[ restore frames ]
the worthless word for the day is: cofishes
other fish in a group; by transf. coworkers, cohorts
(a Christopher Moore nonce-word)
"Bubble dropped a gutless trout into a bushel of
slippery cofishes.[3]..
"3. Cofishes——other fish in a group, coworkers,
cohorts, etc. Shut up, it's a word."
- Christopher Moore, Fool (2009)
---
see the RSS feed for today's details..
the worthless word for the day is: jakes
[origin uncertain, perhaps from F. Jacques]
chiefly British a privy
"He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes."
- James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
"In particular he feared dying in some undignified
way, on the jakes or with his face in the porridge."
- Michael Chabon, The Final Solution (2004)
-----
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I periodically add words to the wwftd dictionary,
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OEDILF
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...
--Robotman--
some ESPM usages are just too good to pass up; e.g., "Still,
do-gooder or dilettante, there are at least two things Mrs.
McMahon will need to consider as she moves from the
forthright sunshine and uplifting narrative of prime-time
"sports entertainment" into the mephitic underworld of
American politics."
- Jeff MacGregor, Page 2 Oct. 9, 2009
the sportswriters at ESPN seem to have taken up this word;
e.g., "This time, it appears we won't have to wait nearly as
long, because I doubt we will see a more shambolic effort
than the one Utah submitted on a second-quarter fastbreak
against L.A. on Sunday."
- John Hollinger, PER Diem Apr. 20 2009
"..that was only until the four or five masked men formed a
cluster round the pair of them - a kind of testudo as the
Romans had called it in her Latin lessons - and dragged and
carried them to the minibus..."
- John le Carre, A Most Wanted Man (2008)
"I couldn't make any headway at all with its search functions,
because of all its cack-handed efforts to assist me."
- Neal Stephenson, Anathem (2008)
__
I know a little man both ept and ert.
An intro-? extro-? No, he's just a vert.
Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.
When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.
Gloss, by David McCord
The Oxford Book of American Light Verse
"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)
"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
"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 E. 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)
"Jets coach Rex Ryan isn't happy with his team's efforts in
the punting game. And since it's one of the most fungible
positions in the sport, the Jets have inked a new punter."
- NBCSports.com August 16, 2009
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
hemipygic
platypygous
pygal
pygalgia
pygephanous
quatopygia
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"
NB: this word has caused much gnashing of teeth at
wordorigins and languagehat
the worthless word for the day is: futz
[perhaps fr. Yiddish arumfartsn zikh, lit. to fart
around; or maybe just a euphemism]
1) with around : to fool around, waste time
2) with with : to mess with; to tinker or trifle with
"Studs kept futzing around until Helen Shires came
out with her soccer ball."
- James T. Farrell, Young Lonigan (1932)
"In spring there is the garden. In fall the leaves.
But in winter, unless you're into igloo-making,
futzing with the snowblower, or carving out figure
eights on the pond, what is there to mess with?"
- Chr. Science Monitor, 4 Mar. 1980
the worthless word for the day is: cinereal
[fr. L cinereus, ash-colored] /si NER ee ul/
cinereous : ashen
"What phantom version of me is it that watches
us—them-as they grow indistinct in that cinereal
air and then are gone through the gap..."
- John Banville, The Sea (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: Pessimisterian
pessimism as a state of mind (coined by Rankin?)
"In religion, he might be more Pessimisterian than
Presbyterian, but in some things John Rebus still
clung to faith. Faith and hope."
- Ian Rankin, Strip Jack (1992)
the worthless word for the day is: ramsquaddle
to beat, thrash {DARE}
also, ramquaddled unkempt and in disarray; drunk
"The Kentuckian was the half-horse, half-alligator man,
full of fun and fight, with a gargantuan capacity for
punishing his jug without getting ramsquaddled."
- Gerald Carson, The Social History of Bourbon (1963)
the worthless word for the day is: procacity
[fr. L. procacitas pertinacity, obtrusiveness,
impudence] /pro KAS uh tee/
petulence; impudence
"Folks from all over the island went to.. receive
a daily dose of the mock crotchety proprietor's
patented procacity."
- New York Times, 14 June 1998
the worthless word for the day is: frowy
(also froughy) chiefly NEng.
1) esp. of wood : spongy, brittle
2) stale, rancid; spoiled
this week: words from DARE, the
Dictionary of American Regional English
the worthless word for the day is: slurt
to squirt; to blurt (out)
"From my company's prospective[sic] business knowledge
is far more important than being able to slurt
out the latest buzz words." - anon
the worthless word for the day is: hookem-snivey
[fr. earlier hook and snivey, prob. fr. hook (to steal)]
NE U.S. (orig. Brit.) petty; deceitful, sneaky
(Brit. sp. is often hookum-snivey)
the worthless word for the day is: flug
dust or lint that collects in pockets, under beds,
and in similar places; also fig. (also sp. phlug)
the worthless word for the day is: bowssen
[fr. Cornish beuzi, to drown, submerge] /BAUS un/
in Cornwall to immerse in water as a treatment
for insanity; hence, bowssening
the worthless word for the day is: backchat
[back + chat]
a) gossipy or bantering conversation: small talk
b) good humored repartee
c) UK impertinent or impudent replies
the worthless word for the day is: liripipe
[fr. Med. L. liripipium] (also liripoop)
1) the long tail of a hood in medieval or academic costume
2) obs. a lesson or role to be learned or spoken
3) obs. a silly person
expansively and humorously explained by Michael Quinion
"The priest is habited in a robe of purple, with a black
cap and a black liripipe attached to it."
- E. L. Cutts, Scenes & Chars of the Middle Ages (1872)
the worthless word for the day is: pericope
[Gk perikope, section] /puh RIH kuh pE/
a selection from a book; specif. a liturgical
reading for a particular day
the worthless word for the day is: ackamarackus
[origin unknown] (possibly coined by Runyon)
U.S. slang, now rare pretentious nonsense;
something intended to deceive; humbug
"Now of course this is strictly the old ackamarackus,
as the Lemon Drop Kid cannot even spell arthritis,
let alone have it.."
- Damon Runyon, The Lemon Drop Kid (story, 1934)
the worthless word for the day is: threap
[fr. OE threapian, to rebuke, reprehend]
chiefly Scot. [vt] to rebuke, reprove, chide, scold, blame
[vi] to contend in words; to inveigh against; to argue, dispute;
to quarrel, bicker, disagree; to wrangle about terms, haggle
hence, threaping
the worthless word for the day is: picktooth
obs. a toothpick
"If a gentleman leaves a snuff-box or pick-tooth-case
on the table after dinner, and goeth away, look upon
it as part of your vails*; for so it is allowed by
all servants, and you do no wrong to your master or
lady."
- Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants (1731)
*a casual or occasional profit
the worthless word for the day is: vetanda
[fr. L. vetare, to forbid] /ve TAN duh/
rare forbidden things
the worthless word for the day is: kerygmatic
[fr. Gk kerygma, proclamation] /kerig MAD ik/
belonging to or of the nature of preaching;
also transf.
the worthless word for the day is: jaculation
[fr. L. jaculari, to hurl]
obs. the act of throwing or hurling
the worthless word for the day is: gilravage
[origin unknown]
chiefly Scot. to practice intemperate eating and
drinking; to be noisy and boisterous in merrymaking
"Great was the gilravaging and fun.."
- John Ramsay, Eglinton Park Meeting (poem, 1848)
the worthless word for the day is: pilpul
[fr. Heb. pilpel, to search, argue] /PIL pool/
: casuistic argumentation especially among Jewish
scholars on talmudic subjects
: rabbinical dialectic
: critical analysis and hairsplitting
the worthless word for the day is: tohubohu
[fr. Heb. tohu, confusion + bohu, emptiness]
/TOW hu BOW hu/ chaos, confusion
the worthless word for the day is: shammes
[fr. Hebrew shamash, servant] /SHAH mes/
(rhymes with promise) Yiddish
1) the sexton or caretaker of a synagogue
2) Am. slang : a detective, a policeman;
a 'private eye' (see Irish shamus)
the worthless word for the day is: pistic
[fr. Gk pistikos, faithful < pistos, faith] /PIS tik/
of, relating to, or exhibiting faith
the worthless word for the day is: volitant
[fr. L. volitare, to fly to and fro] /VOL i tnt/
1) flying or capable of flying
2) moving about rapidly, to and fro
"The bat is a volitant quadruped."
- Century Dictionary (1891)
"The tremulous volitant motion of breeze upon wave."
- Fraser's Mag. July, 1857
the worthless word for the day is: aposematic
[fr. Gk apo-, away from + sema, sign]
Zool. being conspicuous and serving to warn
(applied to coloration of animals)
"In effect, then, aposematic coloration is negative
advertising."
- Steven B. Carroll, Ecology for Gardeners (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: redeless
[fr. G. rede + -less]
archaic without counsel or advice; foolish,
heedless; resourceless, perplexed, confused
"The treasury being empty, owing to the extravagance
of Richard, Parliament meets in accordance with the
royal summons, but it is a packed Parliament, and the
poet thus describes it, in "Richard the Redeless"..."
- William Langland(?), Piers Plowman (ca. 1378)
"Ethelred, so redeless, From westward course
restrained me."
- Eirik the Red (tr. by Gwyn Jones, 1961)
"The marriage Unn arranged.. produced the villain
of Njáls saga.., while Gunnars' redeless marriage
to Hallgerd enabled its central feud."
- W. I. Miller, Bloodtaking & Peacemaking (1990)
the worthless word for the day is: zyxt
[fr. Kentish zi, ze to see]
obs. Kentish thou seest (also zixt, zist)
"'Zyxt' will be the last word in the New English
Dictionary [OED], the monumental ten-volume work
which is being carried to completion by the Oxford
University Press."
- The Living Age, [Spring] 1921
"The New York Times put the fact on the front page
the next morning, [Jan 1, 1928] - that with the
inclusion of the Old Kentish word zyxt - the second
indicative present tense.. of the verb to see - the
work was done, the alphabet was exhausted, and the
full text was now wholly in the printers' hands."
- Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
(1998)
"Given that in the new online edition [zyxt] has
been stripped of its headword status and moved to
the middle of a heap of variant spellings of see, it
seems unlikely that it will ever return to vogue."
- Ammon Shea, Reading the OED (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: zythum
[fr. Gk zuthos, beer] /ZAI thum/
in ancient Egypt a kind of malt beer
(much of the word's continuing use is due to
its status as the last word listed in several
dictionaries, as in the online OED)
"For the thousands of years that the Egyptians
were building pyramids they were brewing zythum
to quench their thirsts, to satisfy their gods,
nourish their appetites and to help them relax."
- (Newcastle) Journal June 28, 2001
"And, there's someone in the pub we refer to as
Zythum. He always has the last word."
- ibid.
---
NOTE: the last word in W3 is 'zyzzogeton', a
genus of large South American leafhoppers
the worthless word for the day is: fremescent
[fr. L. fremere, to roar] /fre MES ent/
archaic, rare murmuring, growing noisy and indignant
"Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle, to comfort
the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent: then
descends; departs with protest..."
- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (1837)
"On either side fremescent crowds jostle and growl."
- Scotsmann May 4, 1881
the worthless word for the day is: antipriscianisticall
[fr. Priscian-us, a celebrated Roman grammarian]
obs. nonce-word ungrammatical
"Againe he was unlearned, because the Latin which he
did speake was such incongruall and disjoynted stuffe,
such antipriscianisticall eloquence..."
- Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crambe (1611)
"Coryate describes the woodcutter's mode of speech as
'antipriscianisticall'.. meaning ungrammatical, an
adjective of his own manufacture which has justifiably
failed to find a place in the Oxford English Dictionary."
- Michael Strachan,
The life and adventures of Thomas Coryate (1962)
(thanx to Cécile)
the worthless word for the day is: huckery
(today's word is esp. for Stuart in NZ..)
[fr. huckster, or origin unknown]
1) obs. ME the business of a huckster {OED2}
2) NZ slang ugly {Collins Eng. Dict. 5th Ed.};
often used to describe a woman or moll {Partridge}
"Collins, Chambers, OED, they're all useless anyway,
since none of them offer a defintion or etymology for
NZ English "huckery", which means run-down, decrepit,
in a state of poor repair, etc. So I say that none of
them are worth the paper they're no [longer] being
printed on."
- Stuart, languagehat.com Sept. 24, 2008
She hath holden hokkerye al hire lyf tyme.
- William Langland, Piers Plowman (ca. 1377)
"Jools looking pretty huckery in dun frock and
plastic sandals."
- (Wellington) Dominion, 25 Mar. 1993
(quoted in New Partridge Dict. of Slang, 2006)
"..everybody seems to be in agreement that this year's
batch are pretty ordinary, so much so that you could
rename this show America's Next Huckery Moll."
- America's Next Top Model (blog) June 3, 2007
this week: expect the unexpected
the worthless word for the day is: flamfew
[corruption of F. fanfelue, bubble(?)]
also flamefew, Sc. flamfoo obs. rare
1) a gewgaw, trifle, trinket
2) Naut. moonlight reflected on water (cf. moonglade)
"a top drawer filled with costume-jewelry flamfew"
- David Grambs, The Endangered English Dict. (1997)
"Flam-few. The glimmer of the moon on the water."
- A Naval Encyclopædia (1880)
the worthless word for the day is: plumpendicular
[blend of plumb line + perpendicular (fr. L. pendeo,
to hang)] obs. dial.
perpendicular (to the ground); hanging perpendicularly
"A plumpendicular gulch is a sudden, awkward and heavy
fall."
- A dictionary of archaic and provincial words (1855)
"[I]t will be a bad day indeed, and the sun must be
"plumpendicular down in dere eyes,".. if your industry
is not rewarded by a dozen of sporting fish..."
- The New Sporting Magazine (1870)
the worthless word for the day is: flapadosha
[origin unknown] an eccentric, showy, superficial person
"Need some verbal firepower to flatten an obnoxious
stuffed shirt? Try the supremely supercilious flapadosha,
which applies to any vain, ostentatious, shallow person."
- Charles H. Elster, There's a Word for It! (1996)
the worthless word for the day is: crumenically
[fr. L. crumena, purse]
humorous nonce-word in relation to the purse;
related to money
"A Work.. in which I am greatly interested, morally
and crumenically."
- S. T. Coleridge (letter to a friend, Mar. 20 1825)
"It is a different matter if every individual begins to
consider what in his own case is crumenically expedient."
- The Christian Observer (1834)
(reminds me a bit of the Simpson's cromulent..)
this week: really rare words, or Google this!
the worthless word for the day is: energumenist
[fr. Gk energoumenos, possessed by an evil spirit]
obs. rare one possessed by demons
"The meerly passive be simply deemoniacks, but
not energumenists."
- John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience (1646)
"Who is the energumenist who comes up with these,
or is it a committee, or is it--"
- W. F. Buckley (to M. Thatcher, on Firing Line,
Sept. 20 1975)
the worthless word for the day is: impigrity
[fr. im- + L. piger slow, dull, sluggish]
obs. rare quickness; diligence
The omni parent of all arts am I,
My forms and motions do surpass
The Delian twins impigrity,
Of the fam'd mirror glass.
- D. Roscoe, A Pindarick* Enigma
(fr. The Diarian Miscellany, 1775)
*in the style of the Greek poet Pindar
the worthless word for the day is: infrendiate
[fr. L. infrendere] obs. rare to gnash the teeth
"As everyone knows, the words marked obsolete or
archaic in unabridged dictionaries are the best words
of all... the dazzled reader will learn that "bloncket"
means "gray, or a light grayish blue" and "infrendiate"
to "gnash the teeth" and "discerp" to "tear something
to shreds."
- The Washington Post Oct 19, 2003
the worthless word for the day is: villatic
[fr. L. villaticus, of a country house < villa]
/vi LAD ik/ of a farm or village: rural; rustic
And as an evening dragon came
Assailant on the perched roosts
And nests in order ranged
Of tame villatic fowl..
- John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671)
"I suppose you think a hummingbird would dare
stick its beak into this arctic tundra, this
endless twilight, this . . . this villatic
barbican!"
- Jan Karon, Out to Canaan (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: obluctation
[fr. L. obluctari, to offer resistance]
obs. rare the action of striving or struggling
against something
'a struggling or striving against; resistance'
{Webster, 1828}
(not to be confused with oblectation!)
"To use that artificial obluctation, and facing
out of the matter."
- Martin Fotherby, Atheomastix (1619)
the worthless word for the day is: humicubation
[fr. L. humi, on the ground + cubare, to lie down]
/hyu mik yoo BAY shun/
obs., rare lying on the ground, especially in
penitence or humiliation
"Fasting and sackcloth, and ashes, and tears, and
humicubations, used to be companions of Repentance."
- Bp. John Bramhall, Hobbes' Animadversions (1658)
"He is afraid, that 'this doctrine' of fasting, and
mourning, and tears, and humicubation, and sackcloth,
and ashes, 'pertaineth to the establishment of Romish
penance.'"
- Bp. Bramhall, op. cit.
"I had to submit to humicubations in abatures during
my pernoctations..."
- S. K. Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant (1856)
the worthless word for the day is: Sprachgefühl
[G., fr. sprache speech + gefühl feeling]
/SHPRAKH guh fyl/
an intuitive grasp of the spirit of a language, esp.
consciousness of what is acceptable usage;
linguistic instinct
"..whose Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more
than fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages."
- Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused,
Mispronounced Words (Foreword, 1972)
"The Sprachgefühl, feeling for speech, exercises a
pervasive influence in a language so long cultivated
as English."
- Eric Partridge, World of Words (1938)
the worthless word for the day is: humectation
[fr. L. (h)umecto, to moisten] /hyu mek TAY shun/
archaic the act or process of moistening or wetting;
irrigation; the condition of being moistened or wet
"Health consisting in his view in the humectation and
suppleness of the parts, he advised water in great
abundance as the "universal menstruum..."
- C. B. Burr, The Physician as a character in fiction
(from The American Journal of Insanity, July 1906)
bonus word: menstruum - a solvent
the worthless word for the day is: orexis
[Gk orexis, desire] /aw REK sis/
Psych. the aspect of mental activity concerned
with emotion and desire rather than cognition;
appetite, desire
"..whose Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than
fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages."
- Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused,
Mispronounced Words (Foreword, 1972)
"Aristotle coined the Greek noun orexis from.. orego,
which means "to reach out." Orexis is the soul's
"reaching out" for something in the world.
- Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: legerity
[fr. F. legereté, lightness (fr. L. leviarius?]
/luh JER ud ee/ agility of mind or of limb: nimbleness
"This is not a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy
of nullifidians. Rather it is hoped that the haecceity of
this enchiridion of arcane and recondite sesquipedalian
items will appeal to the oniomania of an eximious
Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose
Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than fugacious
fulfillment among its felicific pages."
- Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused,
Mispronounced Words (Foreword, 1972)
"..the legerity of the French mind made the Gallic visitor
quick to comprehend his desire for solitude, and the very
transparency of the masking rendered it invulnerable."
- Elinor Wylie, The Venetian Glass Nephew (1925)
the worthless word for the day is: contrafibularities
[fr. contra-, against + fibula, a bone in the lower leg]
while sounding congratulatory, the elements suggest
pulling someone's leg
Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you
will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most
enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: What?
Blackadder: '"Contrafribularites", sir? It is a common
word down our way.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Damn! [writes in the book]
- Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder the Third
"Contrafibularities was one of several nonce [or nonsense]
words used by the fictional Edmund Blackadder to confuse
the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, whom Blackadder
despised. Among the others were anaspeptic, phrasmotic,
pericombobulations, interphrastically and extra-
muralization."
- wikipedia
(this week: nonsense and jokes)
the worthless word for the day is: hackette
[hack + -ette]
a jocular or disparaging term for a female journalist
"I, innocent hackette on my first foreign assignment,
passed up the chance of becoming part of the action
of Frederick Forsyth's life."
- The Sunday Times, 18 Feb. 1990
"[Barbara] Amiel has been busy penning yet another
letter to The Spectator in her ongoing row with
Sunday Times hackette Eleanor Mills."
- The Evening Standard (London), Feb 19, 2004
the worthless word for the day is: stupex
[fr. stupid] jocular, obs. a fool
"The light of nature would show that to any one
but a stupex."
- Charlotte Mary Yonge, The Trial (1864)
"..we had fairly to place the morsel in his mouth
and call him a little stupex for his pains."
- Beatrice Batty, Mätzchen and his Mistresses (1881)
the worthless word for the day is: frostification
jocular the process of becoming frosty
"..a certain frostification in progress among most
elaborately tended whiskers..."
- John Wilson, Blackwood's Magazine (1831)
"[I]t is an act of great barbarity to leave the
persons of the plot stoically and heroically facing
the gathering storm - feet in imminent peril of
frostification and the very words of their converse
snapping from their tongues like broken icicles."
- Michael Loftus, The Pots of Mcphail (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: hedgehoggy
[hedgehog + -y]
having a prickly nature, of a forbidding appearance
or manner; tending to arouse aversion
(hence, hedgehogginess)
"So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and
over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to
their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is."
- John Ruskin, The Ethics of the Dust (1866)
"'Why is it that we English, when we meet abroad, are so
very friendly, and when we reappear in London are so
very hedgehoggy?' I told her that the reason why there
was no hedgehogginess on this occasion was because I
was not an Englishman."
- John L. Motley, Correspondence (a. 1877)
the worthless word for the day is: enturbulate
[coined by L. Ron Hubbard, prob. fr. turbulent/disturbed]
used as a shibboleth by Scientologists to disturb;
to harass
"The English language was insufficiently rich and diverse
for Hubbard and he often made up new words to compensate
for its inadequacies - to 'enturbulate' was a neologism
meaning 'to bring into a confused state'."
- Russell Miller, Bare-faced Messiah (1987)
"Underground armies operate in the large cities
enturbulating the police with false information through
anonymous phone calls and letters."
- William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys (1971)
"Yet it gets under the skin, leaks in, enturbulates the
dark waters."
- Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: nomothetic
[fr. Gk nomothetikos, of legislation]
/nom uh THET ik/ relating to law; based in general laws
"Is musicology.. a nomothetic or an idiographic discipline?
Ought it to emulate physics and concern itself with estab-
lishing generally applicable laws or must it, like history,
describe what is unrepeatable?"
- Daily Telegraph 19 Sept, 1970
the worthless word for the day is: obnixely
[fr. L. obnixus strenuous, resolute]
obs. rare earnestly, strenuously
cf. obnixiously (not to be confused w. obnoxiously)
"[M]ost humbly and most obnixely I must beseach both
them and you..."
- The Gentleman's Magazine (1862, in letter fr. Robt.
Codrington to Sir Edw. Dering, pleading for mercy from
the Parliament for unintentional offence given in one
of his poems)
the worthless word for the day is: pernickety
[origin unknown]
chiefly Brit. characterized by excessive precision and
attention to trivial details; fussy, meticulous,
persnickety
"Sich fellers are troubled with a vertigo in their
consciences, and are never very pernikety how they steer
if it leads 'em tu profit."
- J. Downing, Life of Andrew Jackson (1834)
""No, the word is not persnickety; it's pernickety,"
I can hear him saying to me. Only a pernickety person,
like him, might say such a thing."
- Zontee Hou, Pieces Apart (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: omniscian
[fr. L. omniscius + -an]
obs. rare a person who knows, or professes to know,
everything
"[A]nd say not but Thomas Nash hath read something,
that, affecting to seem an university of sciences,
and a royal exchange of tongues, would be thought
to have devoured libraries, and to know all things..,
like Adam and Solomon, the arch-patrons of our new
omniscians."
- Gabriell Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation (1593)
"Have Omniscians learned anything new recently?"
- Neil de Grasse Tyson, Just Visiting This Planet (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: myrmidonize
[myrmidon + -ize]
obs. rare to make hard, to harden
"Besides, she hath steeled my soft impressive heart,
and myrmidonized mine eyes, that they shall never
give grief a tear more alms."
- Th. Nashe, Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem (1593)
"..long ago someone thought to use myrmidonize
as a verb, but the word didn't catch on."
- poetrypoem.com Jul 03, 2007
the worthless word for the day is: mussitate
[fr. L. mussitare, to mutter]
obs. to mutter
"'Oh, Anu, I never thought to see you again,' he
mussitates. (I have appeared to him in my original
form.) 'What name are you using now?' 'Loki.'"
- Dan Wick, The Devil's Tale (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: heisenbug
[after Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle]
Programming jargon a software bug that alters its
behavior or disappears when you try to isolate it
or examine it (compare schroedinbug)
"A Heisenbug is a transient software error (a soft
software error) that only appears occasionally and
is related to timing or overload. Heisenbugs are
contrasted to Bohrbugs which, like the Bohr atom,
are good, solid things with deterministic behavior."
- Gray & Reuter, Transaction Processing (1993)
"Finally, and this is perhaps the easiest solution,
you can kill yourself. Believe me, [that] looks
pretty tempting after trying to find a thread related
Heisenbug for two weeks."
- The Register, 28th July 2008
this week: more eponyms
the worthless word for the day is: Zoilist
[after Zoilus, Gk critic famous for criticism of Homer]
a carping critic
My fashion's known; out rhyme, tak't as you list;
A fico for the sour-brow'd Zoilist.
- John Marston, What You Will (1607)
"'The man is a Zoilist, and there is nothing to be done
about such creatures.' Polly asked what a Zoilist was.
'A carping and malicious critic..'"
- Pamela H. Johnson, Survival of the Fittest (1968)
the worthless word for the day is: Oblomovian
[fr. Ivan Goncharov's novel, Oblomov]
characterized by sloth or lassitude
(see also Oblomovism, sluggish inertia)
"Gumbo was in a bad mood. His Oblomovian head was
dizzy and drooped over the bar."
- Drago Jancar, Mocking Desire (tr. 1998)
"There is Papa, an ex-journalist whose wife committed
suicide, and who now leads an Oblomovian existence of
bed, gin, and hopes for his 18-year-old Omar at
university next fall."
- John Simon, John Simon on Film (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: Thalian
[pertaining to Thalia, the muse of comedy]
of the nature of comedy; comic
"The Thalian Association's version [of 'Phantom']
is different from Andrew Lloyd Webber's better-
known "The Phantom of the Opera," which has been
running on Broadway since 1988.."
- California Chronicle, Oct. 06, 2009
the worthless word for the day is: lusk
[origin uncertain]
idle, lazy, worthless {Johnson, 1822)
"The lapses of lusk water heard apart,
As in a dream are heard love-broken words,
Or wing-strokes when the chimney-swallows dart."
- Julian Hawthorne, Millicent and Rosalind (1889)
the worthless word for the day is: gry
[fr. Gk gru, grunt of a pig; dirt under the nail]
obs. anything of little value, as the paring of
the nails {Johnson, 1805}
"The work has every fault which must convict it..
but which will leave it not the ninety-ninth part
of a gry the worse.."
- E. S. Barrett, Heroine (1815)
the worthless word for the day is: tralatitious
[fr. L. tralatio, a transporting or transferring]
/tra luh TISH us/
1) characterized by transference; metaphorical, figurative
2) handed down: traditional
(nothing at all to do with skipping/jumping, tra la..)
"In the first place I give the meaning of each word, both
its primary and its secondary or tralatitious meaning."
- Richard C. Christie, Etienne Dolet (1880)
"Among biblical critics a tralatitious interpretation is
one received by expositor from expositor."
-Wm. Withington
the worthless word for the day is: moider
[origin uncertain] /MOI dur/
Irish & Brit. dial. (also moither, etc.)
[tv] 1) to perplex, bewilder 2) to distract, bother
[iv] 1) to talk incoherently: be delirious
2) to wander about aimlessly or confusedly
(not to be confused with U.S. vernacular for murder)
this week: more words from Dr. Johnson
"I never was so moidered in all my life as I was
yesterday..."
- William Westall, Ralph Norbreck's Trust (1885)
"..to become, at last, the writer who depicted, as
none has ever done before or since, the moidered
passions of youth."
- Andre Maurois, Mad Grandeur (tr. 1938)
the worthless word for the day is: violaceous
[L. violaceus, violet-colored]
of a violet color, bluish purple
"(his prose frequently begins as lavender and moves
rapidly through violaceous toward plum-colored)"
- Damien Broderick, Earth is But a Star (2001)
"The extraordinary violaceous blue tint which
immediately precedes the yellowish red."
- Pereira's Polarized Light (1854 tr.)
the worthless word for the day is: chartopaigniologist
[fr. Gk charte[s], a sheet of paper + pagnios, playful
+ -ologist, person who studies]
nonce-word an expert in gambling
"But if I told them that I'm a chartopaigniologist,
they might be impressed and give me a laboratory."
- Anthony Burgess, The End of the World News (1983)
the worthless word for the day is: fidimplicitary
[fr. L. fides implicita, implicit faith]
/fi dim PLI si ter ee/
nonce-word having implicit faith in another's views
"[I]nsomuch as one word will hardly be believed by our
fidimplicitary gown-men, who, satisfied with their
predecessors' contrivances, and taking all things
literally, without examination, blaterate, to the
nauseating even of vulgar ears, those exotick proverbs,
There is no new thing under the sun, Nihil dictum
quod non dictum prius, and, Beware of philosophers.."
- Sir Thomas Urquhart, Logopandecteision (1653)
(cf. logopandocie)
"It had grown later and later when Dr. Dodypol,
fidimplicitary no more, burst into a crazy fit of
laughter.."
- Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat (1981)
the worthless word for the day is: deblateration
[fr. L. deblaterare, to prate or blab out]
the act of prating or babbling
"..in the words of Sir Thomas Urquhart.."We nauseate
such quisquiliary deblaterations of philsophunculi."
- Jacqueline Belanger, Critical Receptions
""Truly, sieur," replied Sir Thomas, "your observations
on those antiquated times, as they are now called by
those shallow and fidimplicitary coxcombs, who fill our
too credulous ears with their quisquiliary deblaterations,
appear to me both orderly digested and aptly conceived."
- Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1817
"(she'd received the ophelimitic deblateration of god..)"
- Christopher WunderLee, The Loony (2005)
(quisquiliary: trashy, worthless)
the worthless word for the day is: philosophunculist
[fr. the Latinate form philosophunculus]
rare a petty or insignificant philosopher
(see also philosophaster)
"You know, or should know, that I am a senior
philosophunculist on active duty."
- Robert Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
"..the sagacity of the sapient philosophunculi.."
- Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. (1817)
the worthless word for the day is: deprehend
[fr. L. deprehendere: to seize, catch, detect, etc.]
obs. 1) to seize, capture 2) to take by surprise
3) to perceive or detect
hence, deprehendible & deprehensible (detectable)
"[L]et them and the world know that thou.. can
deprehend the wise in their own wisdom, and the
proud in the imagination of their wicked hearts
to their everlasting confusion."
- John Knox (sermon, ca. 1570)
"I deprehend in myself more than an alacrity, a
vehemency to do service to that company, and so
I may find reason to make rhyme."
- John Donne, Letters (1651)
the worthless word for the day is: eumoirous
[fr. Gk eumoiros, well-endowed by fortune]
/yoo MOI rus/?
rare happy or lucky as the result of being good
""But in a hundred years we wouldn't use a word
like 'eumoirous'!""
- Leo Rosten, The Return of Hyman Kaplan (1959)
"After the threesome went their own eumoirous ways,
Regina Lochner slipped like a specially treated
throat lozenge into the seedy, contrectated terra
incognita of the Louisiana Francophile militia.."
- Christopher WunderLee, The Loony (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: commination
[fr. L. comminari, to threaten] /kom uh NAY shun/
a formal denunciation; also used loosely
"The last [letter] is on the subject of religion,
and by its publication will gratify the priesthood
with new occasion of repeating their comminations
against me."
- Th. Jefferson, letter to John Adams June 15, 1813
"At last the leaders of the Democratic Party
have moved decisively, hauling out their ripest
comminations and hurling them at--no, not at
George Bush. The man at whom they're leveling their
fire is Representative James Moran of Virginia."
- Alexander Cockburn, The Nation March 31, 2003
this week: things I've left undone
the worthless word for the day is: depontication
[ad L. pons/pontis, bridge; after defenestration]
the act of hurling from a bridge
"There are several instances of defenestration in
Czech history, and it has continued into modern
times. The martyrdom of St Johannes is the only
case of depontication, but it must be part of the
same Tarpeian tendency."
- Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (1977)
[this is quoted (erroneously?) online as
'depontiFIcation', perhaps influenced by this:
"Shana Alexander added that if this verb [to
defenestrate] is acceptable, then jumping
off of bridges should be "depontification."]
---
akmszkuta writes to remind us of an other variant
form, flocciPaucinihilipilification (which gets
out-googled about four-to-one, for what that's
worth). This was apparently foisted on us by Sir
Walter Scott in 1829: "They must be taken with an
air of contempt, a floccipaucinihilipilification
[sic, here and in two other places] of all that
can gratify the outward man." {OED2}
But consider, the Latin prefix nauci- means
worthless, while pauci- means few or little. QED.
the worthless word for the day is: maritodespotism
[fr. L. maritus, husband + despotism]
/MAR i toh DES puh tiz'm/
ruthless, tyrannical domination by a husband
"One could very well assume that these women
are victims of domestic violence and might have
been subject to extreme maritodespotism without
any recourse for legal or social review of their
circumstances with the aim of attaining a
favourable outcome."
- Akin Akintayo, Akin (blog) 21 January 2009
"Ruthless domination by a husband is
"maritodespotism." Search for the comparable wife
word is under way. Stand by."
- L. M. Boyd, San Fran. Chronicle Apr 5, 1998
[that would be uxorodespotism; thanx Charles..]
".. and the one and only hyperhedonic, brimborian,
and mendaciloquent maritodespot, playing craps
and engaged in a heated, rather secretive, hubbub
over someone's roll."
- Christopher WunderLee, The Loony (2005)
(and, apropos of nothing..)
"Known hence forth as a quantum heretic, Albert
was left in a strange limbo, his ideas were
discussed to a great extent; however he, himself,
..who so many considered the personification of
floccinaucinihilipilification, was greatly
ignored."
- Christopher WunderLee, ibid.
the worthless word for the day is: devenustation
[de- + venustation, a making beautiful]
(Theroux's coinage?)
the condition or process of being reduced from Venus
status: de-aestheticization
"[W]e can rely on Leo Steinberg's reading of the formal
and thematic ways in which Les Demoiselles constitutes
"the radical devenustation" that inaugurates modernist
art."
- Charles Altieri, The Kenyon Review Spring, 1984
"LEGS. The one devenustation. What intrusive image will
you have, swollen fetlock? Curb at the bank of the hock?
Puffed gaskin?"
- Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat (1981)
the worthless word for the day is: uranology
[fr. Gk ouranos sky, heaven(s) + -logy]
/yur uh NAL uh jee/ (also ouranology)
1) the study of the heavens: astronomy
2) a discourse or treatise on the heavens
hence, uranologist & uranological
"Uranology is a science which treats of the
natural body of heaven..."
- E. Sibly, The Celestial Science of Astrology (1792)
"..we may regard ouranology as the discipline that
binds together the various specializations
necessary to the creation of a space microcosm."
- Anthony Burgess, The End of the World News (1983)
the worthless word for the day is: eonism
[eponym, fr. the Chevalier Charles d'Éon (1728-1810),
a French adventurer who wore women's clothes + -ism]
transvestism, esp. by a man
"Eonism is rather a puzzling condition to define and
to label. I met with it many years ago [1920] and put
it aside for further consideration."
- Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex (1938)
"Havelock Ellis proposed the term "eonism," naming
it after its prototype, the Chevalier D'Eon and as a
parallel to sadism and masochism. Hamburger and his
associates in Denmark reserved the term eonism for
severe cases of so-called "genuine transvestism."
- Harry Benjamin, Transexualsim and Transvestism..
(1954)
the worthless word for the day is: luciferous
[fr. L. lucifer, light-bearing] /lu SI f(uh)rus/
archaic bringing light or insight: illuminating
(to be confused with Luciferous)
"..the luciferous action of dead fish may be not
only transfused to water, but may be afterwards
brightened by a certain quantity of saline impreg-
nation..."
- The Imperial Magazine, Vol I (1831)
"..the line between the 'luciferous' imparting of
knowledge to the common good and the 'luciferous'
exploitation of knowledge for personal gain was a
fine one, to be drawn within the consciences and
attitudes of each individual."
- Mark Greengrass et al, Samuel Hartlib (2002)
the worthless word for the day is: astunomologist
[fr. Gk astunomos, city magistrate]
policeman (nonce word coined by Burgess?)
"'I never saw the necessity of an astunomologist on
the team.'...'It comes from the Greek for policeman..
Policeman sounds horrible, of course.'"
- Anthony Burgess, The End of the World News (1983)
the worthless word for the day is: castrametation
[fr. L. castra, camp + metari, to measure out]
the art or science of laying out an encampment
"The elder traveller.. plunged, nothing loth, into
a sea of discussion concerning urns, vases, votive
altars, Roman camps, and the rules of
castrametation."
- Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816)
"'..pray put me in mind of the word that has been
on the tip of my tongue this last half hour,.. the
learned word for setting up tents and so on.'
'Castramentation[sic], sir,' said Welby, beaming
with decent triumph..."
- Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute (1989)
the worthless word for the day is: epicritic
[fr. Gk epikrinein, to decide] /ep i KRIT ik/
of or relating to sensory nerve fibers that enable
the perception of slight differences in the intensity
of stimuli, especially touch or temperature
(not to be confused with protopathic, of or relating
to sensory nerve fibers that enable the perception of
strong rather crude stimuli)
"During the early stage of recovery, when the primitive,
protopathic sensibility had been restored, but not yet
the finely discriminating epicritic sensibility, many
of the experiments had been extremely painful."
- Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)
this week: science rears its ugly head?
the worthless word for the day is: devorative
[fr. L. devorare, to devour] /de VOR uh tiv/
obs., Med capable of being swallowed whole
"[D]evorative capsules are thin films of gelatin
designed to be used like powder-papers, except..
when ready to be taken the whole capsule (and powder)
is.. then swallowed."
- John King, King's American Dispensatory (1900)
succulent and devorative cherrystone clams
- David Grambs, The Endangered English Dict.
the worthless word for the day is: calefacient
[fr. L. calefacere, to make warm]
[n] a medicinal agent which produces warmth or
a sense of heat
[adj] producing warmth (also, calefaction, calefactive)
"Galen strongly defends the practice of drinking wine,
especially for old people. He says: 'Old age is cold
and dry, and is to be corrected by calefacients.'"
- Lord Bramwell, 'Drink: A Rejoinder'
(in the 19th Century, June 1885)
"But if the swelling is itself cold, the remedy must be
combined with a calefacient astringent such as bog rush
and the medicament derived from a certain species of
oyster."
- Eric Schroeder, Muhammad's People (1955)
the worthless word for the day is: cohobate
[fr. L. cohobare, perh. fr. Arab. ka"aba, to repeat
an action] /KO ah bate/ old Chem.
to redistill (a distillate) one or more times
hence, cohobation, a repeated distillation
(not to be confused with cohabit)
thanx to Joel Patton
"Cohobate the Spirit and distil again, after which
rectify it in a Glass Matrass, in a gentle Balneo,
or Sand-heat."
- Richard Le Gallienne, An Old Country House (1902)
"He is our contemporary Dr Dee, effecting cohobation
from the dross and vapours of the urban scape to
produce this golden vision..."
- Will Self, New Statesman 16 October 2000
the worthless word for the day is: cephalization
[fr. Gk kephala, head + -ize + -ation]
/SEF uh li ZA shun/
Biol. the degree to which the head is developed and
dominates over the rest of the body
"Now this cephalization, this subordination of the members
and structure of the anterior part of the body to the head,
is a difference in degree..."
- Charles Lyell, The Antiquity of Man
(in The North American Review, Oct. 1863)
"Indeed, this increased cephalization of animal life in
the fall of the great year does suggest a kind of ripening
process, the turning of the sap and milk, which had been
so abundant and so riotous in the earlier period, into
fibre and fruit and seed."
- John Burroughs, Time and Change (1912)
the worthless word for the day is: precatory
[fr. L. precari, to pray] /PREK uh tor E/
expressing entreaty, or a wish
also, precative
"Because the Constitution gives the President the
discretion to recommend only "such Measures as he
shall judge necessary and expedient" (Article II,
section 3 of the Constitution), the specified officers
and I shall treat these directions as precatory."
- Pres. Obama, (in The Washington Post Mar. 11, 2009)
(thanx to TEd R.)
the worthless word for the day is: fissiparous
[fissi- (being split) + L. parere, to bring forth]
divisive; factious
"Lenin was duelling with the Mensheviks while pursuing
the fissiparous feud against Bogdanov and Krasin, who
had stolen much of his Tiflis-heist booty, which in turn
was being vigorously pursued by the European police."
- Simon Montefiore, Young Stalin (2007)
"Russia's far east has always been the most strate-
gically vulnerable part of Moscow's fissiparous
imperium, in what is the world's biggest country."
- The Observer (UK), 2 August 2009
the worthless word for the day is: hyperhedonia
[fr. hyper-, above + Gk hedone, pleasure] Psychol.
feeling abnormally great pleasure from a humdrum act
"Hyperhedonia A condition in which abnormally
heightened pleasure is derived from participation in
activities which are intrinsically tedious and
uninteresting. For a case study near you, see any golfer."
- Peter Bowler, The Superior Person's Second Book
of Weird and Wondrous Words (1992)
the worthless word for the day is: mendaciloquent
[fr. L. mendacium, falsehood + -iloquent, speaking]
obs. rare skillful or artful at telling lies
"..the one and only hyperhedonic, brimborian, and
mendaciloquent maritodespot, playing craps and
engaged in a heated, rather secretive, hubbub over
someone's roll."
- Christopher WunderLee, The Loony (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: enracinate
[en- + F. racine, root < L. radix]
to put forth roots; hence, enracination, the act or
process of taking root
(compare deracinate/deracination)
"For no kind of formal architecture can take account
of ecology: the cold and authoritarian abstractions
of recent modernists comprise quite another discourse.
Here, we enracinate ourselves."
- Peter Jones, The Architectural Review (Nov 1996)
"[The angel's] reply uses the familiar Caribbean
metaphor of the tree, but in a way that no longer
sees enracination as an imperative, and which now
encourages the movement into exile."
- Martin Munro, Journal of Modern Lit. (Winter 2006)
the worthless word for the day is: jacquerie
[F. < jacques, peasant] /zha KREE/
1) capitalized the uprising of the French peasants
against the nobility in 1358
2) a peasant revolt, esp. a very bloody one
"In the ensuing jacquerie, peasants attacked the
nobility, seized land and drove out the Tsar's police."
- Simon Montefiore, Young Stalin (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: perlustration
[fr. L. perlustrare]
1) the act of inspecting, surveying, or viewing a place
thoroughly; a comprehensive survey
2) the act of examining documents for purposes of sur-
veillance; spec. the inspection of posted letters, etc.
(see also perlustrate)
"The perlustration was compounded by widespread fear
of contagion in Philadelphia."
- Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague (1994)
"Mr. Hugh Fraser.. asked the Prime Minister whether
cables and radio telegrams sent by M.P.s were priv-
ileged from perlustration by the security services."
- Times (London), 15 Mar. 1967
"[The Okhrana] bureaux noirs practised perlustratsia
(perlustration): 380,00 letters annually were being
opened by 1882... police director, Lopukhin, found
forty of his own private letters in the dead man's
safe: the Minister was perlustrating his own chief
of police."
- Simon Montefiore, Young Stalin (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: hemipygic
[fr. Gk hemi- half + pyg, buttocks + -ic]
nonce-word having only one buttock (or, half-assed)
"..which first causes it to depress at the poles,
then warps it into an ellipsoid that wobbles
through a period of hemipygic asymmetry to the
beauty of a pear."
- Guy Davenport, The Dawn in Erewhon
(in Tatlin!, 1974)
the pyg family
the worthless word for the day is: buccinator
[fr. L. bucinator, trumpeter] /BUK suh nA tur/
Anat. (of) the thin, flat muscle forming the
wall of the cheek - so called from its use in
blowing wind instruments also attrib.
"Two or three [frogs] are blowing out their
buccinators."
- Blackwood's Magazine, v. LI, 1842
"Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, he explained, owed
the signature ballooning of his cheeks to the
buccinator muscles."
- Steve Giegerich, Body of Knowledge (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: canicular
[fr. L. canicula, little dog < canis]
1) relating to the Dog Star, or its rising (ab. Aug. 11)
2) of or relating to the dog days of summer
"Canicular days are computed by Harris to extend from
the 24th of July to the 28th of August."
- Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia Supp. (1753)
"But, in the sudden storm, calculations went to the
canicular devils."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Ada (1969)
the worthless word for the day is: assot
[fr. F. assoter < L. ad- + sot, a fool] /as SOT/
obs. to make a fool of, infatuate, befool (cf. besot)
(not to be confused with asset)
"They assot themselves, they will not conceive aright
of their estates."
- Bp. Andrewes, Sermons (a1626)
"[H]e counted on King Mark to be so assoted with Isolde
that he would plunge his hands into her robe rather
than deeply into the supposed treasure."
- Thomas Berger, Arthur Rex (1978)
the worthless word for the day is: costiveness
[fr. L. costiver, to bind]
constipation; also fig., stultification
"I find the autumn stimulating, as spring is supposed
to be for others. Autumn is the time to work... A general
costiveness has set in, however,.. and I cannot work."
- John Banville, The Sea (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: viduity
[L. viduitas < vidua, widow] /vi DOO i tee/
widowhood
"[T]here is of course the house on the canal where
mother lay a-dying, in the late autumn, after her
long viduity."
- Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
"Hauled back to his cell, he took his own life by
drinking a phial of poison smuggled to him by his
wife, who perhaps was, understandably, impatient
for her viduity."
- John Banville, Prague Pictures (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: feuilletonist
[F. feuilletoniste] /fuh yuh TOE nust/
a writer of regularly appearing critical or familiar
essays or of a column
"The article was terrible. The feuilletonist had
obviously understood the whole book deliberately in a
way in which it could not possibly be understood."
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (tr. 2000)
"And there, glaring at him across the room, was sad
old Svoboda, the critic and feuilletonist, whose name
had not been allowed to appear in print since '68."
- John Banville, Prague Pictures (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: synecdoche
[L. a. Gk synekdoche] /suh NEK duh kee/
a figure by which a more comprehensive term is used
for a less comprehensive or vice versa; as whole for
part or part for whole, genus for species or species
for genus, etc.
compare metonymy
"Are only the Danish snot-nosed? No, but a good
question. The writer does refer to Danes here, but
perhaps not literally. Perhaps he refers to a generic
type of mid-eighties, reflexively leftist Western
European youth. I think the writer could just as
easily have used Norwegian. I'd say this is a good
example of synecdoche as we discussed yesterday."
- Arthur Phillips, Prague (2003)
"Conjure a winter morning, a river and a castle and
a traveller disembarking with a book under his arm
and for the space of a page or two an implied world
comes to creaky life. It is all a sleight of the
imagination, a vast synecdoche."
- John Banville, Prague Pictures (2003)
heh. dueling citations..
the worthless word for the day is: plutonic
[fr. L. Pluto]
1) of deep igneous or magmatic origin plutonic rocks
2) plutonian (relating to Pluto)
(not to be confused with platonic)
"Ocean ridges and island arcs are the location of the
Earth's most active areas of volcanic and plutonic
activity."
- Kearey & Vine, Global Tectonics (1990)
"As if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here
against his will in the service of his Plutonic master."
- Th. Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)
the worthless word for the day is: intenerate
[ad. L. tener, tender]
now rare to make tender, soften (lit. and fig.)
(not to be confused with intemerate)
"..and the undesigning approaches and familiar communion
of his family could not but win and intenerate his heart."
- The New-England Magazine Oct 1, 1835
the worthless word for the day is: arse-verse
[L. arse verse, to turn back fire]
a Tuscan-Latin incantation against fire
not to be confused with arse-versy, heels-over-head,
topsy-turvey
"Arse-verse.. A spell written upon a house to
preserve it from burning."
- Nathan Bailey, English Dialect Words.. (1883)
Stand to't, quoth she, or yield to mercy,
It is not fighting arsie-versie...
- Samuel Butler, Hudibras (1678)
the worthless word for the day is: snipocracy
[fr. snip + -ocracy] obs. rare
the tailoring profession or its leading members
"By Jove! this comes it strong. Fancy the
snipocracy here - eh?"
- George Meredith, Evan Harrington (1861)
the worthless word for the day is: forficate
[fr. L. forfex] /FOR fi kit/
shaped like scissors; deeply forked
"It would be advisable to have a term to express such
extreme condition, which I shall call forficate..."
- Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds (1872)
"Many of you probably are aware that the scissor-tailed
flycatcher (Muscivora forficate) is our state bird."
- Daily Oklahoman Apr. 5, 2005
the worthless word for the day is: divulgate
[fr. L. divulgare, to divulge]
1) obs. divulge 2) archaic disclose, reveal; publish
(while marked as archaic in modern dictionaries, this
term seems to be making a comeback, either as a loan
word (from Italian), or as an inkhorn term..)
(thanx to Pfranz)
"I tried to slow myself down so as not to divulgate the
impatience of desire."
- Lee Siegel, Love in a Dead Language (2000)
"[The Iron Heel] divulgates a fully developed theory but
cannot countenance its consequences."
- Phillip E. Wegner, Imaginary Communities (2002)
the worthless word for the day is: plagium
[L., kidnapping] /PLAY jee um/
Civil Law the crime of kidnapping (esp. of children);
an instance of this
"A 29-year-old woman has appeared in court charged
with plagium, the offence of child stealing."
- BBC News Oct 31, 2005
"Plagiarism, which means kidnapping words of another,
comes from the Latin, plagium (kidnapping)."
- (as from) Anu Garg, The Dord, The Diglot, etc.
the worthless word for the day is: spaghettification
[by extension fr. spaghettify]
the stretching of objects into long thin shapes in a
very strong gravitational field, caused by extreme
tidal forces
"I am convinced, by arguments given by Wheeler in 1957,
that the end point of spaghettification - the singularity
itself - is governed by a union, or marriage, of the laws
of quantum mechanics and those of spacetime warpage."
- Kip Thorne, The Future of Spacetime (2003)
"You're stretched into an incredibly thin line, miles
long, like a strand of pasta. Scientists call this
process spaghettification. And the black hole, as if
in appreciation of the analogy, slurps you down."
- Philip Plait, Death from the Skies! (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: ekpyrotic
[fr. Gk ekpurosis, conflagration]
referring to the destruction and recreation of the
world in fire
"The ekpyrotic process begins far in the indefinite
past with a pair of flat empty branes sitting parallel
to each other in a warped five-dimensional space - a
situation they say that represents the simplest
solution of Einstein's equations in an advanced
version of string theory."
- Dennis Overbye, New York Times May 22, 2001
"There is another idea, still in its infancy, called
the ekpyrotic universe (Greek for "from (or out of]
fire")."
- Philip Plait, Death from the Skies (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: benignity
[fr. MF. benignité]
/bi NIG nuh tee/ (rhymes with dignity)
1) the state of being gracious
2) archaic kindness
"The abbé spoke of the faith with wisdom and
benignity."
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)
"The evil inherent in human nature forbids the
fancy of a despot blending benignity with energy,
or an oligarchy at once sagacious and generous."
- The New York Times July 29, 1867
the worthless word for the day is: peenging
[prob. an imitative alteration of whinging]
Sc. and n. Eng. regional whining, complaining,
moping; peevish
"[T]hat useless peenging thing of a lassie there, at
Ellangowan..."
- Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815)
"And he says, I've sold some neeps - you ken he
had that girny peenging voice - I've sold a cartload
of neeps to a chiel in London, but he wants me to
deliver them, and I don't ken where it is."
- Duncan McLean, Blackden (1994)
[neeps are turnips!]
the worthless word for the day is: exodist
[fr. exodus + -ist] /EK suh dust/
rare one who departs from one place to settle in
another; an emigrant
"Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had
to fortress themselves against."
- James R. Lowell, The Biglow papers (1848)
"I walked through Chelsea's streets with an
exodist's attentiveness."
- Joseph O'Neill, Netherland (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: inconsonance
[fr. inconsonant, after consonance]
lack of harmony: disagreement
"[W]e are able to judge respecting the consonance
or inconsonance of the means employed."
- Rbt Wilberforce, The doctrine of holy baptism (1849)
"It had turned into a freakishly transparent morning
free of clouds or natural inconsonances of any sort."
- Joseph O'Neill, Netherland (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: tantalism
[fr. Tantal-us + -ism] obs. rare
a teasing or torment like that of Tantalus; tantalization
"Is not such a provision like tantalism to this people?"
- Jos. Quincy {Webster, 1828}
"..longings concerned with horizons and potentials
sighted or hallucinated and in any event lost long ago,
tantalisms that touch on the undoing of losses too
private and reprehensible to be acknowledged to
oneself, let alone to others."
- Joseph O'Neill, Netherland (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: gormlessness
[gormless (stupid) + -ness]
the state of lacking intelligence; foolishness
"The problem with being evil, he'd been forced to
admit, was that demons were not great innovatory
thinkers and really needed the spice of human
ingenuity. And he'd really been looking forward to
Eric Thursley, whose brand of superintelligent
gormlessness was a rare delight."
- Terry Prachett, Eric (2002)
"She was casting us in a screwball comedy, herself
as Hepburn.. me as the professor with his head up
his ass. I looked the part: excessively tall, bespec-
tacled, given to nodding and smiling. I have never
entirely shed the gormlessness of that early role."
- Joseph O'Neill, Netherland (2009)
the worthless word for the day is: aftosa
[Am. Sp., < Sp. fiebre aftosa, aphthous fever]
/af TOE suh/
hoof-and-mouth disease (cf. Hud, Bill Cosby)
"We need a cure for the confusion surrounding
the common name for aftosa."
- William Safire, The Right Word.. (2004)
"hoof-and-mouth is synonymous with foot-and-mouth,
could be regional differences -- or maybe hoof-and-
mouth got a bad reputation from Paul Newman in Hud,
and Bill Cosby.. or maybe we should just call it
aftosa or aphthous fever."
- tsuwm, Wordsmith Talk 03/22/01
back in the days when "Hud" was in first run release,
Cosby was doing stand-up comedy and his take on the
scene in the movie where the cattle were hurtling
towards oblivion went something like this:
cow1: hey man, where we goin?
cow2: goin' to get shot
cow1: shot?! how come?
cow2: we got hoof-and-mouth
cow1: what's that?
cow2: noticed that white stuff 'round your mouth?
cow1: yeah...
cow2: that's hoof-and-mouth
(thanx to anonymous expiscation)
this week: more contributions from our readers
the worthless word for the day is: ceilidh
[Gaelic] /KAY lee/
Irish & Scot. 1) a friendly call: visit
2) a social gathering with traditional music,
dancing, and storytelling
Eating and meeting
Talking and singing
Such is the ceilidh
The joy of my life
- Robert Urquhart
(in The Creaky Traveler, by Warren Rovetch)
"There will be a ceilidh on Saturday evening at
the Spa Ocean room from 8pm to midnight."
- Scarborough Evening News, 16 June 2009
(thanx to Meghan R.)
the worthless word for the day is: amerce
[fr. OF. a merci, at (one's) mercy] /uh MURS/
to punish by a fine, the amount of which is left to
the discretion of the court; broadly to punish
"That the University have power to punish and
amerce all forestallers, regraters.."
- The History of the Univ. of Cambridge (1840)
"The King could not amerce other people's villeins
harshly, although those on his own farms might be
amerced at his discretion."
- William S. McKechnie, Magna Carta (1905)
(thanx to Ray Haupt)
the worthless word for the day is: lustration
[fr. L. lustrare, to purify] /luh STRAY shun/
a purifying ceremony; an act or instance of cleansing
especially by moral or spiritual purification
"There was much to be done: prayers, lustrations, holy
meals-and the sacred scrolls must be taken to the
nearby caves and hidden from the impious enemy."
- Out of the Desert, Time Apr. 15, 1957
"It lasted a long time, this swim which seemed to have
some of the qualities of an esoteric act of lustration."
- Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur (1975)
"Nalyvaychenko described the opening of formerly secret
documents and plans to proceed with prosecutions as
"the launch of a Ukrainian version of lustration.""
- Eurasia Daily Monitor June 5, 2009
(thanx to krambo)
the worthless word for the day is: siffilate
[modif. of F. siffler, to whistle] /SIF uh layt/
rare to whisper
""He's gone," was siffilated above and below,
until it met the ears of even Corporal Van Spitter,
who had it from a marine, who had it from another
marine, who had it from a seaman, who..."
- Frederick Marryat, Snarleyyow (1837)
"The librarian told us that if we felt impelled to
communicate in the library we should either pass
notes or siffilate our words."
- Rod L. Evans, The Gilded Tongue (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: megalonisus
[fr. Gk megalo- great, exagerrated + L. nisus, striving]
/meg ah LON ih sus/?
very rare a tendency to exaggerate {Mrs. Byrne}
"Mrs. Byrne herself suffered from a rare form
of megalonisus."
- anon.
the worthless word for the day is: anamnesis
[Gk < anamimnesko, to remind one] /an am NEE sus/
the recalling of things past; recollection, reminiscence
"It is the familiar, autumnal Auden speaking: student of
fleshly decay, writer of thank-you notes, urbane scold,
expert at anamnesis, a celebrator of the numinous past
that raises nostalgia almost to the level of ritual."
- Timothy Foote, Time Feb. 03, 1975
"Everybody who has heard of Plato has heard of the
doctrine of anamnesis or recollection."
- I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines
(1979)
the worthless word for the day is: anhedonia
[NL. fr. Gk an-, without + hedone, pleasure]
/an hE DO nE uh/
Psych. the inability to feel pleasure
"Anhedonia (if I may coin a counter-designation to
analgesia) has been very little studied.. but there
are cases of an insensibility relating to pleasure."
- T. A. Ribot's Psychol. of Emotions (tr. 1897)
"An election straight from Freedonia was an expression
of a national anhedonia, a mass loss of appetite for
mediocrity, artificiality, pandering, meandering and the
rest of the cheap tricks that passed for campaign 2000."
- Maureen Dowd, The N. Y. Times Nov. 12, 2000
the worthless word for the day is: becquerel
[after Antoine H. Becquerel, French physicist]
/bek uh rel/
a unit of radioactivity equal to one nuclear
decay per second
"A dose of a billion becquerels would typically
be fatal in more than half of people, [a
spokesman] said."
- Alex Morales, Bloomberg Dec 6, 2006
this week : more spelling bee words!
the worthless word for the day is: brachylogy
[Gk brachylogia] /bra KIL uh jee/
conciseness of expression; also a condensed expression
""Unless we hold back on hendiadys and ban brachylogy
utterly," Blair's public opinion guru Philip Gould told
the PM in a memo unearthed by a Sun reporter in a dustbin
in Goole, "this party is done for.""
- David McKie, The Guardian February 15, 2001
hendiadys
the worthless word for the day is: beckmesser
[G., after Sixtus Beckmesser, pedantic musical
philistine in Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger]
/BEK mes u(r)/ usu. capitalized
a critic or teacher of music characterized by
timid and excessive reliance upon rules: pedant
""Shall we have," he whispered to Mr. Zander,
"a Beckmesser fiasco to-night, or will it be a
Walter success?""
- Paul Leicester Ford, A House Party (1901)
"Kid Rock was seen leaving the club with a
'beckmesser' on each arm." - The feeble attempt
at a hip response by the Spelling Bee pronouncer
to "can you use it in a sentence?"
- david iserson (blog, May 28 2009)
the worthless word for the day is: Laodicean
the 2009 Scripps spelling bee final word..
[fr. the ancient city of Laodicea]
1) of or relating to Laodicea
2) indifferent or lukewarm esp. in matters of religion
or politics (in reference to Revelation 3:14-16)
"An unfashionable subject in these Laodicean times,
that of a man's struggle with his religious faith."
- Christopher Hart, Sunday Times (UK) Dec 3, 2006
the worthless word for the day is: otiant
[fr. L. otiari, to be at leisure] /OH she unt/
now rare idle; resting; unemployed (cf. otium)
"His existence would be otiant and superfluous."
- North American Review, Apr. 1845
"They who.. relegate the Supreme to the otiant ease
of Epicurus, cut the nerves of moral obligation."
- North American Review, May 1878
the worthless word for the day is: salvific
[L. salvificus] /sal VI fik/
having the intent or power to save or redeem
".. they had carried back down to the four-dimensional
world the memories of the way it had been before
Lepidopt's salvific jump."
- Tim Powers, Three Days to Never (2006)
the worthless word for the day is: pervious
[fr. L. pervius passable, accessible] /PUR vee us/
1) permeable 2) archaic accessible; open-minded
"Pervious concrete -- made of gravel and cement
minus the sand that gives regular concrete its
impenetrable density -- has the porous quality of a
Rice Krispies bar."
- Minneapolis Tribune May 26, 2009
The solid, solid universe Is pervious to Love.
- R. W. Emerson, May-day (in Works, 1867)
the worthless word for the day is: quale
[L., of what kind] /KWA lee/ pl. qualia
a property considered independently from things
having the property
"When I do not know the 'quid' of anything how can
I know the 'quale'?"
- Benjamin Jowett, The dialogues of Plato (tr. 1875)
"Despite our disagreements on qualia, zombies, and
consciousness, we remain good friends."
- Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: gnathonize
[fr. Gnatho, a parasite in Terrence's The Eunuch]
obs. rare to act the sycophant
to play the smell-feast, to flatter {Blount, 1656}
See how he squares it, takes a private stand,
To Gnathonize, to act it with his hand.
Behold his gesture and his brazen face,
How stoutely he doth manage his disgrace.
Lo ! how he whispers in his masters eare...
- Henry Hutton, Follie's anatomie (1619)
the worthless word for the day is: illecebrous
[fr. L. f. illicere, to entice]
inkhorn term alluring, enticing, attractive
"Hesiodus, in Greek, is more brief than Virgil where
he writeth of husbandry, and doth not rise so high
in philosophy; but is fuller of fables, and therefore
is more illecebrous."
- Sir Thomas Elyot, The value of poetry.. (1531)
"The background music changes to suit the mood as
the program [sc. Alien Empire] celebrates both the
illecebrous and the illaqueable of bugdom."
- Walter Goodman, The New York Times Feb 9, 1995
bonus inkhorn term: illaqueable - capable of being
ensnared [fr. L. laqueare, to snare
the worthless word for the day is: didymous
[fr. Gk didumos, twin] /DID uh mus/
arranged or growing in pairs; twin
"To the Oswego tea furnished by the didymous
monarda and the fermented liqueur extracted from
the dragon tree roots, Cyrus Smith had added a
real beer..."
- Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (tr. 2002)
[monarda = aromatic plant of the mint family]
"As it happens, we do not live in a didymous world
like Twinwirld, nor do we live in a world where the
existence of relatively clear boundaries between
souls seems imminently threatened by the advent of
extremely high-bandwith interbrain communication..."
- Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: goropism
[eponymous] see Fletcher quote
"..the culmination coming when Leibniz coined the
term 'goropism' to characterize the practice of
basing historical linguistic relationships on
absurd etymologies."
- William H. Fletcher, Netherlandic Studies (1985)
"[T]heir activity has been referred to as Goropism -
a term coined from the first[sic] name of [Johannes]
Goropius Becanus (d. 1572), who tried to prove that
Dutch was the Ur Sprache of all languages. An example
of "Goropism" was the Celtic Academy founded in France
in 1805. Members were eager to prove that the etymology
of all European languages could be explained with the
help of Irish, Welsh and Breton."
- Societas Celtologica Nordica, 26 May 1990
[cf. Ursprache]
(thanx to zmjezhd)
the worthless word for the day is: hirtellous
[fr. L. hirtus rough, hairy + -ellus (diminutive suffix)]
/hur TEL us/ (also hirsutulous)
finely hirsute thickened hirtellous leaves
"He noted that there were "at least 60 ways* to say that
a plant is not smooth, that it has fuzz, hair, prickles,
or roughness of some sort." Few of these words (such as
bullate, hirtellous, pilosulous, and rugose) were
familiar to the average person."
- Elizabeth Rosenthal, Birdwatcher (2008)
*Eskimos got nothing on Botanists
"That dictum being: "Any noticeable hirsute or even
hirtellous shadings visible upon the represented,
unclothed, female form, anywhere below the eyebrows, say,
is, in the judgment of this Department, sufficient cause
to remove said representation from the category..."
- Frank Yerby, Tobias and the Angel (1975)
the worthless word for the day is: thalassotherapy
[fr. Gk thalassa, sea]
the use of seawater (baths, voyages, etc.) in health
and cosmetic treatment
"Establishments which provide thalassotherapy have been
springing up around the continent of Europe.. to provide
a holiday in which the usual seaside ingredients.. are
supplemented.. by a regime of salt-water treatments."
- Inglis & West, Alternative Health Guide (1983)
"...your choice of therapeutic thermal, krauter bad,
thalassotherapy and aromatherapy mineral baths."
- Orange Coast Magazine, Oct. 1996
the worthless word for the day is: obstupefactive
[L. obstupefacere, to stupefy]
obs. rare obstructing the mental powers; stupifying
{Johnson, 1828}
"Readers today are also asked to contribute in another
way, by tracking down a long list of quotations that the
OED incorporated from Samuel Johnson's 18th century
dictionary but which have not been found and checked in
their original context. Heading the OED's "Appeals List"
is this, purportedly penned by Archbishop Abbot, about
1633: "The force of it is obstupefactive, and no other.""
- Steve King, salon.com Apr 19, 2002
"The force of it [sc. an hearbe] is obstupefactive, and
no other."
- George Abbot, A briefe description of the whole worlde
(1605)
[as from OED DRAFT REVISION Dec. 2008]
this week: more from Johnson's Dictionary
the worthless word for the day is: discalceation
[fr. L. discalceare, to pull off the shoes]
obs. : to put off the shoes {Johnson, 1828}
the act of taking off the shoes, esp. in token of reverence
"We have all Johnson's pedantic words, such as disculceate,
discalceated, discalceation. We know not on what principle
these words, which are never used, can be admitted into a
dictionary, unless upon the principle that every word which
every educated person has introduced into his writings,
should be placed immediately in the dictionaries."
- The Westminster Review, v14 1831
"The classical Biblical allusion to discalceation is,
"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground."
- Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1909)
the worthless word for the day is: vaticide
[fr. L. vates seer, prophet; (trans.) bard, poet]
a murderer of prophets* (Johnson, 1828}
a murderer of poets {Johnson, 1836}
*the modern rendering, in most cases
Then first (if Poets aught of truth declare)
The caitiff Vaticide conceiv'd a prayer.
- Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728)
"Vaticide is no crime in the statute-book : but a
crime, and a heavy crime, it is; and the rescue of a
poet from a murderous enemy, although there is no
oaken crown decreed for it, is among the higher virtues."
- Walter S. Landor, Classical Conversations (1882)
"Last week, a committee of the House of Representatives
emerged as the vaticide. The prophet is dead, and the
war over."
- William F. Buckley, Washington Star June 14, 1977
the worthless word for the day is: perpotation
[fr. L. perpotare, to drink heavily]
obs. rare the act of drinking largely {Johnson, 1755}
excessive drinking
"And which insists upon a perpotation, A sort of
liquid loan for instant liquidation."
- Manufacturer and Builder Apr. 1878
"What perpotation and ruinous ebriety!"
- J. E. L. Seneker, Frontier Experience (1906)
bonus word: ebriety
[L. ebrietas] drunkenness {Johnson, 1828}
the worthless word for the day is: smellfeast
[smell + feast] archaic
one that is apt to find and frequent good tables;
an epicure; a parasite {Johnson, 1828}
"Like so many smell-feasts they hankered near
the Altars to enjoy the nidorous fumes."
- Henry More, [The] mystery of iniquity (1664)
The Smell-feasts rouse them at the hint
There's cookery in a certain dwelling-place.
- Robert Browning, The ring and the book (1868)
"He is an outsider, an ingrate, a smell-feast,
and who could possibly see the burgeoning of a
savior in such qualities?"
- Kenneth Burke, Here & Elsewhere (1932)
this week: oddities of all sorts
the worthless word for the day is: ucalegon
[Ucalegon is one of Priam's friends in the Iliad, and
the destruction of his house is referred to in the
Aeneid: jam proximus ardet Ucalegon]
/yoo KAL uh gon/ archaic
a neighbor whose house is on fire or has burned down
"But who is this Ucalegon below, that cries and makes
such a sad moan?"
- Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (tr. 1694)
"One of them, Peter Chamberlin, was burnt out; but this
Ucalegon lived next door to the Castle, and suffered in
consequence."
- T. F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester College (1892)
"Mingling with the crowd gathered outside the burning
dwelling, the ill-starred lexicographer simply could
not restrain himself; after smugly flaunting the word
ucalegon several dozen times, he was set upon by his
neighbors and cast into the flames."
- Novobatzky & Shea, Depraved and Insulting English
(2002)
the worthless word for the day is: thiotimoline
a fictitious chemical compound conceived by science
fiction author Isaac Asimov (first published in the
March 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction)
"The result was that I wrote a pseudo-dissertation
written as stodgily as I could manage about a compound
which dissolved 1.12 seconds before you added the water.
I called it The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated
Thiotimoline."
- Isaac Asimov, I.Asimov: A Memoir (1994)
"It can only be initiated in my continuum, because the
molecules of the activating substance, thiotimoline,
have different properties when they're reversed."
- Spider Robinson, Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981)
the worthless word for the day is: cereologist
[fr. Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture]
/cee ree AWL uh jist/ (also cerealogist)
one who studies or investigates crop circles
so, cereology
"The growing number of amateur and professional
cereologists may have the last laugh."
- John Vidal, "Cereal Killers" The Guardian,
13 Sept 1991
"Pity the humble cerealogist. Saddled with the
Herculean task of explaining the existence of
crop circles."
- The Observer, 11 July 1993
"The people who had invented the new field (no
pun intended) of "cereology" watched a source of
income turn into a vapor."
- Judith Herbst, Hoaxes (2004)
this week: oddities of all types
the worthless word for the day is: droumy
[origin uncertain, but see Sc. drumlie]
obs. rare troubled; muddy: turbid
"[T]o set on fire and trouble states, to the end to
fish in droumy waters.."
- Francis Bacon,
Of the advancement of learning (1605)
drumlie winter, dark and drear -- Robert Burns
the worthless word for the day is: depertible
[fr. L. dispertire, to distribute, divide
(as if fr. depertire]
obs. capable of being divided into parts; divisible
"[S]ome Bodies have a.. more Depertible Nature than
others.."
- Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum (1626)
"And, as lagniappe, they threw in a list of "spurious
words" the scholars had come upon in dictionaries dead
and extant, which imposters had got into them as the
result of typographical or other errors (sample:
"Depectible, a. Error in Johnson's Dict. and some
later Dicts. for Depertible")..."
- William F. Buckley, The New York Times Dec. 19 1971
(the lengths I go to for latter-day citations..)
the worthless word for the day is: expediate
[fr. L. expedire, to make ready, prepare]
[adj] obs. expeditious
[v] error for expedite (in Cockeram)
"This way.. is more prompt and expediate."
- John Evelyn, The French Gardener (tr. 1658)
Expediate, to dispatch, or make ready.
- Henry Cockeram, The English dictionarie, or
an interpreter of hard English words (1623)
the worthless word for the day is: ush
[back-formation from usher]
U.S. slang to serve as an usher
"The six gentlemanly cow-boys.. swore that whoever
should prove to be the lucky man, the others would
ush for him at the ceremony."
- Harper's Magazine, Dec. 1890
"Man alive, you've crossed half a continent to 'ush'
at that wedding!"
- Margaret Cameron, Tangles (The Forlorn Hope) (1910)
"The ushers ush anyone who needs ushing, including all
the mothers you mention. That is their job."
- vandalfan on February 20, 2009
(thanx to Giles Thomas)
the worthless word for the day is: crastinate
[fr. L. crastinum, tomorrow] obs.
= procrastinate, delay
(so crastination = procrastination)
so why procrastinate? the prefix was added in classical
Latin procrastinare, to put off until the morrow.
crastinate seems to have been just an inkhorn term.
"And try, by pray'rs, and vows, and floods of tears,
To crastinate their sure impending doom."
- Richard Dagley, from Death's Doings (1828)
""I am trying to crastinate, so I can stay here long
enough to find out what is so infernally important
about your quest.""
- Piers Anthony, Swell Foop (2002)
this week: lost positives, or not
the worthless word for the day is: fatigable
[fr. L. fatigare, to fatigue] /FAT uh guh bul/
subject to fatigue; easily tired: defatigable
(where defatigable was truly lost, and then
back-formed from indefatigable; where de- is
used to intensify and in- to negate)
"It is evident that the idea of any kind of play
can only be associated with the idea of an
imperfect, childish, and fatigable nature."
- John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853)
"He was fatigable, and often desperately
fatigued, but he persisted..."
- Hershel Parker, Herman Melville (2005)
"I was always the most defatigable of hacks."
- Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One (1948)
the worthless word for the day is: flappable
[back-formation from unflappable (1968)]
lacking self-assurance and self-control: easily upset
(a lost positive of the 2nd kind: jocular)
"The existence of back-formed words such as flappable
from unflappable. In the word-based hypothesis, this
would have to be formed by the prefixation of un- to
an already existing flappable, which contradicts its
back-formation origin."
- Pavol Stekauer, English Word Formation (2000)
(the theory being that unflappable was formed
out of whole cloth; i.e., un- + flap + -able)
""Now that," said Milo.. "is what I call a shrink.
Unflappable, soft-spoken, analyzing everything."
"I don't qualify?"
"You, my friend, are an aberration."
"Too flappable?""
- Jonathan Kellerman, Therapy (2005)
"I'm the sort of flappable American who leaves
everything until the last minute."
- Benjamin Cheever, Strides (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: sheveled
[by shortening] (also shevelled)
rare, archaic disheveled
"He bowed his tall white head into my shevelled hair."
- Richard Blackmore, Erema (1877)
"After the prisoner was delivered to Lexington the
next day in sheveled and humbled state, the posse was
dismissed..."
- Reese Prescott; The Rockbridge County Gazette,
June 28, 1904
(but)
"She was a descript person, a woman in a state of
total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled,
and she moved in a gainly way."
- Jack Winter; The New Yorker, 25 July 1994
"Is sheveled the opposite of disheveled? Recreational
linguists call these words lost positives."
- Charles Elster, What in the Word? (2005)
___
you never know how a prefix is going to affect things;
some expect that sheveled existed as a positive form
(as happened with couth and kempt), but in this case
the word was formed (as per OED) by aphesis.
the worthless word for the day is: tardigrade
[fr. L. tardigradus, slow-moving] /TAR duh grade/
slow-moving; sluggish
"The steady wash of the rain, the tardigrade
progress, the inexorable attrition."
- T. C. Boyle, Water Music (1981)
"Davis mentions.. two intimately connected char-
acteristics of the Latin American Enlightenment,
namely its tardigrade character and its political
conservatism."
- Mario Saenz, The Identity of Liberation in Latin
American Thought (1999)
this week: some echt descriptive words
the worthless word for the day is: mundivagant
[fr. L. mundus, world + vago, to wander]
/mun DIV uh gant/ rare world-wandering
{wandering through the world - Johnson, 1755}
His chest was ready and well stocked with clothes
Including many things of useless want,
Which had been better left to their repose,
Instead of being made mundivagant.
- Thomas Cadett, Timothy Cotton, a poem (1871)
"..and they saw the cities and manners of many men, to
an extent undreamed-of by Ithaca's mundivagant king."
- James Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917)
the worthless word for the day is: tritical
[trite + -ical, after critical]
archaic trite or commonplace in nature
"I don't like it at all; though I own there is a world
of water-landish* knowledge in it; but 'tis all tritical,
and most tritically put together."
- Laurence Sterne, Tristam Shandy (1762)
"Nor in reading good moral observations, or anecdotes
of great men, do I care whether they are in a connected
series, or strung together like Swift's Tritical
Dissertation on the Faculties of the Human Mind."
- A. P. Russell, In a Club Corner (2007)
*nonce-wd characteristic of theologian Daniel Waterland
the worthless word for the day is: entheastic
[fr. Gk entheastikos, inspired] /en the AS tic/
obs. agitated by divine energy; inspired
"It is this that makes them - to use an uncommon but
proper word - entheastic, or having in them the energy
of God."
- Warren Evans, The Divine Law of Cure (1884)
"I thought you should know, because if you're going [to]
tell people you're running an election for a seat in the
Senate of Canada, you should consult a lawyer... You send
me one (1) name, of someone you've elected, and I don't
care if that person is also earnest, elegant, erect,
enchanting, embraceable, electrifying, ebullient, emollient,
enlightened, eager, energetic, earthy, erudite, ecaudate
(having no tail), erotic, exotic, effervescent, effete,
effulgent, egalitarian, enlivening, enlumining, equable,
ethereal, ethical, exuberant, or entheastic." [patiently
explaining that the Senate of Canada is appointed by the
Governor General]
- George Bain, The Gazette (Montreal) Feb 19, 1989
the worthless word for the day is: palterer
[fr. palter (of unknown origin) + -er]
one who palters: a triffer; a huckster, a haggler
"'Was I a preacher?' Pain asked of Anderson, 'no
I was a palterer, and my living was but in paltry,
and I had no mind to mend yet.'" [fr. ca. 1592]
- David Cressy, Agnes Bowker's Cat (2001)
"The circuit from conjurer to palterer runs the gamut
of scepticism about the very idea of specialness."
- International Affairs No.72, 1996
this week: very special people
the worthless word for the day is: morologist
[morology + -ist < Gk moros, foolish]
/moh ROHL uh jist/ obs. rare
1) a boring fool who speaks utter nonsense;
'a foolish talker' {Bailey, 1727}
2) a student of fools or folly
"But then I am a student of fools, a morologist - to
coin a word."
- W. Wilkins & H. Vivian, The Green Bay Tree (1894)
"There is no such thing as applied morology. The
laws of stupidity cannot be translated into
practice... The laws of morology only work when
applied unwittingly."
- Matthijs van Boxsel et al,
The Encyclopædia of Stupidity (2005)
"Everybody has an opinion. Most of them are based on
a morologist mentality."
- bobsayssomejunk.blogspot.com Mar. 6, 2009
the worthless word for the day is: agathist
[fr. Gk agathos, good + -ist; cf. optimist]
/AG ah thist/
rare an adherent of the doctrine that all things
tend toward ultimate good
"The existence of evil compels Dr Miller to substitute
the moderate title of 'Agathist' for that of 'Optimist'."
- Sydney Smith, The Edinburgh Review Oct. 1829
"The agathist is like an optimist, but more rational
and profound. "
- Charles Elster, There's a Word for It (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: pedascule
[fr. pedant]
archaic nonce-word a contemptuous diminutive
of 'pedant', coined (or discovered) by WS
According to Warburton, "He should have said
Didascule [fr. Gk didaskalos; but thinking this too
honourable he coins the word Pedascule, in imita-
tion of it, from pedant." And Stevens opines, "I
believe it is no coinage of Shakepeare's; it is more
probable that it lay in his way and he found it."
How fiery and forward our pedant is!
Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.
Pedascule, I'll watch you better yet.
- W. Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1
(c. 1590)
No pedascule,
he bears in his visage such spirits and fires...
She will a handmaid be to his desires.
- Ausonius, tr. by David Slavitt (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: intrigante
[F. < intriguer, to intrigue] /in trE gahnt/
a woman who intrigues; a busybody (also intriguante)
"Well, Sir, my mistress was the greatest intriguante of
her party.."
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Devereux (1829)
"..the most fascinating woman they had ever known, but
also as an intrigante of dark and winding ways.."
- Gertrude Atherton, Black Oxen (1923)
""'Intrigante' conjures up the idea of lightness which
I refute. I am not an intrigante; I'm a hard worker. It
was vital for me to earn my living," [Miss Dati] said."
- Telegraph (London) 09 Mar 2009
the worthless word for the day is: slughorn
[erroneous use of slughorne, an early form of slogan]
a trumpet
some caught a slughorne and an onsett wounde
- Thomas Chatterton, Battle of Hastings (1770)
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
- Robert Browning, Childe Roland... (1855)
"The name "Roland", references to his slughorn (a pseudo-
medieval instrument which only ever existed in the mind of
Thomas Chatterton and Browning himself), general medieval
setting and the title childe (a medieval term not for a
child but for an untested knight) suggest that the
protagonist is the paladin of The Song of Roland..."
- wikipedia
this week: ghost words and fictitious entries - we've
seen others, from dord to zzxjoanw; here come five more
the worthless word for the day is: phantomnation
[misinterpretation of 1725 quot.]
appearance as of a phantom; illusion. (Obs. and rare.) Pope.
{Webster 1864}
Phantomnation
To The Editor Of The Nation:
Sir: Nowhere that I have seen this monstrosity adverted to is anything said
relative to its history.
We find, in Richard Paul Jodrell's Philology on the English Language, published
in 1820: "Phantomnation, n. A multitude ot spectres. These solemn vows
and holy offerings paid To all the phantomnations of the dead.
Pope, Odyssey, b. x., v.'627."
Worcester followed, in 1860, with: "Phantomnation, n. Illusion. Pope."
A few years later, Webster's editors proposed, aiming at an improvement on
Worcester: "Phantomnation, n. Appearance as of a phantom; illusion. [0bs.
and rare.] Pope."
In England and its dependencies, this Brummagem [spurious] gem of lexicography
is known chiefly through the medium of Ogilvle's Dictionary.
If those who have accepted phantomnation as incomplex [simple, uncompounded]
had used their eyes to proper purpose, their recorded treatment of it would
have been impossible. Though "a multitude of spectres" is not one with "a
nation made up of phantoms," Jodrell plainly understood what he essayed to
define. But his definition was passed by unobserved, and so was the very
next article after his phantomnation, namely, phantomprophet, - also credited
to Pope, - explained by "an incorporeal seer." A single glance, other than
the most hasty, at his article on either of those eccentricities would have
sufficed to reveal that he was possessed with a singular caprice. In phantom
we have a substantive passing into an adjective; so that, phantomnation being
no stereotyped combination, either phantom-nation or phantom nation is
permissible, with hardly anything to choose between them. The point is by
no means a nice one.
Worcester, where quoted above, gives no information as to where he learned
that Pope has phantomnation, or as to who first defined it "illusion," or
something similar. It would be curious to know how many of those who, like
him, have appropriated it, were aware of its being in Jodrell. That they
all went astray owing to a coincidence of oscitancy [inattentiveness] is
clearly beyond belief. We must suppose, then, that their miscarriage had
its source in the too frequent practice of their craft in general: whatever
novelty one of them brings forward is spheterized [appropriated] by his
successors in compilation, without scrutiny and without acknowledgment of
indebtedness.
- F. H. Jan 13, 1900
"These solemn vows and holy offerings paid
To all the phantom nations of the dead.."
- Alexander Pope, The Odyssey of Homer (1725)
the worthless word for the day is: kelemenopy
[fr. the alpha sequence klmnop] /kel em en OH pea/
a sequential straight line through the middle of
everything, leading nowhere
<a strictly sequential irrelevance - John Ciardi>
"A good example of the nonce word is kelemenopy,
which John Ciardi invented in a A Browser's Dictionary
(1980) solely to indulge his wish to father a word."
- Jeff Jaske, Storied Words (2004)
"Ted Kennedy's political career is a kelemenopy
through 20th-century American politics."
- John Ciardi, NPR's "On Words"
the worthless word for the day is: abacot
[see OED2 quote]
a corruption of the word bycoket, a kind of cap or
head-dress
"Through a remarkable series of blunders and ignorant
reproductions of error, [bycoket] appears in modern
dictionaries as abacot.. (some of which provide a
picture of the 'abacot'), and even inserted in
dictionaries of English and foreign languages."
- Oxford English Dict. 2nd Ed. (1989)
"Abacot, (ab'-a-kot) The cap of state, used in old
times by our English kings, wrought up in the figure
of two crowns.
- Johnson's Dictionary (1828)
"It came then to his reeling mind that an appropriate
costume for the deed would be the robes and abacot
of a Minor Priest."
- Gelett Burgess, Lady Mechante (1909)
"Murray proved to be an adept ghostbuster, revealing
abacot to be based on an early misprint of bycoket
(a cap or head-dress) after which, bizarrely, it had
taken on an entirely independent life and meaning in
the pages of various dictionaries, being passed down
'like a precious heirloom' from Phillips to Bailey,
Ash and Johnson, as well as to the canonical Webster."
- Lynda Mugglestone, Lost for Words (2005)
the worthless word for the day is: mountweazel
[see quotes]
a bogus entry purposely inserted into a reference
work: a copyright trap
"Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New
Columbia Encyclopedia and you'll find an entry for
Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer
turned photographer.. she never existed."
- Henry Alford, The New Yorker Aug. 29, 2005
"And only publishing insiders know that a Mountweazel
is "a bogus entry purposely inserted in a dictionary
or encyclopedia as a means of protecting copyright.""
- William Safire, N.Y. Times Mag. Dec 3, 2006
(following up on last week's theme, nothing at all
to do with taxidermy 8-)
the worthless word for the day is: obambulate
[fr. L. obambulare, to walk to] /oh BAM byuh late/
archaic to walk about; wander aimlessly
"[T]hey do not obambulate and wander up and down,
but remain in certain places and receptacles of
happiness or unhappiness."
- John Boys, An exposition of the festival.. (1615)
"While we alas ! must still obambulate,
Sequacious of the Court and Courtier's Fate."
- Francis Rabelais, Works (tr. 1653)
"We have often seen noble statesmen obambulating
(as Dr. Johnson would say) the silent engraving-room,
obviously rehearsing their orations."
- The Year's Art (1917)
(nothing at all to do with Japanese or Kenyan surnames)
this week : unexpected connections (or not)
the worthless word for the day is: idiotism
[(1) fr. L. idiotismus, common or vulgar
manner of speaking (2) idiot + -ism]
1) a peculiarity of phrase: idiom
2) a lack of knowledge: ignorance; stupidity
"The expression 'in or with respect' is an
idiotism, a phraseological construction of an
adverbial character, and in its ordinary modern
use it is the equivalent of relatively."
- Edmund Routledge, Every Boy's Annual (1865)
"People get sympathy when they have damaged
themselves by the perpetration of an idiotism.."
- Scotsman, 8 Apr. 1864
"Now, I know that idiotism is highly contagious.
But even I was surprised it can go this far.
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Mar. 11, 2009
(best not to use this in connection with idioms)
the worthless word for the day is: sicarian
[fr. L. sicarius < sica, dagger]
rare (relating to) a murderer, esp. an assassin
"In a nation which produced the sicarii, Pilate
had given a fatal precedent of sicarian conduct;
the Assassins had received from their Procurator
an example of the use of political assassination.
- Frederic Farrar, Life of Christ (1874)
"We called the Sicarian - Lujan, our enforcer - it
was taken care of. "
- Thea Devine, Sensation (2004)
(the Sicarii (dagger-men) were the occupiers of
the fortress Masada, taken by the Romans in 74CE)
the worthless word for the day is: cliosophic
[fr. Gk kleiein : to tell of, celebrate + -sophic, of wisdom]
rare in praise of wisdom (usu. capitalized)
"The College of New Jersey had two clubs at this time: the
American Whig Society and the Cliosophic Society. Burr
was unusual because he belonged to both-the Whigs, until
he switched to the Clios."
- Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder (2007)
"When Gibson joined the Cliosophic Society [a debating club],
he was given the cognomen Decius."
- Thomas A. Foster, Long Before Stonewall (2007)
(connected to Clio, the Greek muse of history, but little to
do with the annual advertising Clio awards named after her)
the worthless word for the day is: organonymy
[organo- + -onymy] /OR guh NAH nuh me/
1) Anat. obs. rare the nomenclature of the body organs
2) rare the study of the names of musical instruments
"The terms.. are the names of parts, organ-names, or
organonyms, and their consideration constitutes
organonymy."
- Buck's Ref. Handbk. of Med. Sci (1889)
"Organonymy (by analogy with toponymy) would seem to be
an essential part of organology."
- World Archaelogy (1981)
"An essential part of organology is the analytical
classification of instruments from different epochs
and cultures."
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music (1980)
the worthless word for the day is: imborsation
[ad. It. imborsazione] /im bur SAY shun/
an Italian mode of election in which the names of the
candidates were put into a bag to be drawn by lot
"The imborsations are made, and eight hundred names
are put in the purses."
- John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions.. (1787)
"After this they fortified themselves with new laws and
ordinances, and made a fresh imborsation, substituting
the names of their friends for those of their enemies."
- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Florentine Histories
(tr. 1845)
(this week is all about names)
the worthless word for the day is: micronymy
[micro-, small + -onymy, method of denotation]
obs. nonce word
the use of short terms or names in scientific nomenclature
"Astronomers have set an example in micronymy that
anatomists might well follow."
- Buck's Handbook of Med. Sciences (1889)
"Program content: to explain terminology: onomastics,
toponymy, anthroponymy, micronymy, hydronymy,
urbanonymy, ethnonymy, etc; the subject and methodology
of onomastics research; the toponymy and anthroponymy
of the region; classifications in onomastics; the state
of onomastics research in the region and directions of
development; the specific character of the research;
place and person names of Polish, Belarussian, Ukrainian,
Lithuanian and other origins; the meaning of onomastics
research in the realization of an educational program in
schools..."
- Inst. of East-Slavonic Philology, Belarussian philology
the worthless word for the day is: polyonymosity
[polyonymous + -osity]
rare the use of several different names for the
same person or thing
"In rural polyonymosity it is hailed as sheep-sorrel,
cuckoo-spice, hallelujah, ladies' cakes, [etc]. Need
it be added that it is also St. Patrick's one true
shamrock?"
- Walter De La Mare, Times Lit. Suppl. 3 May 1923
the worthless word for the day is: onomasticon
[fr. Gk onomazein, to name] /ON uh MAE stik on/
a vocabulary or lexicon of proper names or place names
"[The] book ends.. with a Glossary or Onomasticon
interpreting the proper names which have been used..."
- George Saintsbury, History of the French Novel (1917)
"There's the Buffyverse Onomasticon, an online resource
that gives the origins of the names of all the characters
in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
- Michael Quinion, World Wide Words 17 Sep 2005
the worthless word for the day is: disquiparant
[fr. med. L. disquiparantia]
Logic obs. pertaining to the relation of two correlates
which are heteronymous, i.e. denoted by different names,
as father and son, or husband and wife
"There are said, in [Aristotle's] book of Categories, to be
four kinds of opposites. Relative opposites are relate and
correlate of a disquiparant relation. Contrary opposites
are the most unlike species of the same genus, as black and
white, sickness and health. The third kind of opposition is
between a habit and its privation, as sight and blindness.
The fourth kind is between affirmation and negation. This
passage has prevented the word opposite from taking any
definite meaning in philosophy."
- Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1902)
the worthless word for the day is: obaceration
[fr. L. obacerare to contradict, interrupt]
/oh BASS uh RAY shun/?
obs. rare the act of shutting someone's mouth
(cf. obacerate, to shut someone's mouth; contradict)
"Obaceration is the action of shutting someone's
mouth -- whether metaphorically or physically is
not clear."
- Erin McKean, AskOxford 14 Apr 2005
(Bird actually had this spelled correctly, but dropped
it for lack of verification; as of Dec. 2008 it has a
definitive headword in OED online, whereas it was
pretty well obscured (under obacerate) in OED2.)
this week I've got obscure words that were at some
point purged from Christopher Bird's Grandiloquent
Dictionary because they couldn't be confirmed by
using various available online resources - in these
instances because they were misspelled! as a
result, the misspellings have some net ubiety.
(e.g., he had abecedarian (the usual spelling)
originally as abcedarian, a nice conceit actually
given as a variant by OED2.)
this all provides support for one of my disclaimers:
You try spell-checking this stuff!
the worthless word for the day is: schrecklichkeit
[G. Schrecklichkeit, a deliberate policy of terrorizing
the enemy (esp. non-combatants) as a military asset]
/SHREK likh kahyt/
frightfulness (in the above sense); also trans. and fig.
"The British frightfulness of 1943 has left the German
Schrecklichkeit of 1915 far behind."
- G. B. Shaw, Everybody's Polit. What's What? (1944)
"I embarked on the quotidian schrecklichkeit of
getting up."
- K. Bonfiglioli, Don't Point that Thing at Me (1972)
(Bird had this misspelled as schrecklichkreit)
the worthless word for the day is: imparlibidinous
[impar, unequal + libidinous] /im PAHR li BID i nus/
very rare relating to an unequal state of desire
between two people (another nonce/inkhorn term?)
"When you ask the woman of your dreams out on a date
and she [mocks] you, and says she would rather couple
with a rhino, simply explain to your friends that the
two of you were imparlibidinous."
- Novobatzky & Shea, Depraved and Insulting English
(2002)
(Bird had this as inparlibidinous.)
the worthless word for the day is: percribrate
[fr. L. percribro, to sift thoroughly < cribrum, sieve]
obs. rare to sift; pass through a sieve
"The extravagated blood.. percribrates and
trickles into the vessells of the vena cava."
- Henry Power, Sloane MS British Mus. (1652)
(the misspelling in C. S. Bird was percribate)
the worthless word for the day is: mutuatitial
[fr. L. mutuatio, a borrowing]
/myoo choo uh TISH ul/
obs. rare [adj] borrowed [n] something borrowed
(heading) "Mutuatitial essais." [essays]
- Robert Vilvain, Enchiridium Epigr. (1654)
(hdng) "The sixth classis or century of mutuatitials."
- Robert Vilvain, Enchiridium Epigr. (1654)
(mutuatitial was misspelled as mutatitial)
the worthless word for the day is: cacestogenous
[fr. Gk kakesto, ill-being + -genous, of or relating
to origin or development] /kak us TOJ un us/?
very rare caused by unfavorable home environment
this is probably a nonce/inkhorn term coined by
someone who used it once and stuck it on a list of
hard words
from time to time folks come to wwftd searching out
really obscure words - imagine my surprise! this week
I'll reveal five more of these. (I have no way of
knowing who exactly does these searches, so I'll just
have to say thanx to all.)
the worthless word for the day is: dartle
[dim. of dart] /DART ul/ (cf. sparkle)
archaic, rare to dart or shoot forth repeatedly
"My star that dartles the red and the blue!"
- Robert Browning, My Star (1855)
"Out from the incandescent heart of the kindling
amethyst begin to dartle and to flash violet..."
- Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Ring of Amasis (1863)
(not to be confused with dottle!)
the worthless word for the day is: illaqueation
[fr. L. laqueare, to snare] /il LAK wi A shon/
obs. the act of entangling in a snare; esp. an
entangling argument
"Secondly, there is a seducement that worketh by the
strength of the impression, and not by the subtlety of
the illaqueation; not so much perplexing the reason as
overruling it by power of the imagination."
- Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605)
the worthless word for the day is: doryphore
[F. doryphore, Colorado beetle (a pest)] /DOR i fo(r)/
(coined by Sir Harold Nicholson) also doriphore
one who gains inordinate pleasure from detecting minor
errors; a pedantic nitpicker
"Conversely the prig, the pedant, or the doriphore
were thought unworthy of the name of gentleman."
- Harold Nicholson, Good Behavior (1956)
"When [the editors].. took me to lunch, they were rigidly
abstemious, lest they fuddle their minds and give hostages
to subsequent doryphores on returning to work."
- New Yorker, 3 Apr 1989
regarding yesterday's garbled Kate Burridge citation, I
received the following note, "you must have missed an n
in commenstaions."
the following quote seems to apply:
"For a doryphore, what is more delightful than a
mistake in a correction?"
- Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle (1996)
the worthless word for the day is: deipnetic
[fr. Gk deipnon, the principal meal + -etic]
obs. rare pertaining to dinner; fond of eating
"Of peculiar interest in connection with the present
study is the mimic letter which occurred in the
"deipnetic" or banquet literature of Chaerophon..."
- Reinhard Becker, A War of Fools (1981)
"She was an opsophagist, coenaculous and cuppendous -
pabulous commesations were an ephialtes for the
deipnetic."
- Kate Burridge, Blooming English (2004)
the worthless word for the day is: idiolalia
[NL fr. idio-, private + -lalia, speech]
an idiosyncratic language, one invented and spoken
by only one or a very few people; often the private
language of twins: idioglossia
"Manichaeans who see two Rockets, good and evil,
who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the
Primal Twins..."
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
the worthless word for the day is: anecdotage
[anecdote + -age] or [anecdote + dotage]
1) anecdotes collectively
2) facetious garrulous old age
Grandfather is in his anecdotage.
"Successive campaign advisers had tried without
success to get him to give briefer answers, but
nothing had stemmed the logorrheic tide, the
tsunami of subordinate clauses and parenthetical
asides, the inexorable mudslide of anecdotage."
- Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship (2008)
"When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a
sign for him to retire from the world."
- Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair (1870)
the worthless word for the day is: jactancy
[fr. L. jactare, to throw]
boastfulness; boasting
"He does not strut in innocent pride and open
jactancy and crow like Chanticleer to wake the
world to labor and joy o' the sun."
- Christian Gauss, Why We Went to War (1918)
"There was no need now for jactancy in an
attempt to magnify himself. Sufficiently had
his achievements magnified him."
- Rafael Sabatini, Columbus (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: icosahedron
[Gk eikosaedron] /eye kO suh HEE drun/
a polyhedron having 20 plane faces
"It was an icosahedron. Twenty faces, each of them an
equilateral triangle... Geometers loved icosahedrons,
but so did nature; viruses, spores, and pollens had
all been known to take this shape. So perhaps it was a
space-adapted life form, or a giant crystal that had
grown in a gas cloud."
- Neal Stephenson, Anathem (2008)
the worthless word for the day is: grassation
[fr. L. grassari : to go about, attack, rage against]
obs. an act of attacking violently; a lying in wait
to attack
"He addes with extreame intemperance, that this claime
to that Kingdome was buried a while, but revived againe
by Tyrannicall force, by violent grassation, and by the
robbery of Princes.."
- John Donne, Pseudo-martyr (1610)
"For example, he sneered at Italianate composers,
saying that their "Cassations" should really be called
"Grassations"."
- Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism.. (1997)
the worthless word for the day is: hypotyposis
[Gk hypotyposis sketch, outline] /hy po ty PO sus/
vivid picturesque description
"Simple and suitable language, the effective metaphor,
'the nervous hypotyposis' may be introduced."
- Dublin Review Oct. 1897
"The list could surely go on, and there is nothing
more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous
hypotyposis."
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (tr. 1983)
the worthless word for the day is: snaffle
[of obscure origin]
Brit. dialect to steal, purloin; to obtain by
devious means, snatch
" Jack discovered how to extend the TV mosaic image..
seemingly snaffling up just anybody from anywhere."
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)
Hundreds of BBC staff snaffle six-figure pay
- Times Online (headline) Jan 24, 2009
the worthless word for the day is: snaste
[origin unknown] /snAst/
obsolete the wick of a snuffed candle
obs. rare to snuff a candle
"The swiftest in consuming was that with saw-dust;
which first burned fair till some part of the
candle was consumed, and the dust gathered about
the snaste..."
- Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum (1627)
the worthless word for the day is: shonky
[origin unknown]
Austral. informal of poor quality, shoddy; inferior
(thanx to The Pook)
"They are based on shonky science, rubbery data
and green myths."
- The Macleay Argus, Australia Jan 8, 2009
"His drunken friend, his shonky but energetic manager
and his bumbling aristocratic fool of an uncle are
all caught in the whirlpool of his illness."
- The Australian Jan 25, 2009
the worthless word for the day is: shtook
[origin unknown (app. not Yiddish)] /shtook/
also shtuck or schtuck
U.K. informal, esp. in phrase: in (dead) shtook
a problem situation
"If it falls down on any of these points, you
are likely to be in dead shtook."
- Racing Post Jan. 31, 2003
"Do they really believe George W Bush rang up
Tony Blair and said something like: "I'm in dead
shtuck in Ohio. We need a futile gesture. You'll
have to send the Black Watch to Baghdad"?"
- Richard Littlejohn, The Sun (London) Oct 22, 2004
the worthless word for the day is: snarge
[prob. onomatopoia] /snarj/
the Feather Identification Lab at the Smithsonian
Institution has, sometime within this century,
coined this term for the goop that remains of a
bird after it collides with an airplane
(notwithstanding Charles Elster's insistence that
it's really "a person nobody likes; a total jerk")
(thanx to Betsy!)
"Carla Dove(!) and her team at the feather-
identification lab at the Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of Natural History, study snarge -
that's the bird goo that is wiped off an aircraft
after it hits a bird."
- All Things Considered [NPR], Jan. 16, 2009
"How badly do I want to hear Tamara Taylor say,
"Any word on the snarge?" and/or "There's human
DNA in the snarge"? So. Badly."
- Jamie Frevele, The Huffington Post Jan 21, 2009
the worthless word for the day is: solitarian
[fr. L. solitarius, solitary] a recluse, a hermit
"At the other end of the solitarian spectrum we find
the American monk Thomas Merton, who found monastery
life too gregarious for his eremitical taste..."
- David McKie, The Guardian May 9, 2002
""I've spent most of my life alone. Holidays.
Birthdays. Symposiums. Even football games. You
are dealing with an expert in solitude. I'm an
award-winning solitarian.""
- Jennifer Vanderbes, Easter Island (2003)
the worthless word for the day is: cacozelia
[Gk kakozelia: unhappy imitation; affectation]
/ka ko ZEEL i a/
studied affectation in diction or style, as in a
speech filled with pedantic latinisms and inkhorn
terms (not to be confused with lalochezia?)
""It's not over until it's gone" should be
this nation's watchword.
Until what's gone, you ask, eyes coruscating
with the eager spirit of youth, brow bulging
quaquaversally (pardon my cacozelia)."
- Ben Tripp, counterpunch.org Oct 26, 2004
"[T]he Times may just be engaging in epicaricacy,
but that should not compel us to give ourselves
over to cacozelia."
- James Robbins, nationalreview.com Nov 18, 2008
the worthless word for the day is: balneary
[fr. L. balneum, bath] /BAL nee er ee/
of or relating to a bath, bathing, or a bathroom
(also balneal)
"In fantasy I view and loathe each balneary
station - I have been down at Pebbleton-on-Sea."
- Weekly Westminster Gazette, 29 Aug 1924
""I saw the servants this morning when they were
making the search; they opened the door of the
balneary and took a glance inside, without
investigating.""
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (tr. 1983)
the worthless word for the day is: encomiastic
[fr. Gk enkomiazein, to praise] /en CO mi AS tic/
praising; eulogistic; laudatory
"That the views held by the majority of people on social
questions are formed largely by their environment seems
clearly apparent from the endless encomiastic letters
and editorials in the press regarding Andrew Carnegie
and his library hobby."
- E. B. Swinney, N. Y. Times Mar 31, 1901
"He and Elle.. had spent a tipsy evening extracting
from this critical molehill an encomiastic mountain."
- Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man
the worthless word for the day is: fumid
[fr. L. fumus, smoke] (rhymes with humid)
smokey, vaporous; hence, fumidity (smokiness)
"He imagined himself standing on the corner, taking in
the view, smelling the fumid city air mixed with the
stink of stale alcohol and fast food,"
- Val McDermid, The Mermaids Singing (1995)
""Good night," he said, and went out into the rich
fumid air of a Manchester summer evening."
- Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man
"Temperatures soar and the humidity thickened in
a syrupy morass that Cam not so cheerfully dubbed
"fumidity."
- Nora Roberts, Rising Tides (1998)
the worthless word for the day is: clemmed
[fr. ME forclemmed, pinched with hunger] /klem'd/
UK dial. hungry; famished
"'All this hanging around's fair clemmed me.'"
- Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man (2007)
the worthless word for the day is: rathe
[OE hræth] /rayth/
appearing or ripening early in the year
bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies - John Milton
"Most of these businesses proved as short-lived
as the rathe primrose that forsaken dies..."
- Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man (2007)
""Can I help you, Mr. Penn?" said Rye with enough
frost in her voice to blast a rathe primrose."
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: simoniac
[fr. LL. simonia, simony] /sy MOE nee ak/
one who practices simony, or the buying and
selling of church offices and preferments
"In any event, he hadn't seen him for a long time,
and Michael's friends hastened to paint the
portrait of that simoniac in the darkest hues."
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (tr. 1986)
the worthless word for the day is: refection
[fr. refect < L. reficere, to refresh]
/rih FEK shun/
1) now rare refreshment of the mind or spirit:
nourishment
2) the taking of food and drink: repast
"The abbot asked him whether he wanted to join the
community for the midday refection, after sext."
- Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
(tr. William Weaver, 1986)
the worthless word for the day is: Nissen hut
[after Peter Nissen, Brit. mining engineer]
a prefabricated shelter with a semicircular arching
roof of corrugated iron sheeting and a concrete floor
cf. Quonset hut
"He found Haydon in a Nissen hut hidden among the trees."
- John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor.. (1974)
"They got to their barracks, which were Nissen huts
heated by twin pot-bellied stoves, ..."
- Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers (2001)
the worthless word for the day is: Oxbridge
[conflation of Oxford + Cambridge]
[n] 1) a fictional university, esp. regarded as a
composite of Oxford and Cambridge 2) the universities
of Oxford and Cambridge regarded together, esp. in
contrast to other British universities
[adj] regarding Oxbridge, often with implication of
superior social or intellectual status
"'Rough and ready, your chum seems,' the Major said.
'Somewhat different from your dandy friends at Oxbridge.'"
- W. M. Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1850)
"The searchlight was remorselessly on Tessa, the Society
Girl Turned Oxbridge Lawyer, the Princess Diana of the
African Poor..."
- John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener (2000)
the worthless word for the day is: Persil
[Persil is a brand of laundry detergent in the UK]
of no intelligence interest: clean
"..after three years he was graded Persil: investigated
in depth and found to be of no intelligence interest."
- John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)
"Toby Esterhase's lamplighter reports carried no adverse
trace whatever. Both had been investigated, both were
graded Persil: the cleanest category available."
- ibid.
"I'm dirtier than Emmanuele, its' a crud that started
collecting centuries ago, Persil lave plus blanc, it
calls for a Detergent the Father, girl, a cosmic soap."
- Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch (tr. Rabassa, 1966)
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