Sessile

Word of the Day for Friday 31^st January 2014

Sessile \SES-il, -ahyl\, adjective:

1. Zoology. permanently attached; not freely moving.
2. Botany. attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing directly from the stem.

And I was afraid of being grounded, sessile—stuck in one spot for eighteen years of oboe lessons and math homework that I couldn’t finish the first time around.
-- Ariel Levy, "Thanksgiving in Mongolia," The New Yorker, Nov. 18, 2013

Alfred was stretched out his full length in the sword of sun that shone through the thick branches of the sessile oak trees.
-- Catherine Coulter, Rosehaven, 1997

Sessile stems from the Latin word sessilis which had a range of meanings including "fit for sitting on, low enough to sit on, and dwarfish (when referring to plants)." It entered English in the early 1700’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Riposte

Word of the Day for Thursday 30^th January 2014

Riposte \ri-POHST\, noun:

1. a quick, sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke: a brilliant riposte to an insult.
2. Fencing. a quick thrust given after parrying a lunge.

verb:
1. to make a riposte.
2. to reply or retaliate.

He remembered von Neumann's sly riposte to Oppenheimer's famous words quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the Trinity implosion was heard around the world on July 16, 1945.
-- Bradford Morrow, Ariel's Crossing, 2002

Bantering, smart but tentative as shy circling children, both of us checking covertly after each riposte to make sure we hadn't crossed any line or hurt any feelings.
-- Tana French, In the Woods, 2007

Riposte comes from the French word of the same spelling which means "a prompt answer."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Squib

Word of the Day for Wednesday 29^th January 2014

Squib \skwib\, noun:

1. a short and witty or sarcastic saying or writing.
2. Journalism. a short news story, often used as a filler.

verb:
1. to write squibs.
2. to shoot a squib.

This last is a sarcastic squib partly based on an experience of Gérard de Nerval's in Vienna.
-- Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), translated by Richard Holmes, My Fantoms, published in 2008

His tendency to uphold technical views gave rise to a very clever squib by the late Mr. Justice Hayes, in which the spirit of the baron is supposed to arrive in Hades…
-- William Ballantine, Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life, 1883

Squib is of unknown origin, though it entered English in the 1500’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Boîte

Word of the Day for Tuesday 28^th January 2014

Boîte \bwaht; Fr. bwat\, noun:

a nightclub; cabaret.

Three more people entered the boîte and one of them was Clarisse. She saw Daniel, nodded without smiling and looked for a place to sit.
-- Hugh MacLennan, Return of the Sphinx, 1967

You're here now, at this groovy new boîte, for instance.
-- Kim Moritsugu, The Restoration of Emily, 2006

Boîte entered English in the early 1900s from the French word of the same spelling, which literally means "box" but is also used to refer to a nightclub, from the phrase boîte de nuit which means "box of the night."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Pettifogging

Word of the Day for Monday 27^th January 2014

Pettifogging \PET-ee-fog-ing, -faw-ging\, adjective:

1. insignificant; petty: pettifogging details.
2. dishonest or unethical in insignificant matters; meanly petty.

The state legislature at this time was ruled over by a small group of wire-pulling, pettifogging, corporation-controlled individuals who came up from the respective towns, counties, and cities of the state, but who bore the same relation to the communities which they represented and to their superiors and equals in and out of the legislative halls at Springfield that men do to such allies anywhere in any given field.
-- Theodore Dreiser, The Titan, 1914

…since she was habitually absorbed in worsted work, and it was probably from her that Telemachus got his mean,pettifogging disposition, always anxious about the property and the daily consumption of meat, no inference can be drawn from this already dubious scandal as to the relation between companionship and constancy.
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876

Pettifogging comes from a combination of the word petty and the Middle Dutch word voger meaning "one who arranges things." The verb pettifog is a backformation of this term.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Aphesis

Word of the Day for Sunday 26^th January 2014

Aphesis \AF-uh-sis\, noun:

Historical Linguistics. the disappearance or loss of an unstressed initial vowel or syllable, as in the formation of the word slant from aslant.

In particular, phrases forming a solid continuous unit and having only one main stress can become subjected to aphesis and other phonetic changes.
-- Mikko Luukko, Grammatical Variation in Neo-Assyrian, 2004

In other cases we witness aphaeresis, or rather aphesis, the loss of initial segments in the MAGY words…
-- György Busztin, The Legacy of the Barang People, 2006

Aphesis is derived from the Greek word of the same spelling meaning "a letting go."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Banal

Word of the Day for Saturday 25^th January 2014

Banal \buh-NAL, -NAHL, BEYN-l\, adjective:

devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite: a banal and sophomoric treatment of courage on the frontier.

This sounds almost banal, and in fact it has become banal, thanks to the frog-like perspective of Darwin and such like.
-- Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, 1939

The banal fact of the existence of time, the confines that social life imposes on continuous time - a frontier around the abstract, a limit on the unknown - brings me back to myself.
-- Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet, published in 2010

Banal originally comes from the French word ban which referred to compulsory military service. Since this law applied to everyone, the word came to be associated with what was commonplace.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Idem

Word of the Day for Friday 24^th January 2014

Idem \AHY-dem, ID-em\, pronoun:

the same as previously given or mentioned.

Moreover, the EU presents a governance system where the authority of government is dispersed into multiple levels and institutions (idem, p. 20).
-- Giovanni Moro, Citizens in Europe, 2011

Indeed, if narrative identity is the identity of the characters associated with this leisure life-world, it is also the identity which links ipse and idem.
-- Tony Blackshaw, Leisure Life, 2003

Idem stems from the Latin word of the same spelling which meant essentially "it."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Williwaw

Word of the Day for Thursday 23^rd January 2014

Williwaw \WIL-ee-waw\, noun:

a violent squall that blows in near-polar latitudes, as in the Strait of Magellan, Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands.

Outside, a new note has crept into the wind, a black williwaw sound straight from the terrible wastes to the north.
-- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, 1961

There was a big williwaw blowing and nothing was moving on the island. So I was a couple of days late in leaving…
-- Edited by Fern Chandonnet, Alaska at War, 1941-1945: The Forgotten War Remembered, 2007

Williwaw entered English in the 1830s. It is of unknown origin

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Litigious

Word of the Day for Wednesday 22^nd January 2014

Litigious \li-TIJ-uhs\, adjective:

1. inclined to dispute or disagree; argumentative.
2. of or pertaining to litigation.
3. excessively or readily inclined to litigate: a litigious person.

He was concerned to see so litigious a temper in men.
-- Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 1742

Canada, in so many ways, seemed superior to America anyway. Canada was saner, more tolerant, friendlier, safer, less litigious.
-- Richard Ford, A Multitude of Sins, 2002

Litigious is derived from the Latin word lītigi meaning "a quarrel."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Bosky

Word of the Day for Tuesday 21^st January 2014

Bosky \BOS-kee\, adjective:

1. covered with bushes, shrubs, and small trees; woody.
2. shady.

It was cradled in the bosky foothills of the coastal ranges.
-- Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Well of Tears, 2005

It stood in a hollow of a bosky park, crowded to a degree that surprised and even displeased me, with huge timber and dense shrubberies of laurel and rhododendron.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, South Sea Tales, 1893

Bosky comes from the Middle English word bosk which referred to a bush.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Misology

Word of the Day for Monday 20^th January 2014

Misology \mi-SOL-uh-jee, mahy-\, noun:

distrust or hatred of reason or reasoning.

The ultimate consequence of misology is a kind of self-destruction in which what is destroyed is that aspect of the self represented by active reason.
-- David A. White, Myth and Metaphysics in Plato's Phaedo, 1989

In this way misology, the hatred of reason, arises. Socrates now confronts misology "because there's no greater evil that could befall anyone" (89d2-3).
-- Paul Stern, Socratic Rationalism and Political Philosophy, 1993

Misology comes from the German word Misologie, coined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 1780’s from the Greek word meaning "hating argument." It entered English in the 1820’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Hornswoggle

Word of the Day for Sunday 19^th January 2014

Hornswoggle \HAWRN-swog-uhl\, verb:

to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.

But don't forget, boys, when you-all want me to hornswoggle Wall Street another flutter, all you-all have to do is whisper the word.
-- Jack London, Burning Daylight, 1910

Tinkie could talk her way out of a ticket in Mississippi, but I wasn't so certain the California state troopers would be as easy to hornswoggle.
-- Carolyn Haines, Wishbones, 2008

Hornswoggle is of unknown origin. It entered in America in the 1820’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Echt

Word of the Day for Saturday 18^th January 2014

Echt \ekht\, adjective:

real; authentic; genuine.

This is true or echt because I used a calculator.
-- Patricia Wood, Lottery, 2008

Outside, there is the kind of veiled, wintry sunshine which never manages to warm the chilly air, stirred by a light and capricious, echt Berlin breeze.
-- Alain Robbe-Grillet, Repetition, 2003

Echt entered English from the German word of the same spelling in the early 1900’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Infinitesimal

Word of the Day for Friday 17^th January 2014

Infinitesimal \in-fin-i-TES-uh-muhl\, adjective:

1. indefinitely or exceedingly small; minute: infinitesimal vessels in the circulatory system.
2. immeasurably small; less than an assignable quantity: to an infinitesimal degree.
3. of, pertaining to, or involving infinitesimals.

Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part.
-- H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," Weird Tales, July 1934

I knew that her diversions described an arc only minutely different from before; but that infinitesimal alteration separated our steps, one from another, with brutal absoluteness.
-- Claire Messud, The Last Life, 1999

Infinitesimal comes from the Latin word infinītus meaning "boundless." The suffix -ēsimus was added to ordinal numbers in Latin.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Antebellum

Word of the Day for Thursday 16^th January 2014

Antebellum \AN-tee-BEL-uhm\, adjective:

before or existing before a war, especially the American Civil War; prewar: the antebellum plantations of Georgia.

Some of these ornate wooden structures are vast, every bit as grand in their own cluttered fashion as the great antebellum Greek Revival houses of the Garden District, which always put me in mind of temples, or the imposing town houses of the French Quarter itself.
-- Anne Rice, The Tale of the Body Thief, 1992

Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind.

-- Eric Van Lustbader, First Daughter, 2008

Antebellum entered English in the 1860’s. It literally means "before the war" in Latin.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Hurdy-gurdy

Word of the Day for Wednesday 15^th January 2014

Hurdy-gurdy \HUR-dee-GUR-dee, -gur-\, noun:

1. a barrel organ or similar musical instrument played by turning a crank.
2. a lute- or guitar-shaped stringed musical instrument sounded by the revolution against the strings of a rosined wheel turned by a crank.

The whole fleet of vehicles caught in the circle stops and starts to the eye-rhythm established, and a loud fairground hurdy-gurdy on the sound track synchronises all the movements into an unexpected, ravishingly beautiful and joyous merry-go-round.
-- David Bellos, Jacques Tati, 1999

The thump of rugs being beaten was sometimes joined by a hurdy-gurdy, which was painted brown and mounted on squalid cart wheels, with a circular design on its front depicting an idyllic brook…
-- Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, 1970

Hurdy-gurdy entered English in the 1740’s. It is a variant of the Scots word hirdy-girdy meaning "uproar."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Wamble

Word of the Day for Tuesday 14^th January 2014

Wamble \WOM-buhl, -uhl, WAM-\, verb:

1. to move unsteadily.
2. to feel nausea.
3. (of the stomach) to rumble; growl.

noun:
1. an unsteady or rolling movement.
2. a feeling of nausea.

You meet frequently for dinner, after work, split whole liters of the house red, then wamble the two blocks east, twenty blocks south to your apartment and lie sprawled on the living room floor with your expensive beige raincoats still on.
-- Lorrie Moore, Self-Help, 1985

I'll have to take you there. It's a cheery sensation, you know, to find a man who has some imagination, but who has been unspoiled by Interesting People, and take him to hear them wamble.
-- Sinclair Lewis, Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, 1914

Wamble may be related to the Norwegian word vamla which means "to stagger." It entered English in the 1300’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Mot

Word of the Day for Monday 13^th January 2014

Mot \moh\, noun:

1. a pithy or witty remark; bon mot.
2. Archaic. a note on a horn, bugle, etc.

…and only when King Alfin was back in Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather frantic questions that he had left somebody behind ("What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot).
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire, 1962

And then as the duchess went on relating a mot with which her mother had snubbed the great Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter of French history more interesting to himself might possibly be a results of an extreme consideration for his feelings.
-- Henry James, The American, 1877

Mot comes from the French word of the same spelling, which in turn is rooted in the Latin word muttum which meant "utterance." It is related to the word motto.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Comport

Word of the Day for Sunday 12^th January 2014

Comport \kuhm-PAWRT, -POHRT\, verb:

1. to bear or conduct (oneself); behave: He comported himself with dignity.
2. to be in agreement, harmony, or conformity (usually followed by with): His statement does not comport with the facts.

Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a man tomorrow in the day of battle.
-- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

I'll go to church morning, afternoon, and evening, and comport myself in such a godly sort that she shall regard me with admiration and sisterly love, as a brand plucked from the burning.
-- Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848

Comport is derived from the Latin word comportāre which meant "to transport."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Terminus

Word of the Day for Saturday 11^th January 2014

Terminus \TUR-muh-nuhs\, noun:

1. the end or extremity of anything.
2. either end of a railroad line.
3. British. the station or the town at the end of a railway or bus route.
4. the point toward which anything tends; goal or end.

We were like tram-cars running on their lines from terminus to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within small limits the number of passengers they would carry.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919

…tilting away in a rush past cinemas and shops to the hollow where the collieries are, then up again, past a little rural church, under the ash trees, on in a rush to the terminus, the last little ugly place of industry, the cold little town that shivers on the edge of the wild, gloomy country beyond.
-- D.H. Lawrence, "Tickets, Please," England, My England, 1922

Terminus comes from the Latin word of the same spelling which meant "boundary, limit, end."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Lea

Word of the Day for Friday 10^th January 2014

Lea \lee, ley\, noun:

1. a tract of open ground, especially grassland; meadow.
2. land used for a few years for pasture or for growing hay, then plowed over and replaced by another crop.
3. a crop of hay on tillable land.

adjective:
1. untilled; fallow.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea / The flocks are whiter down the vale / And milkier every milky sail / On winding stream or distant sea…
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 1849

…and there were the scrubby bushes in the lea of the hill, and there was the winding gravel road that meandered over to the next valley.
-- Brad Leithauser, The Friends of Freeland, 1997

Lea comes from the Old English word lea which referred to a plot of land. It likely came from the Latin word lūcus which meant "grove."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Welkin

Word of the Day for Thursday 9^th January 2014

Welkin \WEL-kin\, noun:

the sky; the vault of heaven.

As the elegant coach trotted through the warm night air, Rome leaned back and gazed at the welkin, trying to guess which star Home orbited about.
-- Mark S. Geston, Lords of the Starship, 1967

Down washed the rain, deep lowered the welkin; the clouds, ruddy a while ago, had now, through all the blackness, turned deadly pale, as if in terror.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Villette, 1853

Welkin comes from the Old English word welcn which meant "cloud." It was a cognate of the German word Wolke, which also meant "cloud."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Cede

Word of the Day for Wednesday 8^th January 2014

Cede \seed\, verb:

to yield or formally surrender to another: to cede territory.

There are those who have accused me of being broken by the mistakes I've made in my life, crippled to the point where I would rather cede power than wield it.
-- Nick Sagan, Everfree, 2006

I gather I'm supposed to cede her points for those resumés, but I'm bored of this game we're playing for I know not what prize or reason.
-- Kim Moritsugu, The Restoration of Emily, 2006

Cede is derived from the Latin word cēdere meaning "to go, yield." It entered English in the 1620’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Skosh

Word of the Day for Tuesday 7^th January 2014

Skosh \skohsh\, noun:

Slang. a bit; a jot: We need just a skosh more room.

The pack's momentum had nailed me facedown cause a pebble under my toe had rolled, but it wouldn't've if I'd been a skosh more coherent.
-- John Barnes, The Sky So Big and Black, 2002

Except there's just the barest crook to his version, showing he knows just a skosh more than she did. And probably wishes he didn't.
-- Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion, 1962

Skosh entered English in the 1950’s from the Japanese term sukoshi which meant "a little bit."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Punnet

Word of the Day for Monday 6^th January 2014

Punnet \PUHN-it\, noun:

a small container or basket for strawberries or other fruit.

The Flip is among Chobani's latest innovations: flavored yogurt paired with a punnet of fruit or dry ingredients.
-- Rebecca Mead, "Just Add Sugar," The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 2013

I was selling strawberries for ten pence a punnet, less than half the cost, for jam. And they complain.
-- Doris Lessing, The Diaries of Jane Somers, 1984

Punnet is of unknown origin. It arose in the early 1800’s.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com

Delitescent

Word of the Day for Sunday 5^th January 2014

Delitescent \del-i-TES-uhnt\, adjective:

concealed; hidden; latent.

“I am a delitescent writer.” “What does that mean?” It means I didn't start the book.
-- Rex Stout, Double for Death, 1939

He obviously detected some delitescent power within Claudie, or some power which he would create and set there, something hidden from the rest of us…
-- Stephen Glazier, The Lost Provinces, 1981

Delitescent comes from the Latin word dēlitēscere meaning "to hide away."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com