Strategery: How Republicans prevailed on the Hill", The Daily Standard, December 12, 2007
___________________
strategery, from strategy, from Ancient Greek στρατηγία (strategia) "office of general, command, generalship", from στρατηγός (strategos) "the leader or commander of an army, a general", from στρατός (stratos) "army" + άγω (ago) "to lead, to conduct".

[grit]

Word of the Day
Monday 14 January, 2008AD

skullhuggery
\skuhl-HUG-er-ee\, noun:

1. a harmelss untruth, intended to comfort simple souls.

2. empathetic actions initiated by skeletons, such as their gifting of balloons or party favours.

"It's a massive spot on the end of my nose but my boyfriend says you can hardly see it. He's either blind or telling me a skullhuggery!"
- anonymous

"the graveyard was festive with the spirit of skullhuggery and get well wishings"
- grit, tWeb, "Word of the Day", Monday, 14 January, 2008

___________________
an invented verboticism (http://www.verbotomy.com/verboticisms.php?jid=vonnegut&this_room=-1) attributed to Kurt Vonnegut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) and first appearing in his novel Cat's Cradle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle), it is derived from skullduggery + hug. skullduggery, alteration of Scottish sculdudrie "adultery", sculduddery "bawdry, obscenity", a euphemism of uncertain origin; an instance of or proceedings considered dishonorable, mean, dishonest or essentially involving a trick, graft, or purposeful misrepresentatiom. hug, a tight clasp or embrace, esp. with cherished affection; perhaps of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse hugga to soothe, akin to OE hogian to care for.

- also perhaps an obtusely paradoxical oxymoron.

[grit]

Word of the Day
Tuesday, 15 January, 2008AD

neologism *
\nee-OL-uh-jiz-uhm\, noun

1. a new word, meaning, usage, or expression, often created to apply to new concepts..
2. the creation, introduction, or use of new words or new senses of existing words.
3. Psychiatry. the invention of new words regarded as symptopatic of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, usually understood only by the speaker.
4. Theology. a new doctrine or a new interpretation of scripture.a new doctrine, esp. a new interpretation of sacred writings.

"robotics", "phaser", "e-mail," "gay", and "adorkable", as commonly used today, are examples of a neologism.

"While there is no specific policy against neologisms here, I think this term is a difficult one to have included."
-Tmtoulouse, "Conservapedia", 8 March 2007
_________________
Etymology: Greek νεολογισμός [neologismos], from νέος [neos] new + λόγος [logos] word, speech, discourse + suffix -ισμός [-ismos] -ism

*note: also the Word of the Day for Sunday, May 16, 2004 (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showpost.php?p=554006&postcount=771) (by Lazy Agnostic (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/member.php?u=387)), thus making it a word of great importance for the tWeb community to remember.

[grit]

Word of the Day
Wednesday, 16 January, 2008AD

pooka - variants:, phouka, puka (púka), puca (púca)
\POO-ka\, noun

an impish spirit of Celtic folklore which, according to legend, is capable of taking on a variety of forms, usually appearing as a terrifying and darkly coloured animal such as a rabbit, goat, dog (or perhaps even a morphing cat), but most commonly a sleek black horse with yellow eyes; and generally regarded as mischievous, though not cruel.

Mr. Wilson (an Asylum oderly, reading from the dictionary): "Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice. A wise but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum-pots, crack pots; and how are you, Mr. Wilson."
- "Harvey", a play by Mary Chase, 1945 (where the pooka appears as a giant white rabbit).
__________________
ETYMOLOGY: Irish púca, from Old Irish; its name is a cognate of the early Irish poc, 'a male goat', and it lends its name to Puck, the goat-footed satyr made famous in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[grit]

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

[grit]

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

[grit]

I can haz gerbil?

[grit]

Word of the Day
Thursday, 17 January, 2008AD

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

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

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

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

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
Friday, 18 January, 2008AD

homologumena

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

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

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

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

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
Saturday, 19 January, 2008AD

gomenasai

\Go-me-nah-sai\

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

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

go = ご
me = め
n = ん

na = な
sa = さ
i = い

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

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
Sunday, 20 January, 2008AD

bard
\bärd\

noun.

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

verb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
Monday, 21 January, 2008AD

floccinaucinihilipilification (or variously floccipaucinihilipilification)

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

[Augustine2004]

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

[grit]

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
Tuesday, 22 January, 2008AD

jo

\jō\ , noun

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

__________________
Etymology: var. of joy

[grit]

still catching up a bit as a newbie...

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

1-2-3 Molinas

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

1. An expression of condition descriptive of theological wallflowers (http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=16686) caught in a very respectful attempt at reconciling two divergent traditions of Christian thought by smashing together God’s sovereign omniscient will (Calvinism) with man’s free will (Arminianism), and thus creating a third harmonious though slightly left of center divine knowabiliwill called Middle Knowledge (http://www.theopedia.com/Molinism) (which apparently worked very well for combining Mary and Magdalene into Marlena, and seemed a very valiant and worthy Jesuit postulation).

“It's see no, speak no, hear no evil about us”, ‘cause “there's got to be someone we can trust out here among us [1-2-3 Molinas]” - Jakob Dylan, Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse, 1996 Interscope Records
__________________
Etymology (http://www.the-wallflowers.net/behind2e.html ): “I gotta make a lot of decisions in my life every day, like everybody else, and sometimes you feel like you got three different people [when] you're making choices and you don't know which one's speaking to you on which day. - The Album Network, December 19, 1997 - article121997.htm

[grit]

Word of the Day
Monday, 4 February, 2008AD

suppurate


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

1. To produce or secrete pus.

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

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

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

[grit]

Word of the Day
SuperTuesday, 5 February, 2008AD

oquassa

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

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

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


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

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

[grit]

WORD OF THE DAY
Wednesday, 6 February, 2008AD

mugwumpery, from mugwump (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugwump#_note-7), often Mugwump

\mug'wump'er•y\ noun.


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

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

c. a non-comformist

(compare 2008 American presupertuessence)

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

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

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/attachment.php?attachmentid=51052&stc=1&d=1202227980

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

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

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/attachment.php?attachmentid=51053&stc=1&d=1202227980

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

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

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

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

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

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

[grit]

WORD OF THE DAY
Saturday, 9 February, 2008AD

klatch (also klatsch, klach, or coffee klatsch, also kaffeeklatsch)

\ kläch\, noun
1. a casual gathering of people characterized usually by informal conversation
2. group <a klatch of friends>

Klatch (capped)
1. a fictional, multi-ethnic country (similar to Arabic states) in Discworld fantasy novel series by Terry Pratchett, famous for its strong, almost magical coffee.

2. a rock music cover band out of Kansas.

“Rachel Davis summoned her klatch to Toscanini's in Central Square last week to help her make one of the most important decisions she will face this year -- what to wear to the Matzo Ball on Christmas Eve.”
- “A Christmas Eve klatch”, Christopher Muther, Boston Globe, December 2006

“Hillary Clinton chokes up during a Monday coffee klatch, which has nothing to do with a Drudge Report flash floating a rumor that she'll drop out. Both sides parse Sunday's debates, and Bill Kristol comes out in support of Huckabee.”
- “Take It for Granite”, Sonia Smith, Slate blog, January 7, 2008

“Friends, I'm growing rather worried about America's current klatch of ubiquitous celebrities -- both in Hollywood, CA and Washington, DC. In our burnished "Bed, Bath & Beyonce" world of painstakingly marketed personalities, the glossy veneers are starting to peel disagreeably in the corners, revealing the disconcerting intimation that we may be a nation that only idolizes the annoying -- if not downright insane.”
- Newsletter from the desk of America’s best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers
_________________
Etymology: Partial translation of German Kaffeeklatsch : Kaffee, coffee + Klatsch, gossip

[Augustine2004]

Molinism, Molinist

Roughly speaking, Christian theology is split into 3 camps, Calvinist, Molinist, and Arminian. The main issue, or so it seems to me, is the tension between God’s omnipresence and omnipotence on the one hand and creaturely freedom. The Molinist takes the middle position between the Arminian who appears to think humans are able to act against God’s will and the Calvinist who disagrees.

For further and more detailed discussion, I don’t know how good this article is, but it does seem to be informative, to say the least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molinism


[Please don't expect regular posts now, but maybe later. I still can't find that list of Shakespearean words.]

[dizzle]

I can give you a link to a theological word of the day? Would you be interested in doing that in the Christianity section?

[Kelp]

If he can't, I'd like to do it.

[Augustine2004]

Let Kelp do the theological thing. If he wants to do the general word thing, that's fine, too.

[Kelp]

Well, everybody kind of does the general word thing. And I wouldn't mind if you or someone else ever wanted to drop by and do a theological word one day.

[Kelp]

I can give you a link to a theological word of the day? Would you be interested in doing that in the Christianity section?
If this is good to go, can I have that link? You gave it to me once upon a time, but I seem to have lost it.

[dizzle]

http://wordoftheday.reclaimingthemind.org/blogs/

[Kelp]

Theological Word of the Day Thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=114661)

[Augustine2004]

[Please don't expect regular posts now, but maybe later. I still can't find that list of Shakespearean words.]Glory be, today I found it. It was almost in plain sight in my office. I wasn't like the diligent woman who looked for her lost money, I guess.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

corslet

substantive.
body armor part (pictured here http://www.thefreedictionary.com/corslet)

The Tragedy of Coriolanus Fourth Part (Collins edition) http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-Coriolanus3.html
Menenius
The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes:
when he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks
before his treading: he is able to pierce a corslet with his eye,
talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery.

Modern use:
Dizzle, bearing her anger like a corslet, approached the unsuspecting Augustine.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words.

couch

substantive (modern meaning).
furniture item (you know what).

verb (as Shakespeare might use it, or so I understand):
transitive.
to cause to lie down; to crouch; to be in a heap or pile.
intransitive.
to lie in concealment or ambush; to lurk.



The Merry Wives of Windsor http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Merry-Wives-of-Windsor3.html
Page
Come, come; we'll couch i' the castle-ditch till we see the light
of our fairies.


Modern use:
Lurkers, stop couching yourself! Give us the full glory of your wit.

[Augustine2004]

countervail

verb, transitive.
to act against with equal force; be opposed to.
verb, intransitive.
(similar meaning)



Romeo and Juliet http://www.fullbooks.com/Romeo-and-Juliet2.html
Romeo [Yea, verily that fella]
Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short minute gives me in her sight:
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare,--
It is enough I may but call her mine.

Modern use:
Augustine’s attempts to defend himself against Dizzle’s sizzle did naught to countervail her wrath.

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Multisystofibromatosis.

You can't beat horrible medical conditions for the best words.

[Augustine2004]

Anyone got a word to describe the effects of Dizzle's buffeting suffered by poor Auggie?

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Yonkytonkaboogieboffy

[Augustine2004]

YonkytonkaboogieboffyI googled and got the message, no matching documents. You must have made it up. Is that the greatest glory of your wit?

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

cozen

verb, transitive.
to deceive, by means of a petty trick or fraud.
intransitive.
to act with intent to deceive.


The Taming of the Shrew http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Taming-of-the-Shrewx29903.html
Pedant
Lay hands on the villain: I believe 'a means to cozen
somebody in this city under my countenance.

Modern use:
Alas, Augustine’s attempts to cozen Dizzle did naught to countervail her sizzle.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

crank

substantive.
winding passage.

verb, intransitive.
to turn and twist

The Tragedy of Coriolanus http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-Coriolanus1.html
Menenius [The context is that Menenius is pretending to quote the belly, which sends ‘natural competency’–the digested food–out in the blood. The Roman Senate is the belly of Rome.]
But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to th' seat o' th' brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live.


Modern use:
Dizzle became dizzy and cranky trying to follow the cranks of the maze [nah, nobody uses ‘crank’ that way, yes? How about this instead?] She turned the crank on her Model T flivver. It promptly roared to life, making her happy.

[Note that I’m trying to find words whose meanings in Shakespeare’s time differ considerably from today’s.]

[Augustine2004]

Some of you might think that my ‘modern use’ example should have been this instead: ‘Augustine is a crank.’

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

craven

substantive.
coward.

adjective.
cowardly.

King Henry VI, First Part http://www.fullbooks.com/King-Henry-VI-First-Part1.html
Plantagenet
He bears him on the place's privilege,
Or durst not, for his craven heart, say thus.



Modern use:
‘Craven!’ Dizzle shouted after a rapidly decamping Augustine.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Cynthia and Cytherea

mythological names. The first one is Diana when represented as the moon. The last one is the goddess Venus.

Romeo and Juliet http://www.fullbooks.com/Romeo-and-Juliet2.html
Romeo
Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go.--
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.--
How is't, my soul? let's talk,--it is not day.

The Taming of the Shrew http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex28401.html
Second Servant
Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight
Adonis painted by a running brook,
And Cytherea all in sedges hid,
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath
Even as the waving sedges play wi' th' wind.

Modern use:
[Who uses those names in mythological settings? Oh, well, I will attempt to please a certain lady.]‘Cynthia! Cytherea!’ The audience shouted as a surprised Dizzle stepped onto the stage.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Damascus

Traditionally where Cain slew Abel. [Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus ]

King Henry VI, First Part http://www.fullbooks.com/King-Henry-VI-First-Part1.html
Winchester
Nay, stand thou back; I will not budge a foot:
This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain,
To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt.


Modern use:
According to Wikipedia, ‘Damascus is considered to be among the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.’ [‘Tis not true that the original name was changed from ‘Dizzle’ to ‘Damascus.’]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

daub it

to put on a false show.

The Tragedy of King Lear http://books.google.com/books?ei=W5_GSufoGYSssgPph7miBQ&ct=result&output=text&id=d8YVAAAAYAAJ&q=%27daub+it%27#v=snippet&q='daub%20it'&f=false
Edgar
Poor Tom’s a-cold.—[i][Aside] I cannot daub it further.


Modern use:
[Who says stuff like that today? I will not daub it at all.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

[This is a derivation from the prior word.]

daubery

a false show.

The Merry Wives of Windsor http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Merry-Wives-of-Windsor2.html
Ford
A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her
my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men;
we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of
fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure,
and such daubery as this is, beyond our element. We know nothing.
Come down, you witch, you hag you; come down, I say!


Modern use:
[Apparently the usual diction is, an object of amateurish art.] Dizzle wished Augustine would stop his word-of-the-day contributions, regarding them as dauberies.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

decoct

verb, transitive.
to extract or concentrate a desired part of some liquid by boiling it.


The Life of King Henry the Fifth http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex28521.html
Constable Dieu de batailles! where have they this mettle?
Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull;
On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,
Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water,
A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth,
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?
And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,
Seem frosty? . . .




[i]Modern use:
Exerting her abilities to decoct magical potions to the utmost, Dizzle so far was unable to halt Augustine’s logorrhea.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

decimate

verb, transitive.
The Bible says that David had selected parts of an army that he defeated, killed as punishment. His soldiers used ropes as counting devices to quickly execute the correct fraction of the defeated army. Later, the Roman army punished poorly performing or mutinous military units by killing every tenth person in them. The prefix [i]deci- may be recognized as indicating ten of something or a tenth of a thing. Today, the word accrued additional meanings of general destruction or devastation, including near-total disaster.


The Life of Timon of Athens http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Life-of-Timon-of-Athensx30153.html
Second Senator
. . . March, noble lord,
Into our city with thy banners spread.
By decimation and a tithed death,--
If thy revenges hunger for that food
Which nature loathes,-take thou the destin'd tenth,
And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.


Modern use:
The headline blared, ‘Steelers decimate Chargers defense.’ http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-10-05/sports/football/chargers/619-sports-steelers-decimate-chargers-defense [Now, before you come to decimate me, let me say that I’m not a fan of either team.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

deer

substantive.
animals. [Surprised? I guess from now on nobody’s going to call me dear. And others would roll their eyes and exclaim, oh, dear!]

King Henry IV, The First Part http://www.fullbooks.com/King-Henry-IV-The-First-Part3.html
Prince [Hal]
. . . [Sees Falstaff on the ground.]

What, old acquaintance? could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spared a better man:
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity!
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.
Embowell'd will I see thee by-and-by:
Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.

[Not plural, but who’s going to be that fussy–you?]

Modern use:
Deer visit my place sometimes. I kid you not. They’re that tame, though many houses surround my home.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

deracinate

verb, transitive.
to uproot.

The Life of King Henry V http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Life-of-King-Henry-V3.html
Burgundy
. . .
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chas'd,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in it own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery;
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kexes, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility;
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But grow like savages,--as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood,--
To swearing and stern looks, diffus'd attire,
And everything that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favour
You are assembled; and my speech entreats
That I may know the let, why gentle Peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.


Modern use:
Augustine gazed at the huge swath of lawn, appalled. It seemed to him that a million weeds would have to be deracinated.

I remember a review of a comedy based on the lives of several female characters who were said to be ‘deracinated women.’ I’m not sure what that means, I didn’t watch the comedy to understand.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

derogate

[We’re familiar with that word as a verb, but Shakespeare used it as a substantive. I don’t know if it’s so used in modern times. The meanings below were taken from the glossary that I’m using. Not a complete definition.]

Substantive.
Derogation; degenerate.
Adjective.
Debased; degraded; derogatory
Verb, transitive.
To debase oneself.


The Tragedy of King Lear http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex28611.html
Lear
. . .
Hear, Nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility;
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her!


Modern use:
I would be derogating myself were I to write this: ‘On seeing Augustine’s latest entry, Dizzle cried, “Derogate!”’

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Deucalion

With his wife, the survivors of a great flood sent by Jupiter.


The Tragedy of Coriolanus http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-Coriolanus1.html
Menenius
. . . Yet you must
be saying, Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth
all your predecessors since Deucalion; though peradventure some
of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen.


Modern use:
My guess is that the Deucalion myth is a reworking of Noah’s story, but it could spring more directly from the time of the Great Flood, if you’d pardon the pun.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

diapason

[According to my glossary, a diapason is a bass accompaniment to a melody. I’m afraid, however, that definition may be incorrect. My dictionary defines the word as, range or scope or a swelling burst of harmonious sound. There are some technical meanings that you should look up yourself if you’re interested.]

The Rape of Lucrece http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Rape-of-Lucrece.html
[sonnet, I think]
. . . So I at each sad strain will strain a tear,
And with deep groans the diapason bear:
For burthen-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still,
While thou on Tereus descant'st better skill.


Modern use:
Before Dizzle began to upbraid Augustine, the diapason from Pogo Pogo’s magnificent piano concert sidetracked her.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

diffidence

[Glossary]
adjective.
doubt; mistrust.
[Dictionary, modern]
lacking self-confidence; timid; not self-assertive


King John http://www.fullbooks.com/King-John1.html
Elinor
Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother,
And wound her honour with this diffidence.


Modern use:
Augustine thought to mention that one of his aunts was named Eleanor, but his diffidence silenced him.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

difference

[Glossary]
adjective.
In heraldry, a distinguishing mark.
[The modern meaning is too familiar to repeat here]

[My apologies, but there does not seem to be any obvious use of the heraldic meaning that I could discover. Any one of you know?]

Heraldic meaning:
Augustine’s difference is the Maltese falcon.

[Augustine2004]

I made a boo-boo. I said that the glossary meaning of 'difference' was adjectival. Nay, nay, 'tis subjuctival.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Dis

[We are now embarked on the great sea of Dis, the body of words starting with dis]

Dis is another name for Pluto.

The Tempest http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tempestx30192.html
Ceres
Tell me, heavenly bow,
If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,
Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot
The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,
Her and her blind boy's scandal'd company
I have forsworn.



Modern use:
As you know, to dis (something) is now slang.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disable

[Our next Dis port call has this glossary meaning:]
disqualify; disparage.
[Dictionary meanings]
to weaken or destroy the normal abilities of; to render legally disqualified.

King Henry VI, first part http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex897021.html

Suffolk
. . .
Fie, de la Pole! disable not thyself;
Hast not a tongue? Is she not here thy prisoner?x



[i]Modern uses:
People used to say ‘disabled’; now they say, ‘differently abled.’

The judge said in a stern manner, ‘Augustine is hereby disabled. Bailiff, take him to prison forthwith!’

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disanimate

[Glossary meaning:]
dishearten.
[The dictionary meaning includes the definition of, to deprive of life]




[i]Modern use:
Dizzle’s swordplay disanimated poor Augustine. [Of course I’m still alive–I typed this.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disappointed

[Glossary meaning:]
unprepared.
[Dictionary meanings]
to disappoint is to frustrate/thwart hope or expectation

The Tragedy of Hamlet http://www.fullbooks.com/Hamlet-Prince-of-Denmark1.html
Ghost [That reminds me, Halloween in a few weeks! Brr!]
. . .
Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
. . .


Modern use:
Do you suppose Dizzle is disappointed with Augustine’s words?

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disaster

[Glossary meaning:]
sign of ill omen, as seen in the stars.
[Dictionary meanings:]
a grave misfortune; (informal) total failure; (obsolete) an unfavorable influence of a celestial body.


Antony and Cleopatra http://www.fullbooks.com/Antony-and-Cleopatra2.html
First Servant
To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't,
are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the
cheeks.


Modern use:
Elizabeth Burton thought that the remake of Cleopatra was a disaster. She wondered what conjunction of which planet could have caused it. She consulted her astrologer. He replied, Richard was now residing on Mars. Ah! She thought. Perhaps she ought to persuade him to come back. Such are the lives of stars.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disbranch

[Glossary meaning:]
break off, as from a tree.
[Dictionary meanings:]
[yeah, that (above)].


The Tragedy of King Lear http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Lear3.html
Albany
O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face! I fear your disposition:
That nature which contemns it origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.



Modern use:
‘”Disbranch!”’ Dizzle exclaimed. ‘Me thinks thou hast read too much Shakespeare! Break off, break off, I say!’

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discandy


Glossary meaning:
melt, thaw.
Dictionary meanings:
[The word does not appear in the dictionary.]


Antony and Cleopatra http://www.fullbooks.com/Antony-and-Cleopatra3.html
Cleopatra
. . .
Together with my brave Egyptians all,
By the discandying of this pelleted storm,
Lie graveless,--till the flies and gnats of Nile
Have buried them for prey!


Modern use:
Blofeld nodded to Number 100 to begin the discandying. Billions of children would become disconsolate. Bond’s face hardened granite-like. Not to be discandied so easily, would he!

[Augustine2004]

Do you want me to do anything or stop it? Please don't PM me--post your suggestion in the thread.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discase


Glossary meaning:
undress.
[i]Dictionary meanings:
[The military now uses ‘undress’ as ‘informal wear’ as opposed to ‘formal wear’.]
To take one’s clothes off [the meaning for ‘to undress’; ‘discase’ is not in the dictionary].


The Tempest http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tempest2.html
Prospero
. . .
Ariell,
Fetch me the Hat, and Rapier in my Cell,
I will discase me, and my selfe present
As I was sometime Millaine: quickly Spirit,
Thou shalt ere long be free.



Modern use:
The little girl who opened the front door was clearly embarrassed. She spoke haltingly, ‘Sh-sh-she is discase.’ The gentleman caller asked, ‘Oh, she is not ready to present herself?’ Yes was the reply. [Never mind how the girl came to learn such a word. You don’t know the depths to which I’ve sunk to find modern usage.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discernings


Glossary meaning:
intellect.
Dictionary meanings:
[Not listed.]


The Tragedy of King Lear http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Lear1.html
Lear
Doth any here know me?--This is not Lear;
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied.--Ha! waking? 'Tis not so!--
Who is it that can tell me who I am?



Modern use:
[Aw, must I? My discernings have atrophied to the point that I can no longer distinguish between a good sentence and a blenchful jumble of words.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discomfortable


Glossary meaning:
having no words of comfort.
Dictionary meanings:
Rare not comfortable; distressed or distressing.


The Tragedy of King Richard II http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Richard-II2.html
King Richard
Discomfortable cousin!



Modern use:
Suddenly seeing the many tragedies of English kings of yore, Augustine became discomfortable. Why should he strive to be an English King?

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discommend


Glossary meaning:
disapprove of.
Dictionary meanings:
Formal to show or voice disapproval of.
To bring into disrepute or ill favor.

The Tragedy of King Lear http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Lear2.html
Kent
To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much.
. . .


Modern use:
After answering her daughter’s question, Audrey wondered momentarily if ‘dis’ was short for ‘discommend.’ Certainly their meanings seemed similar.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

discontent


Glossary meaning:
noun malcontent.

Dictionary meanings:
tr. verb to make discontented.
noun absence of contentment; a sense of resentment and grievance.
adj. discontented.



[Alas, I could not discover any passage that obviously bears the glossary’s meaning]



Modern use:
Augustine was as discontented as he feared his readers would be after failing to find any relevant passage.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disfurnish


Glossary meaning:
deprive; leave with nothing
Dictionary meanings:
[No entry]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Two-Gentlemen-of-Veronax29912.html
Valentine
Then know that I have little wealth to lose;
A man I am cross'd with adversity;
My riches are these poor habiliments,
Of which if you should here disfurnish me,
You take the sum and substance that I have.



Modern use:
What a great word for a fair maiden to use against a too-ardent suitor! ‘May I now disfurnish your ardency?’ Wave gaily, smile winsomely, and slip away before a stupefied gentleman makes sense of what is going on.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

disguise


Glossary meaning:
[this meaning is not so obvious today] masque; [this is surprising] wild drunkness
Dictionary meanings:
[too obvious to copy here]




[i]Modern use:
[Probably none. When one says, ‘He went about disguised,’ we would rather likely take that to mean, he wore some sort of disguise.]

[I’m concerned that the glossary is not reliable. I have already skipped many glossary entries, but I will try to be more fussy from now on.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words – I would like to have some input from y'all. I've noticed words in the glossary that have no modern meanings–at least, they don't appear in my dictionary, which is quite hefty. An example is today's entry.

dishabited


Glossary meaning:
dislodged; stripped.
Dictionary meanings:
not habited [? Anyway habited is in the dictionary.]


King John
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex28431.html

King John
For our advantage; therefore hear us first.
These flags of France, that are advanced here
Before the eye and prospect of your town,
Have hither march'd to your endamagement;
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,
And ready mounted are they to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls;
All preparation for a bloody siege
And merciless proceeding by these French
Confront your city's eyes, your winking gates;
And but for our approach those sleeping stones
That as a waist doth girdle you about
By the compulsion of their ordinance
By this time from their fixed beds of lime
Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made
For bloody power to rush upon your peace.
. . .


Modern use:
[Probably none.] For Halloween, the monk decided to go dishabited. Consequently, he was defrocked. Oo, la, la!


I would like some idea of how much you readers want to see such words again.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Introduction. For today I’ve paired two words. The glossary meanings are curious. I suspect they are not the primary meanings in Shakespeare’s time; they seem funny. While I’ve decided to try harder to find words that are unusual but still useful, I shall nevertheless go ahead with these words, below. Incidentally, so far none of you have deigned to enlighten me as to the choice of words I should be making. Oh, well.

[Fanfare! Or should I put it, funfare! ?]

dishonest
dishonesty


Glossary meaning:
immodesty.
unchasity.
Dictionary meanings:
[not given, too well known]


Measure for Measure
http://www.fullbooks.com/Measure-for-Measure3.html

Escalus
. . .
Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that Friar Lodowick to be
a dishonest person?

[b] Lucio
'Cucullus non facit monachum': honest in nothing but in his
clothes; and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the
duke.

[Before you object, I would certainly agree that this is not a good example–unless you want a good laugh. Well, isn’t it sorta funny?]

Modern use:
[you shouldn’t use them that way!]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

dismount


Glossary meaning:
unsheathe (a sword); lower (a gun like a cannon).
Dictionary meanings:
unusual to remove (a thing) from its support, setting, or mounting; unseat, as from a horse.
noun the act of dismounting.


A Lover’s Complaint http://www.fullbooks.com/A-Lover-s-Complaint.html
[ a sonnet ]
. . .
'This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,
Whose sights till then were levell'd on my face;
. . .

[That does seem to be a clear example of lowering something. Fancy, one’s eyes in analogy with cannons! Wish I could lower my eyes on evildoers and blaze away. Super Visioneer. If you sneer, you will be blown away by my mighty orbs.]


Modern use:
After reading the above, Dizzle immediately sought a way to dismount Augustine from his e-soapbox.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Introduction Another curious word that is not in my dictionary. Another reason to make it the word of the day is that some of you might be able to guess its Shakespearian meaning.

dispark


Glossary meaning:
put (parkland) to other uses.
Dictionary meanings:
not included


The Tragedy of King Richard II http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Richard-II2.html
Bolingbroke
. . .
Whilst you have fed upon my signories,
Dispark'd my parks and felled my forest woods,
. . .



Modern use:
The councilman said, ‘Those in favor of disparking the tract in question, vote aye!’

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Introduction Not only is this a word still used often today, this time you may guess wrong.

dispatch


Glossary meaning:
[similar to below?]
Dictionary meanings:
* send (something) to a specific destination or on specific business.
* complete or dispose of promptly.
* to kill summarily.

The Merry Wives of Windsor http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Merry-Wives-of-Windsor3.html
Mrs. Page
Master Doctor, my daughter is in green; when you see your time,
take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch
it quickly. Go before into the Park; we two must go together.



Modern use:
More so than any other person, Usain Bolt goes places with dispatch.

I hope you had a pleasant voyage on the great Sea of Dis, though I admit that Mabel Huffpuffington’s disheading was horrific. And Trent Stokeston-Daring’s disheartening experience with Catherine Avonstone-Wodehoofe’s emphatic preference for Sir Vlad Draconic-Irons was most disturbing. Surely you understand that no voyage can ever be perfect, especially upon this disjoint day.[/indent]Alas, there may be yet more [i]dis words yet to come.]

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

Introduction I briefly considered disponge (be sponged or drip) and dispiteous (be merciless) [Sing the Dispiteous? Flash Gordon in a yet-alternative universe]

distemper


Glossary meaning:
substantive lack of even temper, lack of balance.
verb disturb
Dictionary meanings:
[many meanings, some of which are diseases, but the meanings above are included.]


Hamlet, Prince of Denmark http://www.fullbooks.com/Hamlet-Prince-of-Denmark2.html
Guildenstern
Is, in his retirement, marvellous distempered.



Modern use:
After such a distempered night, a virtual ocean of Pepto Bismol was emptied. How incredible, considering the mountain of sweets that had vanished just before.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words



distrain


Glossary meaning:
confiscate.

Dictionary meanings:
[apparently now a legal term] seize and hold (property) to compel payment or reparation, as of debts.


The Tragedy of King Richard II http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Richard-II1.html
Bolingbroke
My father's goods are all distrain'd and sold;
And these and all are all amiss employ'd.



Modern use:
Harry the Hound distrained Jerry the Jerk’s Jerkmobile at around noon yesterday. That was Harry’s ninth distrainee this month, so far.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

[We hope you’ve enjoyed your cruise on the Great Sea of Dis, despite the news of the horrific Halloween happenings in which two body parts departed for the netherworld of Dis. I’m sorry it was not any more Disney–not as much that as you might have hoped for.]


divers


Glossary meaning:
* several; sundry; different.
* evil.

Dictionary meanings:
several; sundry.


The Tragedy of King Richard II http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Tragedy-of-King-Richard-II1.html
SCENE VII. A Lobby in the Castle.

[Hautboys and torches. Enter, and pass over, a Sewer and divers
Servants with dishes and service. Then enter Macbeth.]

Macbeth
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all--here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,--
We'd jump the life to come.

[I didn’t find any passage with the obvious connotation of evil.]


[i]Modern use:
Divers divers searched in vain for the divers from the divers ships that were sunk by divers hurricanes this most divers year.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Shakespearian words

[An interesting candidate was dividual (meaning, separable). The word individual is in the dictionary, but not the other. Does that not make you want to scream, ‘One World, dividual!’]

dominical


Glossary meaning:
red letter used to mark Sundays in almanacs.

Dictionary meanings:
pertaining to Sunday (the Lord’s Day).


Love's Labour's Lost http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespearex28422.html
Rosaline
Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor,
My red dominical, my golden letter:
O that your face were not so full of O's!




Modern use:
The distraught printer looked at the calendars again. The Sundays remained stubbornly black, instead of the dominical red.

[Augustine2004]

Theme: Curtmudgeonian words



haggis


[i]Glossary meaning:
[not in the glossary]

Dictionary meanings:
a dish whose recipe is something like this:
* mince the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf;
* mix with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings;
* (traditionally) and boil in the stomach from the same animal.







[i]Modern use:
Have any of the Curtmudgeon’s friends ever seen him whale out on haggis? PM me if such a monstrous act was ever witnessed.