Idoneous

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 31, 2012

idoneous \ahy-DOH-nee-uhs\, adjective:

Appropriate; fit; suitable; apt.

As far as benefices are concerned no one could be more idoneous, fitting or suitable than Martin, since he is an Anglican clergyman.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Truelove

It would hardly be possible to apply less idoneous adjectives to it than Watson's reiterated "wailing" and "haunting."
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

Idoneous is derived from the Latin word idōneus which meant "suitable."

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

Neoterism

Word of the Day for Monday, January 30, 2012

neoterism \nee-OT-uh-riz-uhm\, noun:

1. An innovation in language, as a new word, term, or expression.
2. The use of new words, terms, or expressions.

These impressions were not merely of things physical—the contrast, for instance, between the overwhelming antiquity of the western deserts and the neoterism of humanity; or the fabulous nature of the Grand Canyon.
-- Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

In his gesture of breaking with the canon of great national literature, Catullus had opened the way to the ambition of future poets to provide Rome with a new canon of works, which would combine the new requirements of neoterism on the levels of research into subjectivity, and stylistic elegance, with the breadth and the depth of a literature intended to represent the cultural patrimony of a nation.
-- Peter E. Knox, A Companion to Ovid

Though it did not come into English usage until the late 1800s, neoterism originally comes from the Greek word neōterismós which meant "an attempt to change."

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

Hotchpot

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 29, 2012

hotchpot \HOCH-pot\, noun:

the bringing together of shares or properties in order to divide them equally.

She continued, "This is what I can give into the hotchpot." I could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness? "What will each of you give?..."
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula

These amounts are to be deducted from my boys only in the event that their shares may be large enough to permit and are not to be brought into hotchpot, and shall be paid to my two daughters Elizabeth and Katharine in equal shares.
-- Wallace Stevens, The Letters of Wallace Stevens

Dating back to the early 1200s, hotchpot literally meant "shake-pot" in Anglo-French. It is related to the word hodgepodge.

With thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Birr

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 28, 2012

birr \bur\, noun:

1. A whirring sound.
2. Emphasis in statement, speech, etc.
3. A whirring sound.

verb:
1. To move with or make a whirring sound.

She pursed her lips and, expertly, imitated the red-winged blackbird's call: not the liquid piping of the wood thrush, which dipped down into the dry tcch tchh tchh of the cricket's birr and up again in delirious, sobbing trills…
-- Donna Tartt, The Little Friend: A Novel

I turn to the woman. There's a wheezing birr coming from her own bleached-out face.
-- Irvine Welsh, Filth

Birr is derived from the Icelandic word byrr meaning "favorable wind."

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

Conciliate

Word of the Day for Friday, January 27, 2012

conciliate \kuhn-SIL-ee-eyt\, verb:

1. To overcome the distrust or hostility of; placate; win over.
2. To win or gain (goodwill, regard, or favour).
3. To make compatible; reconcile.
4. To become agreeable or reconciled.

"

Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his arrogant composure, "you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct."
-- Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

But this was sufficient, and served to conciliate the good will of the natives, with whom our congeniality of sentiment on this point did more towards inspiring a friendly feeling than anything else that could have happened.
-- Herman Melville, Typee

Conciliate comes from the Latin word conciliāre meaning "to bring together." It is related to the words council and calendar.

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

Mettle

Word of the Day for Thursday, January 26, 2012

mettle \MET-l\, noun:

1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.

Who is so ignorant as not to know that knights-errant are beyond all jurisdiction, their only law their swords, while their charter is their mettle and their will is their decrees?
-- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

"--must do something to justify your existence," Marlene was saying to Tim, "and now is the chance to show your mettle."
-- Muriel Spark, The Bachelors

Mettle was used interchangeably with the material metal until the early 1700s. Mettle continued to be used in the figurative sense of "stuff of which a person is made" even as the spellings diverged.

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

Bleb

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 25, 2012

bleb \bleb\, noun:

1. A bubble.
2. Medicine/Medical. A blister or vesicle.

One day, as he was bathing her, a bleb of shampoo had streamed into her eye, and she had kept a hand pressed to it for the rest of the day, quailing away from him whenever he walked past.
-- Kevin Brockmeier, Things That Fall From the Sky

His gaze skims over the computer out the side-yard window, to rest on a fat avocado, a bleb of green light hanging from a branch.
-- Diana Abu-Jaber, Birds of Paradise

Bleb was first used in the early 1600s. It is considered imitative of a blister itself. It is also related to the Middle English word blob.

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

Educe

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 24, 2012

educe \ih-DOOS\, verb:

1. To draw forth or bring out, as something potential or latent.
2. To infer or deduce.

Forty or fifty minutes of vigorous and unslackened analytic thought bestowed upon one of them usually suffices to educe from it all there is to educe, its general solution…
-- Edited by Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok, The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce

If, after this, you can possibly want any further aid towards knowing what Sir Lionel was, we can tell you, that in his soul "the scientific combinations of thought could educe no fuller harmonies of the good and the true, than lay in the primaeval pulses which floated as an atmosphere around it!"...
-- George Eliot, Middlemarch

Related to educate, educe is derived from the Latin roots ex- meaning "out" and ducere meaning "to lead." Shakespeare was the first writer to use it in the sense of "to provide schooling" in Loves Labours Lost.

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

Slimsy

Word of the Day for Monday, January 23, 2012

slimsy \SLIM-zee\, adjective:

Flimsy; frail.

"Nice girl . . ." he mused, "but sort of thin and slimsy and delicate, not robust and hearty like the kind of girl you ought to have on a farm."
-- Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Flying Bird

The coat was a slimsy bit of dark silk, with a glister in it; and the hat was the thinnest straw, the brim curling a little in the wind.
-- Max Brand, Storm on the Range

Slimsy is an Americanism that came into common use in the 1830s and early 1840s. It is a combination of slim and flimsy.

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

Natheless

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 22, 2012

natheless \NEYTH-lis\, adverb:

Nevertheless.

Natheless, it was I who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning.
-- Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering

Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end will we pray.
-- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Natheless is an Old English word. Nā meant "not" in Old English, and the other roots (the and less) have remained constant in modern English.

With thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Remora

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 21, 2012

remora \REM-er-uh\, noun:

1. An obstacle, hindrance, or obstruction.
2. Any of several fishes of the family Echeneididae, having on the top of the head a sucking disk by which they can attach themselves to sharks, turtles, ships, and other moving objects.

Notwithstanding the extreme unpopularity of the Duke of Kent as a soldier, there was no remora to his employment.
-- Robert Huish, The History of the Life and Reign of William the Fourth

They all coexist today in diachronic contradictions, and what coexists is the colonial remora of Bolivian history, the different articulations of colonizing forces and colonized victims.
-- Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking

Remora is derived from the Latin word remorārī meaning "to delay."

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

Deucedly

Word of the Day for Friday, January 20, 2012

deucedly \DOO-sid-lee\, adverb:

Devilishly; damnably.

When I went in I had seen that there was a deucedly pretty girl sitting in that particular seat, so I had taken the next one.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

It's most important. You will put me in a deucedly awkward position if you don't.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

Deucedly is related to the word deuce which refers to the face of a die with one dot, as in "to roll deuces." It comes from the Latin word for two, duos. In the mid-1600s, it became associated with bad luck, probably because it was the lowest score you could get when playing dice.

With thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/  



Shiv

Word of the Day for Thursday, January 19, 2012

shiv \shiv\, noun:

A knife, especially a switchblade.

Then this one cop, the guy, he pulls out a picture, shows me a photograph, see, of my shiv. Now, I gotta tell ya, this shiv of mine's no ordinary blade.
-- Ashok Mathur, Once Upon an Elephant

“Why would he wipe the shiv?” Decker said. “Supposedly it was his shiv, not hers. Of course it would have his prints on it. Seems to me he'd just stick it back in its sheath and leave.”
-- Faye Kellerman, Milk and Honey

First used in English in the early 1600s, shiv is of unknown origin, but it may be related to the Romany word for knife, chiv.

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

Persnickety

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 18, 2012

persnickety \per-SNIK-i-tee\, adjective:

1. Overparticular; fussy.
2. Snobbish or having the aloof attitude of a snob.
3. Requiring painstaking care.

These critics can take some consolation by looking at the recent rehabilitation of Hamilton Grange, the upper Manhattan house built by founding father Alexander Hamilton. It shows just how persnickety a preservation project can be.
-- Robbie Whelan, "Historic Home on the Grange," The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2011

The point here is to make your animal understand that its upstairs neighbour is exceptionally persnickety about territory.
-- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Persnickety dates back to the late 1800s. It is a variant of the Scots word pernickety, which is of uncertain origin. Pernickety is perhaps related to other Scots words with the per- prefix, like perskeet which meant "fastidious."

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

Alate

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 17, 2012

alate \EY-leyt\, adjective:

1. Having wings; winged.
2. Having membranous expansions like wings.

noun:
1. The winged form of an insect when both winged and wingless forms occur in the species.

Vainly a few diehard physicists pointed out that wings are of no propulsive help in airless void, that alate flight is possible only where there are wind currents to lift and carry.
-- Robert Silverberg, Earth is the Strangest Planet

There are no words branded into this gate, only the shape of a large bird with its wings stretched out over the width of the road like an alate protector.
-- Jenny Siler, Easy Money

Alate is comprised of the Latin roots āla meaning "wing" and the suffix -ate which was used in Latin to make a word an adjective (like separate) but in English came to be used to create a verb out of a noun (like agitate).

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

Perspicacious

Word of the Day for Monday, January 16, 2012

perspicacious \pur-spi-KEY-shuhs\, adjective:

1. Having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning.
2. Archaic. Having keen vision.

You are perspicacious, know the ways of the world, and are more tactful than most men of your age.
-- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

More perspicacious neighbours, the Paulsens among them, suspected that Joey also enjoyed being the smartest person in the house.
-- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

Perspicacious is derived from the Late Latin word perspicācitās meaning "sharpness of sight."

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

Outrance

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 15, 2012

outrance \oo-TRAHNS\, noun:

The utmost extremity.

"Its prevailing features are equability, ease, perfect accuracy and purity of style, a manner never at outrance with the subject matter, pathos, and verisimilitude."
-- Edgar Allen Poe, The Linwoods

I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake.
-- Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth

Outrance came from the Old French word oltrance meaning "to pass beyond." It is probably related to outrage.

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

Desinence

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 14, 2012

desinence \DES-uh-nuhns\, noun:

1. A termination or ending, as the final line of a verse.
2. Grammar. A termination, ending, or suffix of a word.

The extreme facility with which the language lends itself to rhyming desinence has a most injurious effect upon versification. There are not verses only, but whole poems, in which each line terminates with the same desinence.
-- Wentworth Webster, Basque Legends

But it will end, a desinence will come, or the breath fail better still, I'll be silence, I'll know I'm silence, no, in the silence you can't know, I'll never know anything.

-- Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing," The Complete Short Prose

Like descent, desinence is related to the Latin word dēsinere which meant "to put down or leave."

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

Viscid

Word of the Day for Friday, January 13, 2012

viscid \VIS-id\, adjective:

1. Having a glutinous consistency; sticky; adhesive.
2. Botany. Covered by a sticky substance.

This was the moment for the curious, shading their faces from the fiery glow, to plunge their walking-sticks into the viscid mass and dip out portions of the lava.
-- T. M. Coan, "An Island of Fire," Scribner's Monthly

But now a snake commenced to coil around my feet, and with a momentary terror I rushed forward, only to strike a rock and fall into a viscid pool.
-- Will L. Garver, Brother of the Third Degree

Viscid comes from the Latin word for mistletoe, visc. Mistletoe was used to make a sticky paste to trap birds called birdlime. It is clearly also related to the word "viscous."

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

Bonny

Word of the Day for Thursday, January 12, 2012

bonny \BON-ee\, adjective:

1. Pleasing to the eye.
2. British Dialect. A. (Of people) Healthy, sweet, and lively. B. (Of places) Placid; tranquil. C. Pleasing; agreeable; good.

adverb:
1. British Dialect. Pleasingly; agreeably; very well.

noun:
1. Scot. and North England Archaic. A pretty girl or young woman.

Mayhap 'tis time to speak of more than how fine the weather is or how bonny she looks.
-- Hannah Howell, Highland Honor

As he was about to fix the last nail in the last of the shoes, the man in green said, "Would you be knowing what ails the bonny young lady?"
-- Ethel Johnston Phelps and Pamela Baldwin-Ford, Tatterhood and Other Tales

Bonny is of uncertain origin. It may be related to the Old French word bon meaning "good." It entered the Scots dialect in the mid-1400s.

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

Expostulate

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 11, 2012

expostulate \ik-SPOS-chuh-leyt\, verb:

To reason earnestly with someone against something that person intends to do or has done.

The tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections; and sometimes I would expostulate with myself, why Providence should thus completely ruin his creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.
-- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Peter at last determined one day, all of a sudden, that he would step into this highland reaver's den, and expostulate with him on the baseness and impolicy of his conduct, and try to convince him of these, and persuade him to keep his own laird's bounds.
-- James Hogg, Tales of the Wars of Montrose

Expostulate is derived from the Latin word expostulātus which meant "demanded urgently or required."

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

Paregmenon

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 10, 2012

paregmenon \puh-REG-muh-non\, noun:

The juxtaposition of words that have a common derivation, as in “sense and sensibility.”

Although as artificial as his use of traductio, this use of paregmenon at least reveals Sidney's ingenuity and wit.
-- Sherod M. Cooper, The Sonnets of Astrophel and Stella

The recurrence of the same word with a different inflection, as in the polyptoton, or of different words of the same origin, as in the paregmenon, draws attention to the word thus recurring, and adds somewhat to its logical worth.
-- Josiah Willard Gibbs, Philological Studies with English Illustrations

Paregmenon comes from the Greek word parēēgménon meaning "to bring side by side or derive."

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

Heterotelic

Word of the Day for Monday, January 9, 2012

heterotelic \het-er-uh-TEL-ik\, adjective:

Having the purpose of its existence or occurrence apart from itself.

You're of heteroteleic value, that means you were invoked for an extraneous purpose alone, the outcome of which won't even be known to me until I'm back with my physical body in the physical world…
-- William Cook, Love in the Time of Flowers

Therefore, what has been proposed above as a means of redirecting the development of postmodernity toward more livable, human dimensions is a heterotelic narrative transitivity—an active reimmersion of narrative in the social—which contrasts sharply with the autotelic concern for their own procedures and the hermetic intransitivity of modernist self-consciousness and late modernist self-reflexivity.
-- Joseph Francese, Narrating Postmodern Time and Space

Heterotelic is directly derived from the Greek roots héteros meaning "other", tele- meaning "distant", and the suffix -ic which denotes an adjective, as in metallic and athletic.

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

Profligacy

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 8, 2012

profligacy \PROF-li-guh-see\, noun:

1. Reckless extravagance.
2. Shameless dissoluteness.
3. Great abundance.

The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice.
-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of meaner condition.
-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Profligacy comes from the Latin word prōflīgātus which meant "broken down in character or degraded."

With thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/

Cimmerian

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 7, 2012

Cimmerian \si-MEER-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Very dark; gloomy; deep.
2. Classical Mythology. Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of a western people believed to dwell in perpetual darkness.

I was ripe for death, and along a road full of dangers, weakness led me to the boundaries of the world and the Cimmerian land of darkness and whirlwinds.
-- Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Once beneath the over-arching trees all was again Cimmerian darkness, nor was the gloom relieved until the sun finally arose beyond the eastern cliffs, when she saw that they were following what appeared to be a broad and well-beaten game trail through a forest of great trees.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan the Untamed

Like gasconade, cimmerian was originally a toponym. It referred to the Cimmerii, an ancient nomadic people who live in Crimea, according to Herodotus.

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

Sprat

Word of the Day for Friday, January 6, 2012

sprat \sprat\, noun:

1. A small or inconsequential person or thing.
2. A species of herring, Clupea sprattus, of the eastern North Atlantic.

How'd you get yourself into this, sprat, Bustard wanted to know.
-- Gene Wolfe, Epiphany of the Long Sun

Edgerton was cursing, but Mr. Bullock just shook his head. "No, sir, don't say such things in front of the little sprat…"
-- Catherine Coulter, Deception

Sprat is a variation of the Old English word sprot which meant "a sprout or twig." Its most common usage is in the nursery rhyme "Jack Sprat."

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

Gasconade

Word of the Day for Thursday, January 5, 2012

gasconade \gas-kuh-NEYD\, noun:

1. Extravagant boasting; boastful talk.

verb:
1. To boast extravagantly; bluster.

The British officers laugh, because they are well armed and many, and Kemal's men are pitifully few, but they enjoy and admire Kemal's swashbuckling gasconade, and they let his party pass.
-- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings

The papers, barely days old, were full of boastful malarkey and gasconade, but of much more evident value when it came to information about the state of things in France, and in the local area.
-- Dewey Lambdin, Troubled Waters

Gasconade originally referred to people who were from the Gascony region of southwest France, bordering Spain. Gascons reputedly boast and exaggerate their success, and their toponym took on a life of its own. It became common in English in the early 1700s.

With thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/