This is topic New Word Of The Day in forum Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 11-29-2005, 05:58 PM:
Rated G ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
billet-doux: a love letter.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 11-30-2005, 06:30 AM:
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wheedle: to entice by flattery.
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-30-2005, 11:46 PM:
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Callipygous: (1) adj. Having beautifully proportioned buttocks. (2) adj. Pertaining to or having finely developed buttocks; "the quest for the callipygian ideal." [syn: callipygian]
My favorite word and the object of my continuing graduate-level research. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-01-2005, 07:28 AM:
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alfresco \al-FRES-koh\, adverb:
In the open air; outdoors.
adjective:
Taking place or located in the open air; outdoor.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-03-2005, 07:26 AM:
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chagrin \shuh-GRIN\, noun:
Acute vexation, annoyance, or embarrassment, arising from disappointment or failure.
transitive verb:
To unsettle or vex by disappointment or humiliation; to mortify.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-04-2005, 07:05 AM:
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gaucherie \goh-shuh-REE\, noun:
1. A socially awkward or tactless act.
2. Lack of tact; boorishness; awkwardness.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-05-2005, 09:59 AM:
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panache \puh-NASH; -NAHSH\, noun:
1. Dash or flamboyance in manner or style.
2. A plume or bunch of feathers, esp. such a bunch worn on the helmet; any military plume, or ornamental group of feathers
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-06-2005, 06:20 AM:
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logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\, noun:
Excessive talkativeness or wordiness.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-07-2005, 06:19 AM:
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assiduous \uh-SIJ-oo-uhs\, adjective:
1. Constant in application or attention; devoted; attentive.
2. Performed with constant diligence or attention; unremitting; persistent; as, "assiduous labor."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-08-2005, 06:03 AM:
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sylvan \SIL-vuhn\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to woods or forest regions.
2. Living or located in a wood or forest.
3. Abounding in forests or trees; wooded.
noun:
1. A fabled deity or spirit of the woods.
2. One that lives in or frequents the woods or forest; a rustic.
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-08-2005, 11:50 AM:
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therblig, noun: The fundamental motions of the hands of a worker. These operations are made up of 17 types of motion: search, select, grasp, reach, move, hold, release, position, pre-position, inspect, assemble, disassemble, use, unavoidable delay, avoidable delay, plan, and test to overcome fatigue. Frank Bunker Gilbreth defined these motions in his system of motion study. (Therblig is Gilbreth spelled backwards).
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-08-2005, 12:30 PM:
Paul: You mean Therblig is Gilbreht ?
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-08-2005, 09:09 PM:
Yeah, he fudged a little treating the 'th' as one letter. After all it is his term.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-09-2005, 06:38 AM:
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voluptuary \vuh-LUHP-choo-er-ee\, noun:
A person devoted to luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites; a sensualist.
adjective:
Voluptuous; luxurious.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-10-2005, 06:56 AM:
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inure \in-YOOR\, transitive verb:
To make accustomed or used to something painful, difficult, or inconvenient; to harden; to habituate; as, "inured to drudgery and distress."
intransitive verb:
To pass into use; to take or have effect; to be applied; to serve to the use or benefit of; as, "a gift of lands inures to the heirs."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-11-2005, 07:33 AM:
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auspicious \aw-SPISH-uhs\, adjective:
1. Giving promise of success, prosperity, or happiness; predicting good; as, "an auspicious beginning."
2. Prosperous; fortunate; as, "auspicious years."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-12-2005, 06:49 AM:
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tmesis \TMEE-sis\, noun:
In grammar and rhetoric, the separation of the parts of a compound word, now generally done for humorous effect; for example, "what place soever" instead of "whatsoever place," or "abso-bloody-lutely."
If on the first, how heinous e'er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee.
--Shakespeare, Richard II
His income-tax return, he remarked, was the "most rigged-up marole" he'd ever seen.
--Frederic Packard
In two words, im possible.
--Samuel Goldwyn
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-12-2005, 07:45 AM:
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defenestrate, transitive verb: To throw through or out of a window.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-13-2005, 05:47 AM:
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carapace \KAIR-uh-pace\, noun:
1. The thick shell that covers the back of the turtle, the crab, and other animals.
2. Something likened to a shell that serves to protect or isolate from external influence.
. . . a gauge for measuring the length of a lobster's carapace from the thorax to the eye socket.
--Richard Adams Carey, Against the Tide
Hannah Jelkes, . . . who wears an air of cool reserve like a carapace.
--Howard Taubman, "Theatre: 'Night of the Iguana' Opens," New York Times, December 29, 1961
Desperate to win his father's attention and respect, Kennedy became a hard man for a long while, covering over his sensitivity and capacity for empathy with a carapace of arrogance.
--Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-13-2005, 05:50 AM:
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"I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise."
-- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-14-2005, 06:16 AM:
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paladin \PAL-uh-din\, noun:
1. A knight-errant; a distinguished champion of a medieval king or prince; as, the paladins of Charlemagne.
2. A champion of a cause.
Once in power, though, Clinton stumbled repeatedly over obstacles created by the schizoid campaign he had conducted, in which he had cast himself simultaneously as the champion of a more conservative Democratic credo and as a paladin of the party's traditional activism.
--Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union
Even Columbia University economist Jagdisch Baghwati, the paladin of free trade, calls for controls on capital flow.
--"Terrors in the Sun," The Nation, June 29, 1998
Matisse, paladin of modernism, is a long way from us now.
--Robert Hughes, "The Color of Genius," Time, September 28, 1992
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-15-2005, 10:05 AM:
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hale \HAYL\, adjective:
Free from disease and weakening conditions; healthy.
Uncle Charles was a hale old man with a well tanned skin, rugged features and white side whiskers.
--James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The person whom the traveller had so abruptly encountered was of this kind: bluff, hale, hearty, and in a green old age: at peace with himself, and evidently disposed to be so with all the world.
--Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man: very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-16-2005, 05:37 AM:
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sacrosanct \SAK-roh-sankt\, adjective:
Sacred; inviolable.
The family was viewed as sacrosanct: divorce was highly unusual and children were expected to be grateful for the sacrifices that parents, who postponed their own gratifications in forming a family, made on their behalf.
--Alan Wolfe, One Nation, After All
Espionage is about redefining Good and Evil, the violable and the sacrosanct.
--Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-17-2005, 08:22 PM:
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melange \may-LAHNZH\, noun:
A mixture; a medley.
Interspersed with diverse lectures and classroom activities were periods of financial difficulty, military service, and employment as a private tutor, all of which added to the curious melange of experiences that would ultimately blossom into his unexpected and remarkable life's work.
--Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten
The smell in the car . . . was a pungent, sour melange of garlic, unwashed bodies, vodka, musty woolen overcoats, and Bulgarian tobacco.
--Fen Montaigne, Reeling in Russia
Many books in popular psychology are a melange of the author's comments, a dollop of research, and stupefyingly dull transcriptions from interviews.
--Carol Tavris, "A Remedy But Not a Cure," New York Times.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-18-2005, 03:34 PM:
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vainglory \VAYN-glor-ee; vayn-GLOR-ee\, noun:
1. Excessive pride in one's achievements, abilities, qualities, etc.
2. Vain display.
Spurred by the vainglory of being the first person in recent memory to catch a Solovki canal trout on a fly, I fished with newfound intensity.
--Fen Montaigne, Reeling in Russia
As if to underscore the awkward mix of social unease and vainglory on which such claims are based, they are always delivered in the same triumphant tone: 'We have the tallest high-rise flats, the longest wall, the largest community of artists . . . in Europe.'
--Deyan Sudjic, "The race to be a Capital of Culture is a non-starter," The Observer, April 15, 2001
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-19-2005, 06:36 AM:
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sub rosa \suhb-ROH-zuh\, adverb:
Secretly; privately; confidentially.
sub-rosa, adjective:
Designed to be secret or confidential; secretive; private.
Unlike progressive educators of the past, who openly proclaimed their goals, today's multiculturalists are generally unwilling to engage the wider public in open debate about their methods, preferring to promote their agenda sub rosa.
--Sol Stern, "Losing Our Language," Commentary, May 1999
Second, Abramson argues that since a certain amount of jury nullification goes on anyway, sub rosa, it should be brought out into the open.
--Richard A. Posner, "Juries on trial," Commentary, March 1, 1995
The investigators said that a major purpose of the sub-rosa activities was to create so much confusion, suspicion and dissension that the Democrats would be incapable of uniting after choosing a presidential nominee.
--Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats," Washington Post, October 10, 1972
The atmosphere of gloom and dislocation only thickened, though, and Marty found himself in over his head in a world of shadowy fixers, sub-rosa deputies of the C.I.A. and the mob.
--Stephen Metcalf, "Fraud, S&M and St. Francis: A Riotous Bull-Market Fable," New York Observer, March 25, 2002
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-20-2005, 06:36 AM:
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digerati \dij-uh-RAH-tee\, plural noun:
Persons knowledgeable about computers and technology.
As high tech spreads outward from Silicon Valley to American society at large and people spend more and more time in cyberspace, the journalist Paulina Borsook steps back to look at the digerati and their view of the world.
--Michiko Kakutani, "Silicon Valley Views the Economy as a Rain Forest," New York Times, July 25, 2000
[T]his week, over 3,000 digerati will converge at a swank theater where chef Julia Child and pundit Arianna Huffington, among others, will judge 135 Web sites.
--David Whitman, "The calm before the storms," U.S.News & World Report, May 15, 2000
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-21-2005, 05:26 AM:
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confrere \KON-frair\, noun:
A fellow member of a fraternity or profession; a colleague; a comrade; an intimate associate.
At Father Kilmartin's death the book was left unfinished (a sign of the times: not in manuscript, but on his laptop); and the arduous but also extremely delicate task of putting it into publishable condition was carried out by his Jesuit confrere, Robert J. Daly.
--Jaroslav Pelikan, "The Eucharist as Puzzle," Commonweal, May 7, 1999
The reason for this was that our government, out of the weaknesses Kissinger himself describes, was treating that adversary as a confrere whose hideous character flaws could not be discussed.
--Gabriel Schoenfeld, "Was Kissinger Right?" Commentary, May 1999
Baudelaire knew that this brave defense of the much derided middle class, offered without a touch of sarcasm, put him at odds with his confreres; to them, after all,"that inoffensive being" the bourgeois,"who would like nothing better than to love good painting," had long been anathema.
--Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-22-2005, 06:43 AM:
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querulous \KWER-uh-luhs; -yuh\, adjective:
1. Apt to find fault; habitually complaining.
2. Expressing complaint; fretful; whining.
Querulous Oscar rattles on, never more or less than himself, but never much more than the content of his grumpy rattling.
--Sven Birkerts, "A Frolic of His Own," New Republic, February 7, 1994
Mam is a tragic figure when transported to New York by her successful sons -- querulous, unable to get a decent cup of tea.
--Maureen Howard, "McCourt's New World," New York Times, September 19, 1999
Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists.
--James Russell Lowell, "The Pickens-and-Stealin's Rebellion," The Atlantic, June 1861
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-23-2005, 08:48 AM:
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vociferous \voh-SIF-uhr-uhs\, adjective:
Making a loud outcry; clamorous; noisy.
Claudio has work to do and I have a vociferous son demanding a story.
--Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey
The local heroes received meals, heard speeches, were presented with flags, and were accompanied to railroad stations by vociferous crowds.
--Jeffry D. Wert, A Brotherhood of Valor
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-24-2005, 08:23 AM:
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firmament \FUR-muh-muhnt\, noun:
1. The region of the air; the sky; the heavens.
2. The field or sphere of an interest or activity
But to judge by the twinkling summer stars that filled the firmament, the dawn was still far off.
--A. B. Yehoshua, A Journey to the End of the Millennium
Studying the firmament--the night vault that sparkles with thousands of flickering lights--is older than recorded history.
--William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age
The glossy magazines have branded her a rising star, shooting up into the firmament of mega fashion stardom.
--Hadley Freeman, "If I see one more black suit, I'll want to roll over and die," The Guardian, December 14, 2001
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-25-2005, 10:32 AM:
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jollification \jol-ih-fuh-KAY-shuhn\, noun:
Merrymaking; festivity; revelry.
Some inform; some prompt the conscience; some entertain, while having more than jollification in mind.
--Stuart Klawans, "A Greek Bearing Gifts," The Nation, June 21, 1999
In July, expect the usual impertinent jollifications in Key West: look-alike and Key-lime-pie-eating contests, arm-wrestling tournaments.
--David Gates, "Resurrecting Papa," Newsweek, April 12, 1999
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-26-2005, 08:01 AM:
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benefaction \BEN-uh-fak-shuhn; ben-uh-FAK-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act of conferring a benefit.
2. A benefit conferred; especially, a charitable donation.
Rockefeller's taxable income was then $33,000,000 and that his total fortune was probably more than $800,000,000. At that time he had distributed about $500,000,000 in public benefactions.
--"Financier's Fortune in Oil Amassed in Industrial Era of 'Rugged Individualism,'" New York Times, May 24, 1937
It may be, as some social psychologists argue, that the competitive urge to gain more is in time replaced by an equally competitive urge to win fame and favor through public benefactions.
--Robin W. Winks, Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-27-2005, 06:36 AM:
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apposite \AP-uh-zit\, adjective:
Being of striking appropriateness and relevance; very applicable; apt.
As we survey Jewish history as a whole from the vantage point of the late twentieth century, Judah Halevi's phrase "prisoner of hope" seems entirely apposite. The prisoner of hope is sustained and encouraged by his hope, even as he is confined by it.
--Jane S. Gerber (Editor), The Illustrated History of the Jewish People
Suppose, for example, that in a theoretical physics seminar we were to explain a very technical concept in quantum field theory by comparing it to the concept of aporia in Derridean literary theory. Our audience of physicists would wonder, quite reasonably, what is the goal of such a metaphor--whether or not it is apposite--apart from displaying our own erudition.
--Alan D. Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-28-2005, 05:48 AM:
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cynosure \SY-nuh-shoor; SIN-uh-shoor\, noun:
1. Anything to which attention is strongly turned; a center of attraction.
2. That which serves to guide or direct.
3. [Capitalized]. The northern constellation Ursa Minor, which contains the North Star; also, the North Star itself.
The monarch, at the apex of court power and centre of its ritual, and the greatest patron of the arts, was the cynosure of this culture, standing (or, more usually, sitting) at the centre of a system of artistic practice intended to represent his or her sacred omnipotence and monopoly of power.
--John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Lucy is very pretty and becomes the cynosure not only of the aforementioned characters, but also of several faceless and epicene young men who also loiter about.
--John Simon, "Stealing Beauty," National Review, July 15, 1996
Then, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye in the library, he extemporized a brief speech on his "lucky day."
--Peter Schneider, Eduard's Homecoming
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-29-2005, 08:28 AM:
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quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, noun:
1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.
He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow.
--Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," New York Times, October 30, 1998
So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of Japanese and of American literature.
--Ihab Hassan, "In the mirror of the sun: reflections on Japanese and American literature, Basho to Cage," World Literature Today, March 1, 1995
Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the copiousness and quiddity of a personality -- the self peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in unpredictable, evanescent talk.
--John Mullan, "Dreaming up the Doctor," The Guardian, November 11, 2000
It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn.
--Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"
She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits.
--John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had promised to write and wondered how I would go about it -- his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students.
--Saul Bellow, Ravelstein
Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-30-2005, 06:53 AM:
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perquisite \PUR-kwuh-zit\, noun:
1. A profit or benefit in addition to a salary or wages.
2. Broadly: The benefits of a position or office.
3. A gratuity or tip for services performed.
4. Anything to which someone has or claims the sole right.
In a tight market for skilled labor . . . corporations are increasingly buying homes for hot new hires -- a perquisite once reserved for top executives.
--Jennie James, "For Many Europeans, There's No Place Like Home," Time, May 8, 2000
It is a shock to find the master, whom we cannot help thinking of as the greatest gentleman in the history of art, regarding petty larceny as a perquisite of office and diverting the wages of sweepers and cleaners.
--Sir Lawrence Gowing, "Obsessed by Ambition, Saved by Art," New York Times, August 10, 1986
She is dressed in an inexpensive but stylish outfit, impeccably coordinated gloves, hat, shoes, and matching purse--the sole perquisite of her husband's hand-to-mouth pattern-cutting job in the ladies garment industry.
--Ann Druyan, "A New Sense of the Sacred," Humanist, November 2000
After having long been a narrowly aristocratic perquisite, the opportunity for adventurous cuisine was "democratized" in early modern, increasingly capitalistic Europe, by the spreading quest for upward social mobility, imperial service abroad, and thickening networks of social commerce.
--Robert Mccormick Adams, "Introduction: Case Histories," Social Research, Spring 1999
Perquisite derives from Medieval Latin perquisitum, from the past participle of Latin perquirere, "to search for eagerly," from per-, "through, thoroughly" + quaerere, "to seek." In Middle English it meant "property acquired by means other than inheritance." By 1565 it had acquired the sense "fringe benefit"; by 1721 it had also come to signify "a tip or gratuity."
Synonyms: benefit, fringe benefit, gravy, perk, reward.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 12-31-2005, 09:25 AM:
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Hogmanay \hog-muh-NAY; HOG-muh-nay\, noun:
The name, in Scotland, for New Year's Eve, on which children go about singing and asking for gifts; also, a gift, cake, or treat given on New Year's Eve.
This is Hogmanay, the gifting of another year, the coming of midnight, the darkest hour, before the turn towards dawn.
--John F. Deane, "The music of what happens," Irish Times, December 28, 2000
The biggest celebration in Britain was in Edinburgh, where Hogmanay drew about 200,000 people to a free street party in the city centre.
--"Archbishop of Canterbury calls for greater generosity," Irish Times, Saturday, January 2, 1999
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-02-2006, 03:56 PM:
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Word of the Day
bloviate \BLOH-vee-ayt\, intransitive verb:
To speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner.
Anyone who has ever spent an idle morning watching the Washington talk shows has probably wondered: how did these people become entitled to earn six-figure salaries bloviating about the week's headlines?
--Robert Worth, "Quick! The Index!" New York Times, June 3, 2001
After five years as president and thirty years as a political figure, this colossal oaf is still unable to discipline his urge to . . . bloviate.
--R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., American Spectator, December 19, 1997
[W]e follow him minute by minute through a day in his office -- bloviating amiably with colleagues on the telephone, letting his secretary rewrite his clumsy letters and worrying about the possible hatred of his subordinates.
--John Brooks, "Fiction of the Managerial Class," New York Times, April 8, 1984
Bloviate is from blow + a mock-Latinate suffix -viate. Compare blowhard, "a boaster or braggart." Bloviation is the noun form; a bloviator is one who bloviates.
Trivia: Bloviate is most closely associated with U.S. President Warren G. Harding, who used it frequently and who was known for long, windy speeches. H.L. Mencken said of him, "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-03-2006, 06:28 AM:
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gastronome \GAS-truh-nohm\, noun:
A connoisseur of good food and drink.
If "poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter," to quote the 19th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again?
--John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger, "From Poussin to Capon, a Chicken in Every Size," New York Times, September 22, 1999
Even though Paris was then considered the culinary capital of Europe, the food at the Cercle was so highly revered that many well-known gastronomes regularly made the trip to Lyon to eat there.
--Daniel Rogov, "Three culinary tales for Hanukka," Jerusalem Post, December 6, 1996
I am no gastronome at the best; moreover, I have, over the years, eaten in so many unpropitious circumstances and from so many truly awful kitchens that I have come to consider myself almost as much a connoisseur of bad food as other men are of good.
--James Cameron, "Albania: The Last Marxist Paradise," The Atlantic, June 1963
Gastronome is ultimately derived from Greek gaster,
"stomach" + nomos, "rule, law."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-04-2006, 06:31 AM:
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sine qua non \sin-ih-kwah-NON; -NOHN; sy-nih-kway-\, noun:
An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing
Women's enfranchisement was crucial to them -- indeed, a sine qua non, since all other progress for which they worked, such as higher education and entrance into the professions, would be meaningless if women continued to be second-class citizens.
--Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women
"Of the various attributes we fiction-writers require," he said, "one of the most important is detachment. Of course tenacity of purpose is the sine qua non, otherwise we'd never keep on with it for the year or two years or longer that it takes to finish the work."
--Barry Unsworth, Sugar and Rum
However we choose to define a classic, a sine qua non is that the material lend itself to reinterpretation in the light of changing circumstances.
--Matthew Gurewitsch, "A Country of Lesser Giants," New York Times, April 4, 1999
Sine qua non is from the Late Latin, literally "without which not."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-05-2006, 06:41 AM:
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exegete \EK-suh-jeet\, noun:
A person who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.
All the things said in this passage are clear and should be paid attention to, without an exegete interpreting.
--Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates' On the Nature of Man
He is far more a man of prayer, a witness, a confessor and a prophet, than a learned exegete and close thinking scholastic.
--Adolf Deissmann, St. Paul, A Study in Social and Religious History
Exegete is from Greek exegetes, from exegeisthai, "to interpret," and is related to exegesis.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-06-2006, 06:25 AM:
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recondite \REK-uhn-dyt\, adjective:
1. Difficult to understand; abstruse.
2. Concerned with obscure subject matter.
And his fondness for stopping his readers short in their tracks with evidence of his recondite vocabulary is wonderfully irritating.
--"Books of the Times," New York Times, February 23, 1951
Among his playmates he counts the Italian novelist and semiotics professor Umberto Eco, whom he befriended 15 years ago when they engaged in a fierce ottava rima competition that lasted for weeks. They still trade complicated riddles and recondite guessing games by mail.
--"Roberto Benigni: The Funniest Italian You've Probably Never Heard Of," New York Times, October 11, 1998
He is a poet's poet, says another admirer, sometimes recondite and always deeply aware of the formal tradition of poetry.
--"Crown prince of puns to give the past new life," Irish Times, Saturday, May 22, 1999
Recondite is from Latin reconditus, past participle of recondere, "to store back," i.e., "out of the way," hence "to hide"; itself from re-, "back, again" + condere, "to put away, to store." Thus, recondite knowledge is "hidden" (because of obscurity or difficulty) from the understanding of the average person
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-07-2006, 07:14 AM:
Rated G
diktat \dik-TAHT\, noun:
1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.
2. An authoritative decree or order.
Whether with the rapid reaction force or with the Bosnian government, the United States should vigorously support efforts to lift the siege of Sarajevo and help to piece back together a contiguous territory so that the Bosnian government can come to the bargaining table free of a Serbian diktat.
--"Why Bosnia matters," Commonweal, July 14, 1995
And it would begin to encroach on another, more treasured, freedom: the right of the networks to broadcast what they choose independent of government diktat.
--"Back to the smoke-filled room?" The Economist, February 25, 1995
Other important figures in the game said the problems would be better dealt with voluntarily than by diktat.
--Denis Campbell, "Fifa back Vieira," The Guardian, September 22, 2002
Employers weary of the dictatorial Aubry rejoiced on hearing Guigou describe her preference for debate over diktat and for "listening to people before speaking myself."
--Bruce Crumley, "Sitting Pretty," Time, November 13, 2000
His most cherished aim is to serve the Islamic government by giving people the right to choose it--a concept that is dangerously revolutionary to hard-liners who believe in imposing it by diktat.
--Scott MacLeod and Azadeh Moaveni, "Iran's New Revolutionary," Time, June 12, 2000
Diktat comes from German, from Latin dictatum, neuter past participle of dictare, "to dictate." It is related to dictator.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-08-2006, 06:17 AM:
Rated G
esurient \ih-SUR-ee-uhnt; -ZUR-\, adjective:
Hungry; voracious; greedy.
The enemy then was an esurient Soviet Union which, having swallowed up Eastern Europe, had imposed a totalitarian system on countries just liberated from Nazism.
--Arnold Beichman, "As Truman envisioned our role," Washington Times, April 23, 2002
These new censors, the deconstructionists, take the most luscious and delicious apple and show it to a hungry person. They then seal the fruit with plastic wrap and demand that the esurient victim enjoy its flavour.
--Michael Coren, "Behold the deconstructionist, who liberates literature by confining it to a cult," Alberta Report, April 10, 1995
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-09-2006, 05:50 AM:
Rated G
ineffable \in-EF-uh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Incapable of being expressed in words; unspeakable; unutterable; indescribable.
2. Not to be uttered; taboo.
. . . the tension inherent in human language when it attempts to relate the ineffable, see the invisible, understand the incomprehensible.
--Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven
Pope John Paul II notes that people are drawn to religion to answer the really big questions--for example, "What is the ultimate ineffable mystery which is the origin and destiny of our existence?"
--William A. Sherden, The Fortune Sellers
One cannot blame them very much; explaining the ineffable is difficult.
--Edward O. Wilson, "The Biological Basis of Morality," The Atlantic, April 1998
Ineffable is from Latin ineffabilis, from in-, "not" + effabilis, "utterable," from effari, "to utter," from ex-, "out" + fari, "to speak."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-10-2006, 05:50 AM:
Rated G
dubiety \doo-BY-uh-tee; dyoo-\, noun:
1. The condition or quality of being doubtful or skeptical.
2. A matter of doubt
Kennedy and O'Connor may think that Title 3 has been violated, but O'Connor and the chief justice are not convinced that the Supreme Court was meant to litigate challenges under that federal statute, and their dubiety here is shared by Justices Scalia and Souter.
--Hadley Arkes, "A Morning at the Court," National Review, December 2, 2000
Despite a lack of forensic evidence, dubiety among the police themselves and inaccuracies in Raymond's confession, he was finally found guilty.
--Maggie Barry, "I've been a screen for the person who killed Pamela," The Mirror, August 10, 2002
Here, the historical evidence would seem to be tricky but free from all dubieties.
--Paul Taylor, "A mechanical science lesson," Independent, November 21, 2001
I want every inconsistency, every dubiety, every ambiguity left in.
--David Maclean, quoted in David Hencke, "Tories plot hunt bill dirty tricks," The Guardian, January 17, 2001
Dubiety is from Late Latin dubietas, from Latin dubius, "doubtful, uncertain."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-11-2006, 07:20 AM:
Rated G
pugilist \PYOO-juh-list\, noun:
One who fights with the fists; especially, a professional prize fighter; a boxer.
I had escaped my years as a pugilist with few of the badges that gave fellow-veterans of the ring the appearance of ruffians--missing eyes, mashed noses, or suchlike disfigurements--and had no more to show for my beatings than some small scars about my face and a nose that bore only the mild bumps and jagged edges that come with several breakings.
--David Liss, A Conspiracy of Paper
Could it be that Podhoretz -- one of the famously embattled members of the New York intellectual world, a political pugilist who over the course of his life has perfected his roundhouse right -- is going soft?
--Joseph Dorman, "Only in America," review of My Love Affair With America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative, by Norman Podhoretz, New York Times, July 16, 2000
Pugilist comes from Latin pugil, "a boxer," connected with pugnus, "a fist." The adjective form is pugilistic. Pugilism is another term for the sport of boxing.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-12-2006, 06:49 AM:
Rated G
renascent \rih-NAS-uhnt\, adjective:
Springing or rising again into being; showing renewed vigor.
Their goal: to give voters in the June presidential elections a realistic choice between the rough-and-tumble reforms of President Boris Yeltsin and the Soviet-era nostalgia of Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the renascent Russian Communist Party.
--James O. Jackson, "Can Opposites Attract?" Time, May 13, 1996
Where are the new ideas upon which a renascent Toryism can build?
--David Aaronovitch, "There's no setting for Hague's Tories at the nation's kitchen table," Independent, March 11, 1999
Rabbinical students saw themselves at the center of a renascent American Judaism, pioneers of a nationwide -- no, worldwide -- Jewish faith rooted in the best of the past and vigorous with contemporary innovations.
--Chaim Potok, "Legitimate Voyeurism," Forward, November 4, 1994
Heading the pack of institutional investors were dedicated
"emerging-market funds", set up specifically to reap high returns in renascent stock and bond markets.
--"The miracle unmasked," The Economist, December 9, 1995
Renascent comes from Latin renascens, present participle of renasci, "to be born again," from re-, "again" + nasci, "to be born."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-13-2006, 07:56 AM:
Rated G
sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.
noun:
A long word.
As a sesquipedalian stylist, he can throw a word like 'eponymous" into a sentence without missing a beat.
--Campbell, Patty, "The sand in the oyster," The Horn Book Magazine, May 15, 1996
Plus he has a weakness for what we can mischievously call sesquipedalian excess: Look out for such terms as "epiphenomenal," "diegetic" and "proprioceptive."
--Jabari Asim, "Reel Pioneer," Washington Post, November 19, 2000
They walk and speak with disdain for common folk, and never miss a chance to belittle the crowd in sesquipedalian put-downs or to declare that their raucous and uncouth behavior calls for nothing less than a letter to the Times, to inform proper Englishmen of the deplorable state of manners in the Colonies.
--William C. Martin, "Friday Night in the Coliseum," The Atlantic, March 1972
. . . her eccentric family's addiction to sesquipedalians (that big word for "big words"), and her furtive passion for flossy mail-order-catalog prose.
--David Browne, "Books/The Week," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998
Sesquipedalian comes from Latin sesquipedalis, "a foot and a half long, hence inordinately long," from sesqui, "one half more, half as much again" + pes, ped-, "a foot."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-14-2006, 07:02 AM:
Rated G
encumbrance \en-KUHM-brun(t)s\, noun:
1. A burden, impediment, or hindrance.
2. A lien, mortgage, or other financial claim against a property.
As Prince of Wales, George V had himself taken his wife on several foreign or imperial tours, without the encumbrance of their young children.
--Ben Pimlott, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II
He . . . will have to overcome the encumbrance of space gloves to reattach electrical cables and install a hatch.
--"Mir Cosmonaut's Heart Ills Cast Doubt on Repair Effort," New York Times, July 15, 1997
Liberated from the encumbrances of Washington, the editor and his creation were free to embark on the happiest period of their history.
--Edward L. Widmer, Young America
But she knew that each family needed a son to inherit the property and encumbrances and to carry on the name for at least one more generation.
--Annabel Davis-Goff, The Dower House
Encumbrance is from Old French encombrance, from encombrer, "to block up," from en-, "in" (here used intensively) + combre, "dam, weir, hence hindrance."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-15-2006, 05:52 AM:
Rated G
pugnacious \puhg-NAY-shuhs\, adjective:
Inclined to fight; combative; quarrelsome.
Roberto's pugnacious grandmother lived across the meadow and would yell threats and curses helplessly from her balcony.
--Tag Gallagher, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini
The idea that he was truculent or pugnacious, that he went about with a chip on his shoulder, that he loved fighting for the sake of fighting, was, however, a mistake.
--William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
Pugnacious comes from Latin pugnare, "to fight," from pugnus, "fist."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-16-2006, 06:29 AM:
Rated G
capricious \kuh-PRISH-us; -PREE-shus\, adjective:
Apt to change suddenly; whimsical; changeable.
Molly was a capricious woman. Her moods were unpredictable, her anger petty and vicious.
--Rand Roberts and James Olson, John Wayne: American
The Countess was a capricious minx, by turns seductive and aloof.
--Saul David, Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency
Mathematics is logical; people are erratic, capricious, and barely comprehensible.
--Bruce Schneier, Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
Capricious comes, via French, from Italian capriccio, "a shivering, a shudder," finally (influenced by Italian capra, goat) "a whim," from capo, "head" (from Latin caput) + riccio, "hedgehog" (from Latin ericius).
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-17-2006, 07:24 AM:
Rated G
comity \KOM-uh-tee\, noun:
A state of mutual harmony, friendship, and respect, especially between or among nations or people; civility. comity of nations, noun:
1. The courteous recognition by one nation of the laws and institutions of another.
2. The group of nations observing international comity.
In Athens last week, E.U. leaders offered a picture of comity as they formally signed accession treaties with 10 new members.
--James Graff, "Can France Put a Cork In It?" Time Europe, April 28, 2003
Despite the image of civil-military comity during World War II, there were many differences between Franklin Roosevelt and his military advisers.
--Mackubin Thomas Owens, "Sniping," National Review, April 2, 2003
Short-term initiatives in 1919 became longer-term strategies for bringing the two pariahs, Germany and Russia, into the comity of nations.
--Kenneth O. Morgan, "Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: from Versailles to Hitler, 1919-1940," English Historical Review, June 2002
Everyone hopes that Saddam Hussein will honour his agreement with Kofi Annan and that Iraq will be received back into the comity of nations.
--Marrack Goulding, "A wider role for the UN," New Statesman, March 13, 1998
Comity is from Latin comitas, from comis, "courteous
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-18-2006, 10:45 AM:
Ratyed G
quondam \KWAHN-duhm; KWAHN-dam\, adjective:
Having been formerly; former; sometime.
A quondam flower child, she spent seven years at the Royal College of Art, before becoming a lecturer at Edinburgh School of Art.
--"Interview: Cool, calm collector," Independent, December 13, 1997
For the unregenerate "peasant" . . . had gone there with the successful glass distributor, shrewd investor, versatile talker, and quondam bon vivant whose motto was "The best is good enough for me."
--Ted Solotaroff, Truth Comes in Blows: A Memoir
There was an exception to this in the form of Mrs Edna Parsons, a formidable Englishwoman who had once been the Prince's nanny and now served as proctor, supervising his behaviour. She was about fifty and true to her quondam profession, she could be quite strict.
--David Freeman, One of Us
Quondam comes from the Latin quondam, "formerly," from quom, "when."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-19-2006, 06:40 AM:
Rated G
ergo \UR-go; AIR-\, adverb:
Therefore; consequently.
The general observation has always been: Dogs form packs; the leader of the pack is the strongest, wisest, and largest individual; a human being among dogs fits that description; ergo we are the leader of any dog pack.
--Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs
Armani isn't interested in fashion that moves on (ergo he isn't interested in fashion).
--Sinead Lynch, "The waist land," Times (London), October 9, 2000
People who do not suffer fools gladly, gladly suffer flatterers. (Ergo, flatterers are no fools.)
--Richard Stengel, You're Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery
Ergo is from Latin ergo, consequently, therefore.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-20-2006, 08:33 AM:
Rated G
susurration \soo-suh-RAY-shun\, noun:
A whispering sound; a soft murmur.
. . . the soft susurration of the wind through a stand of whistling thorn.
--Ann Jones, "Kenya on horseback," Town & Country, August 1, 1994
Across the road I can make out the grassy park that runs along the sand and hear, in the distance, the steady susurration of the Atlantic Ocean.
--Michael Dirda, "Excursions," Washington Post, January 2, 2000
There was the predictable noise of offence being taken on the Conservative side of the House. But it was low and muted, a mild susurration in the backwoods rather than an outraged gust of anger.
--Andrew Marr, "Making a prime minister of the President," Independent, March 30, 1994
Susurration is from Late Latin susurratio, from Latin susurrare, "to whisper, to mutter," from susurrus, "a whispering, a muttering."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-21-2006, 08:44 AM:
Rated G
irrefragable \ih-REF-ruh-guh-buhl\, adjective:
Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable; as, an irrefragable argument; irrefragable evidence.
I had the most irrefragable evidence of the absolute truth and soundness of the principle upon which my invention was based.
--Sir Henry Bessemer, Autobiography
On June 4, the Citizen featured an interview with the Joneses' lawyer, R. S. Newcombe, who insisted that at the pending manslaughter trial he would bring "positive, absolute, irrefragable proof from . . . the most eminent scientists in the world" to show that both the Bates and Hunt operations were necessary and that no surgeon could have saved their lives.
--Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Conduct Unbecoming a Woman
Irrefragable derives from Late Latin irrefragabilis, from Latin in-, "not" + refragari, "to oppose."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-22-2006, 10:55 AM:
Rated G
tutelage \TOO-tuhl-ij; TYOO-\, noun:
1. The act of guarding or protecting; guardianship; protection.
2. The state of being under a guardian or tutor.
3. Instruction, especially individual instruction accompanied by close attention and guidance.
But he was not yet free of his father's legal tutelage and had still to decide on a career.
--Roland Huntford, Nansen: The Explorer as Hero
This was the Puerto Rico that the United States invaded on July 25, 1898--a country that wanted political, economic, and social justice, but not colonial tutelage, however well meant.
--Jose Trias Monge, Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World
Many years under my grandfather's tutelage had made me the best calligrapher in the entire school.
--Da Chen, Colors of the Mountain
Under her tutelage he picks up not only Greek but Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese before moving on to the rest of the major spoken languages and a slew of minor ones.
--Myla Goldberg, "Paternity Suitor," New York Times, October 15, 2000
Tutelage is from Latin tutela, "protection; guardian" (from the past participle of tueri, "to watch, to guard") + the suffix -age.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-23-2006, 06:59 AM:
Rated G
incommunicado \in-kuh-myoo-nuh-KAH-doh\, adverb or adjective:
Without the means or right to communicate.
Western diplomats in Cuba said yesterday that the fact that the six have been held incommunicado for so long suggests that the Cubans fear they pose a security threat.
--Daniel McGrory, "Cuba to explain why it is holding six Britons," Times (London), October 25, 2000
This was Morrison's last despatch. Shortly after it was sent, the Boxers cut the telegraph line. Peking was not only besieged, but incommunicado.
--Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century: Volume One, 1900-1933
They went underground, they sought an underworld of codes and shadows: incognito, incommunicado, and quietly dissident.
--Martin Amis, "Survivors of the Cold War," New York Times, October 5, 1997
[H]e was held incommunicado for 72 hours, his phone lines cut.
--Joseph Finder, "By Any Other Name," New York Times, June 9, 1996
Incommunicado comes from Spanish incomunicado, past participle of incomunicar, "to cut off," from in- (from Latin) + comunicar, "to communicate," from Latin communicare, from communis, "common."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-24-2006, 06:45 AM:
Rated G
predilection \preh-d'l-EK-shuhn; pree-\, noun:
A predisposition to choose or like; an established preference.
Wilson doesn't see any inconsistency between his socialism and his predilection for the high life.
--Marina Cantacuzino, "On deadly ground," The Guardian, March 13, 2001
. . . youth's predilection for revolt.
--Terry McCarthy, "Lost Generation," Time Asia, October 23, 2000
But for him the first rule of judging was to set aside personal predilection and vote the law and the facts.
--Edwin M. Yoder Jr., "Lewis Powell a Fine Sense of Balance," Washington Post, June 29, 1987
Predilection is literally "a liking before," from Latin prae-, "before" + diligere, "to choose; hence to prefer, to like very well."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-25-2006, 05:19 AM:
Rated G
flippant \FLIP-uhnt\, adjective:
Lacking proper seriousness or respect; showing inappropriate levity; pert.
In the mid-1950s we both wrote for the same weekly, where her contributions were a good deal more serious and less flippant than mine.
--Anthony Howard and Jason Cowley, "Decline and Fall," New Statesman, March 13, 2000
The conversations had grown more adult over the years--she was less flippant, at least.
--Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch
Flippant probably comes from flip. The noun form is flippancy.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-26-2006, 04:15 AM:
Rated G
grandee \gran-DEE\, noun:
1. A man of elevated rank or station.
2. In Spain or Portugal, a nobleman of the first rank.
Jack Byron still harbored delusions of being a local grandee, attempting to influence district politics; as the final humiliation, in the parliamentary election of 1786 his vote was disallowed.
--Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame
Like Bellow, he is at once a snob and a democrat, a voracious brain and a churning gut, a seminar-room grandee and a barroom brawler.
-- A. O. Scott, "Trans-Atlantic Flights," New York Times, January 31, 1999
Seduced by his need to live like a grandee, Coppola can't afford not to work within the system.
--Joseph McBride, "Offers He Should've Refused," New York Times, December 12, 1999
Grandee comes from Spanish grande, from Latin grandis, "great, large, hence important, grand." Related words include grandeur, "the state or quality of being grand"; grandiose, "characterized by affectation of grandeur"; aggrandize, "to make great or greater"; and, of course, grand.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-27-2006, 07:12 AM:
Rated G
wunderkind \VOON-duhr-kint\, noun;
plural wunderkinder \-kin-duhr\:
1. A child prodigy.
2. One who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age.
It was even written that, at 20, his best days were behind him. He had gone from a wunderkind to an object of sympathy, a hero struggling not to be forgotten.
-- "Owen shines like a beacon amid the wrecks," Times (London), May 29, 2000
In the mid-thirties, he became the youngest and best state director of FDR's National Youth Administration, a Texas wunderkind who at age twenty-eight beat several better known opponents for a south-central Texas congressional seat.
-- Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant
Wunderkind comes from German, from Wunder, "wonder" + Kind, child.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-28-2006, 08:02 AM:
Rated G
lucre \LOO-kuhr\, noun:
Monetary gain; profit; riches; money; -- often in a bad sense.
His stories began to be published in the American Mercury before he moved to L.A., lured by the dream of Hollywood lucre.
-- Jerome Boyd Maunsell, "Truly madly weepy," Times (London), June 10, 2000
They ought to feel a calling for service rather than lucre
.
-- Sin-Ming Shaw, "It's Time to Get Real," Time Asia, July 1, 2002
But surely there are other motives for writing, and they range from the desire for filthy lucre to the pleasure in doing the thing itself to the impulse to delight readers.
-- Robert Alter, "The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages," New Republic, October 10, 1994
Picture the place where you grew up. Now, imagine it trampled by an avalanche of capital and the stampede of lucre-crazed hordes chasing after it.
-- Katharine Mieszkowski, "I Want to Blow Up Silicon Valley," Salon, July 14, 2000
Lucre comes from Latin lucrum, "gain, profit." It is related to lucrative, "profitable."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-30-2006, 02:40 PM:
Rated G
sang-froid \sang-FRWAH\, noun;
also sangfroid:
Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness.
The Treasury Secretary's sang-froid in moments of crisis.
-- "Keeping the Boom From Busting," New York Times, July 19, 1998
Both men were mightily impressed by the calmness of the Americans on board, particularly among the women. "I had, during my sojourn in America," Beaumont said later, "a thousand occasions to see the sang-froid of the American."
-- Michael Kammen, "Wrecked on the Fourth of July," New York Times, July 6, 1997
Gaviria knew Alberto as an impulsive but cordial man capable of maintaining his sangfroid under the most stressful circumstances.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, News of a Kidnapping
Sang-froid is from the French; it literally means "cold blood" (sang, "blood" + froid, "cold").
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 01-31-2006, 08:37 AM:
Rated G
consanguineous \kon-san(g)-GWIN-ee-us\, adjective:
Of the same blood; related by birth; descended from the same parent or ancestor.
These Neolithic people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life and are widely supposed to have had consanguineous clans as their basic social grouping.
-- Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun
Am not I consanguineous? am I not of her blood?
-- William Shakespeare, Twelfth-Night
Among other preliminary activities, the prospective groom's party formally inquires as to the girl's clan-name; this is a ritualization of the taboo on consanguineous marriage.
-- Mark Laurent Asselin, "The Lu-school reading of 'Guanju' as preserved in an eastern Han fu," Journal of the American Oriental Society, July 1, 1997
Nowhere, not even in Holland, where the correspondence between the real aspects and the little polished canvases is so constant and so exquisite, do art and life seem so interfused and, as it were, so consanguineous.
-- "Noted with Pleasure," New York Times, October 6, 1991
Consanguineous is from Latin consanguineus, from com-, con-, "with, together" + sanguineus, from sanguis, sanguin-, "blood." The noun form is consanguinity, "relationship by blood, or close relation or connection."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-01-2006, 09:35 AM:
Rated G
malleable \MAL-ee-uh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer, or by the pressure of rollers; -- applied to metals.
2. Capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces; easily influenced.
3. Capable of adjusting to changing circumstances; adaptable.
His image for his own imagination is the acid, the catalyst, that is mixed in to make the gold malleable, and is then wiped away.
-- "Nothing is too wonderful to be true," Times (London), June 7, 2000
The natives proved less malleable and far less innocent than the Europeans imagined, so much so that early colonial history is filled with countless stories of monks who met hideous deaths at the hands of their flocks.
-- Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
I think his request was just a vainglorious way of expressing the basic belief of behaviorism: that children are malleable and that it is their environment, not innate qualities such as talent or temperament, that determines their destiny.
-- Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do
Many current thinkers wish to abandon the idea of a continuous self; novelists have always known that selves are fleeting, malleable, porous.
-- Mary Gordon, "The Fascination Begins in the Mouth," New York Times, June 13, 1993
Those workers aged over 50 were considered too set in their ways, too expensive to keep on and not malleable enough.
-- Jill Sherman Whitehall, "Benefit costs force rethink on retirement," Times (London), April 25, 2000
Malleable comes from Medieval Latin malleabilis, from malleare, "to hammer," from Latin malleus, "hammer."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-02-2006, 07:54 AM:
Rated G
parlous \PAR-luhs\, adjective:
Attended with peril; fraught with danger; hazardous.
It was a parlous time on the Continent, when Communists and fascists vied brutally for supremacy.
-- Howard Simons, "Shots Seen Round the World," New York Times, September 22, 1985
The Crisis left Indonesia's state finances in such a parlous state that the government is now heavily exposed to future risks.
-- Penny Crisp and Jose Manuel Tesoro, "The Buck Stops Here," Asiaweek, July 7, 2000
Parlous derives from Old French perillous, perilleus, from Latin periculosus, adjective form of periculum, "peril, danger, hazard."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-03-2006, 08:07 AM:
Rated G
disparate \DIS-puh-rit; dis-PAIR-it\, adjective:
1. Fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind.
2. Composed of or including markedly dissimilar elements.
Science at its best isolates a common element underlying many seemingly disparate phenomena.
-- John Horgan, The Undiscovered Mind
A Region Not Home," though it encompasses topics as seemingly disparate as Shakespeare, football, suicide, racism and Disneyland, actually has considerable thematic coherence.
-- Phillip Lopate, "Dreaming of Elsewhere," New York Times, February 27, 2000
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets"
Disparate comes from the past participle of Latin disparare, "to separate," from dis-, "apart" + [/b]parare, "to prepare."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-04-2006, 08:52 AM:
Rated G
sapient \SAY-pee-uhnt\, adjective:
Wise; sage; discerning.
By actual measurement they are the brainiest of birds, and on subjective evidence they seem more sapient than most other living creatures.
-- David Quammen, "Bird Brains," New York Times, August 1, 1999
He also gives much of the book over to the voice and point of view of Wyatt's bright, quirky Aunt Ellen, who functions as a sapient observer of the world of the novel.
-- Lorrie Moore, "God Does Not Love Aunt Ellen," New York Times, February 14, 1993
That he has on his side Lord Jenkins and Lady Williams . . . , that Ming Campbell is backing him, that the trusty and sapient counsellor of previous leaders, Lord Holme, is discreetly installed at his side, might seem to dispose of the notion that Kennedy is not a serious man.
-- "It isn't a one horse race," The Guardian, July 20, 1999
Sapient comes from Latin sapiens, sapient-, present participle of sapere, "to taste, to have sense, to know."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-05-2006, 07:21 AM:
Rated G
visage \VIZ-ij\, noun:
1. The face, countenance, or look of a person or an animal; -- chiefly applied to the human face.
2. Look; appearance; aspect.
Older than most, and taller -- taller than Perlman, in fact -- she had a long and lean visage that might once have passed for fair but which age had turned more knowing and severe.
-- Brooks Hansen, Perlman's Ordeal
I hadn't shaved in ever so long, either, but the way my whiskers grew I still looked more dirty than bearded to the quick glance I give my visage now and again when kneeling to drink in a stream slow-moving enough to reflect an image.
-- Thomas Berger, The Return of Little Big Man
The first extends from Poltava to the Congress of Vienna in 1814- 15, a period when Russia presents, in the guise of the "enlightened despotism" of Peter I, Catherine II, and the young Alexander I, the most benign visage she has ever displayed to the West.
-- Martin Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes
Visage is from Old French, from vis, "face," from Latin visus, "seeing, sight, hence what is seen, appearance," from the past participle of videre, "to see."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-06-2006, 09:48 AM:
Rated G
excoriate \ek-SKOR-ee-ayt\, transitive verb:
1. To express strong disapproval of; to denounce.
2. To tear or wear off the skin of.
In his speech to Congress of May 16th -- a speech that France found very insulting -- the President's "rage almost choked his utterance," as he excoriated the French for rejecting his ambassador, urged defensive measures against French dangers from abroad, and warned about French dangers at home.
-- Richard N. Rosenfeld, American Aurora
He constantly excoriated himself for not living up to his own ideals -- for not working hard enough, loving well enough, or having motives that were pure enough.
-- Stephen O'Connor, Orphan Trains
For many months, he had excoriated historians who had "bullied their way into power positions in academia" in order to indoctrinate students with the message that "our country is inherently evil."
-- Gary B. Nash, History on Trial
Excoriate comes from Late Latin excoriatus, past participle of excoriare, "to take the skin or hide off, to flay (literally or figuratively)," from Latin ex-, "off" + corium, "skin, hide."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-07-2006, 07:22 AM:
Rated G
tendentious \ten-DEN-shuhs\, adjective:
Marked by a strong tendency in favor of a particular point of view.
Most writing about Wagner has been like political pamphleteering--tendentious, one-sided and full of revisionist zeal.
-- Erich Leinsdorf, "The Cruel Face of Genius," New York Times, May 15, 1988
Since I believe all novels are political, I certainly believe that it is possible for a novelist to admix deliberate political purpose and aesthetics, although there is certainly the danger, in the process, of making art that is tendentious . . . and therefore not terribly artistically interesting.
-- Rick Moody, "quoted in Politics and the Novel: A Symposium,"
Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2000
All types of social disagreements seem to be routed almost inexorably into the tendentious jargon and intellectually impoverished categories of legal reasoning, until everyone from Alan Dershowitz to the guy fixing your radiator insists on giving you his opinion about fundamental rights, or presumptions of innocence, or probable cause, or--God help us--"what the Constitution requires."
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania: The Madness of American Law
Tendentious comes from Medieval Latin tendentia, from Latin tendens, tendent-, present participle of tendere, "to stretch, to direct one's course to, to be inclined." It is related to tendency.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-08-2006, 07:19 AM:
Rated G
milieu \meel-YUH; meel-YOO\, noun;
plural milieus or milieux:
Environment; setting.
These were agricultural areas, populated with prosperous farming families and rural artisans -- a completely different milieu from the Monferrands', which was more closed, more cultured, but less affluent.
-- Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, Truffaut
Half a century later, Zacarías still remembers . . . how they all played together without distinctions or hierarchy, and how easily Ernesto related to people from different social and cultural milieux.
-- Jorge G. Castaneda, Compańero
They write about their milieux, about where they live and work, and it can be fabulous.
-- Leslie Schenk, "Celebrating Mavis Gallant," World Literature Today, Winter 1998
Milieu is from French, from Old French, from mi, "middle" (from Latin medius) + lieu, "place" (from Latin locus).
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-09-2006, 07:13 AM:
Rated G
deus ex machina \DAY-uhs-eks-MAH-kuh-nuh; -nah; -MAK-uh-nuh\, noun:
1. In ancient Greek and Roman drama, a god introduced by means of a crane to unravel and resolve the plot.
2. Any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an apparently insoluble difficulty.
In times of affluence and peace, with technology that always seems to arrive like a deus ex machina to solve any problem, it becomes easy to believe that life is perfectible.
-- Stephanie Gutmann, The Kinder, Gentler Military
But we also need the possibility of cataclysm, so that, when situations seem hopeless, and beyond the power of any natural force to amend, we may still anticipate salvation from a messiah, a conquering hero, a deus ex machina, or some other agent with power to fracture the unsupportable and institute the unobtainable.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Questioning the Millennium
Deus ex machina is New Latin for "god from the machine"; it is a translation of the Greek theos ek mekhanes.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-10-2006, 07:11 AM:
Rated G
autodidact \aw-toh-DY-dakt\, noun:
One who is self-taught.
He is our ultimate autodidact, a man who made himself from nothing into a lawyer, a legislator -- a president.
-- Kevin Baker, "Log Cabin Values," New York Times, April 2, 2000
Consider the autodidact in Sartre's Nausea, who is somewhat unbelievably working his way alphabetically through an entire library.
-- James Wood, "Human, All Too Inhuman," New Republic, July 24, 2000
Buck's prose is a lot better than you'd expect from a high-school dropout, but he turns out to be a reader and autodidact.
-- Jonathan Yardley, "review of North Star over My Shoulder:
A Flying Life, by Bob Buck," Washington Post, April 7, 2000
Autodidact is from Greek autodidaktos, "self-taught," from auto-, "self" + didaktos, "taught," from didaskein, "to teach."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for autodidact.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-11-2006, 08:45 AM:
Rated G
stertorous \STUR-tuh-ruhs\, adjective:
Characterized by a heavy snoring or gasping sound; hoarsely breathing.
In the cinder-block motel room he set the alarm, but his own stertorous breathing woke him before it rang.
-- E. Annie Proulx, "The Half-Skinned Steer," The Atlantic, November 1997
As pianist Dezso Ranki pounds and weaves at the keys, his breathing is at times so stertorous one could swear that someone in the audience is snoring.
-- Josie Glausiusz, "Joining Hands," Discover, July 2000
Stertorous derives from Latin stertere, "to snore."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-12-2006, 07:39 AM:
Rated G
eleemosynary \el-uh-MOS-uh-ner-ee\, adjective:
1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, "an eleemosynary institution."
2. Given in charity or alms; having the nature of alms; as, "eleemosynary assistance."
3. Supported by charity; as, "eleemosynary poor."
We also need to revive the great eleemosynary institutions through which compassionate people serve those in need with both greater flexibility and discipline than government agencies are capable.
-- Clifford F. Thies, "Bring back the bridewell," The World & I, September 1, 1995
An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
-- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Like Hilda's "eleemosynary doves," these birds depend upon the Author's charity, require mothering, just as Hilda finds solace in the Virgin--"a child, lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a Mother."
-- John Dolis, "Domesticating Hawthorne: Home Is for the Birds," Criticism, Winter 2001
The source of eleemosynary is Medieval Latin eleemosynarius, from Late Latin eleemosyna, "alms," from Greek eleemosyne, from eleemon, "pitiful," from eleos, "pity."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-13-2006, 06:37 AM:
Rated G
concupiscence \kon-KYOO-puh-suhn(t)s; kuhn-\, noun:
Strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust.
The "Tretis" is an argument in favor of chastity and contrasts the "Wise Virgins" who devote themselves to God with the "Foolish Virgins" who taste "the fruits of forbidden concupiscence" and, of course, pay for it.
-- Michael Gorra, "Loved for his Diphthongs," New York Times, November 27, 1983
Within three years Rorik's queen was dead, taking with her into silence her midnight cries of release from that captivity of concupiscence which Eve's curious sin has laid upon mankind.
-- John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius
Concupiscence is from Late Latin concupiscentia, from the present participle of Latin concupiscere, "to desire eagerly," from com-, intensive prefix + cupere, "to desire." The adjective form is concupiscent. The name of the ancient Roman god of love, Cupid, comes from the same root.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-14-2006, 09:12 AM:
Rated G
spoony \SPOO-nee\, adjective:
1. Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental.
2. Foolishly or sentimentally in love.
Nevertheless, because we're spoony old things at heart, we like to believe that some showbiz marriages are different.
-- Julie Burchill, "Cut!," The Guardian, February 7, 2001
So when your fervor cools, you think that this suddenly familiar and lusterless partner couldn't possibly be the one you're destined to be with; otherwise you'd still be all spoony, lovey-dovey and bewitched.
-- John Dufresne, "What's So Hot About Passion?," Washington Post, February 9, 2003
We know they aren't doing it for love, otherwise it wouldn't take $50 million to sucker them into getting spoony for a construction worker.
-- "Say it isn't so 'Joe'," USA Today, December 30, 2002
Spoony is from the slang term spoon, meaning "a simpleton or a silly person."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-15-2006, 07:56 AM:
Rated G
circumambient \sur-kuhm-AM-bee-uhnt\, adjective:
Surrounding; being on all sides; encompassing.
The self owes its form and perhaps its very existence to the circumambient social order.
-- Rom Harre, Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology
Facing reality, then, implies accepting one's essential powerlessness, yielding or adjusting to circumambient forces, taking solace in some local pattern or order that one has created and to which one has become habituated.
-- Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism
It's a voice that does something physical to me, that jumps out of the circumambient air and seizes hold of me like a thing that lives off the blood of other things.
-- T.C. Boyle, A Friend of the Earth
Romantic love . . . rarefies lust into an angelic standoff, a fruitless longing without which our energizing circumambient dreamland of song, film and fiction would be bereft of its main topic.
-- John Updike, "The Deadly Sins/Lust," New York Times, June 20, 1993
Circumambient is from Latin circum[/v], "around, round about, on all sides" + ambire, "to go around, to surround," from [b]amb-, "on both sides, around" + ire, "to go."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-17-2006, 12:16 PM:
Rated G
imbue \im-BYOO\, transitive verb:
1. To tinge or dye deeply; to cause to absorb thoroughly; as, "clothes thoroughly imbued with black."
2. To instill profoundly; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.
Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings.
-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest
Along with the rest of us he would certainly applaud attempts to imbue the young with the spirit of fair play.
-- John Bryant, "Football should heed the Corinthian spirit," Times (London), February 17, 2000
He wanted to remake American cinema into a positive force for good, to imbue it with a transcendent sense of virtue and order.
-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood
Imbue comes from Latin imbuere, "to wet, to steep, to saturate."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-18-2006, 07:24 AM:
Rated G
canard \kuh-NAHRD\, noun:
1. An unfounded, false, or fabricated report or story.
2. A horizontal control and stabilizing surface mounted forward of the main wing of an aircraft.
3. An aircraft whose horizontal stabilizer is mounted forward of the main wing.
This is just a canard that is assumed to be true because it has been repeated so often.
-- Bruce Bartlett, "Lower Taxes Higher Revenue?," National Review, March 13, 2003
Loath as I am to resurrect the old canard accusing writers or critics who dislike a popular work of art of being jealous, in Byatt's case, it might be true.
-- Charles Taylor, "quoted in Rowling books 'for people with stunted imaginations," The Guardian, July 11, 2003
Several students say they still believe the canard that no Americans died in Bali -- in fact, six did.
-- Phil Zabriskie, "Did You Hear...?," Time Asia, February 1, 2003
Whether this was true (which seems improbable) or was one of Lawrence's numerous canards (which seems very possible), it appears that Father did intend to strike camp at some time.
-- Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography
In French canard means "duck" or "false news; hoax." The latter sense of the word probably comes from the phrase vendre un canard ŕ moitié, "to half-sell a duck" -- which is to say, not to sell it at all, hence "to take in, to make a fool of."
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 02-18-2006, 09:40 AM:
Rated G
carrion, noun:
1. Dead and decaying flesh; unfit for human food
2. The dead and rotting body of an animal
adjective:
1. Of or similar to dead and decaying flesh.
2. Feeding on such flesh.
Middle English careine, from Anglo-Norman, from Vulgar Latin *carnia, from Latin car, flesh. See sker-1 in Indo-European Roots.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-19-2006, 07:44 AM:
Rated G
probity \PRO-buh-tee\, noun:
Complete and confirmed integrity; uprightness.
Unless some light is shed on shady dealings and some probity restored, more young lives will be blighted and careers choked off.
-- Norman Lebrecht, Who Killed Classical Music?
To suggest that this exemplar of financial probity was enriching himself at public expense was to shake the very foundations of the new Republic.
-- William Safire, Scandalmonger
Probity is from Latin probitas, from probus, "good, upright, virtuous."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-20-2006, 06:24 AM:
Rated G
titivate \TIT-uh-vayt\, transitive and intransitive verb:
To smarten up; to spruce up.
It's easy to laugh at a book in which the heroine's husband says to her, "You look beautiful," and then adds, "So stop titivating yourself."
-- Joyce Cohen, "review of To Be the Best, by Barbara Taylor Bradford," New York Times, July 31, 1988
In The Idle Class, when Chaplin is titivating in a hotel room, the cloth on his dressing table rides up and down, caught in the same furious gusts.
-- Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places
Titivate is perhaps from tidy + the quasi-Latin ending -vate. When the word originally came into the language, it was written tidivate or tiddivate. The noun form is titivation.
[ 02-21-2006, 08:07 AM: Message edited by: Bob Maar ]
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-21-2006, 08:10 AM:
Rated G
jovial \JOH-vee-uhl\, adjective:
Merry; joyous; jolly; characterized by mirth or jollity.
One pupil of the sixteen-year-old Custer remembered him as "socially inclined," jovial, and full of life.
-- Louise Barnett, Touched by Fire
The Puritans took a dim view of the jovial, amiable cleric who liked to have a pot of ale at one of Purleigh's pubs.
-- Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life
He smiled, joked and at times seemed downright jovial.
-- "Piazza Booed Again (Till He Homers)," New York Times, August 22, 1998
Jovial ultimately derives from the Latin jovialis, "of or pertaining to Jupiter." (The planet Jupiter was thought to make those born under it joyful or jovial.)
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-22-2006, 07:38 AM:
Rated G
salutary \SAL-yuh-ter-ee\, adjective:
1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous.
2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.
Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations -- charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs -- and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens.
-- Fareed Zakaria, "Bigger Than the Family, Smaller Than the State," New York Times, August 13, 1995
Surviving a near-death experience has the salutary effect of concentrating the mind.
-- Kenneth T. Walsh and Roger Simon, "Bush turns the tide," U.S. News, February 28, 2000
And they washed it all down with sharp red wines, moderate amounts of which are known to be salutary.
-- Rod Usher, "The Fat of the Land," Time Europe, January 8, 2000
Salutary derives from Latin salutaris, from salus, salut-, "health."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-23-2006, 05:05 PM:
Rated G
alacrity \uh-LACK-ruh-tee\, noun:
A cheerful or eager readiness or willingness, often manifested by brisk, lively action or promptness in response.
As for his homemade meatloaf sandwich with green tomato ketchup, a condiment he developed while working in New York, I devoured it with an alacrity unbecoming in someone who gets paid to taste carefully.
-- R.W. Apple Jr., "Southern Tastes, Worldly Memories," New York Times, April 26, 2000
Arranged in long ranks, ten-, twelve-, or thirteen-year-old girls, pale and hollow-eyed, their pinned-back hair sprouting tendrils limp with perspiration, operated the machinery with such alacrity that arms and hands were a flying blur.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti
So, I am sure that I was thrilled when I got the letter offering me the fellowship and equally sure that I wrote back to accept with alacrity.
-- Joan L. Richards, Angles of Reflection
Never was a sinking ship abandoned with such alacrity and unanimity, never was an experiment condemned so conclusively.
-- Ernest Gellner, The End of Utopia by Russell Jacoby
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-24-2006, 10:01 AM:
Rated G
munificent \myoo-NIF-i-suhnt\, adjective:
Very liberal in giving or bestowing; very generous; lavish.
Another munificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable.
-- George Eliot, Letters
The fleeting movement of air inside the black tunnel before and after the passage of a train made it a source of refreshment more munificent than a roaring window air conditioner.
-- Norma Field, From My Grandmother's Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo
John Sr.'s paycheck, while hardly munificent, was steady, and frugality did the rest.
-- Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind
Munificent is from Latin munificus, "generous, bountiful," from munus, "gift." The quality of being munificent is munificence.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-25-2006, 12:41 PM:
Rated G
cogent \KOH-juhnt\, adjective:
Having the power to compel conviction; appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.
One woman, Adrian Pomerantz, was so intelligent that the professors always lit up when Adrian spoke; her eloquent, cogent analyses forced them not to be lazy, not to repeat themselves.
-- Meg Wolitzer, Surrender, Dorothy
I suggested to the student that she take her refusal as the theme of her term paper and ponder it as carefully as possible. A few weeks later she submitted one of the most cogent, intelligent papers I have read.
-- Denis Donoghue, The Practice of Reading
Cogent derives from Latin cogere, "to drive together, to force," from co-, "with, together" + agere, "to drive."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-27-2006, 08:06 AM:
Rated G
posit \POZ-it\, transitive verb:
1. To assume as real or conceded.
2. To propose as an explanation; to suggest.
3. To dispose or set firmly or fixedly.
It is not necessary to posit mysterious forces to explain coincidences.
-- Bruce Martin, "Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?," Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 1998
Among other things, the researchers posit that the behavior of the muscles during laughter probably explains why phrases like "weak with laughter" pops up in many different languages.
-- "How Muscles Can Go Weak With Laughter," New York Times, September 14, 1999
Some scientists subscribe to this "catastrophic" view of evolutionary history and posit such events as meteoritic collisions with earth, viral epidemics, and explosive evolutionary changes as responsible for species extinctions in the past.
-- Noel T. Boaz Ph.D., Eco Homo
Posit is from Latin positus, past participle of ponere, "to put, to place, to set."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-28-2006, 07:58 AM:
Rated G
fiduciary \fih-DOO-shee-air-ee\, adjective:
1. Relating to the holding of something in trust for another.
noun:
1. Someone who stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in certain obligations to others; a trustee.
American capitalism relies heavily on the fiduciary duty concept to protect those who entrust their money to large and often distant corporations.
-- Senator Susan Collins, Congressional Record, July 11, 2002
Corporate boards, whose members are elected by shareholders, bear the ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibility for the company's performance.
-- John Maggs, "Out of the Loop," National Journal, March 9, 2002
Congress is faced with a great challenge in protecting workers who need help, while employing our fiduciary responsibility to guard the taxpayer dollar.
-- Representative Jennifer Dunn, The Seattle Times, October 1, 2001
As fiduciaries, investment advisers are expected to be on the client's side of the negotiating table in any deal.
-- Robert Barker, "Will the SEC Bless This Masquerade?," Business Week, March 9, 2002
Fiduciary comes from Latin fiduciarius, from fiducia, "trust," and is related to faith and fidelity.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 02-28-2006, 12:00 PM:
Rated G
scion \SY-uhn\, noun:
1. A detached shoot or twig of a plant used for grafting.
2. Hence, a descendant; an heir.
Convinced he was the scion of Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac, a noble Breton, he was off to do genealogical research in the Paris libraries and then to locate his ancestor's hometown in Brittany.
-- Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac
Sassoon, scion of a famously wealthy Jewish banking family, had never needed to earn his living.
-- Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand
Gates is the scion of an old, affluent Seattle family; Jobs is the adopted son of a machinist in Northern California.
-- "Steve Jobs, Hesitant Co-Founder, Makes New Commitment to Apple," New York Times, August 7, 1997
Scion derives from Old French cion, of Germanic origin.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-01-2006, 07:24 AM:
Rated G
doula \DOO-luh\, noun:
A woman who assists during childbirth labor and provides support to the mother, her child and the family after childbirth.
Chris Morley launched Tender Care Doula Service in Valencia, California, seven years ago to provide nonmedical postpartum care workers (or doulas) to frazzled new moms.
-- Roy Huffman, "Healthy returns," Entrepreneur Magazine, February 1, 1996
Unlike midwives, who deliver babies and are licensed to perform medical tasks, labor doulas provide emotional and physical support to the laboring parents.
-- Stephen L. Richmond, "One Labor-Intensive Job," Time, March 12, 2001
Doula derives from Greek doula, "servant-woman, slave," akin to hierodule.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-02-2006, 07:14 AM:
Rated G
largess \lar-ZHES; lar-JES; LAR-jes\, noun:
1. Generous giving (as of gifts or money), often accompanied by condescension.
2. Gifts, money, or other valuables so given.
3. Generosity; liberality.
Four years after her marriage she exclaimed giddily over her father-in-law's largess: "He has given Waldorf the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a birthday present!"
-- Stacy Schiff, "Otherwise Engaged," New York Times, March 19, 2000
The recipients of Johnson's largesse were understandably indifferent to what propelled him.
-- Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973
A swelling chorus has arisen recently to complain that the PRI has been up to its old tricks, showering voters with largesse (ranging from washing machines to bicycles and cash).
-- "Mexico's vote," Economist, June 24, 2000
Largess is from Old French largesse, "largeness, generosity," from large, from Latin largus, "plentiful, generous."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-03-2006, 07:06 AM:
Rated G
dilettante \DIL-uh-tont; dil-uh-TONT; dil-uh-TON-tee; -TANT; -TAN-tee\, noun:
1. An amateur or dabbler; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
2. An admirer or lover of the fine arts.
adjective:
1. Of or characteristic of a dilettante; amateurish.
As he had put it, it was a matter of principle, not money: Mistler family trusts, over which he exercised discretionary powers, had not been established to support dilettantes or would-be litterateurs waiting for inspiration.
-- Louis Begley, Mistler's Exit
His writings, which began as a schoolboy's jottings for the amusement of classmates, continued into adulthood, although he describes his youthful work as the musings of a dilettante.
-- David Gonzalez, "Eye on the Universe: A Poet Views It All From the Bronx," New York Times, December 25, 1991
At first his colleagues tended to dismiss this witty young dilettante poet as a scientific lightweight, even if he was an agreeable addition to their dinner table.
-- "Dr Alex Comfort," Times (London), March 28, 2000
She was, in the parlance of the time, a 'sermon taster', going to any church where the preaching was supposed to be good; for a dilettante churchgoer Brighton was then an exciting place to be.
-- Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography
Dilettante comes from the present participle of Italian delittare, "to delight," from Latin delectare, "to delight," frequentative of delicere, "to allure," from de- + lacere, "to entice
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-04-2006, 06:32 AM:
Rated G
simulacrum \sim-yuh-LAY-kruhm; -LAK-ruhm\, noun;
plural simulacra \sim-yuh-LAY-kruh; -LAK-ruh\:
1. An image; a representation.
2. An insubstantial, superficial, or vague likeness or semblance.
Incorporating simulacra of historic buildings and exotic landscapes the Emperor saw on his extensive travels through his dominions, the villa is high-style multiculturalism.
-- Martin Filler, New York Times, December 3, 1995
It becomes harder . . . to distinguish the genuine from its simulacrum.
-- Wayne Curtis, "The Tiki Wars," The Atlantic, February 2001
The Wilson who at last recovered some of his health was a pale simulacrum of the man he had been.
-- Louis Auchincloss, Woodrow Wilson
His radiator pipe and fire hose, for example, are like washed out ghosts of real things, waxen simulacra of themselves.
-- Harvey Blume, "Bits of Beauty," The Atlantic, June 3, 1999
Simulacrum is from the Latin, from simulare, "to make like, to put on an appearance of," from similis, "like." It is related to simulate and similar.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-05-2006, 05:19 AM:
Rated G
toothsome \TOOTH-suhm\, adjective:
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.
Fleming was impressed not only by its taste but by its astonishing durability: Caudle's apple, after ten months in storage, was still toothsome and fragrant.
-- David Guterson, "The Kingdom of Apples," Harper's Magazine, October 1999
Their topic, naturally: business niches that offer toothsome opportunities and comparatively limited competition.
-- Dick Youngblood, "Business niches can be opportunities," Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 2, 2003
The myth, which Kournikova herself often takes great measures to perpetuate, is that she is an imposter on the WTA Tour, a toothsome starlet who simply uses the tennis court as a catwalk.
-- Jon Wertheim, "Any day now for Anna," Sports Illustrated, April 14, 2000
Toothsome is derived from tooth + -some.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-06-2006, 07:23 AM:
Rated G
countermand \KOWN-tuhr-mand; kown-tuhr-MAND\, transitive verb:
1. To revoke (a former command); to cancel or rescind by giving an order contrary to one previously given.
2. To recall or order back by a contrary order.
noun:
1. A contrary order.
2. Revocation of a former order or command.
And given the mixed results, a constitutional amendment that could countermand both the law and the original order by Vermont's Supreme Court seems unlikely.
-- Stanley Kurtz, "Florida? Try Vermont," National Review Online, November 13, 2000
Her aunt and uncle kept hoping her father would countermand his orders since his promises to her seemed to be without effect.
-- Dumas Malone, quoted in The Long Affair, by Conor Cruise O'Brien
Based in a futuristic radar room near Dulles Airport, it has become a master center, with electronic vision that sees every airplane in the system and the authority to question and, in some circumstances, [b]countermand[]/b] decisions made by individual controllers.
-- William Langewiesche, "Slam and Jam," The Atlantic, October 1997
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-07-2006, 06:40 AM:
Rated G
expropriate \ek-SPROH-pree-ayt\, transitive verb:
1. To deprive of possession.
2. To transfer (the property of another) to oneself.
Very few voters, after all, really believe Europe's new generation of social democratic leaders are wild Bolsheviks plotting to expropriate their Toyotas.
-- Fintan O'Toole, "The last gasp of social democracy," Irish Times, March 19, 1999
The Spanish constitution declared the country "a democratic republic of workers of all classes" and laid down that property might be expropriated "for social uses."
-- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent
Farmlands that had belonged to Bosnia's Muslim beys . . . and agas were expropriated without compensation and handed over to their former tenant sharecroppers.
-- Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance
Expropriate comes from Medieval Latin expropriatus, past participle of expropriare, "to deprive of property," from Latin ex- + proprius, "one's own." The act of expropriating is expropriation. One who expropriates is an expropriator.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-08-2006, 06:07 AM:
Rated G
perambulate \puh-RAM-byuh-layt\, intransitive verb:
1. To walk about; to roam; to stroll; as, "he perambulated in the park."
transitive verb:
1. To walk through or over.
2. To travel over for the purpose of surveying or inspecting.
Every weekend, the police close off ten to fifteen blocks of some Manhattan avenue. The merchants line the curbs, and the New Yorkers slowly perambulate up and down.
-- Richard Brookhiser, "Island Bazaar," National Review, July 1, 2002
At Syon, we perambulate a succession of rooms of the greatest magnificence, beginning with the entrance hall, with an apse of columns -- characteristic of Adam, all dazzling whiteness.
-- A. L. Rowse, "At Home with History in London," New York Times, January 19, 1986
If you don't like boats -- and it's surprising how many people who come here don't like boats -- you can perambulate the shoreline, take a swim, sit in the lounge and read, or do nothing more than sit on the dock
-- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel
She liked to perambulate the room with a duster in her hand, with which she stopped to polish the backs of already lustrous books, musing and romancing as she did so.
-- Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
Perambulate comes from Latin per-, "through" + ambulare, "to walk." The noun form is perambulation.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-09-2006, 06:34 AM:
Rated G
contradistinction \kon-truh-dis-TINK-shuhn\, noun:
Distinction by contrast; as, "sculpture in contradistinction to painting."
In the quarter-century since "Gravity's Rainbow," American novelists have increasingly fixed their boldest inventions in the past, usually their own early years or a time long before they were born -- in contradistinction to postwar writers who vigorously peeled away World War II and the social fabric of the 1950's.
-- Gary Giddins, "Escape to New York," New York Times, September 20, 1998
The music was breathing constantly, in contradistinction to the willfully suffocated feeling of most heavy music.
-- Ben Ratliff, "A Brazilian Band Emerges From the Loss of Its Leader," New York Times, July 28, 2000
Contradistinction is contra-, from Latin contra, "against" + distinction, from Latin distinctio, from distinguere, "to distinguish."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-10-2006, 06:53 AM:
Rated G
ululate \UL-yuh-layt; YOOL-\, intransitive:
To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals.
He had often dreamed of his grieving family visiting his grave, ululating as only the relatives of martyrs may.
-- Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran
She wanted to be on the tarmac, to ululate and raise her hands to the heavens.
-- Deborah Sontag, "Palestinian Airport Opens to Jubilation," New York Times, November 25, 1998
She used harrowing, penetrating nasal tones and a rasp that approached Janis Joplin's double-stops; she made notes break and ululate.
-- Jon Pareles, "On the Third Day There Was Whooping and There Was Moshing," New York Times, August 18, 1998
Ululate derives from Latin ululare, to howl, to yell, ultimately of imitative origin. The noun form is ululation; the adjective form is ululan.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-11-2006, 06:56 AM:
Rated G
crapulous \KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:
1. Suffering the effects of, or derived from, or suggestive of gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous stomach.
2. Marked by gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous old reprobate.
These were the dregs of their celebratory party: the half-filled glasses, the cold beans and herring, the shouts and smells of the crapulous strangers hemming them in on every side, the dead rinsed-out April night and the rain drooling down the windows.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock
The crapulous life which her future successor led.
-- Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen in the Time of George III
The new money was spent in so much riotous living, and from end to end there settled on the country a mood of fretful, crapulous irritation.
-- Stephen McKenna, Sonia
Crapulous is from Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula, from Greek kraipale, drunkenness and its consequences, nausea, sickness, and headache
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-12-2006, 08:13 AM:
Rated G
parvenu \PAR-vuh-noo; -nyoo\, noun:
1. One that has recently or suddenly risen to a higher social or economic class but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class; an upstart.
adjective:
1. Being a parvenu; also, like or having the characteristics of a parvenu.
But the favourite's power and influence provoke intense ill-feeling among other courtiers, who regard him as a sinister usurping parvenu with ideas above his station, or perhaps even a sorcerer.
-- Francis Wheen, "The whole truth about Peter's friends," The Guardian, January 31, 2001
However, the Creoles, French, Spanish, and Acadians who preceded the American parvenus were deeply entrenched and incredibly snobbish and clannish in relation to outsiders.
-- Laurence Bergreen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life
When John Stewart Parnell went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1865 he found that "the sons of moneyed parvenus from the North of England tried to liken themselves to country gentlemen and succeeded in looking like stable boys."
-- J. Mordaunt Crook, The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches
The Progressives were of the educated middle class, angry at the rule of parvenu financiers and industrialists.
-- Norman Birnbaum, After Progress
Parvenu is from the French, from the past participle of parvenir, from Latin pervenire, "to come through to, to arrive at, to reach, hence to succeed," from per, "through" + venire, "to come."
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-15-2006, 12:16 PM:
[Standing in for Bob Maar, who is presently without computer but is with onions, demonstrating the way of the perfect Maartini here at ShoWest.]
Rated G
Ides \YDZ\, plural noun:
In the ancient Roman calendar the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.
In one measure of how fast this calendar has become in recent years, by the Ides of March 1984, seven states had held primaries, said Rhodes Cook, the author of "Race for the Presidency".
-- Robin Toner, "Both Parties Seek Ways to Tame Fast and Furious Primary Process.," New York Times, January 24, 2000
Oh he is a very fast horse, and on the Ides of November you will know just how fast he is.
-- "The Aristocracy of the Democratic Party.," New York Times, November 9, 1864
A soothsayer bids you beware of the Ides of March.
-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
There is a poem inviting Philodemos to dinner which he is supposed to have written himself, and one of the other guests is Artemidorus, very likely the same son of Theopompos of Cnidos who warned Caesar about the Ides of March in 44 BC on his way to his assassination.
-- Peter Levi, Virgil: His Life and Times
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-16-2006, 12:32 PM:
[Rejoice Bob Maar fans, for as I type this he is JetBlue-ing his way back to The Place So Nice They Say It Twice. In the mean time here's today's NWotD.]
Rated G
megalomania \meg-uh-lo-MAY-nee-ah; -nyuh\, noun:
1. A mania for grandiose or extravagant things or actions.
2. A mental disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur.
Eighteen months generally elapse nowadays between the time a publisher accepts a manuscript and its appearance in book form -- the gestation period of an elephant. During that year and a half of waiting, a writer is visited by every emotion in the fun house, from rosy anticipation to exultation, megalomania, brooding, dread, cringing humility, avarice, guilt and, finally, stolid acceptance.
-- Phillip Lopate, "Waiting for the Book: Storms Before the Calm," New York Times, May 24, 1987
He too often allows us to laugh off notions that science might occasionally be the handmaiden of megalomania, greed, and sadism.
-- David J. Skal, Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture
Mao was a man of considerable charisma and megalomania.
-- Seth Faison, "Deng Xiaoping, Architect of Modern China, Dies at 92," New York Times, February 20, 1997
Megalomania is an occupational hazard for judges, said Prof. Paul Carrington of the Duke University Law School, noting that a trial judge inevitably has a great deal of power over everyone in the courtroom. "Judges can get awfully full of themselves," he said.
-- Neil A. Lewis, "You're Out of Order, Your Honor," New York Times, July 12, 1998
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-17-2006, 11:09 AM:
Rated G
verdant \VUR-dnt\, adjective:
1. Covered with growing plants or grass; green with vegetation.
2. Green.
3. Unripe in knowledge, judgment, or experience; unsophisticated; green.
Drab in winter, then suddenly sodden with alpine runoff, the region turns dazzlingly verdant in spring.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow
Dry as the region just outside the delta may be, it would still be covered with grasses, yellowish in the dry season, verdant in the wet.
-- Niles Eldredge, Life in the Balance
I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine.
-- Henry James, "The Théâtre Français"
Verdant comes from French verdoyant, present participle of verdoyer, "to be verdant, to grow green," from Old French verdoier, verdeier, from verd, vert, "green," from Latin viridis, "green," from virere, "to be green."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-18-2006, 07:39 AM:
Rated G
amalgam \uh-MAL-guhm\, noun:
1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.
In that year, Zola struck back at the novelist and critic Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, that curious amalgam of religious conservative and blasphemous melodramatist -- Zola called him a"hysterical Catholic" -- whom he had long detested for his superior bearing and his unfortunate sallies against writers Zola admired.
-- Gary B. Nash, History on Trial
The so-called "protest" literature of the thirties was often an amalgam of the private rebellion of youth with social revolt.
-- Nona Balakian, The World of William Saroyan
The governing body of college athletics is gradually extruding a regulatory text that reads like some crazed amalgam of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Uniform Commercial Code.
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania
Her vocabulary was an amalgam of slang, especially the show-business jargon of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, and a requisite amount of cultivated English.
-- James A. Drake, Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography
Amalgam comes from Old French amalgame, from Medieval Latin amalgama, probably from Greek malagma, "emollient," from malassein, "to soften," from malakos, "soft."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-19-2006, 07:22 AM:
Rated G
dudgeon \DUH-juhn\, noun:
A state or fit of intense indignation; resentment; ill humor -- often used in the phrase "in high dudgeon."
Higgins was so frustrated by such a basic error that he stormed out of the arena for the mid-session interval in high dudgeon.
-- Phil Yates, "Stevens begins to feel pressure as Swail stages customary revival," Times (London), April 29, 2000
This woman is forever in a state of spiritual high dudgeon, and a list of her dislikes is as long as the Omaha phone book.
-- Jim Harrison, The Road Home
What you see, they reckon, is all there is: a media star of fading allure--and shortening temper, if his dudgeon over a television soap-opera satire about him called "How was I, Doris?" (a reference to his fourth wife) is anything to go by.
-- "Gerhard Schröder, embattled chancellor," The Economist, September 18, 1999
The origin of dudgeon is unknown.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-20-2006, 06:21 AM:
Rated G
paragon \PAIR-uh-gon; -guhn\, noun:
A model of excellence or perfection; as, "a paragon of beauty; a paragon of eloquence."
Even his friends and business associates, men and women alike, were paragons of health: avoiders of fatty foods, moderate drinkers, health-club habitues, lovers of cross-country skiing, weekend canoe trips, and daylong hikes in the North Woods.
-- Alvin Greenberg, How the Dead Live
Voters, if they chose, could easily convince themselves that the people running their government were faithful spouses and temperate drinkers, paragons whose public images were in perfect accord with their private behavior.
-- Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues
Paragon comes from Middle French, from Old Italian paragone, literally, "touchstone," from paragonare, "to test on a touchstone," from Greek parakonan, "to rub against, to sharpen," from para-, "beside" + akone, "a whetstone."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-21-2006, 08:20 AM:
Rated G
aubade \oh-BAHD\, noun:
A song or poem greeting the dawn; also, a composition suggestive of morning.
He was usually still awake when the birds began to warble their aubade.
-- Christopher Buckley, "What was Robert Benchley?," National Review, June 16, 1997
And there he lingered till the crowing cock...Sang his aubade with lusty voice and clear.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emma and Eginhard
Aubade comes from the French, from aube, dawn + the noun suffix -ade: aube ultimately derives from Latin albus, white, pale, as in "alba lux," the "pale light" of dawn.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-22-2006, 04:50 AM:
Rated G
succor \SUH-kuhr\, noun:
1. Aid; help; assistance; especially, assistance that relieves and delivers from difficulty, want, or distress.
2. The person or thing that brings relief.
transitive verb:
1. To help or relieve when in difficulty, want, or distress; to assist and deliver from suffering; to relieve.
In Asakusa, a crowd sought succor around an old and lovely Buddhist temple, dedicated to Kannon, goddess of mercy.
-- Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Ever since I was five, I have inserted myself into every movie I've seen and gratefully, humbly found succor there.
-- Laurie Fox, My Sister from the Black Lagoon
There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm blast and thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor.
-- Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion," The Atlantic, November 1877
He honors the old, succors the infirm, raises the downtrodden, destroys fanaticism.
-- Alan Jolis, Love and Terror
Succor derives from Latin succurrere, "to run under, to run or hasten to the aid or assistance of someone," from sub-, "under" + currere, "to run
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-23-2006, 07:11 AM:
Rated G
paterfamilias \pay-tuhr-fuh-MIL-ee-uhs; pat-uhr-; pah-\, noun; plural patresfamilias \pay-treez-; pat-reez-; pah-treez-\:
The male head of a household or the father of a family.
His father served as paterfamilias to the entire GarcĂa clan, dispensing money and advice to those who needed it, and the family, in turn, revered him.
-- Leslie Stainton, Lorca: A Dream of Life
Just after World War II the paterfamilias, Eric, briefly abandons his wife and children for a doomed romance in Paris.
-- John Domini, "review of Drowning, by Lee Grove," New York Times, July 21, 1991
On the face of it, Henry Spencer Ashbee was a typical middle-class Victorian: a successful businessman, a strict paterfamilias.
-- Iain Finlayson, "Victorian erotic values," Times (London), February 21, 2001
Paterfamilias is from Latin pater, "father" + familias, "of the family or household," the archaic genitive form of familia, "family or household."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-24-2006, 07:14 AM:
Rated G
stolid \STOL-id\, adjective:
Having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily excited.
Normally stolid, she occasionally joined in the frequent applause and smiled along with the laughter at the high-spirited session.
-- Seth Mydans, "Indonesia Leader Imposes a Decree to Fight Removal," New York Times, July 23, 2001
The inherent irrationality of markets was first demonstrated in the 17th century, when the normally stolid Dutch population was seized by a tulip craze that caused the people to pay insane prices for a single bulb.
-- Robert Reno, "Analysis: A market that rides on bubbles," Newsday, August 7, 2002
Republicans hailed Kemp as a quick-tongued charmer who would . . . appear in attractive contrast to the stolid Al Gore.
-- James Fallows, "An Acquired Taste," The Atlantic, July 1, 2000
Ulster Protestants are a slow, stolid, quiet, decent, law-abiding people, unstylish and unfashionable.
-- John Derbyshire, "Paisley Goes to Washington," National Review, March 15, 2001
Stolid derives from Latin stolidus, "unmoving, stupid."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-25-2006, 07:11 AM:
Rated G
metier \met-YAY; MET-yay\, noun:
1. An occupation; a profession.
2. An area in which one excels; an occupation for which one is especially well suited.
The pairing of Maynard and Salinger -- the writer whose metier is autobiography and the writer who's so private he won't even publish -- was an unlikely one.
-- Larissa MacFarquhar, "The Cult of Joyce Maynard," New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1998
In Congress, I really found my metier. . . . I love to legislate.
-- Charles Schumer, "quoted in Upbeat Schumer Battles Poor Polls and Turnouts and His Own Image," New York Times, May 16, 1998
He is in the position of a good production engineer suddenly shunted into salesmanship. It is not his metier.
-- James R. Mursell, "The Reform of the Schools," The Atlantic, December 1939
Metier is from the French, ultimately from Latin ministerium, "service, ministry, employment," from minister, "a servant, a subordinate."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-26-2006, 06:44 AM:
Rated G
bellwether \BEL-weth-uhr\, noun:
A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.
Raised to believe they were among their generation's best and brightest, my class can be seen as a bellwether for a generation caught without a compass on the cutting edge of uncharted territory.
-- Elizabeth Fishel, Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became
Before that election, Maine's proud citizens had fancied their state to be a sort of bellwether, a notion embodied in the saying "As Maine goes, so goes the nation."
-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union
Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, "a male sheep, usually castrated"; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-27-2006, 06:36 AM:
Rated G
confluence \KON-floo-uhn(t)s\, noun:
1. A flowing or coming together; junction.
2. The place where two rivers, streams, etc. meet.
3. A flocking or assemblage of a multitude in one place; a large collection or assemblage.
At the confluence of continents, at the narrow neck of the Nile Valley just before it spreads into the flat water-maze of the Delta, this has always been a place where elements mingle and cultures collide.
-- Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious
It's the combination of these various factors, then -- their historical confluence, if you will -- that must be held responsible for the rapid erosion of the church's authority over sexual matters since the Second Vatican Council.
-- Michael W. Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan
A remarkable confluence of technological and economic forces is enabling women to join the paid labor force around the world.
-- Helen E. Fisher, The First Sex
At the time, I did not appreciate what an unusually fortunate confluence of circumstances was reigning in the cinematic heavens; I thought it would go on forever with the same incandescence.
-- Phillip Lopate, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically
Outside, about a mile below, the Monongahela River met the Allegheny and the Ohio, forming the confluence of waters upon which stood Pittsburgh.
-- Stanley Bing, Lloyd: What Happened
But it is not New-York streets built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston, -- not these that make the real estimation.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "American Civilization," The Atlantic, April 1862
Confluence is from Latin confluens, "flowing together," from confluere, "to flow together," from con-, "with, together" + fluere, "to flow."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-28-2006, 06:28 AM:
Rated G
superfluous \soo-PER-floo-us\, adjective:
More than is wanted or is sufficient; rendered unnecessary by superabundance; unnecessary; useless; excessive.
-- SUPERFLUOUSLY, adverb
-- SUPERFLUOUSNESS, noun
And it's hard to realize economies of scale without shedding superfluous jobs.
-- "The Health of Valley Hospitals: Merger of Holy Cross, Providence Made Sense but Still Caused Pain," Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1999
Power Grubs make a dead skunk smell like a rose by comparison. The 'Not for human consumption' warning is superfluous.
-- "Smelly grub a smash," Toronto Star, May 1, 1999
[E]verything superfluous is more noticeable in him [Hemmingway] than in other writers.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Gabriel Garcia Marquez Meets Ernest Hemingway," New York Times, July 26, 1981
An authority which makes all further argument or illustration superfluous.
-- E. Everett
Superfluous comes ultimately from the Latin superfluus, from superfluo, superfluere, to overflow, from super-, over, above + fluo, fluere, to flow.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-29-2006, 07:34 AM:
Rated G
invidious \in-VID-ee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.
2. Containing or implying a slight.
3. Envious.
But to the human hordes of Amorites -- Semitic nomads wandering the mountains and deserts just beyond the pale of Sumer -- the tiered and clustered cities, strung out along the green banks of the meandering Euphrates like a giant's necklace of polished stone, seemed shining things, each surmounted by a wondrous temple and ziggurat dedicated to the city's god-protector, each city noted for some specialty -- all invidious reminders of what the nomads did not possess.
-- Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews
In his experience people were seldom happier for having learned what they were missing, and all Europe had done for his wife was encourage her natural inclination toward bitter and invidious comparison.
-- Richard Russo, Empire Falls
The lover's obsessiveness may also take the form of invidious comparisons between himself, or herself, and the rival.
-- Ethel S. Person, "Love Triangles," The Atlantic, February 1988
For five decades, Indian liberals, and some from Europe and America, have been shaming the Western world with its commercialism, making invidious comparisons with Indian spirituality.
-- Leland Hazard, "Strong Medicine for India," The Atlantic, December 1965
Invidious is from Latin invidiosus, "envious, hateful, causing hate or ill-feeling," from invidia, "envy," from invidere, "to look upon with the evil eye, to look maliciously upon, to envy," from in-, "upon" + videre, "to look at, to see."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-30-2006, 07:34 AM:
Rated G
benignant \bih-NIG-nuhnt\, adjective:
1. Kind; gracious.
2. Beneficial; favorable.
After the captain and ladies had sat down, the autocratic steward rang a second bell, and with a majestic wave of the hand, and a calm, benignant smile, signified his pleasure that we should sit down.
-- Sir Henry Stanley, "Grand tours - Mind your manners at the captain's table," Independent, August 18, 2002
At the meeting it was strange to see, amidst the peaceful, benignant faces, this woe-begone old man, with his thick white hair and his deeply furrowed placid cheeks, looking wistfully from one to the other, and listening anxiously, hoping some day to hear the words which should bring peace to his soul.
-- Alexander L. Kielland, Skipper Worse
Human beings . . . are forever ascribing malignant or benignant motives even to inanimate forces such as the weather, volcanoes, and internal-combustion engines.
-- Stephen Budiansky, "The Truth About Dogs," The Atlantic, July 1999
Benignant comes from the present participle of Late Latin benignare, from Latin benignus, "kind, friendly."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 03-31-2006, 05:50 AM:
Rated G
edacious \i-DAY-shus\, adjective:
Given to eating; voracious; devouring.
Swallowed in the depths of edacious Time.
-- Thomas Carlyle
[S]omething that... will dismay edacious lips.
-- "The late showman", Independent, August 21, 1999
Our... high-toned irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered constitutions.
-- Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm
Edacious is from Latin edax, edac-, gluttonous, consuming, from edo, edere, to eat.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-01-2006, 06:49 AM:
Rated G
chicanery \shih-KAY-nuh-ree\, noun:
1. The use of trickery or sophistry to deceive (as in matters of law).
2. A trick; a subterfuge.
Wordsworth's paternal grandfather, Richard, had first come to Westmorland from South Yorkshire in 1700, to recoup his fortunes with the then baron Lonsdale, having been done out of his fortune by his own guardian's chicanery.
-- Kenneth R. Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth
True, Gramm-Rudman's deficit targets were often met only by chicanery -- by anticipating revenues and moving expenses off-budget.
-- David Frum, "Righter Than Newt", The Atlantic, March 1995
What is more, it can be deliberately adulterated by the farmer with sand, tree sap or ash, although a trained opium buyer can spot these tricks and few farmers dare resort to such chicanery.
-- Martin Booth, Opium: A History
Chicanery comes from French chicaner, "to quibble, to use tricks," perhaps from Middle Low German schicken, "to arrange," with the sense "to arrange to one's own advantage."
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-02-2006, 12:00 PM:
Rated G
defenestrate \dee-FEN-uh-strayt\, transitive verb:
To throw out of a window.
Some of his apparent chums . . . would still happily defenestrate him if they caught him near a window.
-- Andrew Marr, "No option bar the radical one", Independent, July 5, 1994
I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
-- Lane Smith, quoted in "Who's News", Time for Kids, September 25, 1998
A woman, driven to fury by the manner in which her lover prefers to lavish his attention on a match on the telly rather than her, starts to throw his possessions out of the window. He's finally moved to stop her when she tries to defenestrate his new Puma boots.
-- Jim White, "Budgets substantial enough to buy most of the clubs in the Endsleigh", Independent, April 6, 1996
Defenestrate is derived from Latin de-, "out of" + fenestra, "window." The noun form is defenestration.
[ 04-04-2006, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-03-2006, 11:07 AM:
Rated G
martinet \mar-t'n-ET\, noun:
1. A strict disciplinarian.
2. One who lays stress on a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods.
He is an unmitigated tyrant, a martinet, the sort of man who disapproves of his son's eating the morning oatmeal with sugar -- instead of salt, which he himself prefers.
-- David Quammen, "Punishing Natty", New York Times, April 14, 1985
His insistence on strict discipline began to earn him a reputation among his men as an unfeeling martinet.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "Still Pondering the Myth Of Custer's Last Stand", New York Times, May 28, 1996
At first, the recruits hate and fear the sergeant, but gradually they come to realize that he's been turning them into soldiers. It is the example of this unlovable martinet, not the "Good Joe" who replaces him, that will help them survive in combat.
-- Anthony Quinn, "Revolutionary Dead Ends", New York Times, April 29, 2001
Players coached by him have cursed the day they ever set sight on such a merciless martinet.
-- Gerry Thornley, "Chief architect oversees grand plan", Irish Times, February 19, 2000
A martinet is so called after an officer of that name in the French army under Louis XIV.
[ 04-04-2006, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-04-2006, 11:48 AM:
Rated G
brummagem \BRUHM-uh-juhm\, adjective:
Cheap and showy, tawdry; also, spurious, counterfeit.
But demanding that publishers replace their brummagem wares with books which embody Kunin's "high standards of excellence" would be a promising -- and cost-free -- way to begin.
-- Betty McCollister, "A Conspiracy of Good Intentions: America's Textbook Fiasco", Humanist, November-December, 1993
The distortions they bring on damage society and fuel defiant behavior, encouraging everything from immigrations to the Cayman Islands, to active distortions of reality through brummagem corporate filings.
-- William F. Buckley, Jr., "Reforming the Rich", National Review, January 20, 2006
Brummagem is an alteration of Birmingham, England, from the counterfeit groats produced there in the 17th century.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-05-2006, 06:51 AM:
Rated G
cum \KUM; KUHM\, preposition:
With; along with; combined with; -- often used in combination.
In 1999 he finished converting an old dairy into a sort of village -- a hip warren of apartments adjoining a restaurant and bar, some art galleries, some studios, and an "e-mat" (a laundromat-cum-cybercafé).
-- Bill Donahue, "Byte, Byte, Against the Dying of the Light", The Atlantic, May 2001
Pretty soon, we're digging up the lunch, washing it off at a stand pipe and heading for the shed-cum-kitchen, where the two burners are quickly pressed into working overtime.
-- Bob Granleese, "A bumper crop", The Guardian, September 14, 2002
The memorial service cum political rally for Senator Wellstone brought the sacred low.
-- William J. Bennett, "A Party of Corruption?", National Review, November 4, 2002
Mark Humphrey, the rising star among interior designers, has created a highly-collectable dual-function, chrome and walnut candlestick-cum-rose vase.
-- Nick Pandya, "Making Christmas a one-off", The Guardian, November 2, 2002
Cum is from the Latin cum, "with."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-06-2006, 06:07 AM:
Rated G
hobbledehoy \HOB-uhl-dee-hoy\, noun:
An awkward, gawky young fellow.
For early on, girls become aware -- as much from their fathers' anguished bellows of "You're not going out dressed like that, Miss" as from the buffoonish reactions of the spotty hobbledehoys at the end-of-term disco -- of the power of clothes to seduce.
-- Jane Shilling, "Soft-centred punk", Times (London), October 27, 2000
His memories, even only reveries, of incomparable women, made me feel like a hulking hobbledehoy.
-- Edith Anderson, Love in Exile
Unfortunately, they have to contend with ignorant hobbledehoys who, on seeing these rows of shingle heaps, feel compelled to jump on them.
-- Susan Campbell, "He grows seakale on the seashore", Daily Telegraph, March 27, 1999
The origin of hobbledehoy is unknown, though it perhaps derives from hobble, from the awkward movements of a clumsy adolescent.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-07-2006, 05:54 AM:
Rated G
fustian \FUHS-chuhn\, noun:[/b]
1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.
2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language.
adjective:
1. Made of fustian.
2. Pompous; ridiculously inflated; bombastic.
Don't squander the court's patience puffing your cheeks up on stately bombast and lofty fustian. Speak plainly!
-- Richard Dooling, Brain Storm
His stated motive is to meet "the flood of cant, fustian and emotional nonsense which pollutes the intellectual atmosphere."
-- Walter H. Waggoner, "Joseph W. Bishop Jr., Law Professor and Author", New York Times, May 21, 1985
It would take a stout heart to read through all the loyal effusions and fustian birthday odes of the 18th-century laureates -- Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber and the rest.
-- John Gross, "In Search of a Laureate: Making Book on Britain's Next Official Poet", New York Times, July 15, 1984
Fustian derives from Old French fustaigne, from Medieval Latin fustaneum, but its precise roots beyond that point are uncertain.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-08-2006, 10:26 AM:
Rated G
bonhomie \bah-nuh-MEE\, noun:
Good nature; pleasant and easy manner.
That bonhomie which won the hearts of all who knew him.
-- Washington Irving, Oliver Goldsmith
And what of the salesman's fabled bonhomie, the Willy Lomanesque emphasis on the importance of being liked?
-- "How to Manage Salespeople", Fortune, March 14, 1988
I would carefully study the exploits of positiverole models like Peter Gabriel, Jimmy Carter, and Alec Baldwin, andattempt to emulate their radiant bonhomie.
-- Joe Queenan, My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-Lived Search for Sainthood.
Bonhomie comes from French, from bonhomme, "good-natured man," from bon, "good" (from Latin bonus) + homme, "man" (from Latin homo).
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-09-2006, 08:57 AM:
Rated G
rusticate \RUHS-tih-kayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To go into or reside in the country; to pursue a rustic life.
transitive verb:
1. To require or compel to reside in the country; to banish or send away temporarily.
2. (Chiefly British). To suspend from school or college.
3. To build with usually rough-surfaced masonry blocks having beveled or rebated edges producing pronounced joints.
4. To lend a rustic character to; to cause to become rustic.
Ezra holds out in London, and refuses to rusticate.
-- T. S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken, "21 August 1916", The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume I, 1898-1922 edited by Valerie Eliot
For the longest time, we're stuck in a cabin hewn out of the ground in a parcel of woods as the boys hide and mend; for another, we rusticate on a farm bounded by fields that must be tilled by the hard labor of man and beast.
-- Stephen Hunter, "When Johnny Doesn't Come Marching Home", Washington Post, December 17, 1999
Czechoslovak Communists would imprison or rusticate those who had been active in the Prague Spring.
-- Charles S. Maier, Dissolution
Rusticate comes from the past participle of Latin rusticari, "to live in the country," from rusticus, "rural, rustic[/b[," from [b]rus, "the country."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-10-2006, 05:47 AM:
Rated G
stripling \STRIP-ling\, noun:
A youth in the state of adolescence, or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad.
But at that time he was too young to drive a car, and I wasn't, so I took it upon myself to tell the stripling a thing or two.
-- Geoffrey Wolff, "Advice My Brother Never Took", New York Times, August 20, 1989
It is even possible that some . . . who might be thought to have a chance of election as Pope because of their youthful vigour -- by Vatican standards, a man of 60 is a stripling -- will see their chances come and go in turn.
-- Andrew Medichini, "Cardinal secrets", Times (London), January 23, 2001
There are precious few constants in the story of the yen. For a start, it is a stripling among the monies of the world, being not much more than a century old.
-- Pico Iyer, "Tacos in Kyoto, Kimonos in Peru", New York Times, April 28, 1991
Stripling is a diminutive of strip, as if a small strip from the main stock or stem.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-11-2006, 06:10 AM:
Rated G
panoply \PAN-uh-plee\, noun:
1. A splendid or impressive array.
2. Ceremonial attire.
3. A full suit of armor; a complete defense or covering.
Every step taken to that end which appeases the obsolete hatreds and vanished oppressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe, which encourages nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply, is good in itself.
-- Winston Churchill, quoted in This Blessed Plot, by Hugo Young
The beige plastic bedpan that had come home from the hospital with him after his deviated-septum operation . . . now held ail his razors and combs and the panoply of gleaming instruments he employed to trim the hair that grew from the various features of his face.
-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth
To the east, out over the Ocean, the winter sky is a brilliant panoply of stars and comets, beckoning to adventurers, wise and foolish alike, who seek to divine its mysteries.
-- Ben Green, Before His Time
Labor was hard pressed to hold the line against erosion of its hard-won social wage: the panoply of government-paid benefits such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, Medicare, and Social Security.
-- Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old
Panoply is from Greek panoplia, "a full suit of armor," from pan, "all" + hoplia, "arms, armor," plural of hoplon, "implement, weapon."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-12-2006, 06:15 AM:
Rated G
coeval \koh-EE-vuhl\, adjective:
1. Of the same age; originating or existing during the same period of time -- usually followed by 'with'.
noun:
1. One of the same age; a contemporary.
According to John Paul, this longing for transcendent truth is coeval with human existence: All men and women "shape a comprehensive vision and an answer to the question of life's meaning."
-- "Culture, et cetera", Washington Times, October 6, 2000
Coeval with human speech and found among all peoples, poetry appeals to our sense of wonder, to our unending quest for answers to the timeless questions of who we are and why we are.
-- Mark Mathabane, "A Poet Can Lead Us Toward Change", Newsday, January 20, 1993
Unhappily, however, the writers speak almost wholly to those who already regard Lewis as not just the coeval but the equal of T. S. Eliot, Joyce and Pound.
-- Julian Symons, "Prophecy and Dishonor", New York Times, February 10, 1985
The 1,500 years of [Barcelona's] existence had produced only five names that came easily to mind: the cellist Pau Casals, the artist Joan Miró and his somewhat tarnished coeval Salvador Dali, both of whom were still very much alive, and the dead architect Antoni Gaudí.
-- Nicholas Shrady, "Glorious in Its Very Stones", New York Times, March 15, 1992
Coeval comes from Medieval Latin coaevus, from Latin co- + aevum, "a period of time, lifetime."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-13-2006, 06:44 AM:
Rated G
salmagundi \sal-muh-GUHN-dee\, noun:
1. A salad plate usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, served with oil and vinegar.
2. Any mixture or assortment; a medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.
A glance at the schedule is enough to make one feel that one would rather go out and shoot songbirds than stay in and watch the dismal salmagundi of game shows, repeats and soap operas.
-- Jane Shilling, "My brother and other animals", Daily Telegraph, August 22, 1998
What the BBC has the nerve to call Vanity Fair is a baffling salmagundi of Nineties accents, 1800s clothes, Wardour Street plotting, and a sort of language never spoken by any human being at any point in history.
-- "Stop betraying the classics", Independent, November 4, 1998
Salmagundi comes from French salmigondis.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-22-2006, 09:58 AM:
Rated G
implacable \im-PLAK-uh-bull\, adjective:
Not placable; not to be appeased; incapable of being pacified; inexorable; as, an implacable foe.
For it is my office to prosecute the guilty with implacable zeal.
-- Paola Capriolo, Floria Tosca (translated by Liz Heron)
He... then continued on up the road, his shoulders bent beneath the implacable sun.
-- Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master
She conducted her life and her work with all the steady and implacable seriousness of a steamroller.
-- "The Stein Salon Was The First Museum of Modern Art", New York Times, December 1, 1968
Implacable ultimately comes from Latin implacabilis, from in-, not + placabilis, placable, from placo, placare, to soothe, calm, appease.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 04-23-2006, 08:13 AM:
Rated G
agog \uh-GOG\, adjective:
Full of excitement or interest; in eager desire; eager, keen.
Kobe Bryant left the Minnesota Timberwolves agog after a series of eye-popping moves in a game last week.
-- New York Times, February 5, 1998
He was now so interested, quite so privately agog, about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up to her afterwards.
-- Henry James, The Ambassadors
By the second day he had found his sea-legs, and with hair flying and double-waistcoats flapping, he patrolled the deck agog with excitement, questioning and noting.
-- Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1804-1834
Agog derives from Middle French en gogues, "in mirth; lively."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 05-16-2006, 07:14 PM:
Rated G
virtu \vuhr-TOO; vir-\, noun:
1. love of or taste for fine objects of art.
2. Productions of art (especially fine antiques).
3. Artistic quality.
The Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano described these objects as "statues, pictures, tapestries, divans, chairs of ivory, cloth interwoven with gems, many-coloured boxes and coffers in the Arabian style, crystal vases and other things of this kind . . . [whose] sight . . . is pleasing and brings prestige to the owner of the house." They all spoke to the wealth, taste and virtu of their owner.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Divans, Persian rugs, easy chairs, books, statuary, articles of virtu and bric-a-brac are on every side, and the whole has the appearance of a place where one could dream his life away.
-- "Mark Twain's Summer Home", The New York Times, September 10, 1882
Virtu comes from Italian virtů "virtue, excellence," from Latin virtus, "excellence, worth, goodness, virtue."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 05-17-2006, 08:46 AM:
Rated G
arrant \AR-unt\, adjective:
Thoroughgoing; downright; out-and-out; confirmed; extreme; notorious.
More deplorable is his arrant and compulsive hypocrisy . . . Under all the chest hair, he was a hollow man.
-- J. D. McClatchy, review of Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, New York Times, December 19, 1999
I think a pilot would be a most arrant coward, if through fear of bad weather he did not wait for the storm to break but sank his ship on purpose.
-- Georges Minois, History Of Suicide translated by Lydia Cochrane
The moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.
-- Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
The entire story is a load of arrant nonsense.
-- Victor Pelevin, Buddha's Little Finger translated by Andrew Bromfield
Arrant was originally a variant spelling of errant, meaning "wandering." It was first applied to vagabonds, as an arrant (or errant) rogue or thief, and hence passed gradually into its present sense. It ultimately derives from Latin iter, "a journey."
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 05-18-2006, 01:45 PM:
Rated G
cupidity \kyoo-PID-uh-tee\, noun:
Eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth; greed; avarice.
Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind.
-- John Crowley, "Of Marvels And Monsters", Washington Post, October 18, 1998
At the end, all but rubbing his hands with cupidity, Rockefeller declares he will now promote abstract art--it's better for business.
-- Stuart Klawans, "Rock in a Hard Place", The Nation, December 27, 1999
This strain of cupidity sprang from the mean circumstances of his youth in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York.
-- Jack Beatty, "A Capital Life", New York Times, May 17, 1998
For such is human cupidity that we Thoroughbreds have but one chance to survive it -- to run so fast and to win so much money that we are retired in comfort in our declining days.
-- William Murray, "From the Horse's Mouth", New York Times, August 8, 1993
Myself, I have always believed that BMWs achieve their presence (and their grip on the collective imagination and cupidity of the middle classes) because they combine an athletic, masculine bulk and stance with feminine details and lines.
-- Stephen Bayley, "The evolution of the curve", Independent, October 22, 1998
Cupidity ultimately comes from Latin cupiditas, from cupidus, "desirous," from cupere, "to desire." It is related to Cupid, the Roman god of love.
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 05-19-2006, 08:44 AM:
Rated G
spurious \SPYUR-ee-uhs\, adjective:
1. Not proceeding from the true or claimed source; not genuine; false.
2. Of illegitimate birth.
Some of these graves are clearly spurious and were manufactured by nineteenth-century royalists who wanted evidence of an unbroken 2,000-year-old imperial line.
-- Gale Eisenstodt, "Behind the Chrysanthemum Curtain", The Atlantic, November 1998
We need at least to separate the real issue from the spurious.
-- Eugene D. Genovese, "Getting States' Rights Right", The Atlantic, March 2001
Well, setting aside the sentimental nostalgia that elevates the "good old days" to a spurious perfection . . . the fact remains that Nellie Melba was a unique vocal phenomenon.
-- Tim Page, "For Melba a Well-Deserved Toast", Washington Post, February 9, 2003
Spurious comes from Latin spurius, "illegitimate, hence false, inauthentic."
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