Haimish

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 31, 2012

haimish \HEY-mish\, adjective:

Homey; cozy and unpretentious.

Now separated from Gisela Liner's home cooking and haimish evenings playing living-room soccer with Kisch, Billie consoled himself by going to the finest spots in Berlin.
-- Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder

By late afternoon the house looked at least haimish, with the season's last roses cut and opening in jelly jars.
-- Sally Koslow, With Friends Like These

There were other homey touches: a mizrakh plaque on the eastern wall, a silver menorah and a sewing kit containing a colour wheel of spools on the sideboard—all made the more haimish by the savoury aromas wafting in through the kitchen door.
-- Steve Stern, The Frozen Rabbi

Haimish stems from the Yiddish word of the same spelling, which comes from the German word heimisc that literally means "pertaining to the home."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Skirr

Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 30, 2012

skirr \skur\, verb:

1. To go rapidly; fly; scurry.
2. To go rapidly over.

noun:
1. A grating or whirring sound.

Looking up, he perceived, to his horror, the figure of a man which seemed to skirr along the surface of the water...
-- Ambrose Marten, The Stanley Tales

If they'll do neither, we will come to them, and make them skirr away as swift as stones enforced from the old Assyrian slings.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry V

Skirr is related to the word scour, which comes from the Old Norse word skur meaning "shower."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Varlet

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 29, 2012

varlet \VAHR-lit\, noun:

1. A knavish person; rascal.
2. A. An attendant or servant. B. A page who serves a knight.

Is he not a lying, stinking, contemptible varlet?
-- Jude Morgan, Indiscretion

A varlet scrambled forward at once and attempted to wrestle our luggage away from me.
-- Eric Kraft, On the Wing

Varlet is a variation on the French word valet.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Ventose

Word of the Day for Sunday, May 27, 2012

ventose \VEN-tohs\, adjective:

Given to empty talk; windy.

Anyhow, it is better to wind up that way than to go growling out one's existence as a ventose hypochondriac.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley

The ventose orator was confounded, and put himself and his glass down together.
-- L. J. Bigelow, Bench and Bar

First used in English in the 1700s, ventose is derived from the Latin word for wind, "vent." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Betide

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 26, 2012

betide \bih-TAHYD\, verb:

1. To happen to; come to; befall.
2. To happen; come to pass.

"Ill luck betide thee, poor damsel," said Sancho, "ill luck betide thee!"
-- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

"The girls' skirts are measured each week with a dressmaker's rule," she would say, "to see that they conform to the length prescribed. Woe betide any girl whose skirt does not."
-- Hilary Mantel, An Experiment in Love

Betide stems from the Old English word tide meaning "something that happened." As in besot and belabor, the prefix be- turns the noun into a verb. 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Ingeminate

Word of the Day for Friday, May 25, 2012

ingeminate \in-JEM-uh-neyt\, verb:

To repeat; reiterate.

Sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word Peace, Peace...
-- Christopher Ricks, Essays in Appreciation

Mr. Dott's spirits were a little dashed, especially as Niven with a fateful countenance continued to ingeminate the word “Hungrygrain.”
-- Arthur Train, Tutt and Mr. Tutt

Ingeminate comes from the Latin word ingemināre which meant "to repeat or redouble." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Demiurge

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 24, 2012

demiurge \DEM-ee-urj\, noun:

1. Philosophy. A. Platonism. The artificer of the world. B. (In the Gnostic and certain other systems) a supernatural being imagined as creating or fashioning the world in subordination to the Supreme Being, and sometimes regarded as the originator of evil.2. (In many states of ancient Greece) a public official or magistrate.

Larger than a character, the river is a manifest presence, a demiurge to support the man and the boy, a deity to betray them, feed them, all but drown them, fling them apart, float them back together.
-- Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art

The gnostics think this world was created by a bad god—a demiurge—who wandered too far from the True God and somehow got perverted.
-- Derek Swannson, Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg

Demiurge meant "a worker for the people" in Ancient Greek, from the roots dḗmio- meaning "of the people" and -ergos, "a worker." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Chrestomathy

Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 23, 2012

chrestomathy \kres-TOM-uh-thee\, noun:

A collection of selected literary passages.

I had learned to read Sanscrit and to translate easy passages in the chrestomathy, and devoted myself with special zeal to the study of the Latin grammar and prosody.
-- Georg Ebers, The Story of My Life from Childhood to Manhood

This little chrestomathy preserves almost the only words of Atticus to have survived from antiquity.
-- Peter White, Cicero in Letters

Chrestomathy literally means "useful to learn" in Greek, from the roots chres- meaning "to use" and math- meaning "to learn." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Cumulus

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 22, 2012

cumulus \KYOO-myuh-luhs\, noun:

1. A heap; pile.
2. A cloud of a class characterised by dense individual elements in the form of puffs, mounds, or towers, with flat bases and tops that often resemble cauliflower.

He was organising the year's remnants. He was logging and archiving and filing it all. The whole swollen yearlong cumulus.
-- Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia

"So where is it at, Minogue," asks the palatal man, aloft in a cumulus of webs and dust and creak.
-- David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair

Cumulus stems from the Neo-Latin word meaning "heap, pile." It was first used to describe clouds in the early 1800s. 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com  

Belabour

Word of the Day for Monday, May 21, 2012

belabour \bih-LEY-ber\, verb:

1. To explain, worry about, or work more than is necessary.
2. To assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule.
3. To beat vigorously; ply with heavy blows.
4. Obsolete. To labour at.

Yours and everybody else's, thought Swiffers, but he didn't wish to belabour the obvious.
-- Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

It is distasteful to the present writer to belabour any of his fellow writers, living or dead, and, except Boccaccio, who also stood for a detestable human trait, he has here avoided doing so.
-- Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature

Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly; but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Like besot, belabour comes from the prefix be- which makes a verb out of a noun and the root labour meaning "to work." 

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Gambit

Word of the Day for Sunday, May 20, 2012

gambit \GAM-bit\, noun:

1. A remark made to open or redirect a conversation.
2. Chess. An opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
3. Any manoeuvre by which one seeks to gain an advantage 

The leader was eyeing him up and down, shrewdly calculating. "Thirsty as all that, are you, my friend?" he asked. Gratefully Bomilcar seized upon the gambit. “Thirsty enough to buy everyone here a drink,” he said.
-- Colleen McCullough, The First Man in Rome

But in other cases the gambit may be a dependent clause introducing or rounding off some larger unit whose illocutionary force it helps to establish.
-- Thierry Fontenelle, Practical Lexicography: A Reader

Gambit is primarily a term used in chess. It came from the Italian idiom gambetto meaning "to trip up."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Phatic

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 19, 2012

phatic \FAT-ik\, adjective:

Denoting speech used to create an atmosphere of goodwill.

We conduct phatic discourse indispensable to maintaining a constant connection among speakers; but phatic speech is indispensable precisely because it keeps the possibility of communication in working order, for the purpose of other and more substantial communications.
-- Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

They're just filling the air with noise. This is what's called phatic speech. "How are you?" they might ask.
-- Adriana Lopez, Fifteen Candles

Coined by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, phatic was first used in 1923. It probably comes from the Greek word phatos meaning "spoken."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Pip

Word of the Day for Friday, May 18, 2012

pip \pip\, verb:

1. To peep or chirp.
2. (Of a young bird) to break out from the shell.
3. To crack or chip a hole through (the shell), as a young bird.

Stone's watch pipped eight o'clock. He had curly hair the color of motor oil, and pale green eyes.
-- Jonathan Franzen, The Twenty-Seventh City

As Fiona's horn pipped, just beyond the cab's black fender.
-- William Gibson, Zero History

Pip is a variation on the word peep which arose in the 1600s. It comes from the Lithuanian word pỹpti which was originally imitative of a baby bird.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Omphalos

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 17, 2012

omphalos \OM-fuh-luhs\, noun:

1. The central point.
2. The navel; umbilicus.
3. Greek Antiquity. A stone in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, thought to mark the centre of the earth.

To that incurable romantic the Trenton hovel was omphalos, the hub of existence, the centre of mass.
-- Ellen Queen, Halfway House

Yes; but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the omphalos of mortality.
-- Thomas De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundies

From Greek, omphalos did not enter English until the 1850s when Thomas De Quincey used it in his work Suspiria de Profundis. It literally meant "navel."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Spruik

Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 16, 2012

spruik \sprook\, verb:

To make or give a speech, especially extensively; spiel.

He started to spruik again, but I managed to get in first.
-- C.E. Murphy, Raven Calls

Cain and Leek spruik their foul and immoral stories by the fire at night and the rest of the men grow excited and the mood of the camp becomes restless.
-- Tim Winton, Shallows

Don't go into your spruik for me. I don't care what words you call it.
-- A. E. Martin, The Outsiders

Spruik is Australian slang that arose in the early 1900s. It is of unknown origin.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Altiloquent

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 15, 2012

altiloquent \awl-TIL-uh-kwuhnt\, noun:

High-flown or pretentious language.

He remembered that the politeness seemed too elaborate, too florid, altiloquent to the extent of insincerity.
-- Holman Day, All-Wool Morrison

The meaning of the music was made further explicit by explanations in his own, altiloquent (but purposefully avoiding the technical) Wagnerian prose, wrapped solicitously around the Goethe passages.
-- Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven

Altiloquent stems from the Latin roots atli meaning "high" and loquentem meaning "speaking."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Intromit

Word of the Day for Monday, May 14, 2012

intromit \in-truh-MIT\, verb:

To introduce; to send, put, or let in.

Mrs. Tappitt had frequently offered to intromit the ceremony when calling upon his generosity for other purposes, but the September gift had always been forthcoming.
-- Anthony Trollope, Rachel Ray

But in this I found a great difficulty, arising from the policy and conduct of Mr. Andrew McLucre, who had a sort of investment, as may be said, of the office of dean of guild, having for many years been allowed to intromit and manage the same.
-- John Galt, Annals of the Parish

Intromit comes from the Latin roots intro- meaning "inwardly" and mittere meaning "to send."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Matrilineal

Word of the Day for Sunday, May 13, 2012

matrilineal \ma-truh-LIN-ee-uhl\, adjective:

Inheriting or determining descent through the female line.

In a matrilineal society, in a matriarchy, and especially in this particular matriarchy, the women, as I've already said, control the houses, the lineage of the children, and a lot of decisions about marriage and so forth.
-- Patrice E. M. Hollrah, The Old Lady Trill, the Victory Yell

Several of the women I talked to had decided to challenge the influence of the matrilineal clan and to bequeath part of their land to their sons. The ways they had chosen in this regard were however quite different.
-- Birgit Englert and Elizabeth Daley, Women's Land Rights & Privatisation in Eastern Africa

Matrilineal was first used in the early 1900s by anthropologists. It derives from the Late Latin roots matri- meaning "mother" and lineal meaning "line."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Sibilant

Word of the Day for Friday, May 11, 2012

sibilant \SIB-uh-luhnt\, adjective:

1. Hissing.
2. Phonetics. Characterised by a hissing sound; noting sounds like those spelled with s in this.

noun:
1. Phonetics. A sibilant consonant.

This is the way the presence of a ghost was detected: Some sound would be heard, such as a sibilant noise, a soft whistle, or something like murmurs, or some sensation in a part of the body might be felt.
-- George H. Ellis, Legends of Gods and Ghosts: Hawaiian Mythology

He just drank his coffee, making a little sibilant sound, and watched the earth mover lumber back and forth, back and forth, its shovel going up and down and over and up and down and over again.
-- Anna Quindlen, Object Lessons

The wind in the patch of pine woods off there—how sibilant.
-- Walt Whitman, Prose Works 1892: Specimen Days

Sibilant stems from the Latin word sībilant- which meant "whistling or hissing." It is assumed to imitative of the sound itself.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Obtest

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 10, 2012

obtest \ob-TEST\, verb:

1. To supplicate earnestly; beseech.
2. To invoke as witness.
3. To protest.
4. To make supplication; beseech.

I constrain, adjure, obtest and strongly command you.
-- Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering

And whosoever she be, even with the form of words which to miserable wretches is granted most exaudible, I pray, and do with those prayers most heartily obtest, which are in the ears of the hearers of them most effectual, that she may never taste of such bitter miseries.
-- Giovanni Boccaccio, Amorous Fiametta

Obtest comes from the Latin roots ob-, a prefix meaning "toward", and the root test, meaning "witness."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Cicatrix

Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 9, 2012

cicatrix \SIK-uh-triks\, noun:

1. New tissue that forms over a wound.
2. Botany. A scar left by a fallen leaf, seed, etc.

A new relationship can develop. But the cicatrix of the old one remains. And nothing grows on a cicatrix. Nothing grows through it.
-- Elizabeth George, Playing for the Ashes

He discriminates also very properly between the cicatrix, which is produced by the healing of wounds which have penetrated the cutis, and those in which the surface only is affected.
-- James Moore, "Differtation on Healing of Wounds," The Analytical Review, Volume 5

Cicatrix is derived from the Latin word cicatrix meaning "scar." The Latin word has no clear origin.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Pother

Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 8, 2012

pother \POTH-er\, noun:

1. A heated discussion, debate, or argument; fuss; to-do.
2. Commotion; uproar.
3. A choking or suffocating cloud, as of smoke or dust.

verb:
1. To worry; bother.

"An' why all the pother?" Mrs. Rickards emitted a series of sniffs and returned his scowl with a frosty glare.
-- Colin Arthur Roderick, The Lady and the Lawyer

I don't know what's so extraordinary about it, or why there should be such a pother.
-- William Dean Howells, Novels 1886-1888, Volume 2

Pother is of unknown origin. It is not related to the word bother which did not enter English until the 1700s and is related to the word both.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Sudorific

Word of the Day for Monday, May 7, 2012

sudorific \soo-duh-RIF-ik\, adjective:

1. Causing sweat.
2. Sudoriparous.

noun:
1. A sudorific agent.

Having thrown him into a cold sweat by his spiritual sudorific, he attacks him with his material remedies, which are often quite as unpalatable.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Medical Essays, 1842-1882

Wracked by such sudorific thoughts, he tossed noisily about, maddened, aching.
-- Angela Huth, South of the Lights

Every sudorific hitherto employed had failed to produce this result upon a skin which horrible diseases had left impervious.
-- Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Pons

Sudorific comes from the Latin word sūdor meaning "sweat." The word "sweat" is unrelated and comes from the Old English, swote.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Mensch

Word of the Day for Sunday, May 6, 2012

mensch \mench\, noun:

A decent, upright, mature, and responsible person.

It's easy to be a mensch, his dad says. You honour your father and mother. You stay married, you set your kids a good example, you don't lie or cheat or steal. And every once in a while, Cookie, you gotta pick up the check, his father says, then winks.
-- Jane VanDenburgh, Physics of Sunset

A mensch is not usually interested in fame. You are liable to meet a mensch in almost any situation.
-- Ira Wood, The Kitchen Man

Mensch entered English from Yiddish in the 1950s. In Yiddish, it meant "man, human being" and had the positive associations that carried into English. It is related to the German word mensch.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Besot

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 5, 2012

besot \bih-SOT\, verb:

1. To infatuate; obsess.
2. To intoxicate or stupefy with drink.
3. To make stupid or foolish: a mind besotted with fear and superstition.

We mustn't besot ourselves with big words like independence and sovereignty. We must begin with small concrete tasks.
-- Piotr Rawicz and Peter Wiles, Blood from the Sky

He tried to appear as besot with her as he was with her father's power and money.
-- Judith Pella and Tracie Peterson, A Hope Beyond

The prefix be was used in Middle English to denote verbs, as in the contemporary words become and befriend. The word sot referred to an alcoholic.

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Fulcrum

Word of the Day for Friday, May 4, 2012

fulcrum \FOOL-kruhm\, noun:

1. The support, or point of rest, on which a lever turns.
2. Any prop or support.
3. Zoology. Any of various structures in an animal serving as a hinge or support.

verb:
1. To fit with a fulcrum; put a fulcrum on.

An equal partnership is like a see-saw that sits on a fulcrum. There is a balance of power when one partner gives in and then the other does likewise.
-- Shirley Gunstream Poland, Hearing the Silent Cries

A storm of plans, each one trying to make me into a fulcrum.
-- Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

Fulcrum originally referred to a bed post from the Latin word fulcire meaning "to prop up."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/