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the worthless word for the day is: incrassate(d)
[fr. L. incrassare to fatten, make thick]
/in CRAS sate/
Botany, Zool. thickened or swollen: inspissated;
also fig.
"..lubricious investiture decommissioned externalized
incondite anastrophe incrassate misinformed.."
- William S. Burroughs, The Job (1969)
My first is in Dog House, though not in demand:
My second's incrassate until it's in hand:
My whole is in Simpson when it isn't in Bland.
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
____________
NB: here is an RSS feed for wwftd
the worthless word for the day is: heresiarch
[L.L. haeresiarcha < L.Gk hairesiarches]
/huh REE zee ark/
the founder of a heresy or the leader of a heretical sect
"..and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held
that the Father was Himself His own Son."
- James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
"I conjectured that this undocumented country and its
anonymous heresiarch were a fiction devised by Bioy's
modesty in order to justify a statement."
- Jorge Luis Borges Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
(tr. Andrew Hurley)
another recent search: "aggrawator"; I don't find much
for this, but I do find aggerwator given on a couple of
word lists as locks of hair that frame the face — let's
see if we can find something more on this one.
someone recently searched for cacestogenous, which Mrs.
Byrne gives as 'caused by unfavorable home environment';
but I can find no evidence it's ever been used anywhere.
whoever was recently searching for "area subject to
dust storms" was, I presume, thinking of dust bowl.
spotted any obscure words? questions? other comments?
send e-mail to: wwftd master
-tsuwm
I periodically add words to the wwftd dictionary,
just because they come up so often; either used by
me or searched for by visitors to this site.
Faldage points out that quixotry is the highest-scoring
Scrabble word ever in tournament play.
other recent adds: logophile, linguaphile, direption,
alembic, precession, subhumerate, flibbertigibbet,
catawampus (or cattywampus), pluviosity, snallygaster,
coprophagous, tergiversate, scrutate
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wwftd was recently a Mr. Modem's Site of the Week.
wwftd is listed as a resource at UsingEnglish.com,
under the ESL Web Directory!
J. Reid writes to inform me, "your web page was listed
on Wacky Web Sites Page-A-Day Calendar on May 3, 2007."
It was recently pointed out to me that Spunk and Bite,
by Arthur Plotnik (2005), mentions our site saying,
"Anything but worthless."
OEDILF
Improve Your Vocabulary
Oh the ignominy! -- we've been mentioned by the Conservative Voice.
Spreading the polemical wealth somewhat is a brief mention in
The Capital Times, Wisconsin's Progressive Newspaper.
Not to be outdone, the Libertarians have found us via this blog.
o Russell Perkins writes:
The phrase "yesterday's home page" from the P.K. Dick
quotation used to illustrate "kipple" caught my eye as
being anachronistic for a 1960's novel. My 1996 Del
Rey reprint of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
reads (p.65) "yesterday's homeopape." I believe that
the word "homeopape" is another of the words coined by
P.K. Dick. From the contexts in which the word appears,
a homeopape seems to be something like a futuristic
newspaper. My guess at the etymology would be:
"homeo-" similar + "pape" paper.
o Mel DeSart writes to suggest that the Darwin quote,
which can be found online in a couple of places,
should probably have read, "Mammalia, Ornithology,
Ichthyology, and Entomology." well, it was only
a letter...
o somehow I took on the notion that plunderbund was
coined by Adlai Stevenson, but according to OED2 it
dates back at least to 1914:
plunderbund - [U.S. colloq.] A corrupt alliance of
political, commercial, and financial interests engaged
in exploiting the public
1914 Voice of People (New Orleans) 8 Jan. 1/1 The
whole force of the Texan plunderbund..are howling at
the heels of the dauntless army of workers.
--Robotman--
"My third grade teacher was the master of hell and damnation.
Rumor had it that he had tried to become a Christian Brother
but hadn't made it. The rumor was probably true, because this
man really knew his eschatology."
- Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003)
how do you say epicaricacy in German?!
/EP i kar IK i see?/
taking pleasure in other's misfortune: schadenfreude
this word, as defined in Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of
Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, has generated
lots of discussions on a couple of online forums that
tend to discuss these sorts of things. where in the world
did Mrs. B. find this English word for a concept that
isn't supposed to have a word in English (schadenfreude
being German in origin)? this question has yet to be
answered in full, but I can quote you this from Nathan
Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary,
which is a very olde dictionary indeed (1721):
Epicharikaky - from the Greek words or roots for
"upon", "joy", and "evil": "A Joy at the Misfortunes
of others".
"And I could understand every word she said," she claimed
with pride, referring to our strained conversation with
the car hire man in Glasgow, and the local in Crianlach
who had tried engaging Bel in conversation about, so far
as either of us could make out, trout-tickling."
- Ian Rankin, Bleeding Hearts (1994) (see guddle)
"The newspapers had the Widdler story, and tied it to Bucher,
Donaldson, and Toms. Rose Marie said that more arrests were
imminent, but the Star Tribune reporter spelled it "eminent"
and the Pioneer Press guy went with "immanent." You should
never, Lucas thought, trust a spell-checker."
- John Sandford, Invisible Prey (2007)
"But the symbolic nature of the fruit (knowledge of good and
evil, which in practice turned out to be knowledge that they
were naked) was enough to turn their scrumping escapade into
the mother and father of all sins."
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
"...jawbreakers the size and density of billiard balls, which
were the best value of all as they would last for up to three
months and had multiple strata that turned your tongue
interesting new shades as you doggedly dissolved away one
squamous layer after another."
- Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
stoush
Aussie slang a brawl or fight, a scrap
"At the end of the lunch, though, I wasn't just muzzy but
absolutely knocked cold by the Madiran. I went back upstairs
and slept for two hours." - Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon (2000)
"That minacious image was buttressed when it was revealed
several years ago that convicted spy Robert Hanssen, the FBI
official who sold intelligence to the Soviet Union and may
have been responsible for the death of at least one American
agent, was a member of Opus Dei."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dec 10, 2005
bibulous laughter; found in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
of or relating to drink or drinking
I've had cynarctomachy (bear-baiting with a dog) for a long
time and just discovered it is a nonce-word in Butler.
Gadarene poets; found in reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars...
headlong, precipitate
trepidatious (fearful)
and again:
"The Sultan is deposed, fainting into the arms of his chief
eunuch when he is informed that he is to be sent to Salonika,
and his trepidatious, pliable brother is released from thirty
year's house arrest in order to be enthroned in his place."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
NFL kickers are highly fungible.
interchangeable (of commodities)
pareidolia
Astronomer Philip Plait has two words for the latest
claims of alien objects on Mars. The first is
"garbage." The second and more scientific word is
"pareidolia."
quidnunc
one who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip,
a busybody
trencherman
a hearty eater
I objurgate the centipede,
A bug we do not really need.
-Ogden Nash, The Centipede
floccinaucinihilipilification
the categorizing of something as worthless;
it's what we do here!
deja vu, presque vu, and jamais vu are mentioned in
Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22 and play a large
role in Kim Stanley Robinson's 1996 novel Blue Mars.
Welcome logophiles and verbivores; here are some
notes and updates to past wwftds. If you're
curious as to what we're about, and to see the
subscription list fine print, see our policy.
---
A critic writes as follows, "the name of your site arguably
serves to make its creator(s) appear ludibrious (that is to
say, the butt of their own joke)." Used in this sense, I
guess I should add ridiculous to the definition of
ludibrious.
---
I was cleaning out all of my extant email venues,
and I discovered this gmail from back in August:
re: today's wwftd is... yclyketed
I think this would be "ee~KLEE~ted", alo[ng] the
same lines as yclept... and it is the ME version
of 'cleated', if I am not mistaken..
Kind regards from planet Solipsis,
Anthony S.
---
With regard to the U.S. phrase root hog or die,
our friend Ann H. notes that "Charles Funk explained
the expression this way, in Heavens to Betsy! & Other
Curious Sayings:
Get to work or suffer the consequences. Although the
earliest printed record of the Americanism so far
exhumed dates only to 1834 ... it probably goes back
to colonial times or, at least, to early frontier
days. And, probably, its origin was literal -- an
admonition to hogs or pigs when crops were scant to
forage for themselves in order to survive. In fact,
the expression sometimes appears as a command as given
to a hog: "root, hog, or die!" The way it appears in
each of the seven stanzas of the folk song under that
title in the Archive of the American Folk Song
Society, Library of Congress, each of which closes
with the line, is:
Oh, I went to Californy in the spring of Seventy-six,
Oh, when I landed there I wuz in a terrible fix,
I didn't have no money my victuals for to buy,
And the only thing for me was to root, hog, or die.
---
Dr. McKay writes: The 'jejunum' is part of the small
intestine and means 'empty', so jejeunosity, (merely a
fancy spelling by NYT Dowds person/journo), should
mean an 'emptiness' or 'lack of content' and then it
carries a much better and more correct meaning!
And Joan B. writes: IF you google Woody Allen and
jejunosity, you'll find many references to Woody
Allen's use of the term in the film Love and Death,
which came out in 1975 -- well ahead of Maureen Dowd's
(misspelled) use of that term on September 3, 2003,
in a NYTimes article.
so I googled:
Boris: Since when is murder a heroic act?
Sonya: Violence is justified in the service of mankind.
Boris: - Who said that?
Sonya: Attila the Hun.
Boris: You're quoting a Hun to me?
Boris: Don't you know that murder carries with it a
moral imperative that transcends any notion of
inherent universal free will?
Sonya: That is incredibly jejune.
Boris: That's jejune?
Sonya: Jejune!
Boris: You have the temerity to say that I'm talking
to you out of jejunosity? I am one of the most
june people in all of the Russias.
---
Jenny writes:
Could [your recent] word, minatory, have any
connection whatever to the [Minotaur which was]
VERY menacing and dangerous?
Minotaur is from (literally) Minos' bull (as in
taurus); the similarity is only serendipity.
---
H. L. Mencken coined the word ecdysiast in 1940, from
the root ecdysis, in response to a request from a
stripper for another word for her job.
---
minion Jim B. writes from Lincoln Univ.: "Regolith!
Ah, now you're in my territory.... I like to tell
my astronomy classes that the regolith of the Moon
is basically pulverized rock and dust resulting from
the heavy bombardment by meteors early in the history
of the solar system (about 4 billion years ago). This
is more colorful than a dry definition. (I'd hate to
have my students memorize phrases like "the unconsol-
idated solid material...") The Earth would be like
this also, but we have an active surface: erosion,
volcanic activity, and crustal movement. Before we
landed on the Moon, some people in NASA feared that
this material in the regolith might be too loose to
support the weight of a large object. Luckily, it was
firm enough that the moon landers, with the astronauts
inside, didn't just sink out of sight. This would have
made for a pretty dismal Tom Hanks movie."
---
regarding tetragrammaton, a happy subscriber writes:
"I must disagree. Not only is [this] word of the day
not worthless, I have actually used it within the past
six months, when teaching my ninth grade students
about the transmission of the Hebrew scriptures. The
scribes were very creative in writing the name of God,
to ensure that no one would in his reading later say
the name aloud, thus breaking the commandment against
blasphemy."
w.m. comments: yes, well that's why we referred to
it as the "ineffable name of God ".
---
Donald Le Messurier writes:
"The gyascutis is commonly known as a "Side-Hill
Lancer". You have greatly enlightened me with the
more proper name for this beast. It may be unknown
to you that it is quite dangerous and fast on its
feet. The only known means of escape is to turn about
and run in the opposite direction, in which case the
longer pair of its 4 legs will be on the upside of the
slope thereby unbalancing him and causing the animal
to fall over and roll down the hill. I learned this
at a very early age whilst spending my summers in
Northern Michigan where this creature was then rather
common. I do not know what the status of their
population is now, but then I was always very cautious
when venturing out in the heavily forested hills. I
should add with pride that none ever came even close
to catching me."
to which John Barry was moved to respond:
"I believe that Mr. Donald Le Messurier has mogued
you. He is likely chuffed, but let me expose the
fallacy of his expostulation... Here is the flaw.
Turning about and running in the other direction would
have no effect on the direction in which the gyascutis
is traveling. The re-orienting to which he refers
could only be achieved by causing the creature to
change direction - something that would require either
the considerably braver action of running past, the
insanely dangerous leap over, or the usually fatal
path under the fell beast."
this appears to be a U.S. coinage with local
variations, meant to be mock Latinate. as such, the
preferred spelling may be gyascutus, as in this
Britannica entry:
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=137899
---
the pyg family, so far:
callipygian
dasypygal
platypygous
pygal
pygalgia
pygephanous
spheropygian
steatopygia
pygophilous
uropygial
----
as to the recent prastuphulic,
rkdillon@_____ writes:
"I believe it's of Welsh origin & means heavyset...
with a hint of slatternly. I have a small Collins
Welsh dictionary & there're some near cognates in it.
I'm not familiar with the book cited but Jensen is
often a Welsh border name."
----
Robert Southey, of some recent citations, was
poet laureate of England in 1813 and also a
noted critic of 19th century Americanisms, all
the while coining (or introducing) odd neologisms
of his own, such as agathokakological, cacodemonize,
gelastics and evangelizationer.
----
as words here cost nothing, the gulping
gobemouche is plentifully supplied
----
anthimeria - the substitution of one part of speech
for another; typically a noun used as a verb -- also
known as (and for example) "verbing a noun"
the worthless word for the day is: pullulation
[fr. L. pullulare, to sprout] /pul yuh LAY shun/
1) germination
2) a rapid and abundant increase
"The approaches to the monorail station were black
with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
"I felt all about me and within my obscure body an
invisible, intangible pullulation."
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
(tr. Andrew Hurley)
the worthless word for the day is: necrological
[necrology, an obituary + -ical] /nek ruh LOJ uh kul/
of, relating to, or having the nature of a necrology
"Herbert Quain died recently in Roscommon. I see with
no great surprise that the Times Literary Supplement
devoted to him a scant half column of necrological
pieties in which there is not a single laudatory
epithet that is not set straight (or firmly
reprimanded) by an adverb."
- Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions (1941)
(tr. Andrew Hurley)
the worthless word for the day is: piste
[F. piste < It pista, track] /peest/
1) a beaten track or trail made by an animal; more
generally, any track or trail
2) a hard packed ski trail or course
"A "lost" track recorded by the band in 1967 and
performed only once in public could finally be released,
Paul McCartney told the BBC in an interview... "I like
it because it's The Beatles free, going off piste.""
- The Observer (UK) Nov 16, 2008
"Graham Anderson's family holiday to exclusive Puy St
Vincent ended in appalling tragedy when he skied off
piste with his ski school, lost control and slammed
into a tree."
- Plymouth Evening Herald (UK) Nov 14, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: hypermiling
[coined in 2004 by Wayne Gerdes]
attempting to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-
conserving adjustments to one's car and one's driving
techniques
Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary prepares
for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of
the year. The 2008 Word of the Year is (drum-roll
please) hypermiling.
- OUP blog, November 10, 2008
"The AAA auto club issued a warning this morning that
some gas-savings techniques being popularized through a
"hypermiling" fad can be dangerous and should be avoided."
- Scott Powers, Orlando Sentinel November 13, 2008
(thanx to Betsy)
the worthless word for the day is: cunctatory
[fr. L. cunctari, to delay] /KUNK tuh tuh ri/
(not so) rare : delaying
"When Marie tries to get a visa to go back to France,
the vicious (and often murderous) commissar Pirogov
merely tears up her passport. Aleksei, partly out of
love for the motherland, partly out of necessity,
pursues a cunctatory course, playing along with the
authorities while hoping for some future amelioration."
- John Simon, National Review, May 22 2000
"As minister, Speer had been stripped of his power to
forbid scorched-earth measures. His cunctatory tactics,
doubletalk and delay, were patent defiance of Hitler's
orders."
- James P. O'donnell, The Bunker (2001)
(thanx to rkdillon)
the worthless word for the day is: baltering
[fr. balter, to tread clumsily, to tumble about]
tumbling
Yes, these are the dog days, Fortunatus:
The heather lies limp and dead
On the mountain, the baltering torrent
Shrunk to a soodling thread..
- W. H. Auden, Under Sirius (1952)
bonus word: soodling - moving slowly [origin uncertain]
the worthless word for the day is: flabbergastation
[fr. flabbergast, to confound]
the state of being flabbergasted
"We scarcely remember to have ever seen any respectable
party in a greater state of flabbergastation."
- Punch (London), 13 Dec. 1856
"To the complete flabbergastation of all present, he
easily read exactly what each of the five had written
on their scraps of papers."
- Newton Newkirk, Boston Post (1920)
"Just when we thought we had heard everything from the
financial shenanigans of some of our federal agencies,
along comes this "flabbergastation"."
- Washington Post (letter to the editor) Apr 17, 1995
the worthless word for the day is: vauntless
[fr. vaunt, boasting or bragging + -less]
not bragging or boasting
"Vigorous, vauntless, straightforward, this man is as
eminent and respected a teacher of men as might well
be found today..."
- Time magazine Oct. 13, 1924
"His tongue is true, he is vauntless, and tauntless."
- Daniel Sargent (of G. M. Hopkins),
Four Independents (1977)
the worthless word for the day is: preponderate
[fr. L. praeponderare to exceed in weight or influence]
/pri PON duh rate/
1) to exceed in weight: turn the scale
2) to exceed in influence, power, importance or numbers;
predominate
"And in balancing his faults with his perfections, the
latter seemed rather to preponderate."
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749)
"All these matters, no doubt, will be duly considered by
Congress, and a decision had on whichever side the
advantages preponderate."
- George Washington (to Henry Lee), 20 July 1786
the worthless word for the day is: delation
[fr. L. delatio, an accusation, denunciation]
accusation, denouncement
"[H]e was sure that Wield wouldn't have engaged in
a deliberate act of delation over his researches
into ex-Sergeant Roote's background."
- Reginald Hill, Death's Jest-Book (2003)
"Mirabeau himself announced that 'delation is the
most important of our new virtues!'"
- Friedrich Sieburg, Robespierre the Incorruptible
(2007)
the worthless word for the day is: caliginosity
[fr. L. caliginosus: see caliginous and -ity]
/kuh lij uh nos i tee]
archaic dimness of sight; darkness
"I dare not ask the oracles: I prefer a cheerful
caliginosity, as Sir Thomas Browne might say."
- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876)
"While he stops the camera from recording and
begins disassembling it, I swallow and walk out
into the whispering caliginosity."
- Jason Hornsby, Every Sigh, the End (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: mafflard
[maffle, to mumble or stammer + -ard] /MAFF lard/
obs. a stammering or blundering fool
"As his book, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary,
makes clear, Mr Shea's feat failed to make him a
better person, improve his conversation or make him
appear more intelligent. Rather it turned him into a
mafflard, bedevilled by onomatomania. "
- Ben Hoyle, The Times Oct. 4, 2008
this week: Reading the OED with Ammon Shea
the worthless word for the day is: onomatomania
[NL] /AHN uh MAD uh MANE ea/
uncontrollable obsession with words or names or
their meanings or sounds; esp.: a mania for
repeating certain words or sounds
"Time and again he returned to the subject of
Mrs. Van Alstyne as persistently as though he
were afflicted with onomatomania and her name
was his particular obsession."
- William R. Hereford, The Demagog (1909)
"I'm waiting for the next flashing.. name to
feed my onomatomania and induce reckless,
cackling giggles."
- Courier-Mail, 13 Sept. 1996
the worthless word for the day is: Sitzfleisch
[G., sitting flesh] /ZITS flaish/
the ability to endure or persist in some activity
"They simply hadn't enough Sitzfleisch to squat
under a bho-tree and get to Nirvana by contemplating
anything, least of all their own navel."
- D. H. Lawrence, Things (1928)
"There are the ghosts of governors past: Hiram Johnson
and populist uprisings; Pat Brown and build, build,
build; even Jerry Brown, ca. 1975, with his high-
decibel environmentalism, a California space program,
a string of new governmental agencies, contempt for
civil servants and not much Sitzfleisch for the daily
chores of governing."
- Peter Schrag, McClatchy - Tribune Business News
Nov 14, 2007
"I am always careful to pack a can of sitzfleisch
whenever I have to go to the post office or visit a
friend who wants to show me his entire collection of
baby pictures."
- Ammon Shea, Reading the OED (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: vocabularian
[vocabulary + -ian]
one who gives much or undue attention to words
"..the one thing that isn't contestable.. is the
last thing that left our venerable vocabularian's
mouth prior to his expiration: "Love one another,
push the perimeter of this glorious language.
Lastly, please show proper courtesy; open not your
neighbor's mail."
- Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea (2001)
"Passionate vocabularians often plunge into the
unabridged dictionaries, which average 450,000
entries and offer quantities of information not
available in desk versions."
- Richard Lederer, A Man of My Words (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: anthropophagous
[L. anthropophagus] /ænthruhPOHfagus/
man-eating; feeding on human flesh
"'However domesticated your academic may look, he is
by instinct and training anthropophagous. Whatever
else is on the menu, you certainly are!'"
- Reginald Hill, Death's Jest-Book (2003)
this week: a glance at Reginald Hill
the worthless word for the day is: (to go) pear-shaped
[fr. earlier senses, shaped like a pear; rich, mellow]
chiefly Brit. colloq. to go badly wrong, to go awry
""Because as you well know, Wieldy, the last time I
asked them for help, things went a bit pear-shaped.""
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
"Everything went pear shaped, then banana shaped, then
no shape at all. Then I seemed to be drifting in and
out of these weird dreams."
- Reginald Hill, Good Morning Midnight (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: plonker
[fr. plonk, to set down heavily or carelessly]
Brit. informal a foolish or inept person
""Any road, I didn't say he were a useless plonker.
And if Pozzo says we ought to listen to him, then
mebbe we should.""
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
""I'm being a plonker, but everyone's entitled this
time of year.""
- Reginald Hill, Death's Jest-Book (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: halitotic
[ad L. halitus, breath] /HAL uh TOT ic/?
(characterized by) having bad breath
"Minus her police ally, Jax was delighted to have whatever
high-level support she could hang on to in Mid-Yorkshire
and she let the halitotic councillor rabbit on for ten
minutes or so before cutting him off with a promise to
keep him up to speed."
- Reginal Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
[commenting on the forthcoming end of Prohibition, he said]
"we have cast off the cursed yoke imposed by a parcel of
umbrella-brandishing halitotic harridans who forced the
standards of Goosetown and Waterville, Ohio upon New York,
Chicago and Union Hill, New Jersey."
- Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: contortuplicate
[ad. L. contortuplicat-us < contortus, twisted together
+ plicatus, folded]
Bot. twisted back upon itself; also in extended use
""But it's all a bit... convoluted, isn't it, sir?"
"Convoluted?" echoed Dalziel. "It's [eff]ing contortuplicated!"
That sounded like a Dalziel original, but Pascoe had been
caught out before and made a note to look it up before making
comment."
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2002)
the worthless word for the day is: metastasize
[fr. NL metastasis] /muh TAS tuh size/
Pathol. to spread to other parts of the body by
metastasis; in extended use, to change form or matter;
to transform
"And the possibility was also there to be considered that
what happened between the judge and his associate wasn't
seductive flirtation but something misinterpreted as
such, growing grotesque in the imagination, sufficient
to metastasize as an inclination to bestiality."
- William F. Buckley, On the Right
this week: interesting usages
the worthless word for the day is: soubrette
[F. coy, reserved] /soo BRET/
1) Theatr. a) a lady's maid in comedies who acts the
part of an intrigante : a coquettish maidservant or
frivolous young woman -- compare ingenue b) an actress
who plays such a part; in extended use, a woman playing
a role or roles in light entertainment
2) a lady's maid; a maidservant
"Although ostensibly a male - she played the wisecracking,
cigar-smoking soubrette - Holt alone wore flesh-colored
tights."
- Darryl Brock, If I Never Get Back (2007)
this week: interesting usages
(this use seems very extended)
the worthless word for the day is: luxated
[fr. L. luxare < luxus, dislocated]
put out of joint; dislocated
"[T]here's not even a recognizable human being in here.
And this isn't just because of clunky prose or luxated
structure. The book is inanimate because it communicates
no real feeling and so gives us no sense of a conscious
person."
- David Foster Wallace,
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (2005)
this week: interesting usages
the worthless word for the day is: perseverating
[fr. L. perseverare, to persevere] /pe(r) SEV uh rating/
repeating something insistently or redundantly
"Hoffman realizes, belatedly, the television is
perseverating, obsessively and dramatically dispensing
CNN news. His father waves irritably at the television
and gropes for the remote to shut it off."
- Kathleen George, Afterimage (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: demegoric
[fr. Gk demegoros, popular orator] /dee muh GAW rik/
of or pertaining to public speaking
"Aristotle devides rhetoric into three parts. These
are the dicanic or forensic, a speech delivered in
court; the symbouleutic or demegoric, a speech
delivered in front of a political assembly; and
finally, the epideictic, a speech concerned with
praise and blame, delivered without explicit
political or judicial function."
- Benjamin Todd Lee, Apuleius' Florida (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: gelastic
[fr. Gk gelastos, laughable] /juh LAS tik/
serving the function of laughter, risible
"The members [of the Tuesday Club] adopted what they
called the "gelastic" law: "That if any Subject of
what nature soever be discussed, which levels at
party matters, or the administration of the Government
of this province, or be disagreeable to the Club...
the Society shall laugh at the member offending, in
order to divert the discourse."
- Elaine G. Breslaw, The William and Mary Quarterly
Apr., 1975
"Personally, I want to know the kind of guy or gal
who describes a situation as "droll" or "gelastic."
But those who opt for the LOL? I kind of want to
punch them in the jimmies."
- Jen Lancaster, Bright Lights, Big Ass (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: spruntly
[origin unknown] obs.
1) vigorously; youthfully
2) smartly; gaily; neatly
"How do I look to-day? Am I not drest Spruntly?"
- Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass (1616)
"But he does full justice to Jonson's linguistic
zaniness. The comic high-point comes when Sheila
Steafel's Lady Tailbush ("Am I not dressed spruntly?")
begs Douglas Henshall's dragged-up Wittipol to
discourse on Spanish fucuses (cosmetics) and, advised
of some diabolical concoction to "keep it in your
gallipot well gliddered", solemnly repeats the line
as if it were a Delia Smith recipe."
- Michael Billington, The Guardian Apr 6, 1995
gallipot - a small usually ceramic pot, for medicines
gliddered - glazed over
the worthless word for the day is: sinisterity
[fr. L. sinisteritas awkwardness, untowardness, perversity]
now rare (opposed to dexterity)
1) sinister character; perversity; dishonesty
2) lack of skill or dexterity; clumsiness, awkwardness
3) use of the left hand; skill in this
"Snarling wasn't a form of communication that came easily
to him, and attempting to keep his upper teeth bared while
emitting the plosive P produced a sound effect which was
melodramatically Oriental with little of the concomitant
sinisterity."
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2001)
"We might wisely keep that word [desterity] for what the
hand does at the mind's bidding; and use an opposite
word - sinisterity, - for what it does at its own."
- John Ruskin, Ariadne Florentina (1874)
"The Latin thief's - I may not say dexterity of hand without
exposing myself to the charge of making a bull - but if you
will allow me to say the Latin thief's sinisterity of hand,
became proverbial."
- R. Shilleto, in The [Cambr.] Journal of Philology (1877)
the worthless word for the day is: paronomania
[coined by Reginald Hill, after paronomasia]
a clinical obsession with word games
sometimes a person will go to great lengths in coining a
new word; take this word, for instance — on the flyleaf
of Dialogues of the Dead, Reginald Hill provided the
following fiction of an OED entry, complete with quotes
from Lyttelton, Byron and Hal Dillinger:
paronomania [Factitious word derived from a conflation
of PARONOMASIA [L. a. Gr. paronomasia] Word-play
+ MANIA (see quot. 1823)]
1. A clinical obsession with word games.
2. The proprietary name of a board game for two players
using tiles imprinted with letters to form words.
OED (2nd Edition)
"And was his attempt to read something significant into
these name changes merely a symptom of his own personal
paronomania?"
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2001)
"Anthropophagous. Charley loves such words. We still
play Paronomania, you know, despite the painful memories
it must bring him."
- Reginald Hill, Death's Jest-Book (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: nimrod
[fr. Nimrod, a mighty hunter]
1) not capitalized : a hunter
2) N. Amer. slang : a stupid or contemptible person;
an idiot
"Towns such as Eagle, Glenwood Springs.. and Gunnison
throw out the welcome mat for this horde of nimrods."
- Denver Post, Oct. 1994
"The Lord doesn't give a damn what a chicken does on the
Sabbath, you nimrod! It's a chicken."
- Christopher Moore, The Gospel According to Biff (2003)
this week: words you might not expect to find in
OED and W3, but there they are
the worthless word for the day is: snarf
[prob. blend of scarf + snack]
orig. U.S. slang to consume quickly or greedily
snarfed down some pizza
"Tradition has it that way back in the day, you could
snarf up more free stuff at the State Fair than you
could carry off - I still treasure a little Heinz
pickle pin I got there when I was a kid - and that
the giveaways, in these lean times, have gone away."
- Jacquielynn Floyd, Dallas Morning News (blog)
Oct 01, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: diddly-squat
[prob. euphemistic, cf. doodly-squat]
U.S. slang the least amount: nothing (in negative
constructions, anything)
if everyone ignores it, it won't be worth diddly-squat
-- Andrew Tobias
"On the subject of managerial philosophy, Ozzie Guillen
is something of an agnostic. He believes, with his
requisite fervor, that managers account for diddly-squat
of a team's success, which is interesting, because he
gets paid more than $1 million to manage the Chicago
White Sox."
- Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports Sep 25, 2008
---
J. Hill writes to exclaim:
How appropriate! I have a great usage example;
Yesterday I had a nice 401k package of company stock,
today it's worth diddly-squat.
the worthless word for the day is: bushwa
[probably a euphemism for BS] also bushwah
rubbish, nonsense
there it was again: the bushwa, the sloganeering,
being poured out to him with no regard for the
truth -- David Driscoll
"If you're a detective, what was all that bushwa
about Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard?"
- Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case (1959)
the worthless word for the day is: puzzomous
[puzzom (poison) + -ous(?)]
disgustingly obsequious(?) {Jeffrey Kacirk, citing
F. K. Robinson, but see below}
old glossaries generally gloss this as poisonous,
but I suppose that connects...
"Puzzomouos, poisonous."
- F. K. Robinson,
A Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases (1855)
"'A parfit puzzom', morally, a thoroughly pernicious
individual."
- F. K. Robinson, A glossary of words used in the
neighbourhood of Whitby (1876)
"Puzzomful, or Puzzomous, adj. poisonous. Extremely
filthy. 'Puzzomful winds,' those from the east so
destructive to our vegetation. Also, disgustingly
obsequious."
- John Harland, A Glossary of Words Used in Swaledale,
Yorkshire (1876)
this week: neologisms, contributions, contentions,
and other stuff
the worthless word for the day is: renegacy
the action of renouncing: renegation(?)
I have not been able to find renegacy in any dictionary,
but it is in wide evidence as applied to former leftists
who have reneged their views. Prof. Martin, cited below,
answered my query thusly: "It is likely a term of art
used by the far left. Very often, extremists develop
their own language to talk to each other. The far right
does the same [sort of] thing."
"One would have to write a whole pamphlet to enumerate
the gems of renegacy of that despicable renegade Kautsky."
- V. I. Lenin, Pravda No. 219 11 October, 1918
"The Marxist-Leninist Party has persevered in steadfast
revolutionary struggle, while the opportunists, as fair-
weather "revolutionaries," are reveling in despondency
and renegacy, are denouncing the revolutionary
traditions from the mass upsurge that reached its height
in the 1960s and early 1970s, and are cowering behind
the liberals, labor bureaucrats and any bourgeois who
is willing to throw them a crumb."
- Communiqué on the Second Congress of the Marxist-
Leninist Party, USA Fall 1983 (as quoted by Prof. Gus
Martin, Essentials of Terrorism (2007))
"There are a number of factors in such renegacy. Money,
adulation and that creeping conservatism known as
growing old play a part, as does the apparent collapse
of an alternative to capitalism."
- Terry Eagleton, The Guardian July 07 2007
the worthless word for the day is: exuviate
[fr. L. exuere, to take off]
to shed (a skin or similar outer covering): molt;
to free oneself from: change
"Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the
word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest
volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are
linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be
exuviated abstergently to make room for modern
additions..."
- The Times September 22, 2008
"The young crayfish exuviate two or three times in the
course of the first year."
- Thomas Huxley, The Crayfish (1880)
"..Wagner's observable behaviour indicated that his
intellect had yet to fully exuviate the bender's
incapacitating effects."
- Geoffrey Verdegast, Of Staves and Sigmas (2007)
bonus word: abstergent - cleansing or scouring
(thanx to B.J. Herbison)
the worthless word for the day is: snootitude
[fr. snoot, a snob; after attitude] /SNOOT uh tude/
the state of mind of a snoot; esp. in regards to the
usage of American English
(coined by David Foster Wallace?)
"Maybe it's a combination of my SNOOTitude and the
fact that I end up having to read a lot of it for my job,
but I'm afraid I regard Academic English not as a
dialectal variation but as a grotesque debasement of
SWE [Standard Written English], and loathe it even more
than the stilted incoherences of Presidential English
("This is the best and only way to uncover, destroy, and
prevent Iraq from reengineering weapons of mass
destruction") or the mangled pieties of BusinessSpeak
("Our Mission: to proactively search and provide the
optimum networking skills and resources to meet the needs
of your growing business"); and in support of this utter
contempt and intolerance I cite no less an authority than
Mr. G. Orwell, who 50 years ago had AE pegged as a
"mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence" in which
"it is normal to come across long passages which are
almost completely lacking in meaning.""
- David F. Wallace, Harper's Magazine April, 2001
but (note date),
"Palm Beach, mother ship of the insufferably wealthy, has
a track record of above-it-all snootitude that defies
reality for us in the trade classes. It was in deference
to the high-born, finely bred, princess-and-the-pea
sensitivities of Palm Beach residents that shirtless
jogging was barred from that city's streets a few years
back.I was surprised to learn they allowed pedestrianism
there at all."
- Don Addis, St. Petersburg Times Jan 15, 1989
"Snootitude is a fine coinage, but I have always wondered
what the criteria are by which certain neologisms are
silently accepted while others are not."
- Jim Bisso, Wordsmith Talk, 07/28/08
(thanx, Jim)
the worthless word for the day is: term of art
a word or phrase used in a precise sense in a
particular subject or field; a technical term
"Or will you have the goodness to supply us with
a few thumping, blustering terms of art..."
- Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816)
""Business model" is one of those terms of art
that were central to the Internet boom: it
glorified all manner of half-baked plans."
- Michael Lewis, The New New Thing (2000)
the worthless word for the day is: presenteeism
[after absenteeism] /prez un TEE iz um /
the fact or condition of being present, esp. at work;
(a) the practice of working more hours than is required
by one's terms of employment, or of continuing to work
without regard to one's health, esp. because of perceived
job insecurity; (b) the practice of attending a job but
not working at full capacity, esp. because of illness or
stress (usually opposed to absenteeism) {OED Online}
"'Presenteeism' in War Plants Sought in Manpower Measures"
- Christian Science Monitor (header) Jan 12, 1945
"A new CIGNA survey of U.S. workers shows the flip
side of low absenteeism is "presenteeism" - coming to
work sick or distracted by personal problems, which can
lower productivity."
- Hartford Courant Sep 13, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: chaogenous
[Gk chaos + genos, born] /kay OJ en us/
arising out of (born amidst) chaos
"Then soon chaogenous dreams of revenge were fuming
in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity burned
out, and he called her to him."
- John Gardner, Jason and Medeia (1973)
"And after a time, the boiling sea of blood and all the
lopped and all the hacked-up humanity that swam within
it drained from mah head, and from it rose a pillar of
chaogenous calculus, cold and hard. And some serious
weighing up of terms ensued. Yes, there, supine beneath
a bold and brazen sun, ah struggled with some pretty
eternal, some pretty adult problems. Listen."
- Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989)
the worthless word for the day is: dysnomy
[fr. Gk dys, bad + nomos, law] /DIS noh mee/
rare bad legislation; the enactment of bad laws {Cockeram}
"The state of 'eunomy' and good order which that
constitution [sc. Lycurgus'] brought about..."
- George Grote, A History of Greece (1846)
"And though our elected officials usually claim they are
committed to eunomy (like you know me), the enactment of
good laws that promote the welfare of the people, all the
wheeling and dealing of government often results in
dysnomy, the enactment of flawed legislation that
generates further difficulties and discontent."
- Charles H. Elster, There's a Word for It (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: spifflicated
[a fanciful conflation] /SPIFF likatid/
slang intoxicated, drunk
(also spiflicated)
"They forced his teeth open, and, while a couple of
them sat on his chest, they poured about a quart of
corn liquor into his system. He was so spifflicated
before they let him up that they had to lift him
bodily and plant him in a seat."
- Washington Post, July 1904
""He's spifflicated," said Andy. "We gotta keep him
quiet.""
- Darryl Brock, If I Never Get Back (1990)
"Not surprisingly, many of these terms begin with
the letter "sh" ... er ... "s": "stewed," "soused,"
"stiffed," "stinking," "snuffy," "sozzled,"
"spiflicated," "shellacked," "sloshed," "smashed,"
"schnockered," "sauced" -- and those are just the
ones we can print in the newspaper."
- Rob Kyff, Hartford Courant Jul 11, 2001
the worthless word for the day is: fedifraction
[fr. L. foedus, compact + fractionem, a breaking]
/feh di FRAK shun/? (see also fedifragous)
obs. rare a breach of faith or covenant
"I.. shall be allowed the full benefit of all the..
plenipotentialities and fedifractions that I.. can
devise."
- Nathaniel Ward (as 'B.'), Discolliminium (1650)
"And let great Jove heare thus, whose thunders great
Do truces tie, fright the fedifragous."
- Virgil's Æneid (1632, Vicars tr.)
the worthless word for the day is: perquisquilian
[fr. L. quisquiliae, trifles, rubbish] (cf. quisquilious)
obs. nonce-word thoroughly worthless
"It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in
them, to spend their lives in making fiddle cases for
futilous women's fancies: which are the very pettitoes
of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys."
- N. Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647)
but..
"Efficient primality routines blinking retribution and
incalescent divinity without the avoidance of cachinnatory
hysterics. Avoid the perquisquilian planets that hatch
pseudo magic lanterns."
- Jason Earls, Red Zen (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: mentimutation
[fr. L. mens, mind + mutation] /men ti myoo TAY tion/
obs. rare a change of mind
the exceedingly rare mentimutations of
a major league umpire - David Grambs
" I.. shall be allowed the full benefit of all the..
illaqueations, extrications,..mentimutations,
rementimutations,.. that I.. can devise."
- Nathaniel Ward (as 'B.'), Discolliminium (1650)
"[T]he arrival on the scene of Perot the Spoiler has
made his mentimutation more pronounced."
- Billy Porterfield, Austin American Statesman
Jun 24, 1992
"In fact, there may not even be total consistency in
what I say. This stems less from constant mentimutation,
than from my not knowing what position might be most
valid and useful for research purposes."
- E. Quarantelli, What is a Disaster? (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: mundicidious
[fr. L. mundus, world + -cidious (-cida, killer)]
/mun di SID ee us/ (cf. homicidious, also rare)
obs. rare likely or able to destroy the world
"[T]hese are Exorbitancies: which is a formidable
word: a vacuum and an exorbitancy, are mundicidious
evils, Concerning Novelties of opinions..."
- N. Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647)
the worthless word for the day is: katabatic
[Gk katabatikos, pertaining to descent < katabatos,
descending] /KAT uh BAT ik/
of or relating to a cold flow of air traveling downward:
a katabatic wind
"A local cold wind is called Katabatic if it is caused
by the gravitation of cold air off high ground."
- Meteorol. Glossary (1918)
"Katabatic winds are associated with either a rise in
temperature (Foehn winds) or a decrease (Bora winds);
in either case they are severe."
- J. R. Dudeney, Antarctic Science (D. Walton, ed.)
(1987)
the worthless word for the day is: tehuantepecer
[fr. Gulf of Tehuantepec + -er] /tuh WANTuh PEKur/
usu. capitalized a violent north wind that brings
an inflow of cold air to Central America and esp. to
regions around the Gulf of Tehuantepec
"Santa Ana is similar to the tehuantepecer, papagayo
and jochwinde."
- New Haven Register Feb 19, 2006
"Santa Ana, Shamal, Sharki, Sirocco, Squamish,
Suestado, Sumatra, Sundowner, Taku, Tehuantepecer,
Tramontana, Vardar, Warm Braw, White Squall, Williwaw,
Zephyros."
- Albuquerque Journal May 4, 2001
this week: they call the wind Mariah
the worthless word for the day is: chubasco
[Sp. fr. Port. chuvasco] /chu BAH skO/
a severe squall of rain and wind especially along the
west coast of Central America
"In the semi-arid and desert regions of Mexico, Chubasco
is often used to connote a violent sandstorm."
- Roberto De Haro, The Mexican Chubasco (2007)
""If the conditions are just right - good, abundant
chubasco rains down in Baja and western Mexico, lots
of good leafing out of their food plant - you get a
population explosion," Donahue said."
- Orange County Register Aug. 7, 2008
this week: fine weather we're having
the worthless word for the day is: borasco
[Sp. borrasca] /bo ROS co/ (also borasca)
a squall often attended with a thunderstorm
occurring especially in the Mediterranean
"No, but the rain will, and upon us, too," said
Giorgio, who had now come up; "don't you see
that it's not a battle yonder, it's a borasco."
- Harper's Magazine, v. III (1852)
"Enjoy the gentle zephyrs and respect things called
borasco, meltemi, mistral, sirocco and bora which
do not knock before breaking the door down."
- Angus Clarke, The Times (London), Jan 16 1999
this week: words every sf fan should know..
the worthless word for the day is: waldo
[fr. the name of Waldo F. Jones, the inventor of such
gadgets in a science-fiction story by Robert Heinlein]
a device for handling or manipulating objects by remote
control
"Even the..humanoid gadgets known universally as 'waldoes'..
passed through several generations of development.. in
Waldo's machine shop before he redesigned them for mass
production. The first of them.. had been designed to enable
Waldo to operate a metal lathe."
- Robert A. Heinlein, Waldo (1942)
"Teleoperation on a massive scale. A kind of spiritual
waldo."
- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1993)
the worthless word for the day is: uplift
[fr. earlier sense, to lift up or elevate]
to engineer a species (usually genetically) to make
them intelligent; also, the act of uplifting
"A young man on the left, wrapped in silver sateen
from the throat to toe, held up a placard that said,
'Mankind Was Uplifted Too: let our E.T. Cousins Out!'"
- David Brin, Sundiver (1980)
"[E]ver since their uplift, these species had all grown
more decadent, temperamental, and culturally sterile..
particularly those uplifted for the longest period."
- James Gardner, Ascending (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: tanstaafl
[acronym, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch]
/tans toffle/
intj. asserting that there is a cost, hidden or otherwise,
to everything
"Oh, 'tanstaafl.' Means 'There ain't no such thing as a
free lunch.' And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE
LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half
as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice
as much in long run or turns out worthless.""
- Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966)
"'Tanstaafl. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
We both know that I was brought here for a reason. If we
could get down to business.'"
- Lance Parkin, The Infinity Doctors (1985)
""I noticed she had a large lapel button that said
TANSTAAFL, which I took to be some Scandinavian name.""
- Dr Helen Thomas, Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President
(2003)
the worthless word for the day is: elsewhen
[else + when] obs. at another time, at other times
but used by Robert A. Heinlein in 1941 as a novella title;
so now (in time-travel situations) at another point in time
"Her husband willed her to go to the church, which she both
then and elsewhen refused to do."
- John Foxe, The Book of Martyrs (1563)
"I appear in John Baird's apartment and set down the bag. I
look at the empty chair in front of the old typewriter, the
green beer bottle sweating cold next to it, and John Baird
appears, looking dazed, and I have business elsewhere,
elsewhen. A train to catch. I'll come back for the bag in
twelve minutes or a few millennia..."
- Joe Haldeman, The Hemingway Hoax (1990)
the worthless word for the day is: computronium
[coined by physicists Morgolus and Toffoli, for programmable
matter(?)] hypothetical material engineered to maximize its
use as a computing substrate
""The AI could have digested the entire Earth and spun its
atoms into a Dyson sphere made of pure computronium,"
Hugh told us."
- Damien Broderick & Rory Barnes, The Hunger of Time (2003)
"Planetary Elimination (example: post-Singularity beings
disassemble planet to make computronium)"
- Jamais Cascio, An Eschatological Taxonomy
(December 31, 2006)
the worthless word for the day is: feck
/fek/
feck has several vernacular meanings and variations..
[n] Scots 1) efficacy; force; value (whence, feckless)
2) (large) amount/quantity
3) greater or larger part (used with definite article)
[v] Irish Eng. 1) to steal 2) to throw
3) to leave hastily
[intj] chiefly Irish as an expletive, without sexual
connotation; as in: damn, blast
"He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever
been seen before in a' that presbytery..."
- R. L. Stevenson, Thrawn Janet (1881)
"I hae been a Devil the feck o' my life..."
- Robert Burns, Kellyburn Braes (1792)
"Because they had fecked cash out of the rector's room."
- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist (1916)
"Our perceived reluctance to leave the timelessness
of the struck chord has earned ukulele players our
reputation as feckless, clownlike children who will
not grow up."
- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2007)
this week: I may have previously failed to gloss these
the worthless word for the day is: refractory
[fr. L. refragor, to oppose] /ri FRAK t(u)ree/
1) resistant to control or authority: stubborn,
unmanageable
2) resistent to treatment; unresponsive; immune
3) capable of enduring high temperature
(not to be confused with refactory)
"I must object to Oxford's dubbing resistentialism
a "mock philosophy." There is nothing mock or sham
about it, as anyone who has ever had to call a
plumber on a Sunday morning to unclog a refractory
toilet will attest."
- Charles Elster,
Resistentialism: Things that go totally awry
Refractory Husbands (short stories)
- Mary Stewart (Doubleday) Cutting (1913)
the worthless word for the day is: autological
[fr. Gk autos, self + logos, word]
self-descriptive, self-referential
used to refer to words such as polysyllabic,
English, pronounceable, common, olde, noun, word
(compare heterological)
"If it seems questionable to include hyphenated
words, we can use two terms invented specially for
this paradox: autological (="self-descriptive"),
and heterological (= "non-self-descriptive")."
- Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979)
"The question is: Is the word "heterological" auto-
logical or heterological? If it's autological, then
it's heterological. If it's heterological, then it's
autological. Ha! Ha!"
- Cathcart & Klein,
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: procerity
[fr. L. proceritas height, tallness] /pro SER udi/
now rare tallness, loftiness, height
"When he met a tall woman, he immediately commanded
one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they
might propagate procerity."
- Samuel Johnson, Memoirs of the King of Prussia (1756)
"You see, I'm one of those who has been blessed in the
old elevation department. If it's height, tallness,
stature, procerity or prominence you're after, then I'm
your man."
- Bob Shields, Daily Record (Scotland), 15 Jan. 2000
the worthless word for the day is: aproneer
[fr. OF. naperon + Eng. -eer]
UK, obs. a shopkeeper or tradesman
"He is scared with the menaces of some prating
Sequestrator or some surly Aproneer."
- Bp. John Gauden,
Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ suspiria (1659)
Three quid for just one pint of beer?
The price is an outrage-too dear!
This gouging must stop!
Who's in charge of this shop?
I'll have words with the head aproneer.
- Len Farano, OEDILF
this week: let's see.. describing folks, with an 'a'
the worthless word for the day is: apolaustic
[Gk apolaustikos, devoted to enjoyment]
/ap uh LOS tik/
devoted to seeking enjoyment; self-indulgent
"The lordly, apolaustic, and haughty undergraduate.."
- Saturday Review (London) (1880)
"In France President Jacques Chirac observed his 73rd
birthday with the lowest approval rating in the history
of the Fifth Republic but with the prospect that when
his term ends in 18 months he can have an apolaustic
position in that Russian-German pipeline, possibly in
its oil-for-Food program."
- The American Spectator, Feb. 2006
the worthless word for the day is: archimage
[Gk archimagos] (also archimagus) /AR kuh maje/
a great magician, wizard, or enchanter
“No, no, Rashleigh,” said Miss Vernon; “dismiss from
your company the false archimage Dissimulation, and it
will better ensure your free access to our classical
consultations.”
- Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817)
"Of these, many had application and a few some talent,
but only that floricultural archimage Sebastian Marco
was a Merlin, and over the best gardens in town he
held an inviolate suzerainty..."
- Michael Malone, Dingley Falls (2002)
the worthless word for the day is: abigeus
[fr. L. abigeatus, cattlestealing] /ab IG ee us/
a cattle rustler
"The stealing of one horse and perhaps of an ox made
the thief abigeus; but it was thought that to steal
less than ten sheep, or than four or perhaps five
pigs, was not abigeatus, but simple furtum [theft]."
- William Smith, A dictionary of Greek and Roman
antiquities (1890)
the worthless word for the day is: antiscian
[fr. Gk anti, opposite + skia, shadow] /an TISH iun/
pertaining to those who live on the same meridian, but
on the opposite side of the equator, so that their
shadows at noon fall in opposite directions
"Those who live north of the equator are antiscians to
those on the south, and vice versa; the shadows on one
side being cast towards the north; those on the other,
towards the south."
- Webster's Dictionary (1828)
Southern brother, it's most odd to see
That your shadow's behind, as with me.
North and south-what a riddle-
The sun's in the middle.
We're antiscians, don't you agree?
- Robert (Bob) Hogg, OEDILF
this is (mis)defined on some word lists as 'someone who
lives on the exact opposite side of the world'
the worthless word for the day is: fidging
[fr. Sc. fidge, to move about restlessly]
Scot. restless, fidgety; in phr. fidgin' fain,
eager and twitching with excitement
"A fidging Mare should be well girded."
- James Kelly, Scottish Proverbs (1721)
Wha will mak me fidgin' fain?
Wha will kiss me o'er again?
The rantin' dog, the daddie o't.
- Robert Burns, The Rantin' Dog (1786)
this week: the Scots are comin'
the worthless word for the day is: forfoughten
[fr. archaic form of fought] /for FAUT un/
also forfoughen
Scot. worn out (from fighting); exhausted
""I propose that this good little gentleman, that seems
sair forfoughen, as I may say, in this tuilzie, shall
send for a tass o' brandy and I'll pay for another...""
- Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817)
""I ha'e fear Ise ta'en a strong grippit o' death. I am
sair forfoughten, but never fear, mon, but wha' the
auld Sir Peter will e'er present a heckle to his foes.""
- Zane Grey, George Washington, Frontiersman (1994)
the worthless word for the day is: ettle
[fr. ON ætla, to think, purpose] /ET'l/
Scot. 1) aim, intent, purpose 2) chance, opportunity
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi furious ettle..
- Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1790)
But fainness to be hame, that burnt my breast,
Made me to tak the ettle when it keest.
- Alexander Ross, Helenore (1768)
the worthless word for the day is: heidyin
[usu. in the phrase high heidyins] /hi heed yins/
Scot. (high) head one(s)
"Had the Chief Super been rapped over the knuckles
by the high heidyins themselves?"
- Ian Rankin, Strip Jack (1992)
"The roll-call sounds like a branch meeting of the
'republique des professeurs' combined with the
'high heidyins' of (mostly academic) Scottish
society."
- Sian Reynolds,
Paris-Edinburgh Cultural Connections (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: muffism
[fr. muff, an oaf + -ism] /MUF izm/
UK colloq. obs. the action characteristic of a
muff or incompetent person; foolishness
"[T]he muffism of walking down St. James's Street, on
a gusty day in September, in a rough, and somewhat
shabby, pilot coat."
- Lady Bulwer-Lytton, Behind the Scenes (1854)
"A feeling grew up in their minds that there was a
possibility of picking up a suitable husband just on
the borders of muffism."
- William Chambers, Ailie Gilroy (1872)
the worthless word for the day is: psilology
[alteration of philology; fr. Gk psilo- mere, bare]
/psi LOL o gy/
obs. nonce-word (love of) empty talk
"Schools of psilology (the love of empty noise)
and misosophy are here out of the question."
- Samuel T. Coleridge, Literary Remains (1838)
bonus word misosophy - the hatred of wisdom
the worthless word for the day is: bizarrerie
[F.] /buh ZAR uh REE/
1) bizarre quality 2) something bizarre
"It was a freak of fancy in my friend to be enamored
of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie,
as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself
up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon."
- E. A. Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
"Even the pictures illustrate only one or two phases of
its infinite bizarrerie, endless variety, preternatural
massiveness, and utterly alien exoticism."
- H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
(thanx to Meghan R. of the Scripps spelling bee..)
the worthless word for the day is: vindictivolence
[fr. L. vindicta vengeance, after malevolence]
nonce-word the desire of revenging oneself or of
taking vengeance
"Ill-will is perhaps always a form or mode of
vindictivolence, i.e. is connected with a feeling
of ourselves as somehow wronged."
- John Grote, A treatise on the moral ideals (1876)
the worthless word for the day is: lanceolate
[fr. L. lancea, lance] /LAN see uh late/
tapering from a rounded base toward an apex;
lance-shaped lanceolate leaves
"Tool resumed removing thin, translucent flakes of
obsidian from what was quickly assuming the shape
of a lanceolate arrowhead."
- Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice (2005)
""A medium-size hot to warm growing lithophytic
species found on southeast-facing vertical lime-
stone cliffs in Borneo at elevations of one hundred
and fifty to six hundred meters that has four to
five linear shiny green leaves and multiflowered
blooms on a suberect terminal with purple two-inch-
long pubescent inflorescence with elliptical-
lanceolate leaves and red-brown floral bract
carrying two to five simultaneously opening flowers.
How did you time them to be open when they got here?
How the hell did you do that?""
- David Stone, The Echelon Vendetta (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: ignotism
[fr. L. ignot-us, unknown]
obs. a mistake due to ignorance
"It has 92 Errors or Ignotisms in it."
- The Gentleman's Magazine (1737)
"Quite dead.. is old "ignotism," "a mistake due to
ignorance." God rest his soul, we could have used him."
- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, N.Y. Times Oct. 13, 1971
the worthless word for the day is: overegg
[Yorkshire, 'we mustn't over-egg the pudding']
fig., orig. Eng. regional to embellish or supply
to excess, to overexaggerate
"The bank was anxious however, not to overegg
investor expectations for the current year."
- The Evening Standard, 15 May 2002
"But even that was refreshing, coming from a conductor
so often accused of overegging the pudding."
- Times Online, UK - Jul 10, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: carrefour
[F. fr. L. quadrifurcus, having four forks] /kah ruh FUR/
1) a crossroads, a carfax 2) a public square, plaza
"They'd follow those aristocrats' high-stepping
chargers out through the city gates, there at the
carrefours where the meaner sorts of criminals
dangled unconscious from the whipping-posts, and
they would come into St. Germain des Pres..."
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver (2003)
"A horseback statue of McClellan stands in a carrefour
in Washington overlooked by the windows of an apartment
house largely occupied by retired generals and their
families."
- A. J. Liebling, World War II Writings (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: brumous
[fr. F. brume, fog] /BREW mus/
foggy, misty
"..the entire building seems to be speeding
massively through the brumous air, going nowhere."
- John Banville, Prague Pictures (2003)
"..it seemed to him, self-critical in the brumous
October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that
only his boots had shone throughout their two-hour
companionship."
- John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga (1922)
this week: more words from my reading
the worthless word for the day is: proprioception
[fr. L. proprius, one's own + (per)ception]
/PRO pree oh SEP shun/
the unconscious perception of movement and spatial
orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself
"She continues to feel, with the continuing loss
of proprioception, that her body is dead, not-real,
not-hers -- she cannot appropriate it to herself."
- Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(1998)
the worthless word for the day is: memorous
[fr. L. memorosus memorable, mindful]
obs. rare memorable
"How many of the following words, all of them em-
ployed by writers of English in earlier times, do
you recognize, much less use yourself? memorous..
memorious.. memoried.. memorist.. mnemotechny..
mnemonize.. mnemonicon... The contemporary rarity of
such terms, terms once familiar to ordinary speakers
of English, should give us pause. Where have all the
words for memory gone?"
- Edward S. Casey, Remembering (2000)
"I am the pain of young men memorous
Of beauty that they never knew, and loss
They never suffered."
- Archibald MacLeish, Tower of Ivory (2004)
this week: more words from the gang at Wordsmith Talk
the worthless word for the day is: chiack
[prob. alter. of cheek] /CHAHY uhk/ (also chyack)
Australia to jeer at; tease; deride
"[M]y mates begin to chiack me vociferously for acting
like a bloody drongo and my teachers afterwards rebuke
me for my rudeness to the regal personage and demand
to know the reason why."
- Roger Milliss, Serpent's Tooth (1984)
"Just think how you can chyack those stay-at-homes in
Sydney and Melbourne."
- Thomas Wood, Cobbers (1934)
bonus word: drongo Australasian slang
a simpleton; a stupid, worthless person
the worthless word for the day is: blooter
[origin uncertain]
UK, Scot.
[n] 1) a hard and usu. wild kick of a ball; also fig.
2) a fool, an oaf, a bumbler; a babbler
[v] to do something to excess; to blunder or babble
e.g., to hit with force; to smash, to kick a football
extremely hard or wildly; to drink heavily
"Jock nodded. 'The minute the wind dropped - came
into the boiler house there - said he was away to
blooter them.'"
- Peter Kerr, The Mallorca Connection (2007)
"Admittedly, a few weeks ago, I lulled my wife into a
false sense of security by not saying anything when the
last Rangers blooter was greeted with her cry of relief:
"Thank God that's football over for another season!" I
didn't tell her that the Euros were coming up hard and
fast."
- Aidan Smith, Scotland on Sunday, 8 June 2008
"Women go into pubs.. to enjoy a quiet drink with
friends. And any halitosis-ridden, hand-wandering
blooter who thinks otherwise could find himself stuck
up his own optic."
- The Daily Record (Glasgow), 23 July 1999
the worthless word for the day is: geis
[Irish] /gesh?/ (also gaysh, geas; pl. geasa)
Irish folklore a solemn injunction, prohibition, or
taboo; a moral obligation
"Some geasa were connected with totem animals, some
with certain aspects of hospitality, some with journeys
and traveling but, whatever the geis concerned, should
a person wittingly or unwittingly break it, then
certain doom would follow."
- Steve Blamires, Celtic Tree Mysteries (1997)
"In a sense which most Irish people will know, this put
Fallon under a geas, a moral compulsion, to say his bit."
- The New Statesman, 23 July 1965
(thanx to zmjezhd)
the worthless word for the day is: horrent
[fr. L. horrere to stand on end, bristle] /HOR unt/
archaic 1) bristled 2) bristling
"[S]uddenly I see him, as if he were before me here,
Joe somebody, a hulking, big-boned fellow with jug
ears and horrent hair."
- John Banville, op cit
this week: a touch of Banville
(thanx to Anthony Stevens)
the worthless word for the day is: marmoreal
[fr. L. marmoreus < marmor, marble] /mar MOR ee ul/
resembling marble, as in smoothness, whiteness, or
hardness
"The thought of all that tensed and tensely quivering
naked flesh, untrammelled save by the marmoreal folds
of a robe or a wisp of gauze fortuitously placed..
glutted my inexperienced but already overheating
imagination..."
- John Banville, op cit
the worthless word for the day is: glutinous
[fr. L. glutinosus < gluten, glue] /GLOOT (e)n us/
of the nature of or resembling glue; sticky
"The spring she had dreaded had come and gone, and
she had been too ill to mind its agitations, and now
it was a damply hot, glutinous summer."
- John Banville, The Sea (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: flocculent
[fr. L. flocculus + English -ent] /FLOCK yu lunt/
1) of the character of wool: woolly, flocky
<flocculent cloud masses>
2) made up of loosely aggregated particles or
soft flakes <a flocculent white precipitate>
"In the flocculent hush of the Golf Hotel we
seemed, my daughter and I, to be the only patrons."
- John Banville, The Sea (2005)
this week: a touch of John Banville
the worthless word for the day is: velutinous
[fr. L. velutum, velvet] /vuh LUT uh nus/
covered with dense, silky hairs: velvety
"I seemed to inhabit a twilit netherworld in which
it was scarcely possible to distinguish dream from
waking, since both waking and dreaming had the
same penetrable, darkly velutinous texture..."
- John Banville, The Sea (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: hooplehead
[origin uncertain, but see Quinion]
a foolish, ridiculous or worthless person
"He hated to think it, but his daughter was a hoople-
head. Every one else was moving out, and here she'd
moved back in."
- Mary Anne Kelly, The Cordelia Squad (2003)
"Hooplehead - Al Swearengen's designation for a
member of the largely unthinking, easily manipulated
masses. Presumably refers to the city of Hoople,
North Dakota."
- David Lavery, Reading Deadwood (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: altercate
[fr. L. altercari, to dispute or wrangle] /ALL tur kate/
to dispute with zeal: wrangle
"[I]t becomes us not.. to altercate on the
localities of the battle."
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
Athens: Its Rise and Fall (1837)
"People altercated over questions of identity,
particularly with respect to the older bones
that had long turned brown."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: extravagate
[fr. Med. L. extravagari, to wander]
archaic 1) to wander widely 2) to exceed proper limits
"Out of the bowels of those very schemes
In which his youth did first extravagate;
These spread like day, and something in the shape
Of these will live till man shall be no more."
- William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805)
" In statement, it is true, he could extravagate
like a master."
- Bradford Torrey, The Atlantic Nov 1, 1899
the worthless word for the day is: stravage (or stravaige)
[prob. by shortening and alteration fr. extravagate]
/struh VAIG/
chiefly Scot. saunter, stroll, wander
"[F]or ten years [I] had stravaiged the world like a
tinker, never doing a hand's turn of work."
- John Banville, The Book of Evidence (1989)
"I stravage along behind them, beckoning a cabana boy
who doesn't exist to bring a latte that never comes."
- E . S. Schwarzer, Motherhood Is Not for Wimps (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: guerdon
[Middle F.] /GER dun/
something that one has earned or gained: reward
the ultimate, and rather easy, word from the 2008
National Spelling Bee, confirming the result of
the previous round
"William the Conqueror had to promise a generous
guerdon for people who fought for him."
- from the Scripps judge
"And Rosaline they call her: ask for her;
And to her white hand see thou do commend
This seal'd-up counsel. There's thy guerdon; go."
Giving him a shilling
- Wm Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (1598)
the worthless word for the day is: esclandre
[F.] /esk la(n)dr(eh)/
an incident that arouses unpleasant talk or gives
rise to scandal: scene
this week: interesting words from the 2008 National
Spelling Bee (today's word was the penultimate
(and winning) word from round 15 -- the other
semifinalist got prosopopoeia wrong, omitting the 'i')
"Threatening to make an eslcandre and leave the chateau."
- as used in a sentence by the Scripps judge
(Charles Greville, The G. memoirs - 1832)
"Fostered by feverish play, cheating at cards in France
has soared to heights unknown before. At even the most
select and aristocratic, the most legitimate clubs, much
foul play may occur, as was clearly disclosed by the
recent esclandre in the Cerole de la Rue Royale."
- The New York Times March 28, 1886
the worthless word for the day is: Kulturkampf
[G. fr. Kultur + Kampf, conflict] /kul TUR kam(p)f/
broadly a conflict between cultures or value systems
this week: interesting words from the 2008 National
Spelling Bee (today's word is also from round 13; in
round 14 one of the two finalists correctly spelt
introuvable, which is *not autological!)
"The 1920's proved to be the focal decade in the
Kulturkampf of American Protestantism."
- Richard Hofstadter,
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962)
"Great moments in the drug war Kulturkampf"
- Reason Magazine [banner], Jun 2008
the worthless word for the day is: opificer
[fr. L. opifex: craftsman, artisan + -er] /uh PIF uh ser/
obs. an artificer; a workman; one who creates something
this week: interesting words from the 2008 National
Spelling Bee (today's word is from round 13 and
eliminated one of the three semifinalists, who took
the initial schwa as an 'e' — roots, roots, roots!)
"If you respect either Artificers or Opificers,
all Nations have been benefited thereby."
- as proffered by Scripps judge (5/31/08)
"So many playwrights, and opificers of chit chat have
ever since been working upon.. my uncle Toby's pattern."
- Laurence Sterne, The Life.. of Tristram Shandy (1761)
the worthless word for the day is: aptyalism
[fr. a- + Gk ptuelismos, salivation] /A TIE uh liz um/
absence of or deficiency in secretion of saliva
(cf. ptyalism for excessive flow)
this week: interesting words from the 2008 National
Spelling Bee (today's word is from round 12)
"Just look at those kids on that stage - their cheeks
a bright nacarat, their mouths suffering from aptyalism,
and yet still standing tall like the bogatyr of forgotten
history."
- Seattle Post Intelligencer - May 31, 2008
bonus: bogatyr - a medieval Russian heroic warrior,
akin to Western European knight errant
"Aptyalism can result from dehydration such as with
fever or disease of the kidneys."
- The Times Recorder (Zanesville, OH) - Jun 20, 1960
the worthless word for the day is: pleionosis
[fr. Gk pleos, filled + L. nos, us (ego)]
/PLAY oh NO sis/ obs. rare
the exaggeration of one's own importance
(cf. nosism, egotism)
"The only disorder universal to humankind."
- Peter Bowler, The Superior Person's Second Book
of Weird and Wondrous Words (1992)
"I confess that one word I had never heard of seems
to define one of my traits: That's pleionosis, the
exaggeration of one's own importance."
- Jack Smith, Los Angeles Times Jan18, 1993
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- P. B. Shelley, Ozymandias (1818)
the worthless word for the day is: timber-head
[timber + head] also, timbernonce(?)
Melville's slang usage a blockhead
"Don't you see, you timber-head, that no harm can
come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is
first struck?"
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
"Timbernonce number three... Eleftherios Venizelos,
Prime Minister of Greece, prodigiously overendowed
with Big Ideas."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
this week: jobbernowls and other blockheads
the worthless word for the day is: clodpoll
[clod + poll, head] /CLOD poll/
a stupid person: blockhead, clodpate
"Therefore this letter, being so excellently
ignorant, will breed no terror in the youth.
He will find it comes from a clodpoll."
- Wm Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1601)
"Clodpoll number two, the Greek people again...
for thinking that just because the civilization
here [Smyrna] used to be approximately Greek in
the distant past and is now partially Greek, it
should be forced into political union with old
Greece."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: lackwit
[lack + wit] /LACK wit/
a dull or witless person: blockhead, fool
yahoo, thickwit, dope, nitwit, dimwit, half-wit
""Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English
professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word?
I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I
ever suppose that I was a lackwit.""
- Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets (2002)
"I will tell you who the rattlebrains are, beginning
at the top. Actually, there is not a top, because
there are so many contestants for the lackwit
championships that all come in equal first."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: domnoddy
[origin uncertain] /DOM noddy/
fool, ninny, nincompoop, simpleton
(also, noddypoll, noddy)
""You idiot! You cabbageheaded domnoddy! If you've
hurt my horse, I'll have your skin!""
- Gerald Morris, The Squire's Tales (1999)
"But it can be a miserable, lonely existence for a
subordinate who yearns to be productive and get
things done, but is caught in a strangle hold by
an unqualified and incapable domnoddy. Incompetent
managers rely heavily on rules, policies, and
procedures."
- Jim Weaver, How Did You Manage That? (2002)
"What bothers me is that I am dying (albeit quite
pleasantly) because of the most gignatic f[oul]-up,
brought about by domnoddies, nincompoops and ninny-
hammers of the first order who happened to find
themselves in charge of f[oul]ing everything up."
- Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: palinoia
[fr. Gk pali-n, again + -noia, thought] /pal ih NOI uh/
the compulsive repetition of an act as a way to master
its performance
"It started at that Easter Egg Hunt when we all lined
up in a row, like civil war warriors set to wage brash
attacks upon the yolk of hardboiled phlegmatism.
Poached palinoia."
- Mark Axelrod, Capital Castles (2000)
"This neologism became widely known after it was
used as part of a credit for an episode of the 1990s
US animated television comedy Pinky and the Brain."
- Christopher Foyle, Foyle's Philavery (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: fabulist
[F. fabuliste, fr. L fabula, fable] /FAB yuh list/
1) a creator or writer of fables
2) a teller of tales; a liar
"To quote another American fabulist [Mark Twain],
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- Lila Shapiro, TPM May 4, 2008
"Had it been Hillary Clinton or Al Gore who made all
these errors, we would have heard by now that the
candidate was a fabulist."
- Jennifer Rubin, Commentary 05.27.2008
the worthless word for the day is: krotoscope
[fr. Gk krotos, clapping of hands + -scope]
an applause-measuring instrument: applause meter
"The Krotoscope nearly overloaded at the end of
his speech."
- anon
the worthless word for the day is: onomastic
[Gk onomastikos, fr. onomazein to name] /ah nuh MAS tik/
of, relating to, or consisting of a name or names;
relating to onomastics
""I was thinking more along an onomastic line. Proper
names. Place names. Nicknames. You know, nickname itself
is an interesting word. It comes from ekename, which-""
- David Carkeet, Double Negative (1980)
the worthless word for the day is: exeleutherostomize
(also exeleutherostomise)
[fr. Gk ex-, out + eleutherostom-os, free-spoken] /?/
nonce-word to speak out freely
"The heroes of the Iliad—shall we hide it to live, or
exeleutherostomize it and die?-are for the most part
boors."
- Charles Badham, Prose Halieutics (1854)
"The offices of a General Manager of one of the few
national banks is not the place to exeleutherostomise."
- B.S. Johnson, Christie Malry's Own Double-entry (1985)
bonus word: halieutics - the art or practice of fishing;
a treatise on fishing [fr. Gk halieutikos, of fishing]
the worthless word for the day is: antejentacular
[fr. L. ante-, before + jentacul-um, breakfast]
archaic before breakfast
(compare postprandial)
"Not one poor visit in the antejentacular perambulations."
- Jeremy Bentham, correspondence (1843)
"You will learn that the holder for a handleless coffeecup
is called a zarf (if you didn't already know it); that the
antonym for postprandial (afterdinner) is antejentacular
(before breakfast), while the antonym of wealth may well
be illth..."
- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, NY Times Aug 9, 1982
the worthless word for the day is: malnoia
[fr. mal- : ill, wrong + Gk nous, mind] /mal NOI ah/
a vague feeling of mental discomfort
"At last—the word we all wanted, to describe the
way we feel five minutes after waking up in the
morning when we realize that we are about to
recall yesterday's unresolved problems."
- Peter Bowler, The Superior Person's Second Book
of Weird and Wondrous Words (1992)
the worthless word for the day is: misocainea
[fr. Gk misos, hatred + kainos, new] /miso KINE eah/
an abnormal aversion to new things or ideas
(cf. misoneism)
"Although I agree with the majority that no appellate
court has yet held an insurer liable absent a premium
payment, it may be nothing more than appellate judges
suffering from a case of misocainea!"
- Arizona Business Gazette (Phoenix) Nov 11, 1993
"A crucial objective of our program is to remove any
innate misocainea.. and replace it with the entrepre-
neurial principle of 'change is an opportunity to
create competitive advantage.'"
- Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, 01 Jan 05
the worthless word for the day is: nephelococcygia
[first used in the play The Birds written in 414
B.C. by the Greek comic poet Aristophanes, this was
to be a city in the clouds; fr. nephele, cloud +
kokkyx, cuckoo] /ne fê lê kak SI jee yê/
1) capitalized cloud cuckooland
2) the act of finding shapes in clouds
"Without flying to Nephelococcygia or to the Court
of Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers, bullies,
hard-hearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy
of such paramours."
- Thomas Macaulay, Comic Dramatists (1840)
"Finding shapes in clouds is an old endeavor. There's
even a word for it: nephelococcygia, literally "cloud
cuckooland," from the Aristophanes play The Birds.
Thoreau practiced it, describing a sunset in which he
saw a "phantom city." About a hundred years later
cartoonist Charles Schulz created a Peanuts comic
strip in which Linus gazed at the clouds and spied
the outline of British Honduras, the profile of artist
Thomas Eakins, and a group of forms reminding him of
the biblical stoning of Stephen. "I was going to say
I saw a ducky and a horsie," Charlie Brown responded,
"but I changed my mind."
- Chris Dodge, Utne Reader Jan/Feb 2007
the worthless word for the day is: jeopardous
[Middle English jupartous, fr. jupartie + -ous]
fraught with risk or danger; hazardous, perilous
"In such snow he'd have led us into all sorts of
thrilling and jeopardous traps..."
- Leif Enger, Peace Like a River (2002)
"Had the man not opted for a late soak my brother's
career might've ended on the spot, but wet feet and
wood floors make jeopardous allies..."
- ibid
the worthless word for the day is: grue
[Scot., akin to OHG ingruen, to shiver, shudder] /gru/
[v] to shiver or shudder especially with fear or cold
[n] 1) a shiver 2) a gruesome quality or effect
"I begin to grue at the sound of it."
- R. L. Stevenson, Catriona: a sequel (1893)
"[T]he sound of wind in the rigging still gave him
the chills and the grues when he heard it."
- R. B. Robertson, Of Whales and Men (1954)
"As a tale of grue it was badly timed; Waltzer, too,
had spoken of cannibalism, and in fact it seemed a
thing he might practice without remorse."
- Leif Enger, Peace Like a River (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: Oslerian
[fr. the name of Sir William Osler (1849-1919),
Canadian physician]
of or relating to Osler or to his theories and
methods of practicing internal medicine
"Mr. Thomas A. Edison is just sixty years old, but
instead of taking chloroform, according to the
so-called Oslerian theory that a man's life ends at
threescore years, the famous inventor.. announced
that he was going to start afresh in a new field of
scientific invention."
- Western Gazette, 5 Mar. 1907
"The Oslerian Tradition in medical advances insisted
on the importance of careful and expert clinical
observation coupled with wide knowledge of the
symptoms of disease."
- British Medical Journal, 7 Dec. 1968
"Some critics trace this pattern of behavior to Sir
William Osler, the most famous physician in the
English-speaking world at the turn of the 20th century,
considering him "the father of cool detachment," the
originator of an "Oslerian equanimity" antithetical
to empathic caring."
- Charles S Bryan,
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Summer, 2006
the worthless word for the day is: ogry
[from ogre, presumably]
resembling, or pertaining to, an ogre(?)
"Opvarts and at ham, or this ogry Osler
will oxmaul us all..."
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
(thanx to Cécile)
the worthless word for the day is: marc
[F. fr. marchier, to trample] /mark/
1) the pulpy residue left after a fruit has been pressed
2) brandy made from the residue of wine grapes after
pressing
"As.. by subjecting the marc with the addition of water
or sugar solution to fermentation a wine is obtained
which forms an excellent material for making vinegar."
- William T. Brannt, A Practical Treatise on the
Manufacture of Vinegar (1914)
"The vigneron in residence used to insist that I drink
the "estate's" marc, and I still wince when I remember
the next day's headache."
- Frederick S. Wildman, A Wine Tour of France (1972)
(thanx to Barry MacDonald)
the worthless word for the day is: nephology
[fr. Gk nephos, cloud + -ology] /neh FOL eh jee/
the scientific study of clouds, the branch of
meteorology that deals with clouds (also, nephologist)
"This is the life! Things seen resemble images in a
thaumatrope. (Squinting up at the washing on the line):
I must take up nephology some day."
- Mark Lemon (ed.), Punch (1841)
"Conrad accepted every invitation to lecture Alden
about nephology or aviation."
- Maria Flook, Lux (2004)
"If I put this ad in the paper — nephologist seeks
eidolon — would you answer?"
- Marcus E. Ryan, Two Diaries (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: unau
[Port. < Tuni uná, lazy] /YOO now/
Zool. the South American two-toed sloth
"There are two species of this animal, viz. the Unau
and the Ai."
- The Family Magazine (1843)
"The Ai is more indolent in his habits than the Unau..."
- Arthur Mangin, The Desert World (1872)
the worthless word for the day is: vigneron
[F. < vigne, vine] /VEEN yuh RO(n)E/
winegrower, viticulturist
(an assist to Barry MacDonald on this)
"Wine lovers have garnered the image of the passionate
vigneron into an almost spiritual figure, one who
translates the mysteries of the soil into wine."
- Artvoice Apr 23, 2008
"Away from her roles as actress and guru, she (sc.
Kerry Armstrong) is a vigneron, pressing grapes at
her property near Eltham and bottling a fine drop
that is sometimes finer than others."
- The Age (Australia) May 4, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: bahookie
[alteration of behind(?)] /buh HOO kee/
Scot. colloq., humorous the buttocks
"'Stop staring at my bahookie, nancyboy,' Barry
heard him mutter."
- Michael Gerber, Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary
Sequel (2003)
"'Mm-hmm, and that little tub of his'll go like a
greased dolphin with a Roman candle up its bahookie!'"
- Peter Kerr, The Mallorca Connection (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: bardo
[Tibetan, literally, between two] /BAR dO/
Lamaism the intermediate or astral state of the soul
after death and before rebirth
"Sometimes I felt I was already dead, wandering in some
Hades or Tibetan bardo zone where the shades repressed
the disquieting thought that they were no longer alive
by engaging in a make-believe danse macabre of frantic
activity."
- Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
the worthless word for the day is: disintermediate
[originally a banking term, now more broadly used]
Econ. to withdraw one's money from intermediate
institutions for direct investment; to eliminate
the middleman
"This growth in Euro commercial paper tends to
disintermediate commercial banks in the short-term
market just as Euronotes have replaced medium-term
syndicated credits."
- J. Peter Williamson,
The Investment Banking Handbook (1988)
""One of the reasons you see press releases ranked
higher in Web measurement surveys is that an increasing
number of releases are written not for the press, or
even for consumers, but for search engines.. many PR
pros just decided to leverage the Internet medium
and disintermediate the journalist entirely -- the
intersection of direct marketing and PR, if you will.""
- Rick Sharga (marketing consultant),
via c/net news.com Apr 18, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: thirlable
[fr. OE thirl: hole, perforation]
obs. rare that may be thirled or pierced; penetrable
"Say no more old chap-your logic is unthirlable."
- Peter Bowler, The Superior Person's Second Book of
Weird and Wondrous Words (1992)
yesterday's word: stylite
this week: more hogwash (and other) words
the worthless word for the day is: stylite
let's play hogwash®.. choose one:
a) unadorned stone tracery forming the structural
border of a stained glass window
b) a type of ripstop nylon of extra light nature
mainly used for making kites, banners, etc.
c) a Christian ascetic living atop a pillar
d) a Greek slave used as a soldier
e) fossilized swine excrement
(answer tomorrow)
the worthless word for the day is: sabrage
[F. sabrer] /sah BRAHDZH/
the act of opening a bottle, usu. champagne, with a sabre
"You might think the result will be lots of broken glass
and mess, but the skill of sabrage lies in hitting the
bottle hard just at the bottom edge of the annulus, the
glass ring at the top of the neck. The blow breaks the
neck off cleanly, complete with cork."
- Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, 15 Jul 2006
"With a deft and decisive blow, he relieves the bubbly
of its cork with one foul swoop and the top of the bottle,
glass and all, flies to the bricks below. A rush of
pent-up, foamy champagne gushes from the beheaded bottle.
Bonaparte would be proud. After all, it was his mounted
artillery officers who perfected the "art of sabrage,"
albeit back in the early 1800s, the beheading was usually
done on live victims following bloody crusades."
- Rick VanSickle, Calgary Sun August 6, 2006
the worthless word for the day is: thrapple (thropple)
[origin obscure] /THRAPul/
Scot. [n] the throat, windpipe
[v] to throttle, strangle
But now she fetches at the thrapple,
An' fights for breath :
Haste, gie her name up in the chapel,
Near unto death!
- Robert Burns, to John Goldie (1785)
"Sorrow be in your thrapple then!"
- Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815)
"I could thrapple ye whaur ye staun'."
- James Strang, A Lass of Lennox (1899)
the worthless word for the day is: plagosity
[fr. L. plagosus, given to blows, fond of flogging]
obs. rare the inclination or tendency to beat or flog
people
"Thus Nicholas Udall's accidental propensity to theatricals
led to Eton being the birthplace of English Comedy, and the
'plagosity' of William Malim led to the composition of one
of the masterpieces of English prose." [Roger Ascham's
famous treatise on 'The Scholemaster']
- Lionel Cust, A History of Eton College (1899)
the worthless word for the day is: elenctic
[Gk elenktikos, fr. elenktos] /ee LENC tic/
variants elenchtic, elenctical, elenchtical
serving to refute; refutative (used of indirect modes
of proof)
opposed to deictic, showing or pointing out directly
"His duty is elenchtic."
- Blackwood's Magazine, v. XXXIII (1833)
"Because he has spent so much of his life in elenctic
argument, we are sometimes tempted to infer that Socrates
knows more than he is letting on about the subject matter
at hand."
- Brickhouse & Smith, Plato's Socrates (1994)
the worthless word for the day is: conviciatory
[fr. L. conviciari, to revile, rail at]
(also spelt convitiatory)
obs. wrangling, railing; reproachful
also conviciate,
obs. to revile, reproach, slander, rail at
"This expression [a dog] is the favourite term of
reproach with the Greeks, whose convitiatory language
is most violent and abusive."
- John C. Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania (1813)
"[I]t is an easy thing for men so resolved to
conviciate, instead of accusing..."
- William Laud, The Autobiography of.. (1839)
the worthless word for the day is: fucivorous
[fr. L. fucus, rock-lichen + -vorus, devouring]
/few SIV ur us/
eating or subsisting on seaweed
hence fucivore, one who eats seaweed
"The pancreas in carnivorous Terrapins (Emys) is more
bulky and compact in form than in the fucivorous
Turtles (Chelone)."
- Richard Owen, On the Anatomy of Vertebrates (1866)
this word would probably be totally unknown, but for
its dictionary neighbors...
"The word before the word in question in the dictionary
is 'fucivorous'. Someone who eats meat is a carnivore,
someone who eats plants is a herbivore and someone who
eats seaweed is a fucivore. Sadly, as I've never met
anyone who dines solely at a Chinese restaurant with an
incredibly limited menu, it is a word I'll never get to
use."
- Chris Lloyd, Northern Echo Sept. 27, 2003
the worthless word for the day is: nubivagant
[fr. classical L. nubivagus, wandering among the clouds]
obs. rare passing through the clouds
"[Y]et it would be better for a collineomaniac to think,
now and then, of the desolation he is bringing down upon
happy nests; of how many little broods he may cause to
starve; of how many robbed mates he will send, nubivagant,
whistling and singing tremulous love notes through the air,
vainly searching and calling for their lost spouses, never,
never to return!"
- H. W. Herbert, Sporting Scenes and Sundry Sketches (1842)
bonus word: collineomaniac, a hunter
the worthless word for the day is: pieriansipist
[Perian + sip + -ist]
a dabbler in learning: one who learns a little about
many subjects, or 'sips' from the Pierian spring (a
source of knowledge and inspiration from the Muses)
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
For shallow draughts intoxicate the brain
And drinking largely sobers us again.
- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
What's a pieriansipist?
this week: more neologisms
the worthless word for the day is: retrogenesis
[fr. retro- backward + -genesis, origin]
/ret troh JEN uh sis/
the loss of mental abilities in old age in the opposite
order in which they are gained in childhood, esp. as
exhibited by Alzheimer's patients
"[Dr Barry] Reisberg and others say that retrogenesis is
more than just a newfangled academic term to explain an
age-old human condition."
- John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel June 23, 2002
"It made her feel good, the counting down, and she did
it sometimes in the day's familiar drift, walking down a
street, riding in a taxi. It was her form of lyric verse,
subjective and unrhymed, a little songlike but with a
rigor, a tradition of fixed order, only backwards, to
test the presence of another kind of reversal, which a
doctor nicely named retrogenesis."
- Don DeLillo, Falling Man (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: keming
[fr. misreading kerning] /KEM ing/
the result of improper kerning
(a new typography term)
kerning - the addition or removal of space between
individual characters in a piece of typeset text to
improve its appearance or alter its fit
here are some examples where Book Search software
falls prey to this exact mistake
"Bad keming is rampant in all those twisty groovy
captcha phrases." - anon.
"Spum Bad Keming" - anon.
the worthless word for the day is: nihilartikel
[fr. L. nihil, nothing + G. artikel] /NI hil AR ti kul/
a deliberately erroneous entry in a dictionary or other
reference book (cf. esquivalience, for instance)
also see fictitious entry
"Because we have no English word for the concept, some
English writers have used what looks like a German word,
Nihilartikel, for such deliberately invalid entries...
There's some doubt whether this is a genuine German word,
or one formed in English as a joke and unknowingly copied.
Others have used Mountweazel, which derives from the false
entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel that appeared in
the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia."
- Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, 1 Oct. 2005
"No self-respecting reader will overlook such glaring
errors as describing the DJ's favourite Technics SL-1200
turntable as 'belt driven'. Boy, I hope somebody got
fired for that blunder. Sadly the authors resisted
inserting a proper nihilartikel, the alleged German word
for an item invented to catch out the unwary plagiarist."
(from a review of The Rock Snob's Dictionary)
- Steve Jelbert, The Independent June 26, 2005
the worthless word for the day is: infovore
[info- + L. vorus, devouring] /IN fo vore/
(introduced as a scientific term by neuroscientists
Irving Biederman and Edward Vessel, after carnivore,
omnivore, etc.)
a person who indulges in and desires information
gathering and interpretation
"I'm an infovore. I consume and excrete interesting
factoids for a living."
- Cory Doctorow, A Place So Foreign (2003)
"Why are you reading this article when you could be
watching paint dry instead? It's all because of our
innate hunger for information. Humans, it turns out,
are infovores."
- New Scientist, 22 July 2006
"You might call us 'infovores.'"
- The Wall Street Journal March 12, 2008
the opposite of infovore is ignotarian, a person who
avoids or limits the acquisition of (new) information
the worthless word for the day is: multivious
[L. multivius, having many ways] /mul TI vi us/
now rare having many ways or roads; going in
many directions
"The sinner is often perplexed amidst the multivious
and conflicting directions that are given."
- David Thomas, The Crisis of Being (1850)
"A "plea bargain" may take many forms; it is multivious
in nature."
- Court of Special Appeals of Maryland Mar 9, 1981
"The history of World War II has been told in such
multivious detail that its simplest lessons are
easily obscured."
- Wayne Biddle, Barons of the Sky (2001)
___
for those who feel that most of these words are
just *too obscure, to the point of being mostly
unusable, this week I offer up some words that
I've actually used recently, albeit online.
the worthless word for the day is: opioid
[opi(um) + -oid] /OH pee oid/
n. an opium-like substance produced naturally in the brain
adj. possessing some properties characteristic of opiate
narcotics but not derived from opium
"When he hooked up volunteers to a brain-scanning machine,
the preferred pictures were shown to generate much more
brain activity than the unpreferred shots. While researchers
don't yet know what exactly these brain scans signify, a
likely possibility involves increased production of the
brain's pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters called opioids."
- Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal March 12, 2008
"When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and
we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.'"
- ibid
the worthless word for the day is: disfluency
[dis-, apart or away + fluency] /dis FLOO un see/
1) Pathol. impairment of the ability to produce smooth,
fluent speech; stammering
2) an interruption in the smooth flow of speech, as by a
pause or the repetition of a word or syllable; lack
of skillfulness in speaking
also, dysfluency
"People doubt the believability of a message when these
delivery factors are present: (a) weak eye contact,
looking at people infrequently; (b) frequent disfluencies
(e.g., "uhs," "uhms"); (c) the use of abnormal hand or
arm movements associated with fidgeting; and (d) overuse
of hand gestures."
- W. T. Coombs, Ongoing Crisis Communication (2007)
"I have cleaned up some minor dysfluencies in Clinton's
testimony."
- Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought [note] (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: outmantle
[out- + mantle, to cover] /out MAN tel/
obs. rare to excel in dress or ornament
Spend all the powers
Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise;
Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand,
And with poetic trappings grace thy prose
Till it outmantle all the pride of verse.
- William Cowper, The Task (1784)
"[I've been] outmantled."
- anon
the worthless word for the day is: prepensely
[by extension from prepense, which is usu. seen
postpositionally] (as, malice prepense)
with premeditation: deliberately, purposely
"Whether Jennings changed my wording prepensely or
merely in the folk-speech way, I do not know, and
the point is of little consequence."
- William Ritter, American Journal of Sociology,
Jan. 1929
"To the Socialist a house, a knife, a cup, a steam
engine, or what not, anything, I repeat, that is
made by man and has form, must either be a work of
art or destructive to art. The Commercialist, on
the other hand, divides `manufactured articles'
into those which are prepensely works of art, and
are offered for sale in the market as such, and
those which have no pretense and could have no
pretense to artistic qualities."
- William Morris, Monthly Review, Jan. 1997
the worthless word for the day is: fornication
[fr. L fornix, an arch or vault]
a vaulting or arching: vaulted construction
(as of a cloister)
so how did we get from here to the more common usage
of today? below the streets of Rome were subterranean
vaults that served as dwellings for vagrants, criminals
and low-class prostitutes, who often conducted business
beneath an arch or vault. fornix became synonymous with
what we would call a brothel. (cf. vaulting-house)
"Fornication is, in fact, a surviving term in architecture."
- John Ciardi, A Second Browser's Dictionary (1993)
"If an architect uses the term fornication, he or she is
probably talking about a curved roof covering..."
- Debrah K. Dietsch, Architecture for Dummies (2002)
the worthless word for the day is: pendulate
[NL pendulum + -ate] /PEN jul ate/
1) to swing as a pendulum
2) fig. fluctuate, undulate
"But why does the pendulum vibrate, or
pendulate, to coin a necessary verb?"
- Scientific Monthly, 1922 v. 15
"The American electorate for some decades has
pendulated between liberalism and conservatism."
- J. L. Collier,
The Rise of Selfishness in America (1991)
the worthless word for the day is: glottogony
[fr. Gk glossa, tongue + gonikos, of the seed]
/glo TOG uh nee/
the study of the (putative) origin of language
hence, glottogonic /glot oh GON ik/
relating to the origin of language
"The origin of words is a question that now falls
within the chapter of "glottogony", resurrected
after decades of inactivity."
- Werner Winter, On Languages and Language (1995)
"Reduplication, in early glottogonic periods of
language, cannot have represented anything more
than an attempt to make an idea tarry."
- M. Bloomfield, American Journal of Philology,
v. XVI 1895
(thanx to zmjezhd)
the worthless word for the day is: patulous
[L. patulus, from patere to be open] /PACH ul us/
1) Zool. and Med. expanded; gaping; also fig.
<a wound with patulous margins>
2) Bot. spreading out
<an old tree with patulous branches>
(also, rarely, patulent; not to be confused with petulent)
"The weave [of the cleansing cloth] is designed to remove
material from patulous pores common on the central face."
- Dermatology Times, v. 23, 2002
"Meagan Lawrence, a small young woman with large, patulous
eyes and large, sweetly eccentric voice and manner, is
excellent as the lost Sally Bowles."
- Vincent Canby, New York Times Sep. 20, 1995
"It is said he found the baby under a patulous basil
plant in his garden."
- Times of India 24 Dec. 2000
the worthless word for the day is: frondescent
[fr. L. frondere, to put forth leaves] /fron DES unt/
springing into leaf; leafy; expanding into fronds
"In the spring, when all Nature was frondescent, that
gaunt, strange man, that fellow of a million whimsies
and thrice ten thousand charms, passed away."
- The Smart Set, ed. by George J. Nathan (1930)
"I have given a curious instance of the influence of
light on the colours of a frondescent incrustation,
deposited by the surf on the coast-rocks of Ascension,
and formed by the solution of triturated sea-shells."
- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1888)
""In parks, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans play
dominoes under the frondescent shade of coconut
palms.."
Hold it. Are we in Broward or Dade County? There may
be some Hispanics playing dominoes around here but if
they're doing it under the frondescent shade of palm
trees, every one of them will die of sunstroke."
- Steve Weller, Sun Sentinel, Jun 20, 1989
spring, at last!
the worthless word for the day is: shlumperdik
[Yiddish, fr. shlump, untidy person, slob]
/shlump puh dik/ ?
unkempt, sloppy, dowdy (also as a noun)
"The house could fall down around her ears and she'd
never notice. She'd send her kids off to school all
shlumperdik, shmuts on their faces, holes in their
pants."
- Stanley Elkin, Mrs. Ted Bliss (2002)
"Right now, the shlumperdik needed a shower.
Perspiration glistened above his upper lip like
liquid Vaseline. "I want my lawyer," the creep
finally cried."
- Joanne Meyer, Heavenly Detour (2003)
"Oprah is a, strike that, coins shlumpadinka!"
- anon
the worthless word for the day is: impulregafize
[Urquhart's nonce-word, evidently coined to one-up
Rebelais, who coined emburelucocquer for the nonce]
to strain(?)
"Ha, for favour sake, I beseech you, never emberlucock
or inpulregafize your spirits with these vain thoughts
and idle conceits; for I tell you, it is not impossible
with God, and, if he pleased, all women henceforth
should bring forth their children at the ear."
- Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca. 1532)
(tr. by Sir Thomas Urquhart, 1653)
the worthless word for the day is: scobberlotcher
[related to scopperloit, also of obscure origin] /?/
an idler (also scobolotcher)
""What! not abroad yet, thou bed-worm, thou scobberlotcher!""
- Cecil Day Lewis, Dick Willoughby (1933)
"A scobolotcher, said Mr. Moore, was an undergraduate walking
around a quadrangle hands in pockets and deep in thought."
- Bournemouth Daily Echo 21 Apr. 1956
the worthless word for the day is: equanimous
[fr. L. æquanimis, having an even mind]
/EE kwa nuh mus/
possessing or displaying equanimity: even-tempered
"They are equally equanimous in prescribing the
remedy by which this happy effect is to be produced."
- The Federalist, Hamilton, Madison, Jay (1788)
"French Eric, who has thought long and hard about these
things, says that emotional control is the key to winning
poker... With about 4,500 chips left, the once-equanimous
burly man raised the next pot to 800. The woman beside
him, who only played premium cards, promptly reraised,
putting him all-in. He called, showing his 75 of spades
against her QQ. The board didn't improve his hand and he
rolled, cursing, away from the table, having gone from
tournament leader to oblivion in the space of six minutes
and three hands. French Eric was right."
- Sunday Telegraph (London) Nov 18, 2007
the worthless word for the day is: axiopisty
[fr. Gk axio-pistos < axios, worthy + pistos,
to be trusted] /aks ee AH pih stee/
obs. rare : the quality that makes something
believable: trustworthiness
"She does not only attribute to their sacred authors
the axiopisty, a credibility fully merited, but also
the autopisty; that is to say a right to be believed
independently of their circumstances or of their
personal qualities..."
- Louis Gaussen, Theopneusty (1844)
"How can you not suspect the axiopisty of someone
who has been convicted of a white-collar crime?"
- New Straits Times (Kuala Lumpur), July 1, 1996
bonus words:
autopisty - self-authentication
theopneusty - divine inspiration
the worthless word for the day is: urgrund
[G. fr. ur- primal + grund, ground] /UR grunt/
a primal cause or ultimate cosmic principle
"Bude's argument makes concealment into a kind
of primal foundation for the history of the
Federal Republic of Germany, its shadowy Urgrund."
- Dagmar Reese, Dissent Winter, 2007
"Claire was eliminated in the seventh round
after putting a "t" on the end of "urgrund.""
- Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2007
the worthless word for the day is: expergefaction
[fr. L. expergefacere < expergere, to awake]
/ek spurj uh fak shun/ archaic
the act of rousing; the condition of being aroused
also, expergefactor : someone or something that
awakens: an awakener; e.g., an alarm clock
"[H]aving rubbed my eyes, distended my limbs, and
returned to a full expergefaction, I began to call
myself to account..."
- The Harleian Miscellany: A Winter Dream (1810)
"The newly invented Hydraulic Expergefactor rings
a bell at the time when a person wishes to rise."
- Mechanic's Magazine, 1823, no. 7
the worthless word for the day is: fefnicute
[origin unknown] Lancashire dialect
a hypocrite; a parasite, a hanger-on; a sneak
"It is fate's promiscuous kiss, especially for
the American writer who--ever since the unhappy
pea-and-thimble tricks of Benjamin Franklin,
that shifty-eyed fefnicute who tried to transmute
thrift into worship, greed into sanctity--might
suffer the delusion he can legitimately serve
both God and Mammon."
- Alexander Theroux, Three Wogs (1972)
the worthless word for the day is: comperendinate
[fr. L. comperendinare, to defer (a trial)]
/kom per EN di nate/
obs. rare to delay, to postpone {Johnson, 1805};
hence, comperendination
<I vow not to comperendinate until tomorrow>
I've been meaning to announce that this is
National Procrastination Week...
the worthless word for the day is: priscianist
and speaking of grammarians..
[fr. Priscian, a celebrated Roman grammarian]
arch. rare a grammarian; (in extended use) a
person who uses grammar cleverly in dissembling
(not to be confused with precisian/precisianist)
"He had a little beggarly and course latin, so
much as a Priscianist may have."
- Thomas Coryate, Coryate's Crudities (1611)
"It may be said [Stanyhurst] went somewhat further
than some of the Priscianists in his devotion to
quantity." - George Smith (ed.),
Elizabethan critical essays (1904)
the worthless word for the day is: grammaticaster
[med. L. < grammatic-us + -aster, expressing
incomplete resemblance] /gram MAT i CAS ter/
contemptuous a petty or inferior grammarian
yes, today is National Grammar Day
"He tells thee true, my noble Neophyte; my little