Boon

Word of the Day for Saturday, March 31, 2012

boon \boon\, noun:

1. Something to be thankful for; blessing; benefit.
2. Something that is asked; a favour sought.

China has simultaneously become the greatest boon and the biggest disappointment.
-- Adam Davidson, "Come On, China, Buy Our Stuff!," The New York Times, Jan. 29, 2012

A boon to scholars and to those surreptitiously in search of esoteric knowledge. The reader in the shadowy, out-of-the-way carrel stifled a whoop of delight.
-- Carolyn G. Hart, A Little Class on Murder

Boon comes from the Old Norse word bōn meaning "a prayer."

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

Fugitive

Word of the Day for Friday, March 30, 2012

fugitive \FYOO-ji-tiv\, adjective:

1. Fleeting, transitory, elusive.
2. Having taken flight, or run away.
3. Changing colour as a result of exposure to light and chemical substances present in the atmosphere, in other pigments, or in the medium.
4. Dealing with subjects of passing interest, as writings; ephemeral.
5. Wandering, roving, or vagabond.

I started to write about Sean, and the writing, like a searchlight sweeping wildly, almost caught my fugitive feelings.
-- Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty

I fill my own glass now, and raise it, unspeaking: to her? to us? to the spirit of fugitive love? Whatever it is I mean, she nods as if to say she understands.
-- Vikram Seth, An Equal Music

First used by Shakespeare in Antony & Cleopatra, fugitive stems from the Latin word fugere meaning "to flee."

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

Eudemonia

Word of the Day for Thursday, March 29, 2012

eudemonia \yoo-di-MOH-nee-uh\, noun:

1. Happiness; well-being.
2. Aristotelianism. Happiness as the result of an active life governed by reason.

We all seek eudemonia, but he thinks that it takes a great deal of reflection and education to get a clear enough conception of it really to aim at it in our practice.
-- Robert Campbell Roberts, Intellectual Virtues

They may have believed that we already do value duty, utility, and eudemonia, but it is debatable whether they need to make such descriptive claims.
-- Jesse J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals

From Aristotle, eudemonia comes from the Greek word eudaímōn which meant "a good or benevolent spirit."

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

Luxate

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 28, 2012

luxate \LUHK-seyt\, verb:

To put out of joint; dislocate.

When I began to luxate the tooth I heard a crack.
-- Nathan Jorgenson, A Crooked Number

But at the same time he thinks, that the reduced bone will not remain in it's [sic] place, but luxate itself again, and fall back into the new-formed articulation, which it has formed to itself.
-- Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections

Luxate is not related to any word for "light." Rather, it is from the Greek word for "oblique," which was loxós.

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

Chelonian

Word of the Day for Tuesday, March 27, 2012

chelonian \ki-LOH-nee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Belonging or pertaining to the order Chelonia, comprising the turtles.

noun:
1. A turtle.

At the truly chelonian pace of somewhat under two miles per hour, the passengers and crew onboard would cover the twenty-seven hundred miles in just over two months.
-- Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers

The study door crashed back and a seventy-year-old politician stood there, top hat firmly on his head, collar awry around his scrawny, chelonian neck.
-- M. J. Trow, Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

What pair of messiahs could differ more harshly than Hiram and Magnus, the one a pedantic little fellow with a chelonian paunch and gold eye-glasses and the other a rough, shaggy, carnivorous revivalist from the dreadful steppes?
-- H. L. Mencken, "Editorial," American Mercury Magazine, Jan. to Apr. 1924

Chelonian comes from the Greek word for turtle, chelṓn.

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

Catechise

Word of the Day for Monday, March 26, 2012

catechise \KAT-i-kahyz\, verb:

1. To question closely.
2. To instruct orally by means of questions and answers, especially in Christian doctrine.
3. To question with reference to belief.

He sent her off when the dial made it five o'clock every fourth Sunday—for we had service only once a month, the parson having a church at Brampton, where he lived, and another as well, which made it the more wicked of us to play truant—but whether she got there early or late, or got there at all, he'd never ask, let alone catechise her about the sermon.
-- Mary Webb, Precious Bane

Aunt Bessie tried to catechise her about Erik's disappearance, and it was Kennicott who silenced the woman…
-- Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

Catechise stems from the Greek word katēchízein meaning "to teach orally." It was first used in the sense of "to question" by Shakespeare in Othello.

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

Tellurian

Word of the Day for Sunday, March 25, 2012

Tellurian \te-LOOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Of or characteristic of the earth or its inhabitants.

noun:
1. An inhabitant of the earth.

We must keep in mind that we are, or should I say have become, hybrid personae, part tellurian, and part extraterrestrial.
-- Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, Universe 3

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations…
-- James Joyce, Ulysses

Tellurian was first used by Thomas DeQuincy in 1846, even though it has classical Latin roots literally meaning "one of the earth."

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

Adriot

Word of the Day for Saturday, March 24, 2012

adroit \uh-DROIT\, adjective:

1. Cleverly skillful, resourceful, or ingenious.
2. Expert or nimble in the use of the hands or body.

He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending.
-- V.C. Andrews, If There Be Thorns

It requires finesse. She was very adroit — oh, very adroit — but Hercule Poirot, my good George, is of a cleverness quite exceptional.
-- Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Adroit is from the Old French meaning "elegant, skillful" from the roots a- meaning "increase" and droit meaning "correct."

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

Ruck

Word of the Day for Friday, March 23, 2012

ruck \ruhk\, noun:

1. A large number or quantity; mass.
2. The great mass of undistinguished or inferior persons or things.

Innis steered Jessica through a ruck of large, bearded men in dungarees and greasy sweaters who looked at her like she might be the floor show.
-- Paul Bryers, The Prayer of the Bone

A ruck of charts, clipboards, cuttlefish-flavoured peanut snacks, containers of the barley water and orange pop the enlisted brought on watch, binoculars, and struggling men stirred at the base of the cliff.
-- David Poyer, Korea Strait

The ruck of the men were lower down than our two heroes, and there were others far away to the left, and others, again, who had been at the end of the gorse, and were now behind.
-- Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

Ruck comes from an early Icelandic word ruka or ruke which meant "a heap or a stack."

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

Moschate

Word of the Day for Thursday, March 22, 2012

moschate \MOS-keyt\, adjective:

Having a musky smell.

Her familiar perfume and moschate odour was overwhelming within the confines of the car, especially with the windows rolled up.
-- Charles Ray Willeford, New Hope for the Dead

The plant of the Rio Grande is said by Mr. Schott to exhale a moschate odour.
-- William Hemsley Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, Volume 2, Part 1

Though moschate has Latin roots, it was not used widely in English until the early 1800s. The word mosch meant "musky" in Latin and was used to describe the wine commonly known today at "muscat."

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

Conniption

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 21, 2012

conniption \kuh-NIP-shuhn\, noun:

A fit of hysterical excitement or anger.

"Wah!" says Stella-Rondo. I knew she'd cry. She had a conniption fit right there in the kitchen.
-- Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O." The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

When they came home, everybody was having a conniption about a big giant fight in the village over who got whose share of their horrid meat.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption.
-- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love: A Novel

Conniption is actually an invented word. It first appeared in America in 1833 and may be related to the word corruption which was use in the sense of "anger" in the early 1800s.

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

Vernal

Word of the Day for Tuesday, March 20, 2012

vernal \VUR-nl\, adjective:

1. Appearing or occurring in spring.
2. Of or pertaining to spring.
3. Appropriate to or suggesting spring; springlike.
4. Belonging to or characteristic of youth.

By and by a bird piped in the garden; the shriek of a swallow made itself heard from a distance; the vernal day was beginning to stir from the light…
-- William Dean Howells, A Foregone Conclusion

Where are you trampling vernal blooms?
-- Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

Vernal stems from the Latin word vernus meaning "pertaining to spring." It is related to the word "verdant."

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

Carp

Word of the Day for Monday, March 19, 2012

carp \kahrp\, verb:

1. To find fault or complain querulously or unreasonably.

noun:
1. A peevish complaint.

She'd been carping about money lately – or not carping, but she'd inserted a few pointed remarks about pulling your own weight into the prolonged and intent silences that were her specialty – so he thought she'd be pleased.
-- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

And knowing he could not touch her by persuasion, he carped at her and teased her like a schoolboy.
-- Anton Chekhov, "Excellent People," Chekhov's Doctors: A Collection of Chekhov's Medical Tales

Carp comes from the Old Norse word karpa which meant "to brag or haggle."

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

Brisance

Word of the Day for Sunday, March 18, 2012

brisance \bri-ZAHNS\, noun:

The shattering effect of a high explosive.

The 'There' turned out to be crucial for the sense of brisance and closure and resolving issues of impotent rage and powerless fear that like accrued in Lenz all day being trapped in the northeastern portions of a squalid halfway house all day fearing for his life, Lenz felt.
-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

But this was sustained explosion, reaching now and then a quite unendurable brisance. Yet he endured it, not so much because it was her will as, unbelievably, what had become her need.
-- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

Brisance is a relatively new English word. It started being used commonly in the 1910s, but it can be traced to the Celtic word brissim meaning "to break."

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

Selcouth

Word of the Day for Saturday, March 17, 2012

selcouth \SEL-kooth\, adjective:

Strange; uncommon.

Its English is not more quaint than that of De Brunne himself; it contains no names more selcouth than he himself is in the custom of introducing…
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott

To whom there's hardly any selcouth thing, but seems a juggling trick, that would delude their fancies with an empty wondering; therefore against it they with thundering words do ring.
-- George Starkey, An Exposition Upon the Preface of Sir George Ripley

Selcouth has odd Old English roots. It is related to the word seldom and the Old English word couth meaning "to know."

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

Gasser

Word of the Day for Friday, March 16, 2012

gasser \GAS-er\, noun:

1. Something that is extraordinarily pleasing or successful, especially a very funny joke.
2. A person or thing that gasses.

“You're gonna whiff like Reggie Jackson today, pal,” I said. By the third hole, Blind Bob led by seventeen shots. It was a laugher, a gasser. If it were a fight, Big Al would've been counted out, taken to the hospital, and killed by Clint Eastwood by now.
-- Rick Reilly, Shanks for Nothing

This was very funny indeed, the gasser of all time. When Max announced the name at the briss those thirty-seven years ago, perhaps all the guests, including Dave Raskin, had split a gut or two laughing.
-- Ed McBain, The Heckler

Gasser is an Americanism that arose in the late 1800s.

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

Iniquitous

Word of the Day for Thursday, March 15, 2012

iniquitous \ih-NIK-wi-tuhs\, adjective:

Characterised by injustice or wickedness; wicked; sinful.

The commission was charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
-- Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

Anything else would be iniquitous - iniquitous is the only word. You know as well as I do that there is not the remotest chance of her ever being able to earn any money for herself out here.
-- Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

Iniquitous literally meant "unfair" in Latin, as its clear roots betray.

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

Dowager

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 14, 2012

dowager \DOU-uh-jer\, noun:

1. An elderly woman of stately dignity, especially one of elevated social position.
2. A woman who holds some title or property from her deceased husband, especially the widow of a king, duke, etc.

adjective:
1. Noting, pertaining to, or characteristic of a dowager:

Deeda Blair rhapsodised about the exquisite atmosphere of La Grenouille and La Caravelle, two of the leading temples of fine French cuisine, where she’d lunch with the dowager philanthropist Mary Lasker or the ubiquitous Nan Kempner in the early 1960s, when her husband, William McCormick Blair Jr., was J.F.K.’s ambassador to Denmark and they’d stop in New York on their way home to Washington.
-- Bob Colacello, "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunched!," Vanity Fair, Feb. 2012

She trusted the dowager, and respected her deeply. But that wasn't the issue. Which world was she living in? For the time being, that was the point.
-- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Dowager stems from the Latin word dotare meaning "to endow." In the middle French, it came to mean "pertaining to a dower," or the gift/payment that a wife's family gives her husband when they are married.

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

Astringent

Word of the Day for Tuesday, March 13, 2012

astringent \uh-STRIN-juhnt\, adjective:

1. Sharply incisive; pungent.
2. Medicine/Medical. Contracting; constrictive; styptic.
3. Harshly biting; caustic: his astringent criticism.
4. Stern or severe; austere.

noun:
1. Medicine/Medical. A substance that contracts the tissues or canals of the body, thereby diminishing discharges, as of mucus or blood.
2. A cosmetic that cleans the skin and constricts the pores.

One endeavours to correct, flushing out error and misconception with the astringent power of historical detail; the other treats the myth as meaningful cultural phenomenon in its own right, accounting for its emergence and tracing its development across time.
-- Beth Newman, Emily Brontë, "Introduction," Wuthering Heights

But here too she was thinner, and going unripe, astringent.
-- D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

Related to the words strain and string, astringent comes from the Latin root stringere which meant "to draw tight."

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

Remit

Word of the Day for Monday, March 12, 2012

remit \ri-MIT\, verb:

1. To slacken or relax.
2. To transmit money, a check, etc., as in payment.
3. To abate for a time or at intervals, as a fever.
4. To refrain from exacting, as a payment or service.
5. To pardon or forgive a sin, offense, etc.

It matters not that we remit our attention, at times, to the pain or the pleasure; these are always in the background; and the strength of the appetite is their strength.
-- Alexander Bain, Practical Essays

If I were satisfied that you were not intending to make an exhibition of yourself I might be prepared to remit the fines.
-- Henry Cecil, Independent Witness

Remit is derived from the Latin roots re- meaning "back" and mit meaning "send," so it literally meant "to send back."

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

Antipode

Word of the Day for Sunday, March 11, 2012

antipode \AN-ti-pohd\, noun:

A direct or exact opposite.

It seemed that this enthusiast was just as cautious, just as much alive to judgments in other minds as if he had been that antipode of all enthusiasm called "a man of the world."
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I look for the furthest spot on earth away from Lancaster — Lancaster's antipode— the middle of the Indian Ocean.
-- Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

Here we are, thrust to the opposite and absurd antipode of what we think is good. And tomorrow we'll be out of bed at three o'clock in the pitch-black morning.
-- Tim O'Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Antipode is actually a clipping, or back-formation, of the word Greek word antipodes. It lost its s in the mid-1500s. The original word literally meant "opposite feet," as in "the place on the exact opposite point on the globe."

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

Furcate

Word of the Day for Friday, March 9, 2012

furcate \FUR-keyt\, verb:

1. To form a fork; branch.

adjective:
1. Forked; branching.

The root systems of an ancient tree seemed to furcate and furrow the surface of his thighs, and where his skin was not covered in dark hair, it was strangely rippled with wild webs of some kind of tissue just beneath the skin.
-- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel

Just focus your attention on the eyes and let your mind furcate as it will.
-- Patrick Moran, Tsunami Sundog

Furcate is from the Medieval Latin word furcātus which meant "cloven."

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

Pococurante

Word of the Day for Thursday, March 8, 2012

pococurante \poh-koh-koo-RAN-tee\, noun:

1. Caring little; indifferent; nonchalant.

adjective:
1. A careless or indifferent person.

“She is a charming lady who happened to be born in Vitebsk, and no more than that,” he kept thinking, trying to convince himself that he would be a pococurante person when it came to Nina.
-- Johnny Wright, The Lost Chagall

Already he could see Alfred's blonde head making its way toward him, and he was smiling to himself at the thought of the contemptuous objurgations his friend would address to him at his absurd pococurante affectation, for so Alfred always called Guston's indifference, when his eyes fell upon a woman's profile seated within a few feet of him.
-- Ernest Roland, "Lèse-Amour," The Galaxy

Pococurante came directly from Italian into English in the 1750s. It literally meant "caring little."

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

Rutilant

Word of the Day for Wednesday, March 7, 2012

rutilant \ROOT-l-uhnt\, adjective:

Glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.

He had a round head as bare as a knee, a corpse's button nose, and very white, very limp, very damp hands adorned with rutilant gems.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

It was like the show-piece that is reserved for the conclusion of a fete, the huge bouquet of gold and crimson, as if Paris were burning like a forest of old oaks and soaring heavenward in a rutilant cloud of sparks and flame.
-- Émile Zola, The Downfall

Why flashed through space a sudden and extraordinary splendor, intenser than the rutilant fulgurations of the aurora borealis, lighting up the whole heavens instantaneously, and for a moment eclipsing every star of every magnitude?
-- Jules Verne, To The Sun?

Rutilant is from the Latin word rutilāns, meaning "having a reddish color or glow."

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

Appertain

Word of the Day for Tuesday, March 6, 2012

appertain \ap-er-TEYN\, verb:

To belong as a part, right, possession or attribute.

Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness…
-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense and Other Writings

In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg.
-- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

…and since Phillotson's success in obtaining at least her promise had become known to Jude, he had frankly recognized that he did not wish to see or hear of his senior any more, learn anything of his pursuits, or even imagine again what excellencies might appertain to his character.
-- Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

Appertain stems from the Old French word apertenir which meant "to belong." The prefix ap- is a variation of the prefix ad- which means "toward."

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

Profluent

Word of the Day for Monday, March 5, 2012

profluent \PROF-loo-uhnt\, adjective:

Flowing smoothly or abundantly forth.

Half the congregation — Gwen's family and friends — reached the door ahead of me, their nonchalance more powerful, more profluent than my most intense desire. I could only crawl toward the chapel doors.
-- Stephanie Grant, The Passion of Alice

In southern Arizona, it rains in summer, and I'm impatient for the monsoon torrents of August, for an indulgence of water, a baptism that will roister over rocks and swell profluent down the mountainside, roll through the rubble of the canyon floor...
-- Caitlin L. Gannon, Southwestern Women: New Voices

Profluent is derived from the Latin word prōfluere, which meant "to flow forth."

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