Lily-livered

Word of the Day

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

lily-livered

 \ LIL-ee-LIV-erd \  , noun;

1.

Weak or lacking in courage; cowardly; pusillanimous.

But surely, for your own sake, you will not be so lily-livered  as to fall into this trap 

which he has baited for you and let him take the very bread out of your mouth 

without a struggle.

-- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

He had skin as white as a lily, but he was not lily-livered ; he was as strong as a 

champion at the Shrovetide games.

-- Geoffrey Chaucer and Peter Ackroyd, Canterbury Tales

Lily-livered  was first used in English by Shakespeare in Macbeth . The liver was 

supposedly the seat of passion and was typically dark red or brown. Since a lily is pale 

and light-coloured, a lily-livered person was weak and passionless

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

Loup-Garou

Word of the Day

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

loup-garou

 \ loo-ga-ROO \  , noun;

1. A werewolf; lycanthrope.

In the bushes, the loup-garou  snarled quietly, and its eyes brightened, burned with

scarlet fury.

-- Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

Those who were of French descent among them, and full of the old Acadian superstitions,

explained it simply enough by saying he was a "loup garou ," or "were wolf," and resigned 

themselves to the impossibility of contending against a creature of such supernatural 

malignity and power.

-- Charles Roberts, “The Gray Master,” Concord Junction , 1911

Origin:

Loup-garou  stems from the French word of the same spelling which also means werewolf. 

The word loup also means "wolf" in French. It entered English in the late 1500s

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Eidolon

Word of the Day

Monday, October 29, 2012

Eidolon

 \ ahy-DOH-luhn \  , noun;

1.

A phantom; apparition.

2.

An ideal.

"An eidolon , a manifestation, if you will, sent up to us from the uttermost deeps to 

bring about the end of the world."

-- Neil Gaiman, Looking for the Girl

It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation; the putrid, dripping 

eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth 

should always hide.

-- H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

Origin:

Eidolon comes from the more common word idol, which originally referred to pagan

religious idols. It was first used in the 1820s

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com 

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Cantrip

Word of the Day

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Cantrip

 \ KAHN-trip \ , noun;

1.

Chiefly Scot.  A magic spell; trick by sorcery.

2.

Chiefly British.  Artful shamming meant to deceive.

Used properly, it may be possible to drive a vampire or garou into frenzy 
with this cantrip.

-- Steve Long, Ethan Skemp, Combat

And before I knew it her arms were around me, and she smelt of 
lavender and delicious silk, and her voice in my ear was whispering 
something—a cantrip, I thought, with a twist of surprise, a cantrip,just like 
the days in Lansquenet—and then I looked up and it wasn’t Maman there at all.

-- Joanne Harris, The Girl with No Shadow: A Novel

Cantrip  is of uncertain origin, but it is most likely a variation of the Old English 
word calcatrippe which referred to both a plant and a type of iron ball used to
block cavalry in warfare.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Uncanny

Word of the Day for Thursday, October 25, 2012

Uncanny \uhn-KAN-ee\, adjective:

1. Having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary: uncanny accuracy; an uncanny knack of foreseeing trouble.
2. Mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably strange: Uncanny sounds filled the house.

Again the mood is uncanny, with strange perturbations in the atmosphere, the abstruse word choice purposely jarring: “suzerain,” “diacritic,” “acephalous,” “zebu,” “argute.”
-- Charles Bukowski, introduction by David Stephen Calonne, Absence of the Hero

She saw him put his hand on the shoulder of their mother's chair, touch the fringe on a lampshade, as if to confirm for himself that the uncanny persistence of half-forgotten objects, all in their old places, was not some trick of the mind.
-- Marilynne Robinson, Home

Uncanny once meant "mischievous." The association with the supernatural arose in the 1770s. The word canny means careful, astute, skilled and frugal.

Thanks to. www.dictionary.com 

Delate

Word of the Day for Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Delate \dih-LEYT\, verb:

1. Chiefly Scot. To inform against; denounce or accuse.
2. Archaic. To relate; report: to delate an offense.

“I will delate you for a warlock to the Privy Council!" said Sir John. "I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a torch!"
-- Sir Walter Scott, “Wandering Willie’s Tale,” Selected Short Stories

What's more, if you persist in disobeying me, I'll have no choice but to delate you to His Excellency the Archbishop.
-- Andrew M. Greeley, The Priestly Sins

Delate stems from the Latin word dēlātus which is the past participle of dēferre meaning "to bring down," like the modern English word defer.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Parturient

Word of the Day for Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Parturient \pahr-TOOR-ee-uhnt\, adjective:

1. Bearing or about to bear young; travailing.
2. Pertaining to parturition.
3. Bringing forth or about to produce something, as an idea.

With a scornful snicker, he settled himself behind his desk, replaced the empty cigarette holder in his mouth and lapsed into parturient silence for a few moments.
-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22

To her nothing already then thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferate mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile.
-- James Joyce, Ulysses

Prometheus or Hephaistos smote the head of the parturient god with an axe, and Athena leaped out fully armed.
-- William F. Hansen, Handbook of Classical Mythology

Parturient is derived from the Latin word parturient- which literally meant "being in labor" or "desiring to bring forth."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Acephalous

Word of the Day for Monday, October 22, 2012

Acephalous \ey-SEF-uh-luhs\, adjective:

1. Without a leader or ruler.
2. Also, acephalic Zoology. headless; lacking a distinct head.

Some magicians, as Walter Scott, for instance, having appeared in the world, who combined all the five literary senses, such writers as had but one—wit or learning, style or feeling —these cripples, these acephalous, maimed or purblind creatures—in a literary sense—have taken to shrieking that all is lost, and have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works.
-- Honoré de Balzac, The Muse of the Department

Only one of my books is without a preface, — though some of them are disguised as notes, or forewords, or afterwords, — and I hereby apologise for the acephalous condition of that volume.
-- Cyrus Townsend Brady, Woven with the Ship

Acephalous stems from the Greek combining form -cephalous meaning "having a head or heads" and the prefix a- meaning "not, without."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com