Word of the Day Archive, and a cure for insomnia, all in one

na·ta·to·ry also na·ta·to·ri·al   (nt-tôr–l, -tr-, nt-) adj.

Of, relating to, adapted for, or characterized by swimming: a natatorial appendage, natatorial daughter or natatorial birds.

[From Late Latin natatorius, from Latin natator, swimmer, from natatus, past participle of natare, frequentative of nare, to swim.]

[My husband claims my ability to swim comes from my “extra layer”, and while I will concede that I was plump while breeding, I am currently working on the heroin chic look, and only wish I could buy an ‘e’ for that adjective!]

A natatorial mum and offspring, in those same frigid Go Home waters.

 

And then yesterday’s news:

Well my poor friends, what else would I do when recovering than realise that I had been playing against the advanced computer not the expert computer on my dang phone, and Hal has now been into the botanical and medical libraries, pulling out all the stops when it comes to spelling and meaning.  But somehow this one caught my eye, because the vane of a feather is something useful both to bird and man, the quill pen being but a recent creatively destructed concept in the long march of man to literacy. And it mentions irises again, one of my favourite flowers when not too funereal.

vex·il·lum   (vk-slm) n.
pl. vex·il·la (vk-sl)

1. (Botany) See standard16 [But don’t unless you are compulsive because I was compulsive for you, sharing out the mental burden, and found not only standard16 but also earlier standards 9, a and b:

9. (Botany)
a. The large upper petal of the flower of a pea or related plant.
b. One of the narrow upright petals of an iris. Also called banner, vexillum.

and here’s 16, just to be thorough:
16. (Botany) the largest petal of a leguminous flower, such as a sweetpea.]

2. (Zoology) The weblike part of a feather; the vane.
3. A military standard or banner carried by ancient Roman troops.
4. The men serving under such a banner.

[From Latin, banner or flag, possibly diminutive of velum, a covering or sail.]

And having managed to search for a botanical vexillum image, not a military one, I stumbled upon this fabulous photo and description, and feel both duty bound and pleased to link to this fellow’s iBook concept to teach the taxonomy of botanomy.  But first his magnificent vexillum:

Clianthus puniceus
kaka beak, kowhai nutu kaka,
Fabaceae

This white variety of the kakabeak flower shows the vexillum petal raised up to reveal the inner parts to pollinators. The larger and falcate shaped keel or carina is the inspiration for the plants common name, a reference to the beak of the kaka bird. To the side of the keel are the lateral petals; the wings or alae.

He is from New Zealand, so he has unfairly cool plants from Middle Earth to work with, but he seems to have done a bang up job:

An Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms
Featuring New Zealand Plants

by Tony Foster

 

Now I thought this would just be an alternate spelling for erupt, and it almost is, but dang it all, that e means out and that i means in, i.e., I was wrong but I will attempt not to

ir·rupt    (-rpt)
intr.v. ir·rupt·ed, ir·rupt·ing, ir·rupts

1. To break or burst in.
2. To increase rapidly and irregularly in number: In the absence of predators, the island’s rodent population irrupted.
3. To manifest violent activity or emotion, as a group of persons.

[From Latin irrumpere, to rush into, invade, from rumpere, to break, burst.]

Not that an irruption of Xty’s would necessarily be a bad thing, just expensive and hard to house; but snowy owls?  As the kids would say, word!

9 photos celebrating the snowy owl irruption

 

Nooks and crannies, axils and vugs!

vug   (vg, vg) vugg or vugh n.

1. [as if there were going to be a 2! but I have cleaned up the rest as best I could] A small cavity in a rock or vein,  usually lined with crystals with a different mineral composition from that of the surrounding rock.

[From Cornish [!!!!] vooga, cave.]

vuggy, vughy adj. [Attention all Scrabble players, i.e. 7 people, but those adjectives are full of consonants, as one would expect from our Cornish pals.]

Now there’s a nice pair of vugs!

 

Here’s a cute word that luckily existed when I was playing Scrabble against my dratted phone, that allowed me to go down from the triple word and the i actually made qi as well, so it was a bonus moment of useless words.  Or so I thought, until I looked up

ax·il   (ksl) n.

The upper angle between a lateral organ, such as a leafstalk, and the stem that bears it.

[From Latin axilla, armpit.  [Now there’s an etymology one can wrap one’s head around, until one wonders where the Romans got axilla from.Turtles all the way down.]]

 

 

How in the world did I fail to look this up and relaunch our mutual mollusk education? But there it was, buried like a teredo in a wooden ship, lurking in my list of unusual to me words, and now here it is, ready to worm its way into your tree of knowledge:

te·re·do (tɛˈriːdəʊ) n,, pl. -dos or -dines (-dɪˌniːz)

Any [are there lots?] marine bivalve mollusc of the genus Teredo. [A classically unhelpful definition, other than the bivalve mollusc part.] See shipworm. [Thanks, but don’t you think you might have mentioned, just briefly, what a shipworm is and when a mollusc is a worm and when it has a k not a c? But leaving that aside, here ‘s a definition of shipworm to save you a click:

ship·worm  (shpwûrm)

Any wormlike marine bivalve mollusc of the genus Teredo and related genera and family Teredinidae. They bore into wooden piers, ships, etc, by means of drill-like shell valves. See also piddock. [See also piddock?  Is it a weird game where you chase down clues or a dictionary? But I am on the job, you will be delighted to know:

pid·dock   (pdk)

A marine bivalve mollusk of the family Pholadidae, having a long shell with which it bores into wood, rock, and clay, often causing destruction of wharf pilings.]

And enough being enough, here is the etymology, sort of, of teredo, where this mulloscular journey began, a snail’s pace ago, and a picture, to ruin your lunch:

[Via Latin from Greek terēdōn, wood-boring worm; related to Greek tetrainein to pierce.]

 

 

Remembering things is very odd. I was thinking about our sometimes vaguely functioning system of government and knew there was a word I was missing, that had something to do with being a citizen … and then I typed it into the goldarned Google monster before I knew I knew it. I have been having some very exciting times with my memory as of late, complete and total holes appearing in the middle of a conversation, which can be blamed on self-medicating for, well, decades, but I am a stubborn lass and have been trying to beat back the curtain. My mum got unable to try … a very hard thing to witness and especially hard not to cast blame, and I would hate to fall into a similar state. Genetic “absent-mindedness” got renamed senility, then dementia, and now frequently Alzheimers.  But I am going for absent-minded, with a hint of dementia and trying to forego the … um … where was that … and why am I in the basement?

but this morning out of the fog lurched:

pol·i·ty  (pl-t) n., pl. -ties.

1. a particular form or system of government: civil polity; ecclesiastical polity.
2. a state or other organized community or body.
3. the condition of being constituted as a state or other organized community or body.
4. government or administrative regulation.

[From Latin polītīa, from Greek politeia citizenship, civil administration, from politēs citizen, from polis city.]

[I assume I often am astounded to remember things that are commonplace for others, so please bare with me, as the nudist said to the neophyte, if this is all old-hat to you!]

 

I really hoped when I looked this up that it was going to be a rhetorical device, or single piece of the puzzle, a concrete unit of irony, a single irone, but no, instead it is something that has me a little baffled because they, in this case bizarre fragrance scientists, seem to make the “violet fragrance” out of either an orris root (I know, I know WoD’s coming out our eyeballs) or from an Iris. But not from a violet.

Or wait.  In the brief span of time it took for me to mislead you based on a definition I swear I just read, I have found this definition of irones, which helpfully mentions that an orris root is an iris root, or at least implies it, if you get iris oil from an orris root. Oh those funny scientists and their taxonomies!

Irone

Irones are a group of methylionone odorants used in perfumery, derived from iris oil, e.g. orris root. The most commercially important of these are (-)-cis-γ-irone, and (-)-cis-α-irone.

Irones form through slow oxidation of triterpenoids in dried rhizomes of the iris species, Iris pallida. Irones typically have a sweet floral, iris, woody, ionone [I, oh no, nay! but at least I added a link and didn’t make you read it here], odor.

Ah, here was the confusing definition, which I copy without attempting to decipher:

i´rone n.

A fragrant liquid substance, a mixture of several isomers of the formula C14H22O, forming the essence of the violet fragrance, commonly isolated from orris oil or from the rhizomes of Iris. The main ingredient in violets is , which occurs as both cis and trans stereoisomers. Called also 6-methylionone.

And the main ingredient in violets is … something to be found elsewhere, or elsewhen perhaps. Don’t those scientists make everything so romantic? “Honey, you smell just like 6-methylionone. It reminds me of Paris in the springtime!”

 

Some facts are just so weird, and to have the same concept appear one day after the other, and in totally different contexts, plus a brand new word?  It is WoD heaven.  So we were suffering through sections of a dreadful movie (it stars Robert Redford, and he can ruin any movie for me) called Endless, Dreary Dutch Colonial Get The Fuck Out Of Africa: Could you Please Get The Romance Out Of the Way before I Barf? This is a Sick Thing to Romanticize, and there was a lot of whipping of oxen going on.  Hubby commented that it was folies, or foley workers who made the sounds, and he had to repeat himself and then spell the word.  And so I looked it up:

fo·ley   (fl) n.

1. A technical process by which sounds are created or altered for use in a film, video, or other electronically produced work.
2. A person who creates or alters sounds using this process.

[After Jack Foley (1891-1967), pioneering sound effect editor at Universal Studios in the 1930s.]

And then, I was listening to the podcast, Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Evidence, and once they had finished with cataracts, named after the Greek word for waterfall, they got on to goat testicles.  And really you need to hear it for yourself, but foley work was referred to, and sometimes still is, as giving something a goat gland.  The story of the man behind the initial technique, John Romulus Brinkley, is beyond bizarre and uniquely American: a medical fraud, inventor of the most powerful radio station, governor of Kansas, bigamist, and goat gland implanter. What’s not to like?

 

And you thought you had seen the last of The Last of the Mohicans

but an interesting word that appeared near the maudlin end has surfaced, and really if I have to suffer through it, you have to suffer through it.  Just the way it is at the WoD.

Then a low, deep sound was heard, like the suppressed accompaniment of distant music, rising just high enough on the air to be audible, and yet so indistinctly, as to leave its character, and the place whence it proceeded, alike matters of conjecture. It was, however, succeeded by another and another strain, each in a higher key, until they grew on the ear, first in long drawn and often repeated interjections, and finally in words. The lips of Chingachgook had so far parted, as to announce that it was the monody of the father. Though not an eye was turned toward him nor the smallest sign of impatience exhibited, it was apparent, by the manner in which the multitude elevated their heads to listen, that they drank in the sounds with an intenseness of attention, that none but Tamenund himself had ever before commanded. But they listened in vain.

mon•o•dy  (mn-d) n., pl. mon·o·dies.

1.  A Greek ode sung by a single voice, as in a tragedy; a lament.
2.  A poem in which the poet or speaker laments another’s death.
3.  A musical style in which one melody predominates; homophony.
4.  A musical style with only one melodic line: monophony.

[1580–90; < Late Latin monōdia, from Greek monōidia, from mono + aeidein, to sing.]

I know, I know, homophony, monophony … it almost sounds like the terribly embarrassing cheer we had at one of the high schools I didn’t graduate from, University of Toronto Schools:

Thermistocles, Thermopylae,
The Peloponnesian War!
X squared, Y squared,
H2SO4!
French verbs, Latin verbs,
Ancient history!
UTS, UTS, schools of varsity!
Go BLUES!

What can I say, it was an odd experience.

 

And speaking of academic interests, I finally finished off the Last of the Mohicans, it ending in more pathos than even I had feared, a blood-bath and reaffirmation of the purity of white skin and blonde hair [a purity which must breed, unlike any of the mixed-race or dirty other people in the story who are better off dead than married] and leaving me wondering why it is on the syllabus.  But then I started in on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, and being the spawn of academia I note down words I do not recognize, and a darn good thing in this case, because old Mr. Verne leads one tragically astray, down a dark alley indeed, and I would hate for you to use the word nyctalopic, when you meant to say hemeralopic, and alienate your audience.  He writes, in his verbacious way:

“Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” repeated the sailors of the Abraham Lincoln. And they opened amazingly wide. Eyes and spyglasses (a bit dazzled, it is true, by the vista of $2,000.00) didn’t remain at rest for an instant. Day and night we observed the surface of the ocean, and those with nyctalopic eyes, whose ability to see in the dark increased their chances by fifty percent, had an excellent shot at winning the prize.

But you see, he has it backwards:

nyc·ta·lo·pi·a  (nkt-lp–) n.

Inability to see normally in dim light.  See night blindness and compare hemeralopia.

[Late Latin from Greek nuktálōps, from nux, night, + alaos, blind, + ōps, eye.]

Ah well, a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat ….

 

I hadn’t forgotten about you, or been cast into an oubliette, the charming word I for some presumably irreverent reason thought meant toilet:

ou·bli·ette   (bl–t) n.

A dungeon with a trapdoor in the ceiling as its only means of entrance or exit.

[French, from oublier, to forget, from Old French oblider, from Vulgar Latin obiltare, from Latin oblitus, past participle of oblivisci.  [Oblivisci?  I have oblivisci’ed more Latin than I ever learned, apparently.]]

Ah, humans.

 

tryp·to·phan    (trpt-fn) also tryp·to·phane (-fn) n.

An essential amino acid, C11H12N2O2, formed from proteins during digestion by the action of proteolytic enzymes. It is necessary for normal growth and development and is the precursor of several substances, including serotonin and niacin.

[tryptic, of trypsin (formed on the model of pepsin, peptic); see trypsin [which I did, and what an etymology, I just had to bring it forward because I know how rarely people follow these links, and this one is the rub:

tryp·sin   (trpsn) n.

A pancreatic enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of proteins to form smaller polypeptide units.

[tryp-, from Greek tripsis,  a rubbing, from tribein, to rub, referring to the fact that it was originally produced by rubbing the pancreas with glycerine].

+ phane [which also turns out it be interesting, so here it is, a veritable plethora of WoD’s:

–phane or -phan suff.

A substance resembling something specified: tryptophan, cellophane.

[Greek -phanēs, adj. derivative of phaínesthai, to seem, appear]].

And I think that’s it, and it tuns out the turkey didn’t make you sleepy [that’t what the WoD is here for] it made you happy.  So maybe it really is a Happy Thanksgiving!

 

So reaching a new low, my Scrabble app played curf.  I had to squint to make sure it was really an f, and so I looked the darn thing up.  The only definition I found was this slightly dubious one, with no etymology or examples of usage given:

a cherty limestone found below the whitbed layer in Portland stone beds

Cherty?  I can’t even finish curf without getting hit with cherty?

[chert   (chûrt) n.

1. A variety of silica that contains microcrystalline quartz.
2. A siliceous rock of chalcedonic or opaline silica occurring in limestone.

[Origin unknown.]
cherty adj.

And don’t get all cherty with me and ask what chalcedonic means or whitbed, or I will go all opaline on your quartz.]

But the interesting thing about curf, back to the main WoD, is that the freedictionary site that I like best because it gives you lots of definitions from other dictionaries, usually, and allows you to copy the cool audio link, which I derive peculiar pleasure from, simply returns kerf, which is a very lovely word, that I might even manage to use correctly today, although as I said to my father-in-law the other day, when I explained that I was aerating the lawn more than chopping wood, my aim is poor and my blow is weak.  But I sure leave a lot of kerfs in the wood!

kerf    (kûrf) n.

1. A groove or notch made by a cutting tool, such as a saw or an ax.
2. The width of a groove made by a cutting tool.

[Middle English, from Old English cyrf, a cutting, related to Old English ceorfan, to carve].

 

Well I must credit my Scabble app for coming up with a good word, and what’s more it showed it to me in its scolding teacher mode, but it was still available for me to play on my next turn.  And you can spell it with a Q or a K, which makes it particularly useful in this battle I am having with my phone.  But more to the point, it is plain ordinary interesting:

qanāt, (Arabic) also spelled kanat, [Persian karez, Berber Arabic foggara]

ancient type of water-supply system, developed and still used in arid regions of the world. A qanāt taps underground mountain water sources trapped in and beneath the upper reaches of alluvial fans and channels the water downhill through a series of gently sloping tunnels, often several kilometres long, to the places where it is needed for irrigation and domestic use. The development of qanāts probably began about 2,500 or 3,000 years ago in Iran, and the technology spread eastward to Afghanistan and westward to Egypt. Although new qanāts are seldom built today, many old qanāts are still used in Iran and Afghanistan, chiefly for irrigation. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]

A qanāt at the National Library of Iran, Tehran.

And how can you not like a word that leads you to a website about Water History where you can learn everything you always [all of a sudden, ed.] wanted to know about qanats, starting with

Background

In the early part of the first millennium B.C., Persians started constructing elaborate tunnel systems called qanats for extracting groundwater in the dry mountain basins of present-day Iran (see figure 1).  Qanat tunnels were hand-dug, just large enough to fit the person doing the digging. Along the length of a qanat, which can be several kilometers, vertical shafts were sunk at intervals of 20 to 30 meters to remove excavated material and to provide ventilation and access for repairs. The main qanat tunnel sloped gently down from pre-mountainous alluvial fans to an outlet at a village. From there, canals would distribute water to fields for irrigation. These amazing structures allowed Persian farmers to succeed despite long dry periods when there was no surface water to be had. Many qanats are still in use stretching from China on the east to Morocco on the west, and even to the Americas.

Figure 1. General Schematic for a Qanat.

(1) Infiltration part of the tunnel
(2) Water conveyance part of the tunnel
(3) Open channel
(4) Vertical shafts
(5) Small storage pond
(6) Irrigation area
(7) Sand and gravel
(8) Layers of soil
(9) Groundwater surface

 

This is not what I am being, praise be to Thor, but the word popped erroneously into my bean, and now onto these pages:

a•man•u•en•sis   (əˌmæn yuˈɛn sɪs)
n., pl. -ses (-sēz).

One employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another; secretary.

[From Latin āmanuensis, from the phrase servus ā manū, slave at hand (that is, handwriting). [What they meant to say was slave by means of the hand, manu being the ablative of manus, here employed as the ablative of means, one of my favourite Latin constructs, which we no longer seem to use, which avoids a lot of tricky prepositions, etc.]]

Who knew?  A fourth declension and a feminine noun!  Here’s a weird one and such a common word.  You would think I would have remembered there even was a fourth declension.  I must be in decline!

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	manus	manūs
genitive	manūs	manuum
dative	manuī	manibus
accusative	manum	manūs
ablative	manū	manibus
vocative	manus	manūs

 

I know it is pointless getting mad at a computer programme for having an extensive vocabulary, and my irritation about my Scrabble app is tempered by its Teacher feature, which lets you know how many more points you could have gotten, if you were a computer algorithm, but also confirms when you did find the most points available which is very satisfying, but I can reasonably be irritated by dictionary definitions like this one:

Furz´y

adj.. 1. Abounding in, or overgrown with, furze; characterized by furze.

I mean, what is with the 1, and couldn’t they just briefly describe furze?  But luckily for you, my diligent reader, I have done the leg [finger, ed.] work for you.  And it only got gorse:

furze   (fûrz) n.

See gorse.

[Middle English furse, from Old English fyrs.]

Which I did:

gorse   (gɔrs) n.

Any spiny European evergreen shrub of the genus Ulex, of the legume family, having rudimentary leaves and yellow flowers. Also called furze.

[before 900; Middle English gorst,  akin to Old High German gersta]

gors′y adj.

So I guess if you look like a spiny, or any spiny, evergreen shrub of the genus Ulex, you are looking a little gorsy, or dare I say furzy.  But I am sure it will pass.

From an article entitled Gorse: The Cockroach of Weeds

 

Hey wait a minute.  Once again, how can I not have heard of this?  It would describe the passage to Bimini from the Florida Keys … well I haven’t done it so let’s hear from someone who actually knows what they are talking about:

Being married to an engineer is a good idea for many reasons, like never getting to live in happy error, and also because it helps expand your vocabulary [family blog, ed.] in many scientific [I was going to say all along] ways.  While I have brought to the mix a useless blend of mediaeval Latin and philosophy, and a hint of useful logic, I abandoned mathematical pursuits at a young age and have had to use osmosis to get what I could without diluting the host too badly.  Which brings me to the hydro lines that cross a favourite little camping lake near Calabogie, which is near us, and which you can access through logging roads.  This past weekend on our way home from our lovely relatives’ cottage, we found ourselves in our van with almost all we needed [Mouse] for another night in the woods, and decided to venture in and see if we could make it to the beach campsite before it got so dark as to make our venture particularly silly.  It was a close call.  The roads have been improved in a well-disguised blessing by the recent logging activities, which in fairness I must say spared the lakes nicely and people gotta eat, and urbanites who always want to reno and go off to Home Depot and complain about the price of cedar can bite a logger’s bum while they thank a farmer they eat, but they bypass the old trails, and we [um, we? ed.] had to pay close attention to the route.

But we made it:

And at dawn:

where if you look closely you can see the hydro lines, also reflected in the lake, and you will be happy to know that the shape they form is a

cat·e·nar·y  (kəˈtiːnərɪ) n.

1. The curve formed by a perfectly flexible, uniformly dense, and inextensible cable suspended from its endpoints. It is identical to the graph of a hyperbolic cosine.
2. Something having the general shape of this curve.

[New Latin catenaria, from Latin, feminine of catenarius, relating to a chain, from catena, chain.]

n. pl. cat·e·nar·ies
adj. cate·nar·y

The things you can learn from the old ball and catena!

 

Well you would think I ought’ave a known this word! Stinking scrabble app sure did, and you can blame it for this burst of Italian [Word of the Day having been changed to Parola del Pomeriggio!] a language I do not know, but the interwebz seem to have mastered:

ot·ta·va   (-täv) adv. & adj.

At an octave higher or lower than the notes written. Used chiefly as a direction, positioned above or below a staff.  Symbol: 8va

[Italian all'ottava [don’t go there, it is a trap: exact same definition except for the helpful addiction of the symbol which they cunningly hid in that definition but I cunningly brought forward for my brave readers, a symbol which I will rarely if ever see, but being from ottawa and all, and thus being somewhat all’ottawa, all’ottava caught my slippery attention] literally at the octave, from Medieval Latin octava, from Latin, feminine of octavus, eighth; see octave [which is not a trap at all].

 

So my Scrapple app comes up with teloi, and I have to say here is a word that seems to have shot into “use” around 1980, when words like copacetic got invented so people like the guy who redid my parents’ kitchen could sound pretentious and cool as they assured you that everything would be groovy, but that would have sounded so lame, not rad at all.  Anyhoo, maybe it is a useful concept, and maybe it is not, but the plural is fun to say, and when you get that touchdown, metaphorically, you can do a little dance and call out, “telos, I have reached my telos!” and be safe in the knowledge that you alone will know what you are talking about.

tel·os   (tls, tls)

n. pl. te•le (ˈtɛl i, ˈti li), or tel·oi (ˈtɛl ɔɪ, ˈti lɔɪ)

The end of a goal-oriented process.

[From Greek, telos. [Thanks, ed.]]

OMG it is Yoda!  I already knew that Tatooine was filmed  in Tunisia [for me there only are the first three movies, and really only the first, now the fourth, but it is the one I am yabbeling on about] but I didn’t know that was where they found the inspiration for Yoda.  My stinking Scrabble app played the word ‘fennec’ last night, and even spellcheckers like it, but I sure didn’t.  Turns out is a kind of fox, that happens to look exactly like Yoda and is “found in the Sahara of North Africa”, just like Tatooine happens to have been filmed in Tunisia, where there is a city of almost the same name, leading Wikipedia to have to make this statement: “This article is about the fictional planet. For the city in Tunisia, see Tataouine.” And leading me to think the filmmakers didn’t use much imagination.  Tell me if I could possibly be wrong:

Yoda

Fennec fox

The fennec fox or Yoda fennec is a small nocturnal fox found in the Sahara of North Africa. Its most distinctive feature is its unusually large ears, which serve to dissipate heat.

Scientific name: Vulpes zerda
Mass: 0.68 – 1.6 kg (Adult)
Height: 20.3 cm (Adult)
Rank: Species
Gestation period: 50 – 52 d (In Wild)
Higher classification: Vulpes
Tail length: 18 – 31 cm (Adult)

And worst of all, now I have to share a song with you that I had to endure [or chose to, let’s not squirm out of responsibility with false rhetoric, ed.] I am going to share with you a song that I chose to listen to that I bumped into when verifying that Lucas had plagiarized North Africa.  I cannot improve on the introduction from the article that brought me, now you, to this happy moment:

 

 

It is a bit of a mouthful, but it does certainly describe a kind of opportunistic self-promoter:

Con´tro`ver`tist n.

1. One skilled in or given to controversy; a controversialist.
How unfriendly is the controvertist to the discernment of the critic!
– Campbell.

I don’t know who Campbell was, but he sure rem acu tetitgisti, touched the thing with a needle, or as we modren people would say, hit the nail on the head.  Rem acu tetigisti however is a phrase forever stuck in my head because it sounds so great and uses the ablative of means, one of my favourite Latin constructions, turning the noun acus, pin or needle, into the ablative form, acu, implying means, as in by the means of.  And rem is just the objective of res, which we still use today in law to mean the main thing, the important thing.  And we will leave tetigisti for another day ….[thank Woden, ed.]

 

Words are funny things, especially in translation, and I am not one to take things on the interwebz at face value, as people always have some sort of axe to grind and on the interwebz there are a lot of very sketchy axes being ground for all sorts of sketchy purposes.  [But not here, of course, where the axe being ground is mine own and while it obviously has many heads and needs a lot of sharpening, and possible should be sent to the tool shed for a lengthy time-out, is an innocent, entertaining and possibly enlightening  axe as far as I can tell.]

I say all this because I bumped into a quotation from Cicero that sounded mighty fine, but I wanted to make sure he actually said it.  Yes, well.  It would appear that our man Cicero did indeed write these impressive words:

Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat.

Which are most commonly found on the web translated as:

Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.

Which sounds pretty grand and intelligent.  I wasn’t happy with the spin, and went to find out how we got to fictions, etc., my Latin being as rusty as our old Range Rover, and found this translation:

Time destroys the figments of the imagination, while confirming the judgments of nature.

Figments/fiction, opinion/imagination.  Maybe we can’t quite know what he meant, but it still seems a fine opinion.  So I decided to read on to discover what else Cicero might have said, and see what a contrary cherry-picker might find.  And it was a pleasure!  Much nonsense to be waded through, with gods proving their existence through anecdotal evidence which provides the context for the above quotation:

Yes, and not only as Jove, but as lord of the universe, and as ruling all things by his nod, and as the father, as Ennius also says, of gods and men, and as a god swift to aid and very powerful. I certainly do not see why the man who doubted this should not also be capable of doubting whether there is, or is not, a sun. In what respect is the one thing more evident than the other? We know it as the perception and conviction of our minds; otherwise the belief would not endure with such stability, it would not be strengthened by lapse of time, nor could it have become fixed as the ages and generations of men advanced. We see that length of time has made other beliefs, that were false and groundless, decay. Who supposes that a Hippocentaur or Chimæra ever existed, or what old woman can be found foolish enough to tremble at those horrors in the world of the dead which used once to be believed in? Time destroys the figments of the imagination, while confirming the judgments of nature, and that is why both in our own nation and in others the worship of the gods and the holy observances of religion are increasing daily in extent and worthiness. Nor is this a casual or accidental result; there is, in the first place, this reason for it, that the gods frequently manifest their power in actual presence. At Regillus, for instance, in the war with the Latins, when Aulus Postumius, the dictator, was engaged in battle with Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, Castor and Pollux were seen to fight in our lines on horseback, and within more recent memory the same sons of Tyndareus brought news of the defeat of Perseus.

Or post facto analysis like this gem:

Shall we remain unimpressed by the tale of the presumptuous conduct of Publius Claudius in the first Punic war, who, when the sacred chickens, on being let out of the coop, refused to feed, ordered them to be plunged into the water, that they might, as he said, drink, since they would not eat? He only ridiculed the gods in jest, but the mockery cost him many a tear (for his fleet was utterly routed), and brought a great disaster upon the Roman people. And did not his colleague Junius in the same war lose his fleet by storm after disobeying the auspices?

I can only hope they ate the chickens.

The moral of my lengthy tale is beware of very short quotations.  Now there is an axe to grind!

 

When we were little and up at the cottage for months on end, safe from the purview or censure of any but other odd professors, who were few and far between, my interesting parents devised a system that let us know if we were in their good or bad books, without needing verbal interaction.  We each had a small replica painted head, one side smiley and the other side frowny, that hung on strings near the front window.  Once you had earned a frowny face and the parents had turned your smiley face to the wall, things got a little dicey and unpleasant.

Me at the cottage being peasant, I mean pleasant.

But we never had to stand and face a wall, our little painted buddies doing the hard time for us, so it was wonderfully abstract and you could win your way back to a smiley and everything became possible again.  In the city it was more ambiguous because we had a system of beads, and you could get all the way up to about 5 before trouble really began.  But you could get in more trouble in the city, so it made sense somehow.

And that is how I learned from an early age to

con·cil·i·ate   (kn-sl–t) 

v.tr.
1. To overcome the distrust or animosity of; appease.
2. To regain or try to regain (friendship or goodwill) by pleasant behavior.
3. To make or attempt to make compatible; reconcile.

v.intr.
1. To gain or try to gain someone’s friendship or goodwill. See Synonyms at pacify.

[From Latin conciliare, from concilium, group of people, meeting, from com, together + calare, to call. [Or so they say, but I wouldn’t want to put any one’s nose out of joint, being as how I am so conciliatory and everything.  Nothing like praising yourself, but honestly it was a necessary survival skill.]]

 

I remember being told in many a class that if I had a question, I as in one, then half the class was probably wondering the same thing so please put up your hand and ask because everyone else is too shy. Having been mocked since infancy by my parents and elder brothers, I can take public humiliation like a duck takes a rainstorm, so I took that advice to heart, revealing my ignorance hither and yon. Yesterday I attempted to use the word, well as it turns out, words, hoi polloi and it was an exciting and embarrassingly long time before I got close enough for Google to have a clue what I was searching for. Want to know why your poop is green? It can guess before you finish typing “Why is  my …” [I am not making this up. Well, I was but then I thought I should check, went and didn’t even need the my

and that has nothing to do with my search history. It is a depressing list.] But guess what Xty is trying to spell? That will be for the computer that is to come.

hoi pol·loi   (hoi p-loi) n.

The common people; the masses.

[Greek, the many: hoi, nominative pl. of ho, the [that needs to be stored in the old ambergris for future reference, as in look at all the hoi on the corner ….] + polloi, nominative pl. of polus, many.]

Usage Note: Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase hoi polloi, consisting of hoi, meaning “the” and used before a plural, and polloi, the plural of polus, “many.” In Greek hoi polloi had a special sense, “the greater number, the people, the commonalty, the masses.” This phrase has generally expressed this meaning in English since its first recorded instance, in an 1837 work by James Fenimore Cooper [he had to be useful, despite penning The Last of the Mohicans]. Hoi polloi is sometimes incorrectly used to mean “the elite,” possibly because it is reminiscent of high and mighty or because it sounds like hoity-toity. · Since the Greek phrase includes an article, some critics have argued that the phrase the hoi polloi is redundant. But phrases borrowed from other languages are often reanalyzed in English as single words. For example, a number of Arabic noun phrases were borrowed into English as simple nouns. The Arabic element al- means “the,” and appears in English nouns such as alcohol and alchemy. Thus, since no one would consider a phrase such as “the alcohol” to be redundant, criticizing the hoi polloi on similar grounds seems pedantic. [We got the word alcohol from Arabic? That is too funny. Are we their drunken Indians? [Can I say that? I don’t mean that as a slur, I mean we gave the Indians alcohol and then took advantage of them. Ack, I am just digging a deeper and deeper hole. Best to just pipe down.]]

 

I have been short of words lately, but this just popped into my head, after typing erstwhile, a word I find very useful, and it stood out for its potentially interesting [and so it is, even I think, ed.] etymology, and excellent sound. Nice to say, fun to type.

er•satz   (rzäts, r-zäts)

1. (adj.) Serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial: ersatz coffee made from grain.
2. (n.) An artificial substitute for something natural or genuine.

The ersatz economy just sounds so much nicer than the substitution economy.

[1870–75; From German, ersetzen, to replace, from Old High German irsezzan: ir-, out + sezzan, to set.]

Aficionados of #MouseCam will find this hard to believe but last night my hubby actually described Mouse as svelte.  How can this be?  By virtue of the most miraculous product that I am about to endorse just because I bought it and it really worked where nothing has worked before:

 

The WAHL dematting comb in all its glory.

Now not only did svelte allow me to endorse that greatest tool ever,  but once he said it, it began to sound like the silliest word.  Are there other sv words?  I haven’t looked yet but it was odd enough to trigger my inner etymologist:

svelte    (svlt) adj. svelt·er, svelt·est

Slender or graceful in figure or outline; slim.

[From French, from Italian svelte, from past participle of svellere, to stretch out, from Vulgar Latin exvellere, from Latin vellere: ex– + vellere, to pull.]

Yawl might not find this too exciting, but I have never been able to remember the differences between ship types, even the three main ones, yawl, ketch and sloop, so here we go giving it yet another try, with pictures to follow, and a test on Monday.  Just kidding so don’t bother asking what is on the test, a favourite question of mine:  Is this going to be on the exam?  Why not just ask the prof if he minds if you snooze through his lecture?  How to loss 10% of your mark in one day!  But back to the exciting field of naval architecture before I ketch yawl snoozing:

 

Yawl might not find this too exciting, but I have never been able to remember the differences between ship types, even the three main ones, yawl, ketch and sloop, so here we go giving it yet another try, with pictures to follow, and a test on Monday.  Just kidding so don’t bother asking what is on the test, a favourite question of mine:  Is this going to be on the exam?  Why not just ask the prof if he minds if you snooze through his lecture?  How to loss 10% of your mark in one day!  But back to the exciting field of naval architecture before I ketch yawl snoozing:

yawl   (yôl) n.

1. A two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailing vessel similar to the ketch but having a smaller jigger- or mizzenmast stepped abaft the rudder. Also called dandy. [I left this untouched as an excellent example of a sentence full of information, but completely unable to communicate it to anyone who didn’t already know what it was.  And who calls a yawl a dandy? And doesn’t get whacked by a nearby drunken sailor?]
1. [take two] (Nautical Terms) [who would have guessed?] a two-masted sailing vessel, rigged fore-and-aft, with a large mainmast and a small mizzenmast stepped aft of the rudderpost. Compare ketch, sloop. [and you know I will …}
2. (Nautical Terms) [really?] a ship’s small boat, usually rowed by four or six oars.

[C17: from Dutch jol or Middle Low German jolle, of unknown origin.]

Hey, that must be why they call them Jolly boats … they never seemed particularly merry to me when engulfed in Patrick O’Brian’s prose.

A gaff-rigged yawl.  Gaff-rigged referring to the main said having an upper boom thing, called a gaff.

 

Here’s a good old word you don’t here much in these modren days where the two words, or almost sounds, yo and fuck, can get you through much of your day, especially with a little tone and the occasional man or word thrown in, and by word I mean the word word, which means total agreement, or can be a request for affirmation, word?

ad·a·man·tine   (ˌæd əˈmæn tin, -tɪn, -taɪn) adj.

1. Made of or resembling adamant.
2. Having the hardness or luster of a diamond.
3. Unyielding; inflexible: “If there is one dominant trait that emerges from this account, it is adamantine willpower.” (Eugene Linden). [Where do they find these sentences?  Who is Eugene Linden?  Ah, an American fear-monger.  And we have had enough of those. On that subject I am adamantine!]

[1200–1250; Middle English < Latin adamantinus < Greek adamántinos. See adamant.]

Now being me I did See adamant, and it actually said:

“2. a less common word for adamantine1”

Yup, even less common than adamantine, but I am adamant that they are wrong!

Okay, this isn’t exactly WoD, but what if a modern word has an implication that is suddenly being denied?  I mean who’s to say that a selfie wasn’t taken by a self.  And what would really be so difficult about letting royalties flow to this particular monkey, and get diverted to preserving her natural habitat?  Maybe she could buy herself a hectare.  But most importantly, this is probably the best selfie ever, and as the courts have decided there is no “author” and hence no one to attribute copyright too, she shall become famous but never rich, while proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is more than one species with a notion of self:

And you can real all about it here at the Graudian [as it was called in England because there were so many typos] and straight from the Monkey’s attorney, here where there is

 

I have often mentioned in these pages that I am a complete idiot in many ways, and it has taken a few days for the word bate as compared to bait, to sink into the pond of my mind and emerge not as a small doomed fish, amphibian, elongated invertebrate that cannot be classified within a single group, or piece of bacon, but as an abbreviation of abate.  But that was not all that emerged from the pond, after I unbaited my breath:

bate1   (bt)

v.t.
1. To moderate or restrain: to bate one’s enthusiasm.
2. To lessen or diminish; abate.
v.i.
3. to diminish or subside; abate.

[Middle English baten, short for abaten; see abate.]

bate2 v.i.

To flap the wings wildly or frantically. Used of a falcon.

[1250–1300; Middle English, baten, from Middle French (se) barre, derived from Latin battuere, to beat.]

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, we find bate3, a completely different kettle of fish:

bate

1. vb (tr)  Tanning: to soak skin or hides in a special solution to soften them and remove chemicals used in previous treatments.
2. n. The solution used in this process.

But the etymology made no sense, and if this kind of bate is in your life, I am sure you know a lot more about it than me already, although my dear close relative who doesn’t like to waste things seems to soak items that Mouse would like to gnaw on in Rubbermaid tubs full of vinegar.  So I think removing the vinegar is where the bate would come in, but when he buries the remains in the woods, it sure is bait to Mouse, who produced acres of white fur on the lawn for quite some time.  And you just can’t think about tanning without ending on this happy note:

So they tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that’s it hanging on the gate.

 

They forgot to refer back to my beloved limpet, so I have remedied their callous disregard, because I did not forget that one of the definitions of said faithful limpet was “a small open caisson”, a brand new word to me, although with my early onset old-timer’s setting in many things might start appearing brand new.  Perhaps they can use my cranium for a

caisson   (ksn, -sn)

1. A watertight chamber open at the bottom and containing air under pressure, used to carry out construction work under water.
2.  A large box open at the top and one side, designed to fit against the side of a ship and used to repair damaged hulls under water. [Which is where the limpet comes in!]
3. A watertight float filled with air, used to raise sunken ships. See also camel2
4. A watertight structure placed across the entrance of a lock, basin, dry dock, etc, to exclude water from it.
5. A horse-drawn vehicle, usually two-wheeled, used to carry artillery ammunition and coffins at military funerals
6. An ammunition chest.

[French, from Old French, alteration influenced by caisse, chest, of casson, large box, from Italian cassone, augmentative of cassa, box, from Latin capsa.]

I suppose I could, in an effort to alienate my audience [there she goes again, ed.], work one into the World’s Worst Novel.  I do remember Mythbusters trying to and possibly succeeding in [Yes!] raising a sunken boat with ping pong balls, so I guess they were each mini-caissons, and when Dan needs to either raise his boat, repair her hull, or blow up a lock, we will know, vocabularally speaking, where to turn.

 

What is the matter with people?  Here I go and look up limpet, because I used it the other day, and probably misspelt it, and find out a wonderful mollusc, whose faithful clinging I have admired romantically, has been co-opted to name an ordinance.  Well, be that as it may [and the military can do something anatomically extremely difficult to itself, that really, if people could do, I mean go fuck themselves, they would all the time, so it isn’t much of an exhortation] here is my wonderful mollusc, or it turns out group of molluscs, whom nobody asked about name appropriation:

limpet  (lmpt) n.

1. Any of numerous marine gastropods, such as Patella vulgata (common limpet) and Fissurella (or Diodora) apertura (keyhole limpet), that have a conical shell and are found clinging to rocks.
2. Any of various similar freshwater gastropods, such as Ancylus fluviatilis (river limpet).
3. A small open caisson [note to self: good WoD [i.e. she has no idea what it means, ed. [Thanks.]]] shaped to fit against a dock wall, used mainly in repair work.
4. Relating to or denoting certain weapons that are attached to their targets by magnetic or adhesive properties and resist removal: limpet mines. [No, limpets are mines, all mines …]

[Before 1050; Middle English lempet, Old English lempedu, alter. of *lepedu < Latin lepada, acc. of lepas < Greek lepás, limpet.]

And if you need to know any exact mollusc taxonomy, I seem to have found the resource:
The Living World of Molluscs

mmmm, limpets ….

 

Still in the slow-moving, turgid, turbid and now languid waters:

lan·guid   (lnggwd) adj.

1. Lacking energy or vitality, weak: a languid wave of the hand.
2. Showing little or no spirit or animation, listless: a languid mood.
3. Lacking vigor or force, slow: languid breezes. [Waters, dammit, they meant waters!  Actually, when we were having the fascinating, if a tad turgid, conversation that led to all this, it was Southern Belles that came to mind, or those consumptive Victorians who emulated the symptoms of tuberculosis, wanting to be sick bulimics like Lord Byron, leaning back on one of those half couch things people used to have, I think specifically for swooning on.  Swooning has rather gone out of fashion thank the mighty Turtle.]

[And I am sorry, this etymology sucks, but it will have to uselessly stand for the moment:]

From French languide, from Latin languidus, from languere, to be languid.  [In other words, languid, from languid.  I am languishing in want of language-ing.]

A swooning, on a swooning couch. It turns out they really were called fainting or swooning couches … a passing fade as it were

 

Muddy waters, and words that describe Conrad’s prose, part two:

turbid   (tûrbd) adj.

1. Having sediment or foreign particles stirred up or suspended, muddy: turbid water.
2. Heavy, dark, or dense, as smoke or fog.
3. In a state of turmoil, muddled: turbid feelings.

[From Latin turbidus, disordered, from turba, turmoil, probably from Greek turbe.]

turbid·ly adv.
turbid·ness, tur·bidi·ty n.

He walked through the turbid fog, brooding turbidly, and fell unwittingly into the turbid water, the overwhelming turbidity of it all contributing greatly to the turbidness of his mind.  She wrote turgidly.

 

We had to look them up, and now you have to suffer the consequences.  I have been reading, with some astonishment, the Last of the Mohicans, a book that sure could have benefitted from a copy-editor.  Once Mr. Cooper attaches himself, limpet like to the word limpid, he cannot be pried away.  Like Conrad to turgid in Heart of Darkness, which I inflicted in audio on my poor hubby because my poor eldest had to read it for school, and I remember getting into the car and saying, basically, “If he says turgid one more time …” and there it was … the turgid waters.  But what about turbid asks hubby?  Or languid?

So you see, there are murky waters to be investigated, starting with:

tur·gid    (tûrjd) adj.

1. Excessively ornate or complex in style or language; grandiloquent: turgid prose.
2. Swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated: a turgid bladder; turgid veins.

[From Latin turgid us, from turgere, to be swollen.]

tur·gidi·ty, turgid·ness n.
turgid·ly adv.

Conrad turgidly used turgid to emphasize the turgidity of his prose, but he did also remind me that there is nothing worse than the smell of rotting hippo:  You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence.  Words to live by.

I really don’t remember if this came from Patrick O’Brian or the modern translation of the ding-dang Bible that I have almost fought my way through 90 hours of audio [if you are a believer, try reading it from the start.  I have a few questions …]

I can as easily imagine Stephen Maturin saying it, or climbing one, as I can imagine the Host of Hosts smoting one or getting someone to climb one with a choice burnt offering:

 

ac•cliv•i•ty    (əˈklɪv ɪ ti) n.

An upward slope, as of ground; an ascent (opposed to declivity).

[From Latin acclīvitās, from acclīvis sloping up, steep.]

I am an idiot, I suppose, as I read this, because I have always liked the word declivity, and use it [this is embarrassingly true, ed.] whenever I can and did so at the cottage, there being a particular declivity before a step, and now I realise that I have been using it wrong, all these years.  I though it meant a sort of basin, like a puddle would form in.  But that would be my cranium.

 

Sticking with the nautical theme, I listened to Patrick O’Brian at the cottage, both Master and Commander and then The Hundred Days, because they were luckily on my computer, and once again was struck by the brilliance of the reader, Simon Vance.  This word leapt out at me as something one might want to know how to do, if one’s sailing ship were to spring a leak that is:

Fother \ˈfäthə(r)

noun:
1. A wagonload; a load of any sort. Of dung full many a fother. – Chaucer.
2. Any of various units of weight for lead; especially : a modern unit equal to 191⁄2 hundredweights. [Thanks, very clear indeed.]
3. (dialect) Food for animals, alternative to fodder.

verb trans:
1. To stop (a leak in a ship at sea) by drawing under its bottom a thrummed [more words, everywhere, that need tracing down!] sail, so that the pressure of the water may force it into the crack.

From Old Norse fóðr > Old English fōdor, from Proto-Germanic fōdrą. Compare Dutch voer (pasture, fodder), German futter (feed), Swedish foder, from fōda (“food”).

 

Having just revealed my wallowing, I thought I would look up such a great word.  And yes, the pool of mud fits:

wallow   (wl)
intr.v. wal·lowed, wal·low·ing, wal·lows

1. To roll the body about indolently or clumsily in or as if in water, snow, or mud.
2. To luxuriate; revel: wallow in self-righteousness. [Or self-pity, says cruel ed., ed.]
3. To be plentifully supplied: wallowing in money. [Hahahaha]
4. To move with difficulty in a clumsy or rolling manner; flounder: “The car wallowed back through the slush, with ribbons of bright water trickling down the windshield from the roof” (Anne Tyler). [That was the dictionary’s example.  What a crappy sentence.  Cars don’t wallow, hippos, sea lions and Xty’s wallow.]
5. To swell or surge forth; billow. [This use surprises me: the sails were wallowing versus the sails were billowing.  Hmnnn.]

wallow n.

1. The act or an instance of wallowing.
2. A pool of water or mud where animals go to wallow.
3. The depression, pool, or pit produced by wallowing animals.
4. A condition of degradation or baseness.
[The phrase “she was in a wallow,” could be misinterpreted quite badly.  You could easily be in all four at once it seems to me, especially if needing some hair of the dog!]

[Old English wealwian, to roll (in mud); related to Latin volvere, to turn, Greek oulos, curly, and Russian valun, round pebble.  [This word really got around!]]

 

Can this really be true?  I was listening to the latest Sawbones, that Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine I have been touting, and they were talking about rabies while trying not to go into labour [you could just hear it in her breathing] and apparently Pliny [always the Elder, never the Younger, who sounds like a more cheerful chap] not afraid to make wildly inaccurate statements when called on for an opinion, mentioned this cure once bitten by a mad dog: kill the dog, cut off its tail, burn it, and insert the ashes into the wound, which we believe today of course, when it comes to alcohol and we decide to apply a little hair of the dog to our problems.  Oddly, cutting the tail off a dog was supposed to help prevent it from getting rabies, which is pretty much a shot in the dark.

Wikipedia gives a fuller etymology, which helps explain the apparent lunacy [the moon was also suspected of causing rabies, hence wolfmen at full moon] of Pliny:

The expression originally referred to a method of treatment of a rabid dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the bite wound. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer writes in the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898): “In Scotland it is a popular belief that a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine within 24 hours to soothe the nerves. ‘If this dog do you bite, soon as out of your bed, take a hair of the tail the next day.'” He also cites two apocryphal poems containing the phrase, one of which is attributed to Aristophanes. It is possible that the phrase was used to justify an existing practice, and the idea of Latin: similia similibus curantur (“like cures like”) dates back at least to the time of Hippocrates and exists today as the basic postulate of classical homeopathy. In the 1930s cocktails known as Corpse Revivers were served in hotels.

Indeed, one of Jeeves magic abilities is the drink he produces for gentlemen after a night on the town, and forms the basis of the opening sequence in the brilliant Hugh Laurie television adaptation:

 

More than you bargained for!  In an attempt to crank up my reading, which has really slowed to a low idle, I have been searching through the tomes included in

[only $2.99 speaking of bargains, from iBooks, which I link to for your convenience not, sadly, because anyone is paying me to do so] and having now read Around the World in Eighty Days, which was a peculiar pleasure, I have started to fight my way through The Last of the Mohicans, a title which while tragically sad, because we really did wipe out a whole bunch of indians, one way or another, always makes me laugh because there was a cartoon in the New Yorker that I am failing to find for you, in which a bear is looking in the fridge and saying, “Yup, that really was the last of the Mohicans.”

Which leads me to having had to look up “ex parte” which appeared in this passage:

And if you thought that was wordy, wait ’till you get to the definition of ex parte, which you are about to, so suit up:

Ex Parte   [eks pahr-tee] [Latin, On one side only.]

Done by, for, or on the application of one party alone.

An ex parte judicial proceeding is conducted for the benefit of only one party. Ex parte may also describe contact with a person represented by an attorney, outside the presence of the attorney. The term ex parte is used in a case name to signify that the suit was brought by the person whose name follows the term.

Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” A bedrock feature of due process is fair notice to parties who may be affected by legal proceedings. An ex parte judicial proceeding, conducted without notice to, and outside the presence of, affected parties, would appear to violate the Constitution. However, adequate notice of judicial proceedings to concerned parties may at times work irreparable harm to one or more of those parties. In such a case, the threatened party or parties may receive an ex parte court hearing to request temporary judicial relief without notice to, and outside the presence of, other persons affected by the hearing.

Ex parte judicial proceedings are usually reserved for urgent matters where requiring notice would subject one party to irreparable harm. For example

[Oh, yes, there is more, much more and strangely interesting, at least to someone who has abandoned sleep apparently. You would think this would be an antidote!]

So he only had one spur, you see, and so he could only maim the poor horse on one side.  Holy moly what a lot of work for that.  Fenimore Cooper sure can go on. [One to talk, ed. [well yes, that I am.]]

 

Well knock me down with a cannon ball, I just realised that a gunnel is a gunwale because the rested guns on it.  I thought it was something you tried to bob on like a moron while someone else tried to bob on them at the other end of the canoe, a violent but satisfying cottage battle:

gunwale   (ˈɡʌnəl) or gunnel n.

The top of the side of a boat or the topmost plank of a wooden vessel.

idiom: full to the gunwales: completely full, full to overflowing.

A word particular to the world of boating, and apparently without a known etymology although etymologists are never shy of hazarding a wild guess, but a very useful word and thing:

coam·ing   (kmng) n. Nautical

A raised rim or border around an opening, as in a ship’s deck, designed to keep out water.

[Origin unknown.  Unless you are this guy:

[1605–15; earlier coming, appar. = comb (in sense “crest”) + -ing.]]

No coam overs!

 

I have been reading an interesting book sent to me by a friend and it contained this lovely word, although always after they had shot them, pretty much.  Not the Mohawk leader, although I didn’t check, so maybe they shot him too.  Certainly words not to confuse:

Brant   (brnt)

Joseph Originally Thayendanegea. 1742-1807.Mohawk leader who supported the British in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

 

brant   (brnt) n. pl. brant or brants

Any of several small, dark wild geese of the genus Branta that breed in Arctic regions, especially B. bernicla, having a black neck and head.

[Variant of brentgoose, possibly from Middle English brende, brindled; see brindled [which I did, and it has an interesting etymology that helps explain the goose name:

[Alteration of Middle English brended, probably from brende, past participle of brennen, to burn, from Old Norse brenna.]]

An abundant small goose of the ocean shores, the Brant breeds in the high Arctic tundra and winters along both coasts. The Brant along the Atlantic have light gray bellies, while those off the Pacific Coast have black bellies and were at one time considered a separate species.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, as we oddly like to say [and do, ed.]

 

 

Here’s one for you, as we head back into cottage country for the weekend, that has caused many a mishap.  I mean how can we have one ‘in’ that means no or not, and one ‘in’ that means more so, extremely, intensely so.  These are opposite concepts, and there is no excuse for this word not to start at least with an ‘en’, as in engulf, enamoured, endow, but no, kaboom:

in·flam·ma·ble    (n-flm-bl) adj.

1. Easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly; flammable. See Usage Note at flammable.

[And why wait, says I.  Why lookee, it is the exact same definition.  Let’s put both on the label of say, curtains and gasoline cans, and see what is engulfed in flames first!

flam·ma·ble   (flm-bl) adj.

Easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly; inflammable.

[From Latin flammare, to set fire to, from flamma, flame.]

flamma·bili·ty n.
flamma·ble n.

But with this useful addendum:

Usage Note: Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in- has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means “not flammable” or “noncombustible.” The prefix -in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix -in, which is related to the English -un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this -in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity’s sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings.

[In case you forgotten or dozed off, I hadn’t quite finished with inflammable:]]

2. Quickly or easily aroused to strong emotion; excitable.

[Middle English, liable to inflammation, from Medieval Latin inflammabilis, from Latin inflammare, to inflame; see inflame [if you must].]

in·flamma·bili·ty n.
in·flamma·ble n.
in·flamma·bly adv.

“Honey, it says right on the package that it is inflammable.”  Those were his very last words, but in his defence, it had also claimed it was indestructible, and that also proved true in the end.  His end.

 

Here’s a word that is often used slightly pejoratively, but it dawned on me that it must have the same etymology as incorruptible, and I warmed to it considerably, and it is a shoe that has often fitted me rather well, and possibly my readers too:

in·cor·ri·gi·ble  adj.

1. Incapable of being corrected or reformed: an incorrigible criminal.
2. Firmly rooted; ineradicable: incorrigible faults.
3. Difficult or impossible to control or manage: an incorrigible, spoiled child.
4. (Of a belief) having the property that whoever honestly believes it cannot be mistaken. Compare defeasible.
5. (noun) One that cannot be corrected or reformed: an incorrigible.
6. Xty.

[Middle English, from Latin incorrigibles : i<em>n-, not; + corrigere</em>, to correct.]

in·corri·gi·bili·ty, in·corri·gi·ble·ness n.
in·corri·gi·bly adv.

 

Well this word, which suddenly struck me as odd, is kind of odd, in that one doesn’t often think of metallurgy as supplying good human metaphors.   Actually, as soon as I wrote that sentence, I thought of heart of steel, or an iron will … maybe there are many, a tribute to our more basic past hidden in etymology.  And as you gird your loins this morning, I hope you find yourself feeling like a well-prepared reverberatory furnace, or in more old-fashioned parlance, in fine

fettle   (ˈfɛtəl) vb (tr)

1. To remove excess moulding material and casting irregularities from a cast component.
2. To line the hearth of a reverberatory furnace with loose sand or ore in preparation for pouring molten metal.
3. To prepare or arrange a thing, oneself, etc., especially to put a finishing touch to.
4. To repair or mend something.

fettle noun

5. State of health, spirits, etc., especially in the phrase in fine fettle.
6. Another name for fettling.  [Which I looked up for you, just so I could copy the phrase puddling furnace:

fettling (ˈfɛtlɪŋ) n.

1. A refractory material used to line the hearth of puddling furnaces. Also called fettle.

Conveniently, they both have the same etymology.]

[From Middle English fetlen, to make ready, possibly [possibly? looks like a slam-dunk to me!] from Old English fetel, girdle.]

 

Having asked, how can I not have used this as a WoD, I am of course going to use it, for two reasons: one, I never hesitate to repeat my self; and two, it gives me a chance to mention Michael Innis, the pen name of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who wrote a delightful if vocabulary rich series of detective novels featuring John Appleby and his wife Judith and many an astonishing character, whilst being a professor of English at Oxford, and writing quite an array of interesting if peculiar works.

The great appeal of the Appleby books and of the other Innes crime stories, such as the four featuring the slightly nondescript artist Charles Honeybath, starting with the inventive and recommended The Mysterious Commission(1974) lies in the humour and wild inventiveness of the plots, and the memorably oddly named characters, many of them ancient aristocrats in decrepit old country houses, eccentric dons, or, as Braunkopf puts it, from the “voonderble vorldt of art”.

There are lots of learned literary jokes (too many?), but it is the sheer exuberance of the comic invention that stays in the memory….

It was Appelby’s wife Judith who questioned whether his bad mood stemmed from

atra·bilious·ness     n. also at·ra·bil·i·ar (-bl-r) adj.

1. Inclined to melancholy.
2. Having a peevish disposition; surly.

[From Latin atrabilis, black bile (translation of Greek melankholia) : atra, black + bilis, bile.]

It was implied from the context that hunger had produced this mood, and it has become quite the useful term in our household.  My favourite mother-in-law once calmly mentioned that the males in the clan fight best on an empty stomach, when pre-dinner conversation had reached an uncomfortable pitch at the cottage, and rarely were truer words spoken.  My hubby and I even declared “evil hour”, the hour between our return home from work and our consumption of anything, liquid, solid or vapourous, that would turn our black bile a whiter shade of pale.  Of course, hunger never affects my mood, just the moods of absolutely everyone else I know.  My peeves are 100% real, and my atrabiliousness completely well-founded. Just sayin’… but do pass me a doughnut!

 

I used this word yesterday, in reference to you, Dear Reader [sorry, just an incredibly irritating habit I believe I have inherited from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, although he goes a little further] and when I double-checked it, found that its use is perhaps sliding into obsolescence, so I thought I would yank it back out into the modren world [stealing something stolen from the MBMBAM [My Brother, My Brother and Me] webcast that I have been much enjoying put together by the same Justin who co-hosts Sawbones]:

select    (s-lkt)

selectv.tr.
To take as a choice from among several; pick out.

select v.intr.
To make a choice or selection.

select adj.
1. Singled out in preference; chosen: a select few.
2. Of special quality or value; choice: select peaches.
3. Of or relating to a lean grade of beef.
4. Careful or refined in making selections; discriminating.

select n.
1. One that is chosen in preference to others or because of special value.
2. (used with a pl. verb) Chosen or preferred items or people considered as a group. Often used with the:

[Latin seligere, select-, apart]

se·lecta·ble adj.
se·lectness n.

Selectness and Selectability a pompous novel, by a modren Jane Austin.

 

in·de·fat·i·ga·ble  (ˌɪndɪˈfætɪɡəbəl) adj.

Incapable of being wearied, unable to be tired out, unflagging.

[From French indéfatigable, from Latin indfatgbilis : in- (not)+ defaitgare, to tire out (de-(intensive pref) see de- + fatigare, to weary).]

Physically, I am weary perhaps, and mentally too, but keeping on keeping on is apparently built into the genes, and whatever else may be true, it is a gorgeous morning, and my tea tastes great.  Looking for blessings like they were quarters in the couch, and there they are, covered in dog hair and dust mites, between the cushions.

[I once read that the average couch gains between one and five pounds a year, of specifically human flesh.  Sloughed off cells, just falling like gentle snow, into the gaping jaws of the dust mites that inhabit a smaller perspective. [can you do that, ed? [if perception is reality, then yes, me.]]]

 

Sometimes words just look funny to me, the shape of the letters or the sequence of consonants and vowels.  Impetuous leapt off the page at me, and while it was clear from the context what it meant, the root was obscure to this mind, obscured by clouds as it so often is.  But I was not to be satisfied by my first foray into the dictionary as all of the etymologies said see impetus, which I did, saving you the trouble as always Dear Reader, as it looks even funnier, like they forgot a few letters on the end:

im·pe·tus    (mp-ts)
n. pl. im·pe·tus·es

1. An impelling force; an impulse.
2. The force or energy associated with a moving body.
3. Something that incites; a stimulus.
4. Increased activity in response to a stimulus.  

[Middle English impetous, from Latin impetus, from impetere, to attack : in-, against, + petere, to go towards, seek.]

I still feel there is something lacking here, probably my knowledge of Latin, but I somehow want to know why petere means to go towards … maybe what I am searching for is an impetus!

I think as a young child I thought this meant something my brothers got to do:

druth·ers  (drrz) pl.n. Informal

one’s own way, choice, or preference:  [Given my druthers, there would be more puppies and unicorns!]

[1870–75; pl. of druther, (I, you, etc.) ‘d rather (contraction of would rather).]

 

Not a new word, but one that describes my state of mind, and serves as an apology for my tardiness in updating the WoD, which had become the Word of Three Days, which has a nice ring to it, like The Room of Three Rarities [which I would like to inhabit possibly in my search for a little Zen to go with my tea]

but I digress because I am somewhat

dis·trait  (d-str) adj.

Inattentive or preoccupied, especially because of anxiety: “When she did not occupy her accustomed chair at the seminar, Freud felt uneasy and distrait” (Times Literary Supplement). 

[Where do they get these crappola sentences from?  I am horrified to think I have something in common with Freud, that mangler of the female.  She was distrait when she realised she shared an attribute with Freud, the father of messing with ladies’ noses while smoking a penis cigar, when he wasn’t on holiday with his sister-in-law.]

[Middle English, from Old French, past participle of distraire, to distract, from Latin distrahere; see distract.]

 

For somewhat obvious reasons, I have always liked this word, although they seem to have left out the ‘h’:

sac·ris·ty  (skr-st)n. pl. sac·ris·ties

A room in a church housing the sacred vessels and vestments; a vestry.

[Middle English sacristie, from Anglo-Norman, from Medieval Latin sacristia, from sacrista, sacristan; see sacristan.]

That’s it, it just sounds like it should be a swear word, it almost contains my name, and it could be a good place to hide something.

“Sacrista! What did the sacristan secret in the sacristy?

 

Speaking of how did I knot know this:

fanal /ˈfeɪn(ə)l n.

1. a beacon on a ship or lighthouse;
2. a tower with a light that gives warning of shoals to passing ships;
3. a bell-shaped glass cover used to protect and display delicate objects or to cover scientific apparatus or to contain gases;
4. a powerful light with reflector; attached to the front of an automobile or locomotive;
5. a protective ornamental shade used to screen a light bulb from direct view.

[Italian fanale, from Middle Greek phanarion, from Greek phanos torch, from phanos bright; akin to Greek phainein to show — more at fancy]

Well fancy that!

 

Here’s a fabulous word, keeping with the oceanic theme that permeates this blog, that I had never heard before.  Hard to work into conversation, but you never know when you might find yourself discussing things with a marine biologist.  Perhaps the long neglected Dan Farley [last seen in the World’s Worst Novel, Chapters 3 & 4] will have encountered it during his studies:

ben·thos  (bnths) n.

1. The collection of organisms living on or in sea or lake bottoms.
2. The bottom of a sea or lake.

[Greek. [That’s all she wrote!]]

benthic (-thk), ben·thonic (bn-thnk) adj.

That just didn’t feel satisfactory, so off to the world of Wiki:

Benthos is the community of organisms which live on, in, or near the seabed, also known as the benthic zone. This community lives in or near marine sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths.

Many organisms adapted to deep-water pressure cannot survive in the upper parts of the water column. The pressure difference can be very significant (approximately one atmosphere for each 10 metres of water depth).

Because light does not penetrate very deep ocean-water, the energy source for deep benthic ecosystems is often organic matter from higher up in the water column which drifts down to the depths. This dead and decaying matter sustains the benthic food chain; most organisms in the benthic zone are scavengers or detritivores.

The term benthos comes from the Greek noun βένθος “depth of the sea”. Benthos is also used in freshwater biology to refer to organisms at the bottom of freshwater bodies of water, such as lakes, rivers, and streams.

Does this not look like fractal art?

Seaweed and two chitons in a tide pool [!!]

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was playing golf in St. Kitts, and we met a fellow sitting in the shade who was selling something, beer and golf balls probably, and we got chatting.  He was describing the problems on the island, which weren’t many but were sad, and then he said, offering an opinion many an elder man will utter, that the real problem was that the people were “indolent”.  It was the way he strung it out, making it long and lazy, almost graphic, that made one question one’s soul, and find it lacking.  It was hard to pretend one was taking life seriously when wondering what club to use while racking up a score of 123, on a holiday heavily subsidized by one’s parents despite being old enough to have children, whom said parents were probably keeping alive back at the hotel.

in·do·lent  (nd-lnt) adj.

1. Disinclined to exert oneself; habitually lazy.
2. Conducive to inactivity or laziness; lethargic: humid, indolent weather.
3. Causing little or no pain: an indolent tumor.
4. Slow to heal, grow, or develop; inactive: an indolent ulcer.

[Late Latin indolens, indolent-, painless: Latin in-, not + Latin dolens, present participle of dolare, to feel pain.]

The shoe still fits, but it no longer has cleats, not even little rubber ones.

 

Here’s a word with many meanings, the magnetic one the one I am most purportedly familiar with. It messes with your compass and maps, and must be accounted for when sailing. But it changes which causes me to ask, does anyone else worry about the magnetic poles switching on Earth, or is that just Chicken Littling for the ignorant?

Anyhoo, I decline to continue, politely I hope:

dec·li·na·tion  (dkl-nshn)  n.

1. A sloping or bending downward.
2. A falling off, especially from prosperity or vigour; a decline.
3. A deviation, as from a specific direction or standard.
4. A polite refusal.
5. magnetic declination
6. On the celestial sphere, the position of a celestial object north or south of the celestial equator. Declination is measured in degrees along a great circle drawn through the object being measured and the north and south celestial poles, with positive values north of the celestial equator and negative values south of it, so that the equator itself is 0° and the north and south celestial poles are +90° and -90° declination respectively. See more at equatorial coordinate system.

If you did see more at equatorial coordinate system, you will have also bumped into the altazimuth coordinate system, which is much more practical you will be delighted to learn, but which you are advised to compare to the ecliptic coordinate system.  I hope that is all perfectly clear.

Test on Friday.

 

What a great word to say, but what a bad place to be, astronomically speaking.  For perhaps the zillionth time [apologies to patient eldest sibling for short term memory difficulties] I am attempting to understand the moon’s rotation around the earth, or perhaps I should say apparent rotation, so I can move on to not understanding the tides.  Brushing up the old vocabulary appears to be a necessary first step, so apo[lo]gees if this word is no stranger to you:

ap·o·gee  (p-j) n.

1. The point farthest from Earth’s center in the orbit of the Moon or an artificial satellite.
2. The point in an orbit that is most distant from the body being orbited.
3.  The highest or most exalted point; climax: an apogee of artistic development.

[French apogée, from New Latin apogaeum, from Greek apogaion, from neuter of apogaios, far from the earth : apo- + gaia, earth.]

Compare aphelion and perigee.

You know I am insanely tempted.  Aphelion and Perigree, two Greek brothers who could never see eye to eye!

 

Back to nautical terms, as I look out at the beautiful bay.   I only knew this word in its institutional, modern, sense as somewhere from whence a Professor might drone on and on.  Had the professors decorated their nostrums with the heads of academics they had corrected in print it might have helped gather our attention!

ros·trum  (rstrm, rôstrm) n. pl. ros·trums or ros·tra (rstr, rôstr)

1. A dais, pulpit, or other elevated platform for public speaking.
2. The curved, beaklike prow of an ancient Roman ship, especially a war galley.
3. The speaker’s platform in an ancient Roman forum, which was decorated with the prows of captured enemy ships.
4. Biology A beak-like or snout-like projection.

[From Latin rōstrum, beak, ship’s prow, from rōdere, to nibble, gnaw; in plural, rōstra, orator’s platform, because this platform in the Roman forum was adorned with the prows of captured ships.]

I cobbled this together, hence the repetition of the coolest fact, this habit of decorating a speaking platform with all the prows of the ships you had captured. I wonder if they scuttled the ships or just took the figureheads.  But it must have been an awesome sight!

[Why wonder when the interwebz exist!]

 

So life being full of silly coincidences, I happened to be listening to Sawbones, an excellent podcast that is a “Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine”, while recovering from my gastric adventures, and bumped into the word emetic, which I kind of knew and in context clearly meant something that would make you barf.  But that is not a nice thing for a WoD, as barfing and your host are no longer strangers, and perhaps there are similarly afflicted folk amongst my tenacious readers.  However, when my stinking phone played emetin against me in Scrabble [the cottage is a marvellous place] and it wasn’t kidding, I had to look it up.  And then I just felt like sharing.

emetine or emetin (ˈɛməˌtiːn, -tɪn, ˈɛmətɪn) n.

A white bitter poisonous alkaloid obtained from ipecacuanha: the hydrochloride is used to treat amoebic infections. Formula: C29 H40 O4 N2

[From French émétine; see emetic , -ine ²]

See emetic?  If we must, and we must because … well, just because:

e·met·ic    [uh-met-ik] 

1. adj. Causing vomiting, as a medicinal substance.
2.  noun An emetic medicine or agent.

[1650–60; < Latin emeticus < Greek emetikós, equivalent to émet ( os ), vomiting + -ikos -ic.]

Plus ikos.  Well, yes.

Here’s an interesting word that cropped up in conversation with Mikey, and it not only is an excellent word based on sound and meaning alone, it had no obvious etymology. So vaulting into first place in the exciting WoD contest that goes on in the dim recesses of my mind, we have moniker.  But we are left with two competing etymologies, the second found in a direct, peculiar, quotation from Wikionary.

moniker (n.)

1849, said to be originally a hobo term (but attested in London underclass from 1851), of uncertain origin; perhaps from monk (monks and nuns take new names with their vows, and early 19c. British tramps referred to themselves as “in the monkery”). Its origins seem always to have been obscure:

Sir H. Rawlinson can decipher cuneiform, but can he tell us why “moniker”–the word has a certain Coptic or Egyptian twang–means a name painted on a trunk? [“The Saturday Review,” Dec. 19, 1857]

Partridge (A Dictionary of Historical Slang) suggests a corruption of monogram, which is suggestive of the sense signature.  Given that people put three letter monograms on trunks, according to the definition of monogram:

monogram (plural monograms)

1. A design composed of one or more letters, often intertwined, used as an identifying mark of an individual or institution.

 

gal·ley    (gl) n. pl. gal·leys

Nautical
1. A large, usually single-decked medieval ship of shallow draft, propelled by sails and oars and used as a merchantship or warship in the Mediterranean.
2. An ancient Mediterranean seagoing vessel propelled by oars.
3. A large rowboat formerly used by British customs officers.
4. The kitchen of an airliner, ship, or camper.

Printing
1. A long tray, usually of metal, used for holding composed type.
2. Galley proof.

[Middle English galei, from Old French galie, from Old Provençal or Catalan galea, from Medieval Greek, probably variant of Greek galeos, shark, perhaps from galea, weasel. [I am not exactly sure what the expression “to jump the shark” means, but this strikes me as a stretch at the best of times.  I think the etymologists had jumped something, if not the shark. And then we find this more reasonable, and less assuming, suggestion:

from Old French galie, from Medieval Latin galea, from Greek galaia, of unknown origin [now there’s a sensible statement]; the sense development apparently is due to the association of a galley or slave ship with a ship’s kitchen and hence with a hot furnace, trough, printer’s tray, etc [This may be, I speculate, that you would have had a kitchen ship so as not to set the main ship ablaze when the fires went wrong, just as manor houses often had separate kitchen houses.]]

 

ea·gle    (gl) n.

1. Any of various large diurnal birds of prey of the family Accipitridae, including members of the genera Aquila and Haliaeetus, characterized by a powerful hooked bill, keen vision, long broad wings, and strong soaring flight.
2. A representation of an eagle used as an emblem or insignia.
3. A gold coin formerly used in the United States, stamped with an eagle on the reverse side and having a face value of ten dollars.
4. Sports A golf score of two strokes under par on a hole.
5. v. To score an eagle in golf.

[Middle English egle, from Anglo-Norman, from Old Provençal aigla, from Latin aquila perhaps n. use of feminine of aquilus, dark-colored.]

So, you are saying to yourself, did she really not know what an eagle was? Did she think we were daft?  No,  but I do love sentences that begin “Any of various large diurnal …”, until I realize that I am not so sure what diurnal means, so I can’t really enjoy the “family Accipitridae, including members of the genera ….”  So here it is, in all its glory, more than apt for a word of the day!

di·ur·nal    (d-ûrnl) adj.

1. Relating to or occurring in a 24-hour period; daily.
2. Occurring or active during the daytime rather than at night: diurnal animals.
3. Botany Opening during daylight hours and closing at night.

di·ur·nal n.

1. A book containing all the offices for the daily canonical hours of prayer except matins.
2. Archaic A diary or journal; a daily newspaper.

[Middle English, from Late Latin, diurnalis, from Latin, diurnus, from dias, day.]

di·urnal·ly adv.

 

Well here’s a good word that will probably apply to many people here in Ottawa later today, that happened to catch my eye while cheating and gleaning words from a list of nautical words.  And it really shouldn’t be so obscure:

walt, or [better] walty, adj. archaic of a ship

Liable to roll over, crank [?], as a walty ship [or inebriated Canadian].

[From obsolete English dialect walt to overturn, tumble, totter, from Middle English walten; akin to Old English weltan, wæltan to turn, roll — more at welter.]

We may welter while we swelter, but they are promising thunderstorms, which might right many a ship that was about to crank severely.

The Molson beer armadillo – an optical illusion

 

There seem to be a lot of words for ‘shaped like a boat’. I wonder if there are subtle differences between scaphoid, navicular and

cym·bi·form   [ˈsimbə̇ˌfȯrm] adj.

1. Shaped like a boat.
2. Elongated and having the upper surface decidedly concave, as in the glumes of many grasses.

[From Latin, cymba, boat.]

However, it certainly is a rich field for etymological searchers, and glumes is just sitting there like a ripe plum to be plucked by the ignorant but inquisitive.  In the Moomintroll books that I extol upon occasion, the Hemeulen gets upset when he finishes his stamp collection and mopes about inconsolably

until he gets the wonderful suggestion to become a botanist because then his collection will never be complete, so he needn’t worry.

There is a little Hemeulen in me!

 

You knew it was coming :

na·vic·u·lar  (n-vky-lr)

1. adj.  boat-shaped, as certain bones;
2. the bone at the radial end of the proximal row of the bones of the carpus;
3. the bone in front of the talus on the inner side of the foot;

[1535–45; < Late Latin nāviculāris of, relating to shipping = Latin nāvicul(a) a small ship (nāvi(s) ship + -cula -cule1) + -āris -ar1]

 

Who knew that bones and boats were so closely related?  And why would one care about the etymology of scaphoid?   I don’t know and it is too late to turn back and now I can inflict my newly-found knowledge on you, poor unsuspecting reader.  I say unsuspecting, because the definition is itself a fount of mysterious words:

scaph·oid   [skaf-oid]

1. adj. Boat-shaped; resembling a boat; cymbiform: in anatomy applied to several parts.
2. n. The bone on the radial side of the proximal row of the carpus, articulating with the lunar, magnum, trapezoid, trapezium, and radius. Also called navicular, radiale. See cuts under Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, hand, and solidungulate.
3. n. One of the tarsal bones, placed at the inner side, between the astragalus and the three cuneiforms, and sometimes articulating also with the cuboid. Also called navicular. See cut under foot.

Origin:  1735–45;  < Neo-Latin scaphoīdēs  < Greek skaphoeidḗs,  like a boat (skaphe, meaning a skiff, boat, bowl, or anything dug-out and suffix eidos meaning form or shape). See scaph(o)-, -oid

I don’t know where to begin, but I hope your tarsals articulate well with your cuboid today.

 

So from pendentives to spandrels, a brief tour of architectural terminology.  What excellent sounding words, and how well they would sound while touring Italy.  “Another bottle of Lacryma Christi, per favore.  And what elegant spandrels.  They remind me of the pendentives in Venice.”

span·drel also span·dril  (spndrl) n.

1. The roughly triangular space between the left or right exterior curve of an arch and   framework surrounding it.
2. The space between two arches and a horizontal moulding or cornice above them.

[Middle English spaundrell, probably from spandre, space between supporting timbers, from Anglo-Norman spaundre, from spandre, to spread out, from Latin expandere; see expand.]

 

My searches for an image have lead me to Spandrel Sculpture, where you can learn more, perhaps, than you could ever wish to know about spandrels, raised and otherwise, but what an opportunity for sculpture to enhance building, form not just following function, but presenting a canvas.

But I still think it sounds like a kind of legging for elegant gentlemen back in the 17oo’s.  “My those spandrels show off your calves to great effect, your lordship!”

 

Wallace Stevens, not just a poet, a vocabulary lesson!  And he finally got me with

blue heaven spread

Its crystalline pendentives on the sea
And the macabre of the water-glooms
In an enormous undulation fled.

Pendentives … something hanging?  But it turns out to be a very specific word, but not one of those useless words, one that actually describes something particular that otherwise needs many words (one of which is vying for a spot on Wod):

pen·den·tive  (pɛnˈdɛn tɪv)  n.

One of several spandrels, in the form of concave triangles, forming a transition between the circular plan of a dome and the polygonal plan of the supporting masonry.

[French pendentif, from Latin pendns, pendent-, hanging, present participle of pendre, to hang.]

The paintings of Frank Brangwyn on the eye, panels and pendentive of the dome … dramatically depicts scenes of Missouri’s history, countryside and people.

I did not expect to read the word Missouri when I looked at that image …

 

Here’s a random phrase of the day, that popped into my head, that I remember being very pleased to understand, and while maybe it is old news to you, my patient reader, I am unstoppable once I get the wind up:

To pull out all the stops

meaning to go all out, comes from organs and the way they are constructed.  The stops stop air from getting to the pipes, controlling the volume.  And when you pull them out, the volume goes up.  The phrase first appears in an essay by Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, in 1865:

“Knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that… somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman.”

Here is the keyboard, surrounded by stops, of the Westminster Abbey organ

But of course, the damn Yankees have the world’s largest organ (keep mind out of gutter, thank you, I already did the dangerous Google search)

and in true Yankee spirit, it was built for a world’s fair in 1904, and then bought for a department store atrium, which it still graces today, now owned by Macy’s.

 

An idiosyncratic search lead me to this lovely word, unfortunately now an Ikea ludicrous product name, which seems ill-thought, given that it means a kind of crumbly limestone.  But not only is this word not obscure, except to everybody, it has an entire epoch named after it!

malm (ˈmä|m, ˈmȧ| also |lm) n.

dialectal, chiefly England [not so fast!]

1.  A soft friable chalky limestone.
2. A light clayey soil containing chalk :  marl.
3. An artificial mixture of clay and chalk used in the manufacture of bricks.
4. malm brick

Middle English malme, from Old English mealm. Akin to Old Norse malmr, metal, ore; Gothic malma, sand, Old English melu meal. More at meal.

But why didn’t anyone mention this before?

Late Jurassic – The Malm Epoch
The Late Jurassic Epoch: 161 to 146 million years ago
The Acme of the Dinosaurs

I am pretty sure we have malm in veins in the sand in the bottom of the river on Georgian Bay where my mum’s cottage is.  Stepping into it is unforgettable, and we certainly crafted ugly ashtrays out of it for them.  The kids have used it like a spa rub, the adults not so much.  But maybe we are wrong, because it sure preserved the dinosaurs!  Here you can see our previous dog, Wolf, guarding the stash of clay, and just to his left, your right, you can see the edge of the open pit mine.

 

Someone beat me to the pie!  Just going to cut and paste, and of course attribute, but I think it will be a cut and paste squared moment, or a quotation within a quotation, but pie should never be squared, only round, and never filled with curious objects:

“The English have been enjoying pies for centuries. But where does their name come from? For such an apparently humble word, pie has a mysterious etymology.

pie pastry c.1300, from M.L. pie “meat or fish enclosed in pastry,” perhaps related to M.L. pia “pie, pastry,” also possibly connected with pica “magpie” (see pie (2)) on notion of the bird’s habit of collecting miscellaneous objects. Not known outside English, except Gaelic pighe, which is from English. In the Middle Ages, a pie had many ingredients, a pastry but one. Fruit pies began to appear c.1600. Figurative sense of “something easy” is from 1889. Pie-eyed “drunk” is from 1904. Phrase pie in the sky is 1911, from Joe Hill’s Wobbly parody of hymns. Pieman is not attested earlier than the nursery rhyme “Simple Simon” (c.1820). Pie chart is from 1922.

Seriously, magpies?!

Is it perhaps related to the flat breads pitta and pide or Slavic pierogi? Is there a common PIE origin?”

Does pie have a common PIE origin?  Are we looking for the Lucy of language?  The first person to say pie?  Or the first two people, one to say it, and one to understand it.  But what is this Joe Hill’s Wobbly parody of hymns, from which we derive pie in the sky?  Ah, maybe if you are American or Swedish that might be obvious, and I first tracked him down in Murderpedia!  All I wanted was the lyrics.  I understand socialist rage more than I used to, and it is hard to argue with these sentiments:

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
‘Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they’ll tell you when you’re on the bum:
Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife —
Try to get something good in this life —
You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:

FINAL CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, ’twill do you good,
And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye.

I am all for earthly pie.

 

Leeward, being the flip side of windward, I suspect it is well-known to my well-read readers, but just in case [and because she wants to post a picture she took, ed. [in the Exumas, from a houseboat, so cut me some slack!]] here it is, in all its calm beauty.  Leeward, the saviour of of sailors:

lee·ward  (lrd, lwrd) adj. adv.

1. Of, in, or moving to the quarter towards which the wind blows.
2. Towards the lee.
3. The point or quarter towards which the wind blows.
4. The side towards the lee.

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really convey a bunch of meaning, and no etymology even hinted at?  Outrage from the latent scholar.  Not even a see lee, but I did, not wanting to let the team down:

lee  (l) n.

1. The side away from the direction from which the wind blows.
2. An area sheltered from the wind: in the lee of the boulder.
3. Cover; shelter.

lee adj.

1. Of or relating to the side sheltered from the wind: the lee gunwale.
2. Located in or facing the path of an oncoming glacier. Used of a geologic formation.

[Middle English le, from Old English hleo, shelter, protection.]

Like leeward, only without the ward …

 

Having been unsatisfied with the apparent different roots of yesterday’s WoD, mendicant, and the upstart mendacity, I dug a little deeper, and it would appear they both derive ultimately from the Latin word mendum , defect.  Harsh on the beggar, perhaps, but there we have it, so for those still awake, here is mendacity, but with a much fuller etymology than appeared in the comments yesterday, which ties the whole exciting episode together.

men·dac·i·ty  (mn-ds-t) n. men·dac·i·ties n. pl.

1. The condition of being mendacious; untruthfulness.
2. A lie; a falsehood.

1610s, from Middle French, mendacieux, from Latin, mendacious, “a lie, untruth, falsehood, fiction,” from mendax (genitive mendacis) “lying, deceitful,” from menda “fault, defect, carelessness in writing,” from PIE root *mend- “physical defect, fault” (see amend (v.)). The sense evolution of Latin mendax was influenced by mentiri,“to speak falsely, lie, deceive.” Related: Mendaciously; mendaciousness. [I have no idea what a PIE root is, unless it is EO’s fabulous pastry.  And the root of Pi is the kind of thing I don’t like, and since I am struggling with numbers right now, the less said the better.  And we aren’t even close to Pi Approximation Day, which unfortunately will not even occur in Canada, because there is no 7/22 here, just a much more logical 22/7, because we go from small to big, not medium, small, large.  Worse than Starbucks sizes switching languages on you.]

And then here is yesterday’s WoD, spared oblivion for another day:

Taking a suggestion, happily, but then finding that my etymological guesses were way off the mark, I must beg your forgiveness, if you can excuse my mendicant behaviour.

men·di·cant  (mnd-knt) adj.

Depending on alms for a living; practicing begging.

men·di·cant n.

1. A beggar.
2. A member of an order of friars forbidden to own property in common, who work or beg for their living.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin, mendicans, mendicant-, present participle of mendicare, to beg, from mendicus, needy, beggar, from mendum, physical defect.]

mendi·can·cy, men·dici·ty (-ds-t) n.

 

Here’s a word that cropped up when I was going to write something along the lines of “my indisposition makes disquisition difficult” … luckily I stopped, as that is a pinhead phrase if ever there was one … but disquisition stuck and I had to look it up, so knowing that misery likes company, I find myself in a sharing mood.

dis·qui·si·tion  (dskw-zshn) n.

A formal discourse on a subject, often in writing.

[From Latin disquīsītiō, from disquīrere, to make an investigation, from dis1 + quaerere, [I bookmarked this link, without even checking it out: The Latin Dictionary: Where Latin meets English, when I looked for a useful link for quaerere unlike the pointless one the dictionaries had, which just told you it wasn’t a word.] to seek.]

disquiˈsitional adj.  Really?  He had a disquisitional manner, which was off-putting, to say the least, which he never did.

Smelly things having been brought to mind by the Song of the Day reminiscence below, here is a word that shouldn’t mean smelly, but does, so they can throw it on SAT and GRE tests hoping to trick the unwary:

noi·some  (noism) adj.

1. Offensive to the point of arousing disgust; foul: a noisome odour arose from his hockey bag and with one motion three people gestured to the back door.
2. Harmful or dangerous: noisome fumes, arising from the hockey bag, left them weak and nauseous.

[Middle English noiesom : noie, harm (short for anoi, annoyance, from Old French, from anoier, to annoy; see annoy) + -som, adj. suff.; see –some1.]

noisome·ly adv.
noisome·ness n.

The hockey bag noisomely crept into the room, and overpowered the occupants with its noisomeness.

 

Exoskeleton, which had a cameo [well, two … can you have two cameos?] appearance[s] in yesterday’s WoD, reminded me of this word, which we experienced I swear with an enormous wet log at a bonfire at my mum’s erstwhile Funny Farm:

en·do·ther·mic  (nd-thûrmk) also en·do·ther·mal (-ml) adj.

1. noting or pertaining to a chemical change that is accompanied by an absorption of heat (opposed to exothermic).
2. warm-blooded (def. 1).

[< French endothermique (1879); see endo-, -therm, -ic]

en`do•ther′mi•cal•ly, adv.
en′do•ther`my, en`do•ther′mism, n.

The log won and, like being drunk under the table, it out-smoked us and we left it smouldering around 4 am.  It was very snowy and we are not morons, and if the damn thing had caught those soggy cedar woods on fire it would have been the most implosive forest fire ever.   But its endothermism was a sight to behold and I learnt and never forgot that word that evening.  That is how we had fun when I was a teenager in Canada.  Improving our vocabularies in smoke-filled woods whenever possible.

 

I seem to be finding words by their sound lately, and arthropod is simply a great word, as is exoskeleton:

ar·thro·pod  (ärthr-pd) n. Any of numerous invertebrate animals of the phylum Arthropoda, including the insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and myriapods, that are characterized by a chitinous exoskeleton and a segmented body to which jointed appendages are articulated in pairs. [From New Latin Arthropoda, phylum name : arthro- + New Latin -poda, -pod.] ar·thropo·dan (är-thrp-dn), ar·thropo·dal (-dl) adj

As his exoskeleton shone in the sun, he knew it was his shiny chitinous surface that made this myriapod so attractive to the arthropodal ladies waiting below.

 

So I am back to hating on my Scrabble app, but this was worth chasing down, and is an excellent scrabble word to have in one’s back pocket, or perhaps yard, in this case:

bunya (ˈbʌnjə) n.

(Plants) a tall dome-shaped Australian coniferous tree, Araucaria bidwillii, having edible cones (bunya nuts) and thickish flattened needles. Also called: bunya-bunya or bunya-bunya pine.

[From a native Australian language.]

This wasn’t enough for me, and therefore you, so I chased down the Araucaria bidwillii:

 Araucaria bidwillii, the bunya pine, is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the plant family Araucariaceae. It is found naturally in south-east Queensland Australia and two small disjunct populations in north eastern Queensland’s World Heritage listed Wet Tropics. There are many fine old planted specimens in New South Wales, and around the Perth, Western Australia metropolitan area. They can grow up to 30–45 m.

The Bunya Pine is the last surviving species of the Section Bunya of the genus Araucaria. This section was diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic with some species having cone morphology similar to A. bidwillii, which appeared during the Jurassic. Fossilsof Section Bunya are found in South America and Europe. The scientific name honours the botanist John Carne Bidwill, who sent the first specimens to Sir William Hooker in 1843.

And with that I will bidwillii you a good day!

 

And while we are talking about things out of the ordinary, or without shape, here is another word that is out there, and which is also mellifluous for a long word deriving from Greek.  Like a watch flashing in a Shakespeare play, it drove me crazy reading historical fiction when a modern sensibility would inform an ancient character.  You can’t just wish people in the past were more like us, or impose our moralities upon their circumstances.  Anyhow, that is really just a side-beef between me and George Eliot who penned the egregious Romola [I only scanned the attached article: I couldn’t hack full-blown academia of this sort, but it looks like it wasn’t only my beef], but it is something to be on the look out for, so that when Scrooge’s landlady says, “Bob’s your uncle,” you can know that it was added in for the movie, because A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, long before Alistair Sim owned Scrooge.

a·nach·ro·nism  (-nkr-nzm) n.

1. The representation of someone as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order.
2. One that is out of its proper or chronological order, especially a person or practice that belongs to an earlier time: “A new age had plainly dawned, an age that made the institution of a segregated picnic seem an anachronism.” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)

[Who the heck is Henry Louis Gates?   Junior or otherwise?  So I went to look for a better example and stumbled upon this, which explains my coming up with a watch in a Shakespeare play.  Filtering through the sands of time, erroneously of course:

The most famous example of anachronism comes from Act 2 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”:

“Brutus: Peace! Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three.”

The time this play depicts is a point in history dating back to 44 AD. Mechanical clocks referred to in the above-mentioned dialogue had not been invented at that time but were present in Shakespeare’s time. literary devices.com]

[French anachronisme, from New Latin anachronismus, from Late Greek anakhronismos,from anakhronizesthai, to be an anachronism: Greek ana + Greek khronizein, to take time, from khronos, time.]

a·nachro·nistic, a·nachro·nous (-ns) adj.
a·nachro·nisti·cal·ly, a·nachro·nous·ly adv.

In George Eliot’s anachronistic novel, Romola, she anachronously imposes her Victorian sensibilities on the anachronous, eponymous heroine, Romola, greatly irritating Xty back in the day.

And thanks as always to the free dictionary for helping me cobble these things together, and being a good starting point.

Just because it showed up in yesterday’s definition, kind of iffily it seems to me, and because it rolls off the tongue in a mellifluous way that has nothing to do with its meaning.  It sounds like it should be an adjective meaning distant and mighty, like an emperor: his anomalous majesty was terrific to behold!  But no, here it is in our non Humpty-Dumpty world, where words don’t mean what we want them to:

a·nom·a·lous  (-nm-ls) adj.

1. deviating from the common order, form, or rule; irregular; abnormal.
2. not fitting into a common, familiar, or expected type or pattern; unusual.
3. incongruous or inconsistent.

[From Late Latin anomalos, from Greek, uneven: probably from an-, not + homalos, even (from homos, same.]

I think I feel much more anomalous than amorphous, but I still don’t really see how you can you use anomalous to define amorphous.

I feel better now, having set that straight.  Whew.

 

Well, I did double check this word, and it really adds to my conviction that the human experience is a tough thing for economists to quantify, given that it [the human experience, that is] has an amorphous cultural and community context.

Quantify this:

a·mor·phous  (-môrfs) adj.

1. Lacking definite form; shapeless.
2. Of no particular type; anomalous.
3. Lacking organization; formless.
4. Lacking distinct crystalline structure.

[From Greek amorphos : a-, without; see a-1 + morphe, shape.]

a·morphous·ly adv.
a·morphous·ness n.

Gotta love amorphousness:  It was her amorphousness over time that had kept him captive all these years.  

 

Sometimes the penny drops extremely slowly around here, often because it never left [or entered, it dawns on me a day late and a penny short] the piggy bank that passes for my brain in the first place, and when I saw that scuttlebutt meant the cask of drinking water with a hole in it that was the ship’s equivalent of an office water cooler, where sailors would gather for a quick chat, I thought I would look it up to see what was the etymology of such a great sounding word that has come to mean idle gossip or rumour.  And there was none given.  But it did say to see scuttle and butt, which I did.

scut·tle 1  (sktl) n. 1. A small opening or hatch with a movable lid in the deck or hull of a ship or in the roof, wall, or floor of a building. 2. The lid or hatch of such an opening. scut·tle tr.v. scut·tled, scut·tling, scut·tles 1. To cut or open a hole or holes in (a ship’s hull). 2. To sink (a ship) by this means. 3. Informal To scrap; discard. [Middle English skottell, from Old French escoutille, possibly from Spanish escotilla.]

---

scut·tle 2 (sktl) n. 1. A metal pail for carrying coal. 2. A shallow open basket for carrying vegetables, flowers, or grain. [Middle English scutel, basket, from Latin scutella; see scullery.]

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scut·tle 3 (sktl) intr.v. scut·tled, scut·tling, scut·tles To run or move with short hurried movements; scurry. scut·tle n. A hurried run. [Middle English scottlen; possibly akin to scud.]

butt 1  (bt) v. butt·ed, butt·ing, butts v. tr. To hit or push against with the head or horns; ram. v. intr. 1. To hit or push something with the head or horns. 2. To project forward or out. n. A push or blow with the head or horns. to butt in: to interfere or meddle in other people’s affairs. to butt out: to leave someone alone, not meddle in their affairs. [Middle English butten, from Old French bouter, to strike.]

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butt 2 (bt) tr. & intr.v. butt·ed, butt·ing, butts To join or be joined end to end; abut. n. 1. A butt joint. 2. A butt hinge. [Middle English butten, from Anglo-Norman butter (variant of Old French bouter; see butt1) and from but, end; see butt4.]

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butt 3 (bt) n. 1. One that serves as an object of ridicule or contempt: I was the butt of their jokes. 2. A target, as in archery or riflery. 3. An obstacle behind a target for stopping the shot. 4. An embankment or hollow used as a blind by hunters of wildfowl. 5. Archaic A goal. 6. Obsolete A bound; a limit. [Middle English butte, target, from Old French, from but, goal, end, target; see butt4.]

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butt 4 (bt) n. 1. The larger or thicker end of an object: the butt of a rifle. 2. An unburned end, as of a cigarette. 3. Informal A cigarette. 4. A short or broken remnant; a stub. 5. Informal The buttocks; the rear end. [Middle English butte, from Old French but, end, of Germanic origin.]

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butt 5 (bt) n. 1. A large cask. 2. A unit of volume equal to two hogsheads, usually the equivalent of 126 U.S. gallons (about 477 liters). [Middle English, from Old French boute, from Late Latin *buttia, variant of buttis.]

Now that is a lot of scuttle and a whole lot of butt!

 

Honestly, this word just popped into my head.  It undoubtedly was secretly inputted when I wasn’t focusing, and it isn’t quite the word my brain is still hunting for, some combination of fumigate and fulminate, but for the moment fulminate will suffice, as it seems to have a chemical meaning from which its metaphorical meaning has been derived, and who doesn’t find lightening fascinating?

 

Ah, nautical terms. Like fish in a barrel when looking for words one doesn’t know. On a sailboat every line has a different name for reasons that become obvious when you are sailing. Pass me that rope just doesn’t cut it when you are surrounded by a plethora of ropes. The main sheet, the anchor rode, up the jib halyard … it is maddening but necessary, mostly. And while looking up painter so I could link the odd word in my World’s Worst Novel [WWN], I stumbled upon a most interesting website, The Phrontistery (from the Greek phrontistes ‘thinker’), and should probably just throw in my towel, hang up my blades, and retreat with all due humility. But instead I will soldier on, and add fardage to the interesting words for essential things, that we just innocently called floor boards. I had a little Zodiac when I was a teenager, and it had folding floorboards that both held the bottom semi-rigid, and acted as fardage for our dunnage!

Far`dage´ n.

1. (Naut.) See Dunnage.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

There, don’t you feel informed!  But wait, there is indeed more, looks like somehow the definition got abridged and wikipedia saves the day, encore une fois, and I say one more time en Franςais, because it looks like fardage is a French word, but means something different about the way the structure of a ship affects its wind dynamics and performance and needs to be considered.  But here you go in English:

fardage (uncountable) n.

• (nautical) Material used to fill space and prevent goods from moving about during transport; dunnage.

Etymology French. See fardel.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Now wait one cotton picking minute.  What is this unaccountable fardage?  Oh, wait, it said uncountable. And so I looked:

uncountable, uncountable noun, mass noun

A noun that cannot be used freely with numbers or the indefinite article, and which therefore takes no plural form. For example, the English noun information is a mass noun, at least in its principal senses. For those senses, we cannot say that we have *one information, nor that we have *many information (or *many informations). Many languages do not distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns. Antonym: countable, or count noun.

I wonder if pants and scissors are uncountable in some way.  Was there ever a pant or a scissor? But this has already been one too many information for a day with many sunshines and it is time to get above deck and breathe some fresh airs, leaving a fardage in the bottom of the boat where it belongs.

 

I love dictionary references that bounce you back and forth like your ball trapped behind the net in a really early Pong game. But that was just an added bonus, because the word lapstrake had been on my so-called mind, because of noticing that Viking ships and my mum’s rowboat have something in common. And then I bumped into an article so packed with information and pictures, including an excellent example of a killick, about the construction of Viking ships that the dictionary has been left in the dust. Technologically savvy savages. It would have been bad to see them coming through the fog, but might have been okayish to have been one, if you were onboard with all the pillaging. The article really lets you see what a strake is, and lap, well it still means lap.  But here is the dictionary, just to start you off, and make you want to strangle dictionary editors.

lapstrake (ˈlæpˌstreɪk) or lapstreak adj.

Another term for clinker-built. [They actually used more words, like ‘nautical’ but I still think a bit more effort could have gone into this!]

clinker-built or clincher-built adj.

Having a hull constructed with each plank overlapping that below. Also called: lapstrake.  Compare carvel-built.  [Feel free to do so, but now you are on your own, ed.]

 

Have you ever wondered why Preserved Killick is called Preserved Killick in the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian?  Of course you hadn’t, and neither had I, until we bumped into the Killick Coast Trail.  ‘Preserved’ speaks for itself, and the genius of the author, and ‘Killick’ turns out to be a very clever choice too.  Killick is Aubrey’s steward, and also attends to Maturin, and feeds them and keeps it all together, domestically speaking.

From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English

killick n also cillick, kellick, killock, etc

An anchor made up of an elongated stone encased in pliable sticks bound at the top and fixed in two curved cross-pieces, used in mooring nets and small boats ….

[I think this is from something published in 1792, but I don’t understand their short forms.]

Mr Collingham and two hands finished the shortest seal-net, and the people then carried them both, as also the killicks, &c. to the yawl; but the wind being too high to put them out, they left them there. 1792 ibid Gloss i, xii ~ A wooden anchor, made by nailing a pair of claws across each other, and fixing three rods to each claw; within which a large stone is placed to give it weight, and the ends of all the rods are tied together above the stone to secure it in its place….

Idiom: to have a rock in one’s killick: of a woman, to be pregnant.

That sounds painful.  It should mean something else, like maybe having little to no brains: there’s nothing but rock in his killick!

 

And speaking of having a lovely day, here is a lovely word in meaning, sound and etymology, an etymology that is key to the question of cui bono because it infers that all included will be the cui who do the bonoing:

fel·low  (fĕl′ō) n.

1. a man or boy
2. an informal word for boyfriend
3. one or oneself: a fellow has to eat.
4. A person of equal rank, position, or background, a peer: the surgeon asked his fellows.
5. One of a pair; a mate:  looking for the glove’s fellow.
6.  A member of a learned society.
7. A graduate student appointed to a position granting financial aid and providing for further study.
8. Chiefly British An incorporated senior member of certain colleges and universities; a member of the governing body of certain colleges and universities.
9. Obsolete A person of a lower social class.

fellow adj.

Having in common certain characteristics or interests: (often plural):  fellow travellers.

[Middle English felau, from Old English fēolaga, from Old Norse fēlagi, business partner, fellow, from fēlag, partnership: fē, property, money; see peku- in Indo-European roots + lag, a laying down; see legh- in Indo-European roots.]

Word History: A jolly good fellow might or might not be the ideal business associate, but the ancestor of our word fellow definitely referred to a business partner. Fellow was borrowed into English from Old Norse fēlagi, meaning “a partner or shareholder of any kind.” Old Norse fēlagi is derived from fēlag, “partnership,” a compound made up of fē, “livestock, property, money,” and lag, “a laying in order” and “fellowship.” The notion of putting one’s property together lies behind the senses offēlagi meaning “partner” and “consort.” In Old Icelandic fēlagi also had the general sense “fellow, mate, comrade,” which fellow has as well, indicating perhaps that most partnerships turned out all right for speakers of Old Icelandic.

Cobbled together from thefreedictionary.com.  Thanks.

 

I had been reminded for reasons that will become obvious to devoted readers of the World’s Worst Novel, when a character undergoes a Prince like name-change and becomes the bartender formerly known as Skinny Pete [oops, my Breaking Bad!] of the power of subliminal thought.  I have been forever scarred by reading Subliminal Seduction as a young teen, and like the word, as it rolls off your tongue unlike the accidentally onomatopoeic sublingual, which it always reminds me of.  I think we do this word disservice when we only pay attention to it when it is deliberate, but more to the point or at least more to how we got to this laborious point, the etymology reminded me of a good Latin word, which I suddenly realised was the root of the word limit.

sub·lim·i·nal  (sŭb-lĭm′ə-nəl)

rhet·o·ric (rĕt′ər-ĭk) n.

1. The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.
2. A treatise or book discussing this art.
3. Skill in using language effectively and persuasively.
4. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject: her rhetoric was very much inherited from her father.
5. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous: she would never engage in mere rhetoric for the sake of rhetorical entertainment.
6. Verbal communication; discourse.

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Away from contumacious insects and back to contumacious Scrabble games.  The secret to Scrabble, as the ridiculously inclusive Scrabble dictionary knows, is to use all the Scottish dialect you can ken.  The dictionary at my mum’s cottage was a Canadian edition of I think a Random House dictionary, but to make it Canadian they simply included a tonne of Scottish words [and corrected all the spelling, putting you back in good humour!].  But somehow I missed this one, and must have never raxed me it:

rax (ræks)

vb (tr)
1. To stretch oneself, as after sleeping.
2. To pass or give (something to a person) with the outstretched hand; reach: rax me the salt.
3. To strain or sprain.

vb (intr) 
4. To extend the hand.

noun
5. The act of stretching or straining.

[Before 1000; Middle English (north) raxen, Old English raxan; akin to Old English reccean, to stretch, German recken.

 

A funny thing happened, and let me relearn something I have certainly learnt in the past, and that vaults a word into top place in the exciting Word of the Day try-outs.

We live in an older home, built in 1935, that is home to far more flora and fauna, especially fauna, than humans, if fauna can be used to include all non-human but living things, now that they have messed with kingdoms and taxonomy.

[Just as a side rant,  but there used to be two kingdoms: plants and animals.  Now there are at least 5, and also Pluto, which contains things that are neither plant nor animal nor planet.  It is a good thing I already wrote my biology ‘O’ level, let me tell you.]

One of the things that likes to live in, and consume, our house are ants.  Big ones and small ones, and ones with wings.  When we finally decided to fix our one and only bathroom, a job my daughter and I of course thought would  be simple, it turned out that the strange grinding sound my husband was the first to hear, was carpenter ants, who had actually eaten the entire corner of the house, merely as an appetizer.

What followed was a fumigation that meant not using the one and only bathroom, much removal of what was left of the joists and beams that had been the corner of the house, and the use of much ant killer.  Being properly modern folk, and having a dog and kids, I mean kids and a dog, we got non-toxic ant killer.  Which brings me to the word of the day, and the thing that was funny.

Discussing such things and the upcoming weekend, for which I uncharacteristically have a bit of a honey-do list, we were happy to have already bought contumacious dirt.  And I am pretty sure we discussed whether or not that was the right word, and if it had been, we would have been in big trouble when we opened that container.

So I bring you two more words not to confuse:

con•tu•ma•cious (ˌkɒn tʊˈmeɪ ʃəs, -tyʊ-)  adj.

Obstinately stubborn or rebellious; willfully disobedient.

[1590–1600; < Latin contumāx, unyielding, stubborn ( con– + tum- of uncertain sense + acious]

con`tu•ma′cious•ly, adv.
con`tu•ma′cious•ness, n.

Not to be confused with:

di•a•to•ma•ceous (ˌdaɪ ə təˈmeɪ ʃəs) adj.

Consisting of or containing diatoms or their fossil remains.

[1840–50; < New Latin Diatomace(ae), an order name (see diatom, -aceae) + -ous].

And luckily they have linked diatoms for you, but just in case you have had enough, I can tell you they are algae with cell walls made out of silica, and they grind them up and mix it with something that attracts ants, like bits of our house, and it slices up their insides when they eat it.  Which isn’t very nice, but neither is eating our house.

 

Here’s a word one doesn’t unfortunately have much cause to use, so I thought I would bring it out and polish it up.  Just another favourite word; sometimes there is neither rhyme nor reason:

re·splen·dent (rĭ-splĕn′dənt) adj.

Shining brilliantly; radiant; splendid.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin resplendēns, resplendent, present participle of resplendēre, to shine brightly, re- +splendēre, to shine.]

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Why the word tract should be so funny I am not sure, but it might well be Monty Python’s fault!  Be that as it may, I feel lucky that this word doesn’t just have a picture of me instead of a definition:

in·trac·ta·ble (ĭn-trăk′tə-bəl) adj.

1. Difficult to manage or govern; stubborn. See Synonyms at unruly.
2. Difficult to mold or manipulate: intractable materials.
3. Difficult to alleviate, remedy, or cure: intractable pain.
4. Xty.

Intractable did not come with an etymology so I had to go to a word that does not describe me, and I had almost forgotten existed:

trac·ta·ble (trăk′tə-bəl) adj.

1. Easily managed or controlled; governable.
2. Easily handled or worked; malleable.
3. Not Xty.

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[Latin tractābilis, from tractāre, to manage, frequentative of trahere, to draw.]

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Here’s a word I have always liked, but had to fight to find in the fog that is my mind, as age causes elisions in my brain.  Apparently I am not to use it to describe how a napron became an apron, because that is called ‘rebracketing’ by people who have no sense of style, unlike this blogger who has a good list of such words, like numpire:

What’s a “Napron”?

When my friend Janey decided to name her new Eskimo puppy “Neskimo” because she thought her mother had said it was “a neskimo dog,” her older brothers thought it was a great joke. For weeks they went around saying things like “I had a napple for lunch” and “I just read a story about a nelf” and “Don’t forget to take a numbrella to school.”

What Janey’s brothers didn’t know is that several of the words we use in all seriousness came into the English language the same way Neskimo got his name.

Newt  You may have seen a picture of the creature called a “newt.” It looks like a lizard, but it has no scales or knobs. About four hundred years ago in England, this little animal was called “an ewt.” Somewhere back in history someone made Janey’s mistake and started calling it “a newt” and the mistake stuck! The confusion over “a’ and “an” that gave English the word “newt” has also given us several words that once began with “n” but now begin with a vowel.

Auger An auger is a carpenter’s tool that bores holes in wood. It used to be called a nagger….

All that aside, the word I was after is: e·lide (ĭ-līd′) tr.v. e·lid·ed, e·lid·ing, e·lides

1.  To omit or slur over (a syllable, for example) in pronunciation. 2. To strike out (something written). 3. To undergo or cause to undergo elision. [I just love circular self-referential definitions!] 4. To eliminate or leave out of consideration. 5. To cut short; abridge.

[Latin ēlīdere, to strike out : ē-, ex- + laedere, to strike. [Nice that the ‘x’ gets elided!]]

 

My youngest just read an apparently excellent book called Just My Typewhich led us to an interesting discussion that led us to the International Phonetic Alphabet, which led us to this word, for which I have given three definitions, because each one used different examples, which I thought was weird and a little disconcerting:

fric·a·tive (frĭk′ə-tĭv)

n.  A consonant, such as f or s in English, produced by the forcing of breath through a constricted passage. Also called spirant.

adj.  Of, relating to, or being a fricative consonant.

[New Latin fricātīvus, from Latin fricātus, past participle of fricāre, to rub.] fricative (ˈfrɪkətɪv)

A blog about nothing gets to be a blog about everything, and I happened to look up trepanation, and found words not to confuse, although anyone offering you a trepanation might well be a trepan!

tre•pan (trɪˈpæn) n., v.t. -panned, -pan•ning

1. [n.] a tool for cutting shallow holes by removing a core.
2. [v.] to cut circular disks from (plate stock) using a rotating cutter.
3. [v.] to operate on surgically with a trephine.

[1350–1400; Middle English trepane < Middle French trepan, crown saw < Medieval Latin trepanum < Greek trypanon, borer, akin to trŷpa, hole, trȳpân to bore.  [But of course.]]

trep•a•na•tion (ˌtrɛp əˈneɪ ʃən) n.
tre•pan′ner, n.

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tre•pan (trɪˈpæn) Archaic.

1. [n.] a trickster.
2. [n.] a snare.
3. [v.t.] to ensnare or entrap.

[1635–45; earlier trapan= trap1 + -an, of uncertain orig.  [No other etymology committed itself to this degree.]]

 

It has been a little chatty around here this early a.m. as middle son is over and was up at the crack of dawn, apples not falling far from trees, and unfortunately for you, I asked him about words of the day.  Verisimilitude was his current favourite word, but I somehow wasn’t happy with an appearance of truth, and his next word is one I am also strangely fond of.  He used it to describe a person recently, and I have to agree, it makes an excellent adjectival insult, and it has what turns out to be a useful and common suffix, which is usefully hyperlinked, thank you freedictionary.com:

se·ba·ceous (sĭ-bā′shəs) adj.

1. Of, relating to, or resembling fat or sebum; fatty.
2. Secreting fat or sebum.

[From Latin sēbum, tallow [Ugh, tallow has such a bad resonance for me from reading early novels, smelly candles made of fat; the introduction of wax and gas lighting was a tremendous moment for much of mankind, and must have made reading much more possible.] + -aceous [the useful suffix aforementioned.]]

 

Okay, it is an unused word, but I like it, and it almost sounds like my last name, and we often subsist on nuts and berries around here. We are the nuts, and we are

Baccivorous (bac*civ”o*rous), adj.

(Zoöl.) Eating, or subsisting on, berries; as, baccivorous birds.

[From Latin bacca, berry + varare, to devour.]

 

I never did find the word I was looking for, because I got sidetracked by a surprisingly well-written and therefore comprehensible account of why fruit ripens, and why some fruit ripens after it is picked, and some only ripens on the plant.  This fellow does such a good job of explaining something over one’s head but plowing on because it all does make sense, that not understanding the individual hormones, etc., simply does not matter.  If only I were likely to retain any of it ….  But if you have ever wondered about the difference between climacteric fruits and non-climacteric fruits, your searches are over!

What is fruit ripening?

At the right time (or as we’ll see, sometimes at the wrong time), a series of related transformations occur, all caused by the growth hormone we’re discussing today.  The fruit becomes sweeter as the starches are converted into simple sugars by amylases.  The fruit changes from green to colorful as the chlorophyll (fruit = green) is broken down by hydrolases revealing anthocyanins (fruit = colored).  The fruit becomes less tart as the acids are converted to neutral molecules by kinases.  The fruit becomes softer as the amount of pectin is lessened by pectinases.  And the fruit becomes fragrant as the large organics are converted to volatile aromatic compounds by hydrolases.

And there are pictures, and interesting facts about Egyptians slashing figs to hasten their ripening, and how street lamps helped lead to an understanding of plant mechanics, and it all turned into bio-chemical engineering of our food supply.  Or helpful hints about ripening apples.  Yum.

 

I have always like this word, though it derives from the word, or I should say office I suppose, of bailiff, and bailiff’s don’t come across very favourably in literature, as being the strong arm of local government is not the best way to make friends.  Oddly, the police have a happier start, and have only really lost their way since the 1960’s when they became paramilitary forces, rather than bobbie’s who walked their beat and made sure you got safely home.  Now when you see a cop you think, “what did I do now?”, even if you are Mother Theresa.  But let us not throw away diamonds found in dung heaps, which isn’t a bad metaphor for life, and at least enjoy

bail·i·wick (bā′lə-wĭk′) n.

1. A person’s specific area of interest, skill, or authority.
2. The office or district of a bailiff.

[Middle English bailliwik: bailiff; (see bailiff [which you should only do if you have a spare year or so, and want to make the development of local government in Britain your own particular bailiwick, which I almost did, after writing what turned out to be an award winning essay on the subject, for which I only received an 83, and actually went back to the professor and told him that it was apparently the best written essay in Victoria College in the year I graduated, and maybe he could have given me a better mark, to which I believe he replied that an 83 was a good mark.  Such is life.]) + wik, town (from Old English wīc, from Latin vīcus; see vicinity).]

 

I think I am one of these, but it is hard to be sure … I am sure I am married to one, or at least I think I am sure about that … can one have a cataleptic fit from doubt?  Certainly certainty leads to me having fits, so if the word fits, I will have to wear it:

acataleptic  /eɪˈkæt.lˌɛp.si/ a.

Incapable of being comprehended; incomprehensible.

From Latin acatalēpticus, from Ancient Greek ἀκατάληπτος (akatalēptos, “incomprehensible” [you’re telling me!]), from ἀ– (a-, “not”) + καταλαμβάνω (katalambanō, “I seize”), from κατά (kata, “against”) + λαμβάνω (lambanō, “I take”).

acataleptic n.

An adherent of acatalepsy … which I have looked up for you, in case you were just expecting a picture of my husband:

acatalepsy

Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.

 

It’s a random day, and this word caught my eye, and much to my surprise the etymology was not similar to that given for fetlock, a good old WoD.  But that seems crazy to moi.

fet·ter (fĕt′ər) n.

1. A chain or shackle for the ankles or feet.
2. Something that serves to restrict; a restraint.

fet·ter tr.v. fet·tered, fet·ter·ing, fet·ters

1. To put fetters on; shackle.
2. To restrict the freedom of.

[From Middle English feter, c. Old High German fezzera, Old Norse fjǫturr; akin to foot]

 

At least it is being an education.  Now my phone is calling on its molecular chemistry expertise to beat me at Scrabble.  It is actually amazing that we are alive, and here is just another ludicrous example of what is going on not just around you, but in you.  And knowing these things is key, if we are to beat computers at board games, let me tell you!

Tautomers are constitutional isomers of organic compounds that readily interconvert by a chemical reaction called tautomerization. This reaction commonly results in the formal migration of a hydrogen atom or proton, accompanied by a switch of a single bond and adjacent double bond. The concept of tautomerizations is called tautomerism. Because of the rapid interconversion, tautomers are generally considered to be the same chemical compound. Tautomerism is a special case of structural isomerism and can play an important role in non-canonical base pairing in DNA and especially RNA molecules.

And now you know.

 

Good grief.  It is still me against my phone, and the latest outrage that I bothered to record was culm.  I hoped it had something to do with culminate, but that would be too simple.

culm1 (kʌlm) n.

1. coal dust, slack;
2. anthracite, esp. of inferior grade;
3. a formation consisting mainly of shales and sandstone deposited during the Carboniferous period in parts of Europe.

[1300–50; Middle English colme, probably = col, coal, + -m suffix of uncertain meaning; compare -m in Old English fæthm, fathom, wæstm, growth.  [I think I would like to compare the uses of -m in Old English.  It was a class I loathed and loved, but you could hardly be further from the real world, doing things like exploring suffixes of uncertain meaning.]]

But wait … that’s not all!  Like a late night commercial, you also get:

culm2 (kʌlm) n.

1. a stem or stalk, esp. the jointed and usu. hollow stem of grasses.

culm2 v.i.

2. to grow or develop into a culm.

[1650–60; < Latin culmus, stalk; akin to calamus, haulm.]

I think I should make a list of words with extremely disparate meanings, that you really mustn’t confuse!

 

Well if this isn’t the hirsled limit!  When I looked it up it barely existed apart from being a Scrabble word, but then I stumbled upon this

and decided that is was fair game if it made this tome more comprehensible, although it sure looks like it is comprehensive!  Extensive research [you would be surprised] has led me to suspect that the word hirsled may not appear in the 1853 edition linked above, but it certainly does appear in the 1841 edition:

 

How the internet led me on this sheep chase I cannot explain, but I hope this more than satisfies your curiosity.

hir·sel \hirsəl\ also hir·sle n.

1.  Scot :  a flock of sheep;
2. Scot :  the land grazed by a flock of sheep: “like a poor lamb that has wandered from its own native hirsel” — Sir Walter Scott
3.  Scot :  a large number or quantity.

[From Middle English hirsill, fr. ON [guessing here, but I assume they mean Old Norse!] hirzla, hirthsla safekeeping, custody, fr.hirtha to guard sheep, fr. hirthir shepherd — more at herd.]

I like the way they put Scot at the beginning of every line, so I left it.  But I think we can take it that is is primarily a Scottish word.

So I looked up cholent, because my stinking phone played it in Scrabble, and I was going hum-dee-hum about the definition, until it included the word ‘pulses’, which I had to look up because I didn’t know you could eat them, and worried that they were some sort of gland or something, so I thought I better share, in case you saw them on a menu, and worried it might be a pineal gland.

cholentˈtʃolənt n.

1. (Judaism) Judaism a meal usually consisting of a stew of meat, potatoes, and pulses prepared before the Sabbath on Friday and left to cook until eaten for Sabbath lunch.

I had to go to Wikipedia for etymology, and I thought it was vaguely interesting:

Max Weinreich traces the etymology of cholent to the Latin present participle calentem, meaning “that which is hot” (as in calorie), via Old French chalant (present participle of chalt, from the verb chaloir, “to warm”). One widely quoted folk etymology, relying on the French pronunciation of cholent or the Central and Western European variants shalent or shalet, derives the word from French chaud (“hot”) and len (“slow”). Another folk etymology derives cholent (or sholen) from the Hebrew she’lan, which means “that rested [overnight]”. This refers to the old time cooking process of Jewish families placing their individual pots of cholent into the town baker’s ovens that always stayed hot and slow-cooked the food overnight. The generally accepted etymology is Old French chaudes lentos, hot lentils.

And now for pulses, or I should say pulse2

pulse 2 (pŭls) n.

1. The edible seeds of certain pod-bearing plants, such as peas and beans.
2. A plant yielding these seeds.

[Middle English pols, from Old French, from Latin puls, pottage of meal and pulse, probably ultimately from Greek poltos.]

Puts a whole new meaning on taking someone’s pulse!

 

SoWell isn’t this kind of funny.  I have been entertaining myself by playing Scrabble against my phone, and it plays the most astonishing words, so I thought this morning I would see what it pulled out of its hat, and wouldn’t it just be the very thing that Dude Stacker needed!  It could also be a cry that one would make when a coincidence arose:

za·re·ba also za·ree·ba (zə-rē′bə) n.

1. An enclosure of thorn bushes or stakes protecting a campsite or village in northeast Africa.
2. A campsite or village protected by such an enclosure.
3. A useful Scrabble word.

[Arabic zarība, cattle pen, from zarb, sheepfold.]

So there you have it, brought to you by my phone. Zareeba!

 

A lovely word for a terrible thing, and it looks like this is what has occurred on our street.  The infill across the way isn’t an infill at all, just a two story addition on the side of the house facing the street, with a new dwelling unit in the basement.  That seems to be requiring full, separate, city services from the existing house.  Yeah, the addition is all bathroom …

bam•boo•zle (bæmˈbu zəl)   v. -zled, -zling.

transitive:

1. to deceive or get the better of by underhandedness; hoodwink.
2. to perplex; mystify.

intransitive:

3. to practice trickery, deception, or the like.

[1695–1705; orig. uncertain]

bam•boo′zle•ment
bam•boo′zler

I feel bamboozled, and that should be a good thing, like getting thoroughly baked.

 

Having disposed of ken, kith and kin, we are left with only kine, and the definition is darned short:

kine (kīn) n. Archaic

A plural of cow1.

[Middle English kyn, from Old English cȳna, genitive pl. of cū, cow; see cow1.]

And since they are so keen on one seeing cow1, I have gone and seen both cow1 and cow2, because she was feeling put out to pasture:

cow1 (kaʊ) n.

1. the mature female of a bovine animal, esp. of the genus Bos.
2. the female of various other large animals, as the elephant or whale.
3. Informal. a domestic bovine of either sex and any age.

Idiom: to have a cow, to become hysterical.

[Why would having a cow be bad?  I understand how someone getting your goat would be maddening, but having a cow sounds pretty good.]

[before 900; Middle English cou, Old English cū, c. Old Saxon kō, Old High German chuo, Old Norse kȳr, Latin bōs, Greek boûs ox]

cow2 (kaʊ) v.t.

to frighten with threats; intimidate; overawe.

[So much for cow2, I should have left her alone!]

[1595–1605; from Old Norse kūga, to oppress, cow.]

So kith it is, and it is a little bit interesting, in the difference between kith and kin, which can stand on its own much better than kith.  I mean, if I mentioned someone’s kin, most people would get it.  We had a town we drive through on the way to Georgian Bay that is called Kinmount, our joke being that it is called that because the inhabitants couldn’t spell incest.  Most people get it.  But if I mentioned someone’s kith, it would need some explaining.  And you wouldn’t want to mount it.

kith (kɪθ) n.

(in phrase ‘kith and kin’ or ‘kith or kin’)

[That’s what Oxford sez. But when you look up kin, which I did and will put below, there is no mention of kith.  Equality for kith, I say!  But not equality for the Oxford dictionary, because their definition of kin was on the skimpy side.]

One’s relations: a widow without kith or kin.  [Now once again I have to wonder if most of the examples in dictionaries are depressing.  That was certainly uncalled for.]

From Old English cȳthth, of Germanic origin; related to couth. The original senses were ‘knowledge’, ‘one’s native land’, and ‘friends and neighbours’. The phrase ‘kith and kin’ originally denoted one’s country and relatives; later one’s friends and relatives.

Now I picked Random House’s definition of kin, because it was by far the longest, and still no mention of kith.

kin(kɪn) n.

1. all of a person’s relatives; kindred.
2. a relative or kinsman.
3. a group of persons tracing or claiming descent from a common ancestor, or constituting a family, clan, tribe, or race.
4. someone or something of the same or similar kind.
5. family relationship or kinship.

adj.

6. of the same family; related; akin.
7. of the same kind or nature; having affinity.

[Before 900; from Old English cyn; c. Old Saxon, Old High German kunni, Old Norse kyn, Gothic kuni; related to akin.]

And that’s all I kin take.

 

When I used ‘ken’ I did double check and look it up, so it vaults into first place for Word of the Day, but it drags with it 3 other words for 3 other days that for some reason I always associate with it, kith, kin and kine, I hope because they are Scottish, but maybe it is because I have been playing Scrabble against the computer on my phone, and words that contain the letter ‘k’ are few and far between.  It is a monstrous opponent and seems to invent words and then put them in the dictionary, but it has a cool teacher feature which shows you what you could have played so it is a challenge in two ways: one, to beat the computer in the game; and two, to get the teacher to say “Outstanding” instead of the slowly diminishing comments, “Excellent”, “Good”, and the painful “Hmnn” which lets you know you are a dolt, gently.

ken (kĕn) n.

1. Perception; understanding: complex issues well beyond our ken. [Or how about: manageable issues well within our ken?  But I guess Scots are on the pessimistic side to a large degree.  Darned Presbyterians, taking all the fun out of life.]
2. Range of vision, view.

v.  ken, kens, ken·ning, kenned or kent (kĕnt)

v. tr.

1. To know (a person or thing). 2. To recognize.

v. intr.

To have knowledge or an understanding.

[From Middle English, kennen, influenced by Old Norse, kenna, to know, from Old English, cennan, to declare.]

 

So I thought I better look it up:

Polar Vortex

A polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near either of a planet’s geographical poles. On Earth, the polar vortices are located in the middle and upper troposphere and the stratosphere. They surround the polar highs and lie in the wake of the polar front. These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their reliance upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles.[1] They usually span less than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in which the air circulates in a counter-clockwise fashion (in the Northern Hemisphere). As with other cyclones, their rotation is caused by the Coriolis effect.

The Northern Hemisphere vortex often has two centers, one near Baffin Island and the other over northeast Siberia. The Antarctic vortex in the Southern Hemisphere tends to be located near the edge of the Ross ice shelf near 160 west longitude. When the polar vortex is strong, the Westerlies increase in strength. When the polar cyclone is weak, the general flow pattern across mid-latitudes buckles and significant cold outbreaks occur. Ozone depletion occurs within the polar vortex, particularly over the Southern Hemisphere, and reaches a maximum in the spring.

I think our flow pattern buckled, and it needs to buckle back up!

 

Once again influenced by the DAILY GREAT LAKES and SEAWAY SHIPPING NEWS, I bumped into the term “brash ice”, and when I went to look it up further, although they had in their kindness already defined it, I found a very cool, as in Antarctically cold, source who had found a really frozenly cool manual that described 21 kinds of ice, with photos!  I should never have complained, way back when, about their being too few words for snow.  I will start you off with brash ice, and then you too can discover the difference between grease ice and and ice cake, which sounds rather important, if you were hungry at the time.

Brash Ice 

Accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 6.5 feet across; the wreckage of other forms of ice.   Thank you Jennifer Bogo and Popular Mechanics.  And that is an excellent last name.

21 Kinds of Ice: Definitions and Photos

THUMBING THROUGH THE BRIDGE MANUAL ABOARD THE ANTARCTIC RESEARCH AND SUPPLY VESSEL LAURENCE M. GOULD ON MY WAY TO ANTARCTICA …

 

Here’s a word, which I admit seems awfully obvious once I looked it up, but which I still find cool, at least in the context, meteorological, in which I stumbled upon it.  Reading my current favourite news source, DAILY GREAT LAKES and SEAWAY SHIPPING NEWS, I found a terrific link that then warns you not to link to it, that shows satellite photos of the Great Lakes, synoptic ones, and that I had to look up, because the penny drops more slowly than the fingers search the interwebz:

syn·op·tic  (sĭ-nŏp′tĭk) also syn·op·ti·cal (-tĭ-kəl) adj.

1. Of or constituting a synopsis; presenting a summary of the principal parts or a general view of the whole.
2. Relating to or being the first three gospels of the New Testament, which share content, style, and order of events and which differ largely from John.
3. Meteorology Of or relating to data obtained nearly simultaneously over a large area of the atmosphere.

[From Greek sunoptikos, from sun + opsis, general view.  See synopsis, if you must.]

 

Bufflehead

A buoyant, large-headed duck that abruptly vanishes and resurfaces as it feeds, the tiny Bufflehead spends winters bobbing in bays, estuaries, reservoirs, and lakes. Males are striking black-and white from a distance. A closer look at the head shows glossy green and purple setting off the striking white patch. Females are a subdued gray-brown with a neat white patch on the cheek. Bufflehead nest in old woodpecker holes, particularly those made by Northern Flickers, in the forests of northern North America.

All About Birds

They left out delicious. Yum.

 

I found this rather interesting and did not know there was actually a fellow Mesmer.  Oddly, none of the online definitions I found gave an etymology, but of course the wiki world solved the problem, and together we have cobbled together this fabulous definition for you:

mes·mer·ize  (mĕz′mə-rīz′, mĕs′-) tr.v. mes·mer·ized, mes·mer·iz·ing, mes·mer·iz·es

1. To spellbind; enthrall: the children were mesmerized by the Pied Piper, and let him call the tune.
2. To hypnotize.

mes′mer·i·za′tion (-mər-ĭ-zā′shən) n.
mes′mer·iz′er n.

[From French mesmérisme; so called after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), a German physician who developed the animal magnetism theory.]

I bumped into this fascinating shyster listening to a funny medical podcast called Sawbones that my middle offspring put me onto.  I found them a little slow going at first, but I listen quickly and have become accustomed to their style, and they are a charming married couple, she the doctor, he the funny guy, and since I picked up on them they have covered marijuana, cannibalism and now Mesmer, three terrific topics and hard to beat, so I thought I would give them a shout out.  I was thinking it would be funny to do a podcast about podcasts, sort of a “we listen so you don’t have to” service, with a nice meta ring to it.

Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin welcome you to Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. Every Friday, they dig through the annals of medical history to uncover all the odd, weird, wrong, dumb and just gross ways we’ve tried to fix people over the years. Educational? You bet! Fun? We hope!

 

Let’s just say I wish I didn’t know this word, and I think it might hurt when someone pokes a needle through layers of old scar tissue and the meat of your upper thigh and hip socket. And that when they encountered a tough layer, and they had to push harder, it was difficult for the both of us.  So the thought that it is not all smooth sailing through the right lower quadrant of Xty’s torso is much on Xty’s mind, and this being my own delightful blog, I get to share.

ad·he·sion (ăd-hē′zhən) n.

1. The act or state of adhering.
2. Attachment or devotion; loyalty.
3. Assent or agreement to join.
4. A condition in which bodily tissues that are normally separate grow together.
5. A fibrous band of scar tissue that binds together normally separate anatomical structures. [It’s this definition we particularly dislike.]
6.  The physical attraction or joining of two substances, especially the macroscopically observable attraction of dissimilar substances.

[From French adhésion, from Latin adhaesiō, adhaesiōn, from adhaesus, past participle of adhaerēre, to adhere.  [Isn’t that useful etymology?  Adhesion from the French adhesion, from the Latin adhesio.  But just to jump in with the obvious, it must be to + stick.  As compared to cohesion, which is with + stick.]]

 

Same excuse as yesterday, but I just used this in a comment, so thought I better look it up.  And whew, I got it right, saving the realtime humiliation of the internet for another day.  Like spelling jigedy with one g – but spellcheck didn’t like jiggedy and then it was up, the jigedy that is – and now I am going to change it – it has bothered me long enough, and my readers [there she goes again, eternal optimist, ed.] will forgive me my not perfidy – it was just an honest mistake.  But perfidy, while awful, especially when involving decaffeinated tea substitutions, has a nice ring to it, like a jolly old sin, not a new-fangled and therefore ugly one.  And the definition I robbed from thefreedictionary which they had robbed from another online dictionary, has a lovely example of it used in a sentence, or phrase for the technically minded, and I am a tad jealous.  Fink is always a nice choice of word.  The etymology falls apart a bit with why per means to destroy.  It can mean utterly, so that gets one part way there, but the rest will have to sit as a mystery for the moment.  One can only take so much confusion, and I did follow the link to per … diction:

per·fi·dy  (pûr′fĭ-dē) n. pl. per·fi·dies

1. Deliberate breach of faith, calculated violation of trust, treachery: “the fink, whose perfidy was equaled only by his gall ….” (Gilbert Millstein)
2. The act or an instance of treachery.

[1585–95; From Latin perfidia, faithlessness, from perfid(us) faithless, treacherous (per + fidus, derivative of fidēs, faith).]

 

Having just used it, and having had to check the spelling, I find that this is a word I am fond of, and don’t get much opportunity to use.  We once saw a documentary about these monks in somewhere like Nepal [is there anywhere like Nepal, ed.?] that slowly preserved themselves by eating a diet of pine needles, eventually only pine needles.  And then after five years another monk is sent out to see if the preservation worked.  Like shellacking (although shellac comes from lac, apparently – a word for another day – from within.  Almost tempting sometimes at the cottage, my mum’s cottage which is much more piney, to imagine become part of the permanent landscape.  Creepy, of course, for future generations, but that is their issue.

des•ic•cate (ˈdɛs ɪˌkeɪt)  v. -cat•ed, -cat•ing

v.t.

1. to dry thoroughly; dry up;
2. to preserve (food) by removing moisture; dehydrate.

v.i.

3. to become thoroughly dried.

[1565–75; from Latin, dēsiccātus, dried up; past participle of dēsiccāre = dē, from + siccāre, derivative of siccus, dry.]

des`ic•ca′tion, n.
des′ic•ca`tive, adj.
des′ic•ca`tor, n.

Dessicative?  They just make this stuff up, I swear.

 

I hate to put sublimation to bed, but it has had its day [or two, ed.], and while today looks sublime, in many senses, it is time to move forward.  Or maybe backwards, to a word that is almost self-referential.

rec•on•dite (ˈrɛk ənˌdaɪt, rɪˈkɒn daɪt) adj.

1. pertaining to or dealing with very profound, difficult, or abstruse subject matter: a recondite treatise;
2. known or understood by relatively few, esoteric, arcane;
3. obscure.

[From Latin reconditus, past participle of recondere, to put away: re + condere, to put together, preserve.]

rec′on•dite`ly, adv. rec′on•dite`ness, n.

And what about recondity while we are at it?  What a better word than reconditeness.  “Her recondite was profound,” sounds so much better than “her reconditeness”.  That should be a title, “Her Reconditeness has requested an a treatise on historical maps of Ontario.  Please bring it swiftly.”

I actually had the world’s most arcane job once, proofing the index for a bibliography of historical maps of Ontario.  But I did get to look at some very nice historical maps, and found that the tourist attraction, Dow’s Lake, in Ottawa, used to be called, for good reason, Dow’s Swamp.  Just ask the enormous carp, as they fight with the seagulls for a scrap of poutine.

 

sub•li•mate (v. ˈsʌb ləˌmeɪt; n., adj. -mɪt, -ˌmeɪt) v. -mat•ed, -mat•ing; n., adj. v.t.

1. to divert the energy of (a sexual or other biological impulse) from its immediate goal to one of a more acceptable social, moral, or aesthetic nature or use;
2. to sublime (a solid substance); extract by this process;
3. to refine or purify (a substance);
4. to make nobler or purer;
5. (v.i.) to become sublimated, undergo sublimation;
6. (n.) the crystals, deposit, or material obtained when a substance is sublimated;
7. (adj.) purified or exalted; sublimated.

[1425–75; From Latin sublīmātus, past participle of sublīmāre, to elevate, derivative of sublīmis, sublime.]

sub`li•ma′tion, n.

What we hope the snow will also do, but not today as winter just doesn’t give up.  But you could smell it yesterday, and I love the smell of sublimation in the morning!

 

I have actually been to Kentucky (and saw Chicago, even though I was 12 or 13, it was odd but fun) and one cannot think of Kentucky without thinking of blue grass, and you cannot think about blue grass without thinking about bent grass, and golf, and therefore, fescue, which we use to this day as a swear word.

fescue (ˈfɛskjuː) or fescue grass n

Any grass of the genus Festuca: widely cultivated as pasture and lawn grasses, having stiff narrow leaves. See also meadow fescue, sheep’s fescue.  [Which is why it is so unfortunate to find on a golf curse, I mean course.]

[From Old French, festu, ultimately from Latin, festūca, stem, straw.]

 

Offspring #1 introduced us to this word, when very young, and it has always had a friendly ring to it, even if too many is too much:

Bilirubin (formerly referred to as haematoidin) is the yellow breakdown product of normal haeme catabolism. Haeme is found inhaemoglobin, a principal component of red blood cells. Bilirubin is excreted in bile and urine, and elevated levels may indicate certain diseases. It is responsible for the yellow color of bruises, the background straw-yellow color of urine (via its reduced breakdown product, urobilin – the more obvious but variable bright yellow colour of urine is due to thiochrome, a breakdown product of thiamine), the brown color of feces (via its conversion to stercobilin), and the yellow discoloration in jaundice.

It has also been found in plants.

I think it would make a good name for a character in a novel, and it wouldn’t be complimentary, but not a total disaster either, like a necessary parasite.

 

I think I used this word before to describe Emmy Lou Harris’ singing, but really, if the shoe fits too tightly, you have to wear it.  I mean should music really make you feel that even suicide isn’t good enough for you?  Too active.  Better to just let ennui finally dehydrate one into the dust from which we sprang.

lu•gu•bri•ous (lʊˈgu bri əs, -ˈgyu-)  adj.

Mournful or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner: lugubrious songs of lost love. [HA!  Their example, scout’s honour!]

[From Latin lūgubris, mournful,  from lūgēre, to grieve.]

lu•gu′bri•ous•ly, adv.
lu•gu′bri•ous•ness, n.

Used in a sentence:  The lugubriousness of her singing led the audience to slowly become their chairs, forever preserved like soulful wood carvings of her pained tones.

 

And while I am thinking about eponymous things, how about the Mackintosh, the raincoat, not the apple, although it turns out that the McIntosh apple is actually named after a farmer, a Canadian farmer it says, although American-born, an interesting factoid to have included.  But clearly a smart fellow who emigrated to find fame, a true windfall:

Mc·In·tosh [ˈmakənˌtäSH] noun; plural noun: McIntoshes; noun: McIntosh red; plural noun: McIntosh reds [glad they straightened out that spelling nightmare!]

a dessert apple of a variety native to North America, with deep red skin.

Origin: late 19th century, named after John McIntosh (1777–1845 or 1846), the American-born Canadian farmer on whose farm the apple was discovered as a wild variety.

But enough of our American-born friend [credit where credit is due], here’s the raincoat chap, who actually did something, i.e. filed the patent:

The Mackintosh or Raincoat (abbreviated as mac or mack) is a form of waterproof raincoat, first sold in 1824, made out of rubberised fabric. The Mackintosh is named after its Scottish inventor Charles Macintosh, though many writers added a letter k, and this variant spelling “Mackintosh” is now standard.

Although the Mackintosh style of coat has become generic, a genuine Mackintosh coat should be made from rubberised or rubber laminated material.

And as Wikipedia helpfully adds:

Not to be confused with Macintosh. Indeed.

 

I looked it up, because I didn’t know it was a regional word.  It always makes me laugh to say it, but to me a sofa is not a chesterfield.  A sofa is more beaten up and you might find four people at once on a sofa, watching a movie, while eating Cheetos and Häagen-Dazs, at the same time.  A chesterfield would find one having tea and little sandwiches while discussing the affairs of the day.  My parents were strict about not having a television in the living room, something I have perpetuated, and we had to descend into the basement to watch the limited amount we were allowed each week, planned out in advance.  Narrowing it down, we stuck to Batman and Get Smart for the longest time.  Original Star Trek.  That kind of thing, on a beat up old sofa and then the weirdest snake sofa, a huge tube stuffed like a bean bag chair.  Back to chesterfield, it seems to have a strange local American usage too, and there must be an interesting story somewhere about an immigrant and his chesterfield.  I have never heard it used to describe a coat, and would be most surprised to encounter a gentleman wearing a sofa.

ches·ter·field  (chĕs′tər-fēld′) n.

1. A single- or double-breasted overcoat, usually with concealed buttons and a velvet collar.
2. Chiefly Northern California & Canada: a sofa.

[After a 19th-century earl of Chesterfield.] Regional Note: Chesterfield, a term for a sofa, especially a large one with upholstered arms, was probably brought down from Canada, where it is common. In the United States, it was largely limited to the trade region of San Francisco in northern California. According to Craig M. Carver in American Regional Dialects, the word probably comes from the name of a 19th-century earl of Chesterfield and originally referred “specifically to a couch with upright armrests at either end.” It appears to have come into use in Canada around 1903 and in northern California at about the same time.

 

Yes, it really is a word, and it really could happen, as my hubby found out writing documents for work, not because he actually experienced it.  Apparently additionalities is also a word, but neither of us was pleased, and we will save that for a more bureaucratic day.

in·so·late  (ĭn′sō-lāt′, ĭn-sō′-) verb tr. in·so·lat·ed, in·so·lat·ing, in·so·lates

To expose to sunlight, as for bleaching [or darkening, depending on your starting point, ed.]

[From Latin. insōlāre. to place in the sun, from in + sōl, sun.]

 

Life is weird.  I was going to say something about how silly it is to have so many words for such specific things, but then I realised it was even sillier that both of these behaviours could turn out to be evolutionarily successful:

ca•tad•ro•mous (kəˈtæd rə məs)  adj.

migrating from fresh water to spawn in the sea (not to be confused with anadromous).

[Dont’ worry, I have done it for you, right after the etymology you are so impatient to read.  And if you already clicked, then sorry, but it’s all greek to me.]

[From Greek, katadromos, from kata, down + dromos, from dremein, to run.]

a•nad•ro•mous (əˈnæd rə məs) adj.

migrating from salt water to spawn in fresh water, as salmon (not to to be confused with catadromous).

[From Greek, anádromos, running upward, from ana– towards, as in analysis,  + dromous, [or dromos; could they be consistent, she begged pointlessly?],  which we just read about.

As long as it doesn’t kill you is actually evolution’s motto.  It doesn’t have to be better, it just has to not be fatal.  Right now, skipping the spawning, I would like to be catadromous, and get in the water and start drifting down stream.  If it weren’t negative a million outside again, I mean.

I wonder if some words fall out of use because they just don’t sound like what they mean. Take a good old onomatopoeic word like boom, and you know where you stand, or perhaps stood. But here is a word that sounds weak, when it should be strong, and sort of insipid, or should I say insapid:

sap·id (săp′ĭd) adj.

1.  Perceptible to the sense of taste; having flavor.
2. Having a strong pleasant flavor; savory.
3. Pleasing to the mind, engaging.

[From Latin sapidus, sapere, to taste.]

 

Without comment:

ob·fus·cate  (ŏb′fə-skāt′, ŏb-fŭs′kāt′) tr.v. ob·fus·cat·ed, ob·fus·cat·ing, ob·fus·cates

1. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand: “A great effort was made . . . to obscure or obfuscate the truth” (Robert Conquest). [How did he know? [Whatever happened to no comment, ed.? [I happened to it, xty.]]]
2. To render indistinct or dim; darken: The fog obfuscated the shore.

[From Latin, obfuscāre, obfuscāt-, to cover with darkness: ob-, over + fuscāre, to darken, from fuscus, dark.]

ob′fus·ca′tion n.
ob·fus′ca·to′ry (ŏb-fŭs′kə-tôr′ē, -tōr′ē, əb-) adj. As if, but used in a sentence just for fun:  Her obfuscatory language was obfuscatory, as was its intent.

Enough of that dratted symbolic logic or mathematical logic, and back to the real world, or perhaps the apparently real world.  Inflicting upon you a word because I didn’t know it existed, like casting swine before pearls perhaps, but this was another one of those dictionary definition chases, where the definition leaves you going really? you don’t say,, [and probably shouldn’t, ed.] :

ver·i·si·mil·i·tude (vĕr′ə-sĭ-mĭl′ĭ-to̅o̅d′, -tyo̅o̅d′) n.

1. The quality of appearing to be true or real. See Synonyms at truth.
2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

[From Latin, vērīsimilitūdō, from vērīsimilis,  verisimilar; see verisimilar.]

And that is what sent me off.  Verisimilitude I had heard of, and might even unfortunately have used.  But verisimilar?  Very similar?  Yes.  Verisimilar even the omnipotent spellchecker gets its knickers in a knot over.  [Speaking of spellchecker, I almost typed ‘knockers in a knit’ which would make a great punchline to a shaggy dog story.]  And before we can ever see verisimlar, we have to attempt to pronounce:

ver′i·si·mil′i·tu′di·nous (-to̅o̅d′n-əs, -tyo̅o̅d′-) adj.  [Do not attempt at home, unless stone cold sober.]  and finally the main dish:

ver·i·sim·i·lar  (vĕr′ə-sĭm′ə-lər) adj.

Appearing to be true or real; probable.

[From Latin, vērīsimilis, vērī, genitive of vērum, truth + similis, similar.]

And there you have it, or at least the appearance of it.

 

So hoping to clarify my childhood delusions, I mean confusions, I started reading up on good old Godel, and bumped into [amongst many other things I fail to grasp] modal logic.  So it will be the Term of the Day today. Reading this, and seeing it through the lens of my childhood, I begin to understand more of the strange explosion in thinking that seemed to be always going on, but not necessarily producing useful results, it must be said.  Including the game, Wiff ‘n’Proof, which I never could be bothered to get a handle on, when there was Scrabble or Crokinole or backgammon or indeed solitaire which I still love to the horror and astonishment of my mate to be played.  Even dad gave up, and settled for beating me at whatever game we chose.  Anyhoo, back to me introduction to confusing logic at an early age, here is something I didn’t understand then, and quickly will forget now:

Modal logic

is a type of formal logic primarily developed in the 1960s that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modal, words that express modalities, qualify a statement. For example, the statement “John is happy” might be qualified by saying that John is usually happy, in which case the term “usually” is functioning as a modal. The traditional alethic modalities, or modalities of truth, include possibility (“possibly, p”, “it is possible that p”), necessity (“necessarily, p”, “it is necessary that p”), and impossibility (“impossibly, p”, “t is impossible that p”).  Other modalities that have been formalized in modal logic include temporal modalities, or modalities of time (notably, “it was the case that p”, “it has always been that p”, “it will be that p”, “it will always be that p”), deontic modalities (notably, “it is obligatory that p”, and “it is permissible that p”), epistemic modalities, or modalities of knowledge (“it is known that p”) and doxastic modalities, or modalities of belief (“it is believed that p”).

A formal modal logic represents modalities using modal operators. For example, “it might rain today” and “it is possible that rain will fall today” both contain the notion of possibility. In a modal logic this is represented as an operator, Possibly,  attached to the sentence “it will rain today”.

The basic unary (1-place) modal operators are usually written □ for Necessarily and ◇ for Possibly. In a classical modal logic, each can be expressed by the other with negation:

Thus it is possible that it will rain today if and only if it is not necessary that it will not rain today; and it is necessary that it will rain today if and only if it is not possible that it will notrain today. Alternative symbols used for the modal operators are “L” for Necessarily and “M” for Possibly.

Thank goodness for mathematical philosopher logicians [and Wikipedia].  Sort of how I feel about surgeons and firemen: whew, glad someone wanted to do that!   But it all makes for a lousy board game, and we had a better run with Nomic.

 

Hiding in yesterday’s list of words that were not
bossy, was this oddity, which I thought might be a typo, but no, it exists, and, with the etymology, is even believable:

fastuous [fas′tyo̵̅o̅ əs] adj.

1. haughty; lofty.
2. ostentatious; pretentious.

[From Latin, fastuosus; from fastus, arrogance.  See fastidious. First known use: 1638.]

 

Words that are not bossy:

Authoritarian, authoritative, autocratic (also autocratical), despotic, dictatorial, domineering, imperious, masterful, overbearing, peremptory, tyrannical (also tyrannic), tyrannous, arrogant, assumptive, disdainful, fastuous, haughty, highfalutin (also hifalutin), high-and-mighty, high-hat, huffy, important, lofty, lordly, overweening, presuming, presumptuous, pretentious, proud, self-asserting, supercilious, superior, toplofty (also toploftical), uppish, uppity; commanding, controlling, dictating, regimental; arbitrary, high-handed, imperial; directorial, magisterial; aggressive, assertive, self-assertive; imperative; conceited, narcissistic, pompous, vain; all-powerful, almighty, omnipotent; firm, stern.

 

Because I am actually consumed with self-doubt when it comes to word choice, and because of my astonishing dyslexia, which a cousin-in-law told a great joke about last night on the telephone about a person with dyslexia complaining about her dailysex, I look up a lot of words.  And as someone who has worked some very mundane academic jobs, I enjoy dictionary entries and can’t help but try to edit and improve them.  It is a blessing and a curse.  So anyhoo, I looked up decadent, and it did mean pretty much what I thought, although I had no clue about its nouness, or the literary movement.  And the etymology was lame and made me mad, but it all has an informative ending, about all the nice phrases for going to perdition slowly, perhaps in a hand-basket.

dec·a·dent (dĕk′ə-dənt, dĭ-kād′nt) adj.

1. being in a state of decline or decay;
2. marked by or providing unrestrained gratification, self-indulgent;
3. often Decadent of or relating to the literary Decadence movement [see below].

dec·a·dent n.

1. a person in a condition or process of mental or moral decay;
2. often Decadent A member of the Decadence movement. [Any of a group of writers, esp. of late 19th-century France, whose work stressed refinement of style and a content of artificiality, perverseness, the bizarre, despair, etc., she shamelessly stole from another definition in her quest for definition perfection.]

[From French, décadent, back-formation from, décadence, decadence; see decadence.]

Isn’t that lame?  And repeating decadence in case the accent fooled one? Useless.  But I did go and see decadence and things started looking up:

dec•a•dence (ˈdɛk ə dəns, dɪˈkeɪd ns) also dec•a•den•cy (ˈdɛk ə dən si, dɪˈkeɪd n-)  n.

1. the act or process of falling into decay, deterioration;
2. moral degeneration.

[1540–50; < Middle French < Medieval Latin, dēcadentia < Late Latin, dēcadent, s. of dēcadēns, present participle of dēcadere to fall away.]

That’s more like it.  And then the odd but interesting bonus I found down the page, as we follow the primrose path perhaps unwittingly, distracted by the bread and circuses [did I mention Putin waiting until after the Olympics to invade the Crimea?  Although there is much good in the Olympics, there is much bad in the International Olympic Committee.]  But back to:

Decadence 

I don’t know if anyone ever used or uses this word, but it seems to capture my fragile state quite well, and if you suggest it is age related, prepare for a major fit of the

fantods  (făn′tŏd′s) n. usually pl.

1.  A state of nervous irritability;
2. Nervous movements caused by tension;
3. An outburst of emotion, a fit.

[Origin unknown.  [This strikes me as the equivalent of having no provenance for a piece of art, but the word just … fit!]]

 

Growing up in a home that was agnostic, I really did not realise that many of my friends were Jewish, and I thought we made this word up, as a quick signal to shut up immediately, which happened because we thought we were such clever, sneaky, kids, which in hindsight I would have to say was fairly accurate.  But if you saw an adult coming, and our behaviour or conversation was questionable, then shtoom it was.  But we didn’t have time for the ‘keep”:

shtoom (ʃtʊm) adj.

Silent; dumb; especially in the phrase “keep shtoom”.

[From Yiddish, from German, stumm, silent.]

 

Yes, I have been watching Jeeves and Wooster again with mum.  It turns out most of my WoD’s, especially all fall and over Christmas, were entirely subconsciously placed in my brain through the clever combo of television and P.G. Wodehouse.  It is all now coming to light.  But here’s a word you don’t here much these days, courtesy of Jeeves:

pro•bi•ty (ˈproʊ bɪ ti, ˈprɒb ɪ-) n.

integrity and uprightness; honesty.

[From Middle English, probite,  from Latin, probitās, from probus, upright, good.]

And speaking of boats and words that do not derive from Latin or Greek, here we find a pair that I did not know, although bollard does sound sort of familiar.  But if someone hollered at you to secure your painter [why would a bow line be called a painter? question for another WoD] to the bitt or bollard, now you will know what they mean.

 bitt (bɪt) n.

1. one of a pair of strong posts on the deck of a ship for securing mooring and other lines;
2. another word for bollard.

bitt vb. tr.

to secure (a line) by means of a bitt. [He bitt the bitt?]

[probably of Scandinavian origin; compare Old Norse, biti, cross beam; Middle High German, bizze, wooden peg.]

and here is that “another word for”:

bollard (ˈbɒlɑːd; ˈbɒləd) n.

1. a strong wooden or metal post mounted on a wharf, quay, etc, used for securing mooring lines;
2. a small post or marker placed on a kerb or traffic island to make it conspicuous to motorists;
3. an outcrop of rock or pillar of ice that may be used to belay a rope.

[Middle English, probably from bole, tree trunk.]

 

Once again, a word that if you used it, people would fail to understand you.   I was surprised to know it existed without having cropped up more in modern words, though, but there you have it.  And so a brief resurrection for a word that could really help make you sound like a know-it-all pinhead at your next social beanfest, or prairie burning, where it would actually be very topical:

ne·phol·o·gy  (nĕ-fŏl′ə-jē) n.

The branch of meteorology that deals with clouds.

[From Greek, nephos, cloud.]

Hence:

neph′o·log′i·cal (nĕf′ə-lŏj′ĭ-kəl) adj. neph′o·log′ist n.

Used in a sentence: the nephologist was describing a nephological occurrence, in which nephology had been very instructive. Translation: we were able to predict a thunder storm. But scientists do like to create guilds, just like masons; you just have to learn their lingo.

 

Boy, once you know they are out there, you find them under every rock or nascent swelling.  Another inchoate verb, which shot it into WoD status, as did the definition containing a word I don’t think I knew, tumid, as well as it not being quite the word I thought it was:

tu·mes·cent   (to̅o̅-mĕs′ənt, tyo̅o̅-) adj.

1. Somewhat tumid. [Presumably meaning swollen [yes, indeed, see below], so thanks a lot, but thanks a little for a new word that will help make my writing even more impenetrable.]
2. Becoming swollen; swelling.

[From Latin, tumēscēns, tumēscent, present participle of tumēscere, to begin to swell, inchoative of tumēre, to swell.]

tu·mid   (to̅o̅′mĭd, tyo̅o̅′-) adj.

1. Swollen; distended. Used of a body part or organ. [Perhaps these words will help someone write a particular screen play.]
2. Of a bulging shape; protuberant.
3. Overblown; bombastic: tumid political prose.  [Something Clinton must have been good at: “Let me show you my tumid member, it is in the oval orifice, I mean office …”]

[From Latin, tumidus, from tumēre, to swell.]

tu·mid′i·ty n.
tu′mid·ly adv. [Really?  I get the noun:  its tumidity was astounding.  But an adverb?  It tumidly rolled down the hill, threatening all below?  Said of what?  How to use it without redundancy?  It tumidly grew?  Oh well, best to avoid it now that you know it.

 

Hey, I didn’t know this.  Sometimes I really wonder how I faked my way through university, when I failed to retain, or learn in the first place, so many vital pieces of information that would have made me a better, pointlessly better, literary critic.  Like that this ancient creature existed, and undoubtedly informed and inhabited Douglas Adams’ vast imagination:

Megatherium (meg-ah-theer-ee-um [pl. megatheria] from the Greek mega [μέγας], meaning “great”, and therion [θηρίον], “beast”) was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to Central and South America that lived from the late Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene.  Its size was exceeded by only a few other land mammals, including mammoths and Paraceratherium.

and then we get:

Magrathea is an ancient planet located in orbit around the twin suns Soulianis and Rahm in the heart of the Horsehead Nebula.

It was the home a new form of specialist industry: custom-made, luxury planet building. Hyperspatial engineers sucked matter through white holes in space to form dream planets – gold planets, square planets, glass planets, platinum planets, soft rubber planets with lots of earthquakes – all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy’s richest men naturally came to expect.

Just a similarity jumped out at me, and I thought I would share.  Now back to your more earth shattering problems.

Megatherium
Magrathea

 

My mind has gone to the birds this morning, and having looked up the technical name for a group of pigeons [relevancy confirmed by song of the day endless narrative] and found that it is either flight or flock, which is funny because one means to run away and the other means to gather around, and also somewhat too mundane for how one experiences pigeons in an urban setting.  So I had to quickly check that I was right about horde vs hoard as I searched in my brain for a word connoting an evil, well, horde, and that is all it takes to qualify as a word of the day, these daze.  Setting the bar low, I know, but that has been a key factor in my “success” so far. Also nice to find a word with a more far flung etymology than the constant beating drum of latin roots.

horde (hôrd, hōrd) n.

1. a vast crowd, throng, mob;
2. a local group of people in a nomadic society, especially an Asiatic group;
3. a large moving mass of animals, especially insects [or pigeons: if it is good enough for a swarm of insects, then it fits the bill, like the duck said to the orthodontist when he got his retainer.]

 

Once again, apologies for apparently questioning your intellect, but it wasn’t that you didn’t know the word, it is the etymology that gave this parasitic word it’s chance at fame as a WoD, and also introduces the potential necessity of modifying the definition in the future, back to what it meant in the past, as it might just turn out these little buddies were giving us something in return and we just didn’t appreciate their methods:

par·a·site  (păr′ə-sīt′) n.

1. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing [!?!] to the survival of its host.
2. One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return [!?!].
3. One who lives off and flatters the rich; a sycophant.
4. A professional dinner guest [now there’s a job!], especially in ancient Greece.

[From Latin parasītus, a person who lives by amusing the rich, from Greek parasītos, person who eats at someone else’s table: para, beside+ sītos, grain, food.]

 

Having gotten it wrong, let me put things to rights, as I shrive:

shrive (ʃraɪv) vb., shrives, shriving, shrove, shrived, shriven (ˈʃrɪvən) or shrived

1. to hear the confession of a penitent;
2. to impose a penance upon a penitent and grant him sacramental absolution;
3. to confess one’s sins to a priest in order to obtain sacramental forgiveness.

[Middle English, schriven, from Old English, scrīfan, from Latin, scrībere, to write.]

Shrove Tuesday (also known as Shrovetide Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday and Pancake Day) is the day preceding Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Shrove Tuesday, a moveable feast, is determined by Easter.

The expression “Shrove Tuesday” comes from the word shrive, meaning “confess”.  Shrove Tuesday is observed by many Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Roman Catholics, who “make a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs they need to repent, and what amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth they especially need to ask God’s help in dealing with.”  Being the last day before the penitential season of Lent, related popular practices, such as indulging in food that one sacrifices for the upcoming forty days, are associated with Shrove Tuesday celebrations, before commencing the fasting and religious obligations associated with Lent.  The term Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which begins on Ash Wednesday.

And there you have it from that modern horse’s mouth, Wikipedia,  Personally, I think you should self-examine your self [whom else, ed.] on a daily, or even hourly, or possibly all the time, basis, and also indulge in rich and fatty foods, at all times, shunning the carbohydrate!  I just don’t get having special days to be good.  It implies a rather unpleasant rest of the year.  Pancakes yes!  Repent?  Always!  But shrive away, and may you be well shriven by eventide.

 

Just in case you weren’t sure about this, and like some people, who shall remain nameless, used to think they were tender hooks:

tenterhook (ˈtɛntəˌhʊk) n.

1. one of a series of hooks or bent nails used to hold cloth stretched on a tenter
2. on tenterhooks: in a state of tension or suspense

Unfortunate tenters, hanging wet, newly made blankets on tenterhooks:

 

Not that I thought you wouldn’t know this word,  it is just that I am grumpy about its pronouncification, so I am including a link to someone pronouncifying it correctly, for your edification:

detritus (dɪˈtraɪtəs) n.

1. a loose mass of stones, silt, etc, worn away from rocks;
2. an accumulation of disintegrated material or debris
3. the organic debris formed from the decay of organisms

[From Latin, dētrītus, from the past participle of dēterere, to lessen, wear away; see likewise detriment.]

 

Being a food network junkie, and even more so as a gastric illness passes, literally, through the family, I thought I would look up this word I kept hearing on Chopped, even though we don’t seem to have a blast chiller in our kitchen.   There is always outside.

Granita (in Italian also granita siciliana) is a semi-frozen dessert made from sugar, water and various flavorings. Originally from Sicily, although available all over Italy (but granita in Sicily is somewhat different from the rest of Italy), it is related to sorbet and Italian ice. However, in most of Sicily, it has a coarser, more crystalline texture. Food writer Jeffrey Steingarten says that “the desired texture seems to vary from city to city” on the island; on the west coast and inPalermo, it is at its chunkiest, and in the east it is nearly as smooth as sorbet.[1] This is largely the result of different freezing techniques: the smoother types are produced in a gelato machine, while the coarser varieties are frozen with only occasional agitation, then scraped or shaved to produce separated crystals. Although its texture varies from coarse to smooth, it is always different from the one of an ice cream which is creamier, and from the one of a sorbet, which is more compact; this makes granita distinct and unique.

[1]  from The Man Who Ate Everything, a delightful book, and most informative about the potato.

[2] from Wikipedia, where else?

 

tau•tol•o•gy (tɔˈtɒl ə dʒi)  n., pl. -gies.

1.  See tautology.  Just kidding.  I guess I use this word slightly wrong, as when someone defines all good things as proving there is a god, and thereby just substitutes one word for another, without actually proving any agency.  But that’s just me.  Here’s what the dictionaries said:
2. needless repetition of an idea in different words, redundancy, as in the sentence: Will these supplies be adequate enough?  rather than Will these supplies be adequate?
3. an instance of such repetition.
4. Logic. a compound proposition or propositional form all of whose instances are true, as “A or not A” or “It will snow or it will not snow [but it will be ridiculously cold].”

[1570–80; < Late Latin tautologia < Greek tautología, redundancy.]

 

I think I will let ontology hold its place for a day, while pondering the possibility of an ontologist and a heuristologist [I know but what else would one call a practitioner of heuristics, yesterday’s WoD, other than fathead?] meeting in the halls of academia.  Years of pointless feuding is my guess.  But I leave ontology standing, as an interesting concept, to clutter the interwebz for another day:

Of course, I knew this all along:

In general, ontology (pronounced ahn-TAH-luh-djee ) is the study or concern about what kinds of things exist – what entities there are in the universe. It derives from the Greek onto (being) and logia (written or spoken discourse). It is a branch of metaphysics, the study of first principles or the essence of things.

In information technology, an ontology is the working model of entities and interactions in some particular domain of knowledge or practices, such as electronic commerce or “the activity of planning.” In artificial intelligence ( AI ), an ontology is, according to Tom Gruber, an AI specialist at Stanford University, “the specification of conceptualizations, used to help programs and humans share knowledge.” In this usage, an ontology is a set of concepts – such as things, events, and relations – that are specified in some way (such as specific natural language) in order to create an agreed-upon vocabulary for exchanging information.*

So from first principles, not phenomena, if I understood anything I just read, and an ontological argument would be met with a phenomenological argument in a metaphysics debate as the audience fell into a deep coma.  Glad we got that settled.

*http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/ontology

I don’t think I’ld feel very comfortable using this word, especially if I had to pronounce it confidently, though it describes how I taught my kids (but also with a clearly defined set of rules), and sometimes I really wonder about trying to use such words.  But someone else did, and I had to look it up, so I get to torture you with it:

heu•ris•tic (hyʊˈrɪs tɪk or, often, yʊ-)  adj.

1. serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation.
2. encouraging a person to learn, discover, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error: a heuristic teaching method.
3. pertaining to or based on experimentation, evaluation, or trial-and-error methods.

heu•ris•tic n.

1. a heuristic method or argument.
2. the study of heuristic procedure. [Whaa?  He studied heuristic procedure with heuristics, heuristically!  Honestly, academics have a lot to answer for.  A guild like any other with its own jargon to exclude the uninitiated.]

heu•ris′ti•cal•ly, adv.

[1815–25; < New Latin, heuristics, from Greek heur(ískein), to find out, discover + Latin, isticus -istic]

 

Here’s another word I have always liked:

trench•ant (ˈtrɛn tʃənt)  adj.

1. incisive or keen, as language or a person; cutting: trenchant wit.
2. vigorous; energetic: a trenchant policy of reform.
3. clearly or sharply defined; clear-cut; distinct.

[1275–1325; Middle English tranchaunt < Anglo-French; Old French, trenchant, present participle of trencher, to cut.]

trench′an•cy, n. [You must be kidding.  Used in a sentence: “His trenchancy was his undoing.” As if anyone would have a clue what you were trying to say with your forced pedantry, and deliberate lack of trenchancy.]
trench′ant•ly, adv. [Okay, just maybe, she not so trenchantly observed.]

I like it partly because it always reminds me of this bonus WoD

trench·er (trĕn′chər) n.

1. A wooden board or platter on which food is carved or served.
2. Archaic The pleasure of the table; food.
3. [Or trencher cap] another name for mortarboard.

[Middle English trenchur, from Anglo-Norman trenchour, from trencher, to cut.]

But they left out the better part of the etymology because it is derived from the word for slice, or a cutting, and was originally often made of a slice of stale bread, or the crust, and was eaten after being used as a plate.  A nice mediaeval image, rather than just a piece of wood.

 

A great word, a great happening, and a great etymology:

ser·en·dip·i·ty  (sĕr′ən-dĭp′ĭ-tē) n.

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
3. An instance of making such a discovery.

---

[From the characters in the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, who made such discoveries.]

 

Just venting, but hey, also just a reminder to us all not to become like this:

borg or cyborg (sī′bôrg′) n.

1. A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.
2. A human who has certain psychological processes controlled by an institution, and who no longer interacts as a human, having become an arm of an organization, putting an org of a different colour back in borg!  [I obviously added that, but it is what I am now encountering at the hospital, and it is maddening.  Part of the programming involves mindlessly repeating things that are irrelevant and getting more and more aggressive with each repetition, as they cannot abide those who refuse to be re-educated.  What a world.]

[from Wikipedia: Borg is a collective proper noun for a fictional alien race that appears as recurring antagonists in various incarnations of the Star Trek franchise. The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones of the Collective, or the hive. A pseudo-race, dwelling in the Star Trek universe, the Borg force other species into their collective and connect them to “the hive mind”; the act is called assimilation and entails violence, abductions, and injections of microscopic machines called nanoprobes. The Borg’s ultimate goal is “achieving perfection”.   In this case perfection must be measured by empty beds, not well patients.

 

Sometimes you just run into the wrong person in the wrong job, and the social worker at the hospital who is so insistent that mum should come home that she wants to put a hospital bed in our den, today, is one of those people.   She has never seen our home, and has only seen mum as a very sick old lady in a hospital bed.  She simply will not listen to us explain that three weeks ago, raging infection and all, mum was able to leave the house, ambulatory, with just a steadying arm.  They are content for her to never walk again, even to the bathroom, as long as she gets the four letter word starting with f out of the hospital.  Me, not so content.  Mum still in hospital in comfy bed.  Ward half empty.  No shortage of beds – maybe a shortage of wanting to staff those beds, but mum takes virtually no care from them, now that physio has abandoned her.  Anyhow, somehow this word just keeps popping up in my head.  Coincidence, I am sure.

har•ri•dan (ˈhɑr ɪ dn)  n.

A scolding, vicious woman; hag; shrew.

[1690–1700; perhaps derived from French haridelle, literally: broken-down horse.  Obscure origin.]

 

Since it is really past time for an afternoon nap i form a plan: have a nap instead of putting up a word of the day.  Sorry for the vast disappointment, and I will over-reach tomorrow to make up for today’s slothfulness.

Useless is as useless does, and here we go again.  Comic associations obviously abound, and combined with yesterdays napiform, it was too much to resist:

natiform (nāʹtĭfôrm) adj.  (comparative, more natiform; superlative, most natiform [not natiformier, and natiformiest?  Who says, says I?]

Resembling or having the form of buttocks.

[First attested in 1681; formed as the Latin, natis, rump, buttocks; (from whose plural derives the English, nates, buttocks, haunches)  +‎ form.

[With thanks [thanks, ed.?] to the Worthless Word of the Day]

 

A nominee for most useless word!  I almost feel guilty for sharing it, because you will want to use it, and you shouldn’t.

na·pi·form  (nā′pə-fôrm′) adj. 

Shaped like a turnip: napiform roots.

[From Latin nāpus, turnip + form.]

I mean really.  And how then might one describe a turnip itself?  It was truly napiform in its dimensions.  A platonic napiform.  A napiformiferous turnip!  It was a parsnip, but a very napiform one at that.  Honestly why not just say turnip shaped?  You could use a hyphen if you wanted one word.  Or turnipish, turniplike.  Or you could wear a t-shirt saying “I remember the names of all the vegetables in Latin.  Would you like to be my friend?”  Botanists must just hang with other botanists, and sneer at the rest of us, doomed to a limited [but useful when it comes to communicating with humans, when discussing the shapes of the roots of plants] vocabulary.

 

Well, how non-standardly North American of me, jolly sorry and all that.  I guess my British roots aren’t showing, but at least I got gotten right:

gotten

A full post is eluding my sleep deprived brain, so all I can muster is

mus·ter (mŭs′tər) verb tr.

1. To call (troops) together, as for inspection.
2. To cause to come together, gather: bring all the volunteers you can muster.
3. To call forth; summon up: mustering up her strength for the ordeal. [How did they know?]

mus·ter verb intr.

To assemble or gather: mustering for inspection.

mus·ter noun.

1. A gathering, especially of troops, for service, inspection, review, or roll call.
2. The persons assembled for such a gathering.
3. A muster roll.
4. A gathering or collection: a muster of business leaders at a luncheon.
5. A flock of peacocks.  [So same as 4, basically.]

Phrasal Verbs: [who knew?]

muster in: to enlist or be enlisted in military service: she mustered in at the age of 18. [Poor thing!]
muster out: to discharge or be discharged from military service: he was mustered out when the war ended.

Idiom:

pass muster: to be judged as acceptable.  [A lovely phrase, despite the military connotations.  Not to be confused with requests for condiments, as it frequently is in my house.]
[Middle English mustren, from Old French moustrer, from Latin mōnstrāre, to show, from mōnstrum, sign, portent; from monēre, to warn.]

What a lot of definitions!  Very mustering.

 

Why, you are undoubtedly asking, would Xty choose a word of the day that we know, or would quickly pretend we knew and probably get right?  Because it showed up in the name of a test that my poor mum might undergo, and I had to ask, and well, yuck.  Going in from below, rather than from above.  Less said or imagined the better.

retrograde (ˈrɛtrəʊˌɡreɪd) adj.

1. Moving or tending backward.
2. Opposite to the usual order; inverted or reversed.
3. Reverting to an earlier or inferior condition.
4. Astronomy:

a. Of or relating to the orbital revolution or axial rotation of a planetary or other celestial body that moves clockwise from east to west, in the direction opposite to most celestial bodies.
b. Of or relating to the brief, regularly occurring, apparently backward movement of a planetary body in its orbit as viewed against the fixed stars, caused by the differing orbital velocities of Earth and the body observed.

5. (Archaic) Opposed, contrary.
6. (Medical) to insert from the bottom up, and they might mean that literally.  Puts a whole new spin on “bottoms up”!

retrograde  intr.v.

1.  Recede.
2. To decline to an inferior state; degenerate.

[Middle English, from Latin retrōgradus, from retrōgradī, to go back : retrō-, back + gradus, walking, from gradī , to walk, go.

 

I really must hurry, and darn it all, I liked this quote. Not because it is rude, but because it is so well written and conceived. To end with pineal gland … genius humour … so I am going to let it rest, like a nicely cooked roast, while I do exactly the opposite, and run like a poorly made stocking. Bon appetit.

A penny slowly dropping in my mind is a good enough excuse to bore you with my most recent obvious linguistic aha, when I noticed that adrenaline, or adrenal, was simply ad + renal.  It is interesting to note that one’s adrenaline gland is situated on the kidney like that.  Adds a sort of intellectual content to the compelling memory of Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas gnawing on a human adrenal gland :

“What is it?”
“Adrenochrome,” he said. “You won’t need much. Just a little tiny taste.”
I got the bottle and dipped the head of a paper match into it.
“That’s about right,” he said. “That stuff makes pure mescaline seem like gingerbeer. You’ll go completely crazy if you take too much.”
I licked the end of the match. “Where’d you get this?”  I asked. “You can’t buy it.”
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s absolutely pure.”
I shook my head sadly. “Jesus! What kind of monster client have you picked up this time? There’s only one source for this stuff… He nodded. “The adrenaline glands from a living human body,” I said. “It’s no good if you get it out of  a corpse.”
“I know,” he replied. “But the guy didn’t have any cash. He’s one of these Satanism freaks. He offered me human blood – said it would make me higher than I’d ever been in my life,” he laughed. “I thought he was kidding, so I told him I’d just as soon have an ounce or so of pure adrenochrome – or maybe just a fresh adrenalin gland to chew on.”
I could already feel the stuff working on me.  The first wave felt like a combination of mescaline and methedone. Maybe I should take a swim, I thought.
“Yeah,” my attorney was saying. “They nailed this guy for child molesting, but he swears he didn’t do it. ‘Why should I fuck with children?’ he says; ‘They’re too small!’” He shrugged. “Christ, what could I say? Even a goddamn werewolf is entitled to legal counsel… I didn’t dare turn the creep down. He might have picked up a letter-opener and gone after my pineal gland.”

I am stupid enough to want to gnaw on an adrenal gland, but not a human one unless, well … never pre-judge a situation.

adrenaline (əˈdrɛnəlɪn) or adrenalin [US name: epinephrine n.

1. a hormone secreted by the adrenal medulla upon stimulation by the central nervous system in response to stress, as anger or fear, and acting to increase heart rate, blood pressure, cardiac output, and carbohydrate metabolism.
2. a commercial preparation of this substance, used chiefly as a heart stimulant and antiasthmatic.

Chemical name: aminohydroxyphenylpropionic acid; formula: C9H13NO3.

 

oc·clude (ə-klo̅o̅d′) v.

1. To cause to become closed; obstruct: occlude an artery.
2. To prevent the passage of: occlude light; occlude the flow of blood. As in “Nana has occluded the flow of her IV again by slightly bending her arm.  What nit wit would put an iv in in a hinge?”
3. To absorb or adsorb and retain a substance.
4. To force air upward from the earth’s surface, as when a cold front overtakes and undercuts a warm front.
5. To bring together the upper and lower teeth in proper alignment for chewing.

[From Latin occlūdere : ob– (intensive pref) + claudere, to close.]

 

neu·ro·pep·tide (no͝or′ō-pĕp′tīd′) n.

Any of various peptides found in neural tissue, such as endorphins and enkephalins.

and if that wasn’t good enough, try

neu·ro·pep·tide (noor′ō·pep′tīd)

Any of several types of molecules found in brain tissue, composed of short chains of amino acids including endorphins, enkephalins, vasopressin, and others. They are often localized in axon terminals at synapses and are classified as putative neurotransmitters, although some are also hormones.

and since that only whetted your appetite, let me ask along with you,

What [the heck] are neuropeptides [anyway]?

Abstract

cruciform (ˈkruːsɪˌfɔːm) adj.

Shaped like a cross.

cruciform n.

(Mathematics) a geometric curve, shaped like a cross, that has four similar branches asymptotic to two mutually perpendicular pairs of lines. Equation: x²y² – a²x² – a²y² = 0, where x = y = ± a are the four lines. [Yes, well then …]

From Latin crux, cross + -form.]

Hence:

cru·ci·fer (kro̅o̅′sə-fər) n.

1. One who bears a cross in a religious procession.
2. Any of various plants in the mustard family (Cruciferae or Brassicaceae), which includes the alyssum, candytuft, cabbage, radish, broccoli, and many weeds.

and cru·cif′er·ous (-sĭf′ər-əs) adj.

[From Latin crux,  cross + fer.

 

Rabbits one day, groundhogs the next.  What a strange and seemingly absurd custom, but of course burrowing animals may have some sense of the turning of the seasons, but it sure sounds like mostly groundhogwash to me.  From good old Wikipedia:

The celebration, which began as a Pennsylvania German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, has its origins in ancient European weather lore, wherein a badger or sacred bear is the prognosticator as opposed to a groundhog.[6] It also bears similarities to the Pagan festival of Imbolc, the seasonal turning point of the Celtic calendar, which is celebrated on February 1 and also involves weather prognostication[7] and to St. Swithun‘s Day in July.

The first documented American reference to Groundhog Day can be found in a diary entry,[8] dated February 4, 1841, of Morgantown, Pennsylvania, storekeeper James Morris:

Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans,[9] the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.

In Scotland, the poem:

If Candle-mas Day is bright and clear,
There’ll be two winters in the year.

An English poem:

If Candle mas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

In western countries in the Northern Hemisphere, the official first day of spring is almost seven weeks (46–48 days) after Groundhog Day, on March 20 or March 21. The custom could have been a folk embodiment of the confusion created by the collision of two calendrical systems. Some ancient traditions marked the change of season at cross-quarter dayssuch as Imbolc when daylight first makes significant progress against the night. Other traditions held that spring did not begin until the length of daylight overtook night at the Vernal Equinox. So an arbiter, the groundhog/hedgehog, was incorporated as a yearly custom to settle the two traditions. Sometimes spring begins at Imbolc, and sometimes winter lasts six more weeks until the equinox.[10]

[“an arbiter, the groundhog/hedgehog, was incorporated …” sorry, someone has to call bullshit.  I’ll buy the two approaches to deciding if it is spring, but appointing a land-beaver as some sort of compromise bridge-builder between cultures?  We can’t even decide on a name for the dratted rodent!]

 

Rabbits to you, on this glorious 1st of February, the month when the long weekends begin! 

The celebration, which began as a Pennsylvania German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, has its origins in ancient European weather lore, wherein a badger or sacred bear is the prognosticator as opposed to a groundhog.[6] It also bears similarities to the Pagan festival of Imbolc, the seasonal turning point of the Celtic calendar, which is celebrated on February 1 and also involves weather prognostication[7] and to St. Swithun‘s Day in July.

The first documented American reference to Groundhog Day can be found in a diary entry,[8] dated February 4, 1841, of Morgantown, Pennsylvania, storekeeper James Morris:

Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans,[9] the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.

In Scotland, the poem:

If Candle-mas Day is bright and clear,
There’ll be two winters in the year.

An English poem:

If Candle mas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

In western countries in the Northern Hemisphere, the official first day of spring is almost seven weeks (46–48 days) after Groundhog Day, on March 20 or March 21. The custom could have been a folk embodiment of the confusion created by the collision of two calendrical systems.  Some ancient traditions marked the change of season at cross-quarter days such as Imbolc when daylight first makes significant progress against the night.  Other traditions held that spring did not begin until the length of daylight overtook night at the Vernal Equinox.  So an arbiter, the groundhog/hedgehog, was incorporated as a yearly custom to settle the two traditions. Sometimes spring begins at Imbolc, and sometimes winter lasts six more weeks until the equinox.[10]  [“an arbiter, the groundhog/hedgehog, was incorporated …” sorry, someone has to call bullshit.  I’ll buy the two approaches to deciding if it is spring, but appointing a land-beaver as some sort of compromise bridge-builder between cultures?  We can’t even decide on a name for the dratted rodent!]

 

Rabbits to you, on this glorious 1st of February, the month when the long weekends begin! 

rabbit (ˈræbɪt) n. pl.: rabbits or rabbit

1. any of various common gregarious burrowing leporid mammals, especially Oryctolagus cuniculus of Europe and North Africa and the cottontail of America. They are closely related and similar to hares but are smaller and have shorter ears;
2. the fur of such an animal;
3. a runner who intentionally sets a fast pace for a teammate during a long-distance race;
4. a word that Xty was told long ago you should say before you say anything else on the first of every month.

rabbit vb.

1. to hunt or shoot rabbits;
2. slang (chiefly British): to talk inconsequentially, chatter;
3. rabbit hunt: to see what would have happened in poker, if you hadn’t folded, by checking the next cards.  At lease, that’s what we called it.

[Perhaps from Walloon robett, diminutive of Flemish robbe, rabbit; of obscure origin.]

 

It seemed an odd word, and still does:

purl (pɜrl) n.

1. a basic stitch in knitting, the reverse of the knit, formed by pulling a loop of the working yarn back through an existing stitch and then slipping that stitch off the needle;
2. one of a series of small loops along the edge of lace braid;
3. a twisted gold or silver embroidery thread.

purl v.

1. to knit with a purl stitch;
2. to finish with loops or a looped edging.

[1520–30; perhaps variant of dialect pirl* [here we go again, ed.] to twist (threads, etc.) into a cord.]

pirl v.

1. To spin, as a top;
2. To twist or twine, as hair in making fishing lines.

also purl v.

1. to flow with curling or rippling motion, as a shallow stream over stones;
2. to flow with a murmuring sound.

purl n.

1. the action or sound of purling;
2. a ripple or eddy.

[1545–55; orig. uncertain; compare Norwegian purla, to bubble up, gush]

*pirl v.

1. To spin, as a top;
2. To twist or twine, as hair in making fishing lines.

 

piriformis [pir′ifôr′mis]

1. a flat pyramidal muscle in the pelvic girdle, lying almost parallel to the posterior margin of the gluteus medius, that is closely associated with the sciatic nerve.  It is partly within the pelvis and partly at the back of the hip joint, and is innervated [if only it were enervated!] by branches of the first and second sacral nerves and functions to rotate the thigh laterally and to abduct and to help extend it.
2. something you really don’t want to antagonize, as it will get you back in the end, if you catch my drift.

 

de•lin•quent (dɪˈlɪŋ kwənt) adj.

1. failing in or neglectful of a duty or obligation;
2. guilty of a misdeed or offence;
2. past due: Xty was delinquent in posting a word of the day.
3. of or pertaining to delinquents or delinquency.

de•lin•quent n.

A person who is delinquent.  See Xty

[1475–85; Latin dēlinquēns, dēlinquent, present participle of dēlinquere, to offend : de + linquere, to leave, abandon.]

 

While I am obviously reaching to find words these days, on many fronts, this one made me laugh when I found it and I wish I had known it sooner.  Our youngest invented what we called “worming”, and when it was time to go upstairs and get ready for bed he would go, but like a worm who took a very long time to get up two flights of stairs.  I should have called him

ver•mic•u•lar (vərˈmɪk yə lər) adj.

1. of, pertaining to, or done by worms.
2. consisting of or characterized by sinuous or wavy outlines, tunnels, or markings resembling the form or tracks of a worm.

[1645–55; < Medieval Latin vermiculāris,, derivative of Latin vermis, worm or larva, maggot.]

 

I have always liked this word, but this morning I have been thwarted and it really got my goat.  So I picked it so I could just rant for a second, not to mention the example in the definition is “they thwarted her plans”!  I live in one of the richest cities in Ottawa.  I am relatively well-heeled, and I am articulate.  I have a chronic health problem that causes me a great deal of pain.  This morning I attempted to get an appointment with my doctor.  If you phone at 8:00 a.m. he has same day appointments.  So I set my alarm on my phone so I would be right on time.  Started dialling but got the message saying the clinic was closed.  Kept redialing.  Get a secretary at 8:01.  All appointments given out to people who were waiting in line.  If I phone at 10:00, she said, I might be able to get an appointment tonight.  But will it be given to people standing in line, I asked?  and then the conversation got stupid and she told me there were people in line in tears, and they waited outside the clinic doors in -15°C, presumably in line, to get those appointments.  Nice criteria for being selected to see a doctor.  Difficult if you are really ill.  Apparently you can send a proxy.  Maybe that would be a good new job, standing in line for sick people.  Be very careful what you wish for!

thwart (thwôrt) v.

1. To prevent the occurrence, realization, or attainment of: they thwarted her plans.
2. To oppose and defeat the efforts, plans, or ambitions of.

thwart n.

A seat across a boat, or structural cross-piece used in the construction of a boat.

thwart adj. [really? not athwart?  no time to check, but sounds odd, “he was a thwart lad”?]

1. Extending, lying, or passing across; transverse.
2. Eager to oppose, especially wrongly; perverse.

 

thole (θoʊl) n.

a pin, or either of two pins, inserted into a gunwale to provide a fulcrum for an oar. Also called thole′pin` (-ˌpɪn)

[Before 900: Middle English tholle, Old English tholl, c. Old Frisian tholl, Old Norse thollr, fir tree, peg.]

Now perhaps only I am excited to discover another word for pintle, that thing which if not oiled will make your gudgeon squeak, but I also thought that it was interesting that the same word had this second meaning:

thole (θəʊl) vb.

(Scot and Northern English) to put up with, bear.

[Old English tholian; related to Old Saxon, Old High German tholōn, Old Norse thola, to endure.  [And I would add that the word for endure and tree and a pin that held an oar being all the same is not surprising, if one imagines a much reduced vocabulary and a developing language and life in Northern Europe in 700 a.d.]]

 

Word of the Day, Phrase of the Day, who’s counting anyhow?  I had been discussing stretching a point just last night with hubby, who happened to mention the phrase “barmy in the crumpet”, as I had been tempted before to address the genesis of a phrase.  But barmy crumpets will have to sit on the back burner, staying warm, or perhaps cooling in that uniquely British device, a toast rack, designed to make sure your toast is dry and cold, while Bob’s your Uncle takes centre stage.   It turns out that this phrase has been well researched, and since other people on the web have taken the trouble to put copy-right information on their sites [something I hadn’t even considered], and this guy writes with delightful humour, I will let him explain after offering you this appetizer:

Bob’s Your Uncle

‘Bob’s your uncle’ is one of those phrases that keep etymologists off the street corners. Despite its having been the subject of considerable research, no one is sure of its origin. As with all such mysteries there are plenty of suggestions, but I’ll limit things here to the most plausible three – the favourite, the second favourite and an outsider:

 

1. Like many Victorian aristocrats, the 20th British Prime Minister didn’t lack for names and Viscount Cranborne’s name – Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was as full as his beard.

…

The Phrase Finder: The meaning and origin of the expression: Bob’s your uncle

 

Well I guess the makers of Poppycock gourmet popcorn forgot to check into the etymology of their brand word:

poppycock (ˈpɒpɪˌkɒk) n.

Senseless chatter; nonsense.
[From Dutch dialect pappekak, literally soft excrement, from pap, soft + kak dung; see pap.]

So I did see pap, just for fun:

pap (pæp) n.

1. Any soft or semiliquid food, such as bread softened with milk, esp for babies or invalids; mash.
2. South African porridge made from maize.
3. Worthless or oversimplified ideas; drivel: intellectual pap.

[From Middle Low German pappe, via Medieval Latin from Latin pappāre, to eat; compare Dutch pap, Italian pappa.]

Mystery not solved!  Sometimes the etymologies given do not agree, and sometimes they don’t make sense, and sometimes it seems kind of obvious, to the lay person.  But I do like this word because I always think it should mean to fall apart.  And therein lies a hidden moral irony: that to dissemble usually does presage a falling from grace.

dis•sem•ble (dɪˈsɛm bəl)  -bled, -bling. verb

1. give a false or misleading appearance to;
2. feign, or conceal one’s true motives, thoughts, etc., by some pretence;
3. speak or act hypocritically.

[1490–1500; alter., by association with obsolete semble, to resemble, of Middle English dissimulen, from Latin dissimulāre. ]

dis•sem′bler, n.
dis•sem′bling•ly, adv. [really?  Just try saying it aloud.]

 

Mystery solved!  Why ambulatory care, but an ambulance when you are not ambulatory?

am•bu•la•to•ry (ˈæm byə ləˌtɔr i, -ˌtoʊr i) adj. also ambulant

1.  of, pertaining to, or capable of walking.
2.  moving about or from place to place; not stationary.
3.  not confined to bed; able or strong enough to walk.
4.  serving patients who are able to walk.
5.  [Law] not fixed; alterable or revocable: an ambulatory will.

am•bu•la•to•ry n.

1.  an aisle surrounding the end of the choir or chancel of a church.
2. the covered walk of a cloister.

[From Latin ambulātus, past participle of ambulāre, to walk.  See amble.]

am•bu•lance (ˈæm byə ləns) n.

1. a specially equipped motor vehicle, airplane, ship, etc., for carrying sick or injured people, usu. to a hospital.
2. (formerly) a field hospital.

[From French, hôpital ambulant,  walking hospital.]

 

Here’s a word that seems to have completely flipped its meaning, and fits right in with my peasants’ rights theme:

perquisite (ˈpɜːkwɪzɪt) n.

1.  An incidental benefit gained from a certain type of employment, such as the use of a company car.
2.  A customary benefit received in addition to a regular income; a tip or gratuity.
3.  Something expected or regarded as an exclusive right.

Now shortened to the lambasted perk, seen as a tax dodge of the privileged.

But look at the etymology:

From Middle English perquisites, property acquired otherwise than by inheritance, from Medieval Latin perqustum, acquisition, from Latin, neuter past participle of perqurere, to search diligently for : per, thoroughly + quaerere, to seek.

I was speculating the other evening about how much of the landed gentry’s wealth of the 1800’s was acquired when Henry VIII [whose sperm was incapable of producing a male heir, too bad for his wives, who, if you can’t remember their fates offhand, just memorize this simple poem: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived] nationalized the monasteries in the early 1500’s.   He then gave that wealth to his pals and they kept it.  Obviously some of the wealth was left in religious hands, but it was a pretty enormous money and land grab.  So I wonder when this idea of stuff you acquired through diligence appeared, as opposed to stuff you got through inheritance, and I wonder when perquisites became a pejorative.  Or is it only in my jaded mind that it is pejorative? Not that I didn’t enjoy that cruise to Alaska, Motorola. It really perked us up!

 

hal·cy·on (hls-n) n.

1.  A kingfisher, especially one of the genus Halcyon.
2.  A fabled bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was supposed to have had the power to calm the wind and the waves while it nested on the sea during the winter solstice.
3.  A fortnight of calm weather during the winter solstice

hal·cy·on adj.

1.  Calm and peaceful; tranquil.
2. Prosperous; golden: halcyon years. [That’s more like it!  I am ready … and waiting …]

[Middle English alcioun, from Latin alcyn, halcyn, from Greek halkun, a mythical bird, kingfisher.]

 

Speaking of the weather, I found this word in the Useless WoD I have been turning to in times of mental fog, and when I looked it up I found this delightful resource too, and have copied it, unabashedly::[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.xtybacq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/smirr.mp3″]

This is is an essential vocabulary item for describing Scottish weather at all seasons. The soft smirr of summer can be quite pleasurable, almost caressing.

Chris Dolan seems to reflect this in Poor Angels  (1995): “Not a sound, save the viola darkness and a smir of rain like a mother’s hush”.  In H. Ainslie’s Pilgrimage (1822), the adjective ‘sma’ perfectly captures the nature of fine precipitation borne in on a gentle current of air: “There was a fine pirl out frae the Wast, wi’ a sma’ smurr o’ rain”.  Neil Munro also writes of warm Atlantic wet in Lost Pibroch (1896): “A thin smirr of warm rains fell on the glen like smoke”.  His apt simile explains why smir is occasionally used in the sense of ‘smoke’ as in Marion Campbell’s The Dark Twin (1973):  “He was crouched over a little fire of smoky twigs, holding his hands over it and staring through the smir”. Alan Sharp identifies both the emotiveness and the wetness of it in A Green Tree in Gedde (1965): “When she got out it was starting to rain, a soft smirr. … The rain spun down all around her, soundless, small as small, a mood of rain falling gently yet relentlessly, wetting everywhere!” Few forms of weather are as pervasive as smirring rain. It defies umbrellas, creeping damply beneath them. Ian Rankin’s description in Black & Blue (1997) hits the nail on the head: “it wasn’t real rain, it was smirr, a fine spray-mist which drenched you before you knew it. It was blowing in from the west, moisture straight from the Atlantic Ocean”. An interesting extension of its use comes from Lewis Coutts’ Lyrics, Ballads and Satires (1926): “Smirrin ice hid stoppt the mill”. How much more descriptive of rime than the ‘freezing fog’ of weather reports!

Scots Language Centre

 

I used this word yesterday, talking to mum about some version of history, and she actually laughed aloud, so that’s a pretty good criterion for inclusion in WoD [assuming she was laughing at the word, ed.] And bunkum is also a great word.  It could be like a TV Cop show, Malarky and Bunkum.

ma·lar·ky also ma·lar·key [muh-lahr-kee] noun

speech or writing designed to obscure, mislead, or impress; bunkum:  his claims were just a lot of malarky to Bunkum, who had witnessed the whole thing, while Malarky believed the whole bunkum, having missed the main event.

Origin:  1925–30, Americanism; origin uncertain.
lim·a·cine [lim-uh-sahyn, -sin, lahy-muh-]  adj.

Pertaining to or resembling a slug; slug-like.

[1885–90, New Latin < Latin,  līmāx, slug, snail < limus, mud, slime.]

 

I think I would have gotten this one wrong, because when I saw the definition, I had to look it up, and it was right.  And then I got to the part about “see tendency”, and had to give my head a gentle whack:

ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious (tn-dnshs) adj.

Marked by a strong implicit point of view; partisan: a tendentious account of the recent election.

[From Medieval Latin tendentia, a cause; see tendency.]

ten·den·tious·ly adv.

ten·den·tious·ness n.

Here’s a word that is difficult to define, apparently.  It is great living with an engineer, however, and we are just going to have to define it more properly, taking the emphasis off stasis, and placing it more on process, because you cannot have stasis without constant movement, a delightful life paradox that seems apropos to my current mental wanderings.

homeostasis (ˌhəʊmɪəʊˈsteɪsɪs) or homoeostasis noun

A finding of balance within stress, as when a whirlpool maintains it whirlpoolness, despite being in a constant state of flux; or a beehive or circle of Emperor penguins stays warm, maintaining a consistent internal temperature, and integrity, through constant rearrangement.

[Coined from Ancient Greek ὅμος (hómos, “similar”) + ιστημι (histēmi, “standing still”)/stasis (from στάσις (stasis)) by Walter Bradford Cannon, who also came up with ‘fight or flight’, in the 1930’s.]

 

This is a word I have always liked, and when things scud, you really know it.

scud verb intransitive

1. To run or skim along swiftly and easily: dark clouds scudding by.
2. Nautical: to run before a wind, skimming over the wave tops.

scud noun

1. Wind-driven clouds, mist, or rain.
2. A gust of wind.
3. Ragged low clouds, moving rapidly beneath another cloud layer.

[Probably of Scandinavian origin; related to Norwegian skudda, to thrust, Swedish, skudda to shake.]

 

antelucan (an`te*lu”can) adj.

Held or being before light; a word applied to assemblies of Christians, in ancient times of persecution, held before light in the morning; and now also applied to Xty, who is desperately trying to make a virtue of necessity.

[From Latin, antelucanus from ante, before + lux, light.]

 

bedizen (bɪˈdaɪzən; -ˈdɪzən) vb trans.

To dress or decorate gaudily or tastelessly, like Kind Leopold II of Bavaria.

[From be- + obsolete dizen, to dress up, of uncertain origin, but possibly Middle Dutch disen, to prepare a distaff with flax for spinning, from Middle Low German, dise, disene, a bunch of flax.  [And ten points for finding an etymology with a previous Word of the Day, if I do say so myself, even if it was serendipitous, but a serendipity brought on by tenacity as I was unhappy with the lame etymology given for bedizen and chased down dizen, which is also a verb.]]

 

Sorry if I am about to offend you, but I find some aspects of religious belief hilarious.  I encountered the anatomical word of the day reading about brains and religion, thanks to an interesting excerpt from the book  We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, From the Womb to Alzheimer’s, called  This is Your Brain on Religion, in which I discovered that a) some people actually believe that  they might possess the original foreskin of Jesus, and b) some people dispute that because they believe that either the foreskin reattached during his ascension, or that it actually ascended on its own!  It would be mean of me to pick on this silliness, if circumcision weren’t such a controversial religious practice, which to my mind is horrific.

pre•puce (ˈpri pyus) n.

1. the fold of skin that covers the head of the penis; foreskin.
2. a similar covering of the clitoris.

[1350–1400; Middle English < Middle French < Latin praepūtium, possibly prae-, pre-, + putos, penis.]

 

Nobody will have a clue what you are talking about, but apparently this is a word, and it will take the banal out of your weather chatter:

niveous (ˈnɪvɪəs) adj.

Resembling snow, snowy.

For reasons that shall be left to the forensic psychiatrists, this word popped into my head this morning as I looked outside and remembered that we were now the only house with Christmas lights still lit.  It is possible it was my neighbour, not myself, that I was thinking of.

fractious [ˈfrækʃəs] adj.

1.  refractory; unruly.
2. readily angered; quarrelsome.

[From (obsolete) fraction discord + -ous.]

Usage:  Fractious is sometimes wrongly used where factious is meant: “this factious [not fractious [well, fractious and factious, ed.]] dispute has split the party further.”  [That was their example, not mine.  Not trying to stir the political pot ….]  And I have to admit that I had to look up factious, which I don’t think I have ever heard used.

factious [ˈfækʃəs] adj.

Given to, producing, or characterized by internal dissent.

ˈfactiously adv. ˈfactiousness n.

I felt like an idiot when they mentioned the word faction.  But I think I get a point in my new challenge for finding a definition that used a previous word of the day.

Beware the fractious factious factions!  They are refractory!

 

I have always liked this word, and found a definition that uses yesterday’s Word of the Day, ungulate.  Now that would be a challenge, to keep a chain like that going!  But chew on this one, which I am sure you already knew, but it is nice to be refreshed in the cranium.

ru•mi•nant (ˈru mə nənt) n.

Any even-toed ungulate of the suborder Ruminantia, characterized by cud-chewing and a three- or four-chambered stomach for digesting food rich in cellulose: includes cows, sheep, goats, deer, giraffes, and camels.

ru•mi•nant adj.

1. ruminating; chewing the cud.
2. contemplative; meditative: a ruminant scholar.

[1655–65; < Latin rūminant-, s. of rūmināns, present participle of rūminārī, rūmināre, to chew cud, derivative of rūmen, throat.]

 

It was not my intent to drag you through a compendium of the videos I have been watching with my octogenarian mum, but it has certainly informed my vocabulary.  Here’s one from the past:

un•gu•late (ˈʌŋ gyə lɪt, -ˌleɪt)  adj.

1. having hoofs.
2. belonging or pertaining to the former order Ungulata, comprising all hoofed mammals, now divided into the odd-toed perissodactyls and the even-toed artiodactyls.
3. hoof-like.

un•gu•late n.

A hoofed mammal.

[1795–1805; < Late Latin ungulātus hoofed, see Latin ungul(a), hoof.]

 

Well here’s a coincidence.  I stumbled upon a Worthless Word of the Day site, and going straight past the glaring implication that I was engaged in a similarly worthless task, have browsed through it a bit.  Today, brain being soggy, I thought I might look for inspiration under the letter N. And here’s what I found:

ne•ol•o•gism (niˈɒl əˌdʒɪz əm), neology  noun

1. a new word or phrase or an existing word used in a new sense.
2. the introduction or use of new words or new senses of existing words.
3. a word invented and understood only by the speaker, occurring most often in the speech of schizophrenics. [No comment, ed.]

[1790–1800; < French néologisme]

ne•ol′o•gist, n.
ne•ol`o•gis′tic, adj.
ne•ol′o•gize`, v.i. -gized, -giz•ing.

 

So here I am, awake too early for unpleasant reasons, now ameliorated, and wondering about a word of the day.  Then I check my blog stats.  Well, then.  I knew I was thinking out loud, but sheesh.  Soldier on, think I, maybe everyone is on holiday.  Maybe I suck, but that must be denied.  So I scan my brain for a word.  Up pops one that I completely misspell on first try [too embarrassed to show what I typed] and here it is, the unvarnished truth from the depths of my brain:

desuetude (dɪˈsjuːɪˌtjuːd; ˈdɛswɪtjuːd) noun

1. the condition of not being in use or practice; disuse: those ceremonies had fallen into desuetude.

[From Latin dēsuētūdō, from dēsuescere, to lay aside a habit [like a naughty nun!], from de- + suescere, to grow accustomed. [Another inchoate verb, containing the idea of growth or beginning. Who knew they were everywhere?]]

 

Sometimes I think they just make up the etymology:

bur·geon also bour·geon (bûrjn) intr.v.

1.  a. To put forth new buds, leaves, or greenery; sprout
     b. To begin to grow or blossom.
2.  To grow or develop rapidly.

---

[Middle English burgeonen, from Old French borjoner, from burjon, a bud, from Vulgar Latin, burrio, burrion, perhaps ultimately from Late Latin, burra, shaggy garment; from the downiness of certain buds.]

 

par·tic·u·lar  (pə(r)ˈtikyələr) adj

1. used to single out an individual member of a specified group or class: “that particular piece of pie, please.” Synonyms: specific, certain, distinct, separate, discrete, definite, precise;
2. especially great or intense: “one should exercise particular care when handling a scorpion.”  Synonyms: (extra) special, especial, exceptional, unusual, singular, uncommon, notable, noteworthy, remarkable, unique;
3. insisting that something should be correct or suitable in every detail, fastidious: “she is very particular about consistency in formatting.”  Synonyms: fussy, fastidious, finicky, meticulous, punctilious, discriminating, selective, painstaking, exacting, demanding.

[1350–1400; Middle English particuler < Late Latin particulāris, Latin particul(a), particle.]

Word of the Day Archive, and a cure for insomnia, all in one

To explain what might be one of the world’s most boring posts, my life has been somewhat constrained lately, but my brain has been free to roam.  Hence this odd blog, and the burgeoning Word of the Day.  [Note to self – that would make a good word of the day.]  So you can imagine my alarm the other day when offspring #1 mentioned that one of her most particular friends would likely check my blog because he would want to click on the Word of the Day.

The alarm was caused by the word ‘click’.  While Offspring #3 turned me into an Instagram monster just the other day [#MouseCam], and close friends inform me that the blog is dead and I must now tumbl, er, … where is my quill … an interactive word widget challenged my nascent html skills.  However, in order to prevent the further atrophying of the cranial contents, I have become determined to stay hip.  [I think using the word hip might preclude being hip, but never mind.]

So after much head scratching, of Mouse’s head

not mine, I have come up with this approximate archive, which should get a clickable tab at the top, if I am hipper than my sore hip would imply, just to make that most excellent friend happy.  And as I get about 8 visitors a day, I will know from my stats if he reads it.

Just saying,

I have decided not to make it alphabetical, and just let it flow [flow, ed.?] the way it appeared.  I did reverse the order, because I ramble on from day to day and it makes little enough sense as is, without some hint as to narrative and context.  Why am I boring you with this detail?  Because there are just too many ways one can categorize things, and it drives me bonkers.

I had the privilege of reorganizing the disorganization of the library of the U of T Press, i.e. the library of all the books they had published, when they moved buildings back in the 1980’s, when I was but a babe, and for some reason they seemed to trust me.  It was carte blanche.  I was given the dimensions of the room and was allowed to order all the shelving even, and establish a new system, as the old one seemed to have consisted of tossing the books into a room as they appeared.  Author?  What about multiple authors?  Topic?  How to choose between biography and history, literature and art, science vs physics etc.  Just a nightmare for an over-thinker.  And always the solitary big books, destined to remain forever unsorted, relegated to the large shelf, like the tallest kid always standing at the back of a photo.

But they liked me: I was smart, easy on the eyes, and my dad was hugely important within the University.  That had nothing to do with it.  Merit, nothing but merit, I swear, and I cannot be accused of nepotism, as I am not a nephew.  I actually was already a library rat, having earned extra lucre as a student by helping professors with their research, and the complexities of organizing stuff so it can be found both fascinate and horrify me.

My most exciting job was proofing the index of a bibliography of historical maps of Ontario … I would tell you about it, but you may already be dozing off, and I barely stayed awake myself doing it.  But you can see my difficulties with language and categorization are brought about by painstaking attention to painstaking detail, and a close brush with library science, a field that has consumed two close relatives, poor souls.  The library I mostly worked in resembled a turkey, btw.

Just trying to stay relevant to the season.

All that being said,  I have spared myself and you, dear reader, any attempt at organization whatsoever, other than to place these words in the order in which they appeared, failing to learn any lessons from the past, other than that to create order in one way creates disorder in another.  So why start?

Why they have been chosen is lost to the fogs of time, thank whatever power you like, and psychoanalysis of the author is to be done on the quiet.

 

ret•ro•min•gent (ˌrɛ troʊˈmɪn dʒənt) adj.

urinating backward because of bodily configuration: i.e. The lion is a retromingent animal.

[1645–55; retro + Latin mingent-, s. of mingens, present participle of mingere, to urinate.]

 

hirsute [ˈhɜːsjuːt] adj.

 1. covered with hair; having long, thick, or untrimmed hair
 2. (of plants or their parts) covered with long but not stiff hairs

[from Latin hirsūtus shaggy; related to Latin horrēre to bristle, hirtus hairy; see horrid]

 

gudg·eon 1 (gjn) noun

1. A metal pivot or journal at the end of a shaft or an axle, around which a wheel or other device turns.
2. The socket of a hinge into which a pin fits.
3. Nautical: The socket for the pintle of a rudder.  As in the phrase “you need to oil your gudgeons, your pintles are squeaking,” a phrase I was actually once greeted with, on a first meeting no less.

[Middle English gudyon, from Old French gojon, from Vulgar Latin gubius, variant of Late Latin gubia; see gouge.]

gudg·eon 2 (gjn) noun

A small Eurasian freshwater fish (Gobio gobio) related to the carp and used for bait.
Slang: One who is easily duped. [into believing a gudgeon is a gudgeon, no doubt, ed.]

[Middle English gojoun, from Old French goujon, from Latin gobio, gobion-, variant of gobius; see goby.]

 

unc·tu·ous  adj.

1. Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness: as in Dicken’s Uriah Heep [you just added that to look good, ed.]
2. Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.
3. Containing or composed of oil or fat.
4. Abundant in organic materials; soft and rich: unctuous soil.

[Middle English, from Old French unctueus, from Medieval Latin unctuosus, from Latin unctum, ointment, from neuter past participle of unguere, to anoint.]

 

la·con·ic   adj.

Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise. See Synonyms at silent.

[Latin Laconicus, Spartan, from Greek Lakonikos, from Lakon, a Spartan.  The English word is first recorded in 1583 with the sense “of or relating to Laconia or its inhabitants,” the name for the region of Greece of which Sparta was the capital. The Spartans, noted for being warlike and disciplined, were also known for the brevity of their speech.]

 

orthinologist noun

word-botcher.

 

cur·so·ry adj.

Performed with haste and scant attention to detail: a cursory search [you should know, ed.]

[Late Latin cursorius, of running, from Latin cursor, runner; see cursor.]

 

car·bun·cle  noun

1. A painful localized bacterial infection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue that usually has several openings through which pus is discharged.
2.   a. A deep-red garnet, unfaceted and convex.
       b. Obsolete A red precious stone.

As in: “I sure hope the thing on Grandpa Bertie’s neck was the second kind of carbuncle, not the first.”

 

hi·ber·nac·u·lum   noun,  pl. hi·ber·nac·u·la

1. A protective case, covering, or structure, such as a plant bud, in which an organism remains dormant for the winter.
2. The shelter of a hibernating animal.

[Latin hibernaculum, winter residence, from hibernare, to winter, from hibernus, relating to winter.]

 

pro·lix   adj.  

1. Tediously prolonged; wordy: editing a prolix manuscript.
2.  to speak or write at excessive length. See wordy and Xty, usually, but not today, thank Tiw!

[Middle English, from Old French prolixe, from Latin prolixus, poured forth, extended.]

 

in•ef•fa•ble (ɪnˈɛf ə bəl) adj.
1. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy.
2. not to be spoken because of its sacredness; unutterable: the ineffable name of the deity.

[1400–50; late Middle English < Middle French < Latin ineffābilis = in + effabilis = effā(rī) to utter, say (ef- + fari- to speak) + -bilis -ble.]

 

lepidopteron  noun, pl.  lep·i·dop·ter·a

any lepidopterous insect. [Thanks, ed.  Don’t you just love dictionary entries like that?  I have [had to, ed.] search to add some meaning.] [There’s an ed. to the ed.?  Yes, two ed.s are better than one.]

lep·i·dop·ter·an [or lepidopteron, ed.] noun

An insect belonging to the large order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths, characterized by four membranous wings covered with small scales.  Hence lepidopterist, lepidopterology, lepidopterous [finally, ed.] etc.

[From Neo-Latin,  from Greek lepis, scale [see leper, ugh, ed.] + Greek –pteros, having wings.]

 

eutectic (yuˈtɛk tɪk)  adj.

1. of greatest fusibility: said of an alloy or mixture whose melting point is lower than that of any other alloy or mixture of the same ingredients; formed at the lowest possible temperature of solidification for any mixture of specified constituents.
2. of or pertaining to such a mixture or its properties: eutectic salts.

[1880–85; < Greek eútēkt(os), easily melted, dissolved]

 

pan·e·gyr·ic noun

1. A formal eulogistic composition intended as a public compliment.
2. Elaborate praise or laudation; an encomium.

[Latin panegyricus, from Greek panegurikos, (speech) at a public assembly, panegyric, from paneguris, public assembly : pan- + aguris, assembly, marketplace.]

 

an·cil·lar·y adj.

1. Of secondary importance.
2. Auxiliary; helping: an ancillary pump.

 an·cil·lar·ies  noun, usually pl.

1. Something, such as a workbook, that is subordinate to something else, such as a textbook.
2. Archaic A servant.

[From Latin ancilla, maidservant, feminine diminutive of anculus, servant]

Freud would have a field day with that choice, and he didn’t even see my kitchen this morning.

 

progenitor [prəʊˈdʒɛnɪtə] noun

1. a direct ancestor.
2. an originator or founder of a future development; precursor.

[from Latin: pro- + genitor, parent, from gignere, to beget]

 

riparian [raɪˈpɛərɪən] adj.

1. Inhabiting, or situated on the bank of a river;
2. denoting or relating to the legal rights of the owner of land on a river bank, such as fishing or irrigation.

riparian noun

a person who owns land on a river bank.

[from Latin rīpārius, from rīpa a river bank]

 

ob·du·rate adj. 

1.  a. Hardened in wrongdoing or wickedness; stubbornly impenitent: “obdurate conscience of the old sinner” (Sir Walter Scott)
b. Hardened against feeling; hardhearted: an obdurate miser
2. Not giving in to persuasion; intractable.

[1400–50; late Middle English obdurat < Latin obdūrāre, to harden, be persistent = ob + dūrāre, to harden, derivative of durus, hard.]

 

en·co·mi·um   noun, pl. en·co·mi·ums or en·co·mi·a

1. Warm, glowing praise.
2. Formal praise; an elaborate or ceremonial panegyric or eulogy.

[Latin encomium, from Greek enkomion (speech) praising a victor, neuter of enkomios, of the victory procession : en, in  + komos, celebration.]

Not to be confused with

me·co·ni·um   noun

the earliest stool of a mammalian infant, composed chiefly of bile, mucus, and epithelial cells, materials digested while in utero.

[from New Latin, from Latin: poppy juice (used also of infant’s excrement because of similarity in colour), from Greek mēkōneion, from mēkōn, poppy. [Ugh, ed.]]

 

confabulate [kənˈfæbjʊˌleɪt] verb intransitive

1. to talk together; converse; chat
2. Psychiatry to replace the gaps left by a disorder of the memory with imaginary remembered experiences consistently believed to be true See also paramnesia.

[From Latin confābulārī, from fābulārī, to talk, from fābula, a story; see fable]

 

pran·di·al   adj.  

Of or relating to a meal.

[From Latin prandium, late breakfast.]

 

escutcheon [ɪˈskʌtʃən] noun

1.  a shield, esp a heraldic one that displays a coat of arms.
2. a plate or shield that surrounds a keyhole, door handle, light switch, etc., esp an ornamental one protecting a door or wall surface. [I did not know it also meant a light switch plate.  Now I can remark on the cracked escutcheon in our house and not mean our blotted past.]
3. the plate on the stern of a ship or vessel inscribed with the ship’s name.

idiom: to have a blot on one’s escutcheon: a stain upon one’s honour.

[1470–80; from Old North French escutcheon, ultimately from Latin scūtum, shield.]

 

re·frac·to·ry   adj.

1. Obstinately resistant to authority or control. See Synonyms at unruly.
2. Difficult to melt or work; resistant to heat: a refractory material such as silica.
3. Resistant to treatment: a refractory case of acne.

re·frac·to·ries noun, usually pl.

1. One that is refractory.
2. Material that has a high melting point.

[Alteration of obsolete refractary, from Latin refractarius, from refractus, past participle of refringere, to break up; see refract.]

 

im·por·tu·ni·ty ( ˌɪmpɔrˈtunɪti, -ˈtyu-) noun pl. im·por·tun·i·ties

1. An importunate request; an insistent or pressing demand.
2. The quality of being importunate.

Yes, one of those definitions!, so of we go for more:

importunate [ɪmˈpɔːtjʊnɪt] adj.

1. persistent or demanding; insistent
2. troublesome; annoying

[From Latin importūnus, unsuitable, inopportune, from im + -portūnus as in opportūnus, opportune.]  To use it in a sentence: Mouse was certainly importunate this morning!

 

fun·gi·ble   (ˈfʌn dʒə bəl) adj.

1. Law Returnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain.
2. Interchangeable.

fun·gi·ble noun

Something that is exchangeable or substitutable. Often used in the plural, i.e. fungibles.

[From Medieval Latin fungibles, from Latin fungī, to perform; see function.]

An example I remember is from some ancient documentary eulogizing Henry Ford, but this part was true: there was a revolution in the automobile industry when car parts became fungible.  It is bad to be fungible as a person, however.

 

fatuity [fəˈtjuːɪtɪ] noun pl -ties

1. complacent foolishness; inanity
2. a fatuous remark, act, sentiment, etc.

fatuitous adj.

[Latin fatuitas, from fatuus, silly, foolish.]

 

in•im•i•cal (ɪˈnɪm ɪ kəl) adj.

1. injurious in tendency or effect, adverse: habits inimical to health.
2. unfriendly, hostile: a cold, inimical gaze.

[from Late Latin inimīcālis, from inimīcus, enemy, from in- + amīcus, friend.]

 

ineluctable [ˌɪnɪˈlʌktəbəl] adj.

(esp of fate) incapable of being avoided; inescapable.

[From Latin inēluctābilis, from in- + ēluctārī, to escape, from luctārī, to struggle.]

I really fought to find that one, and then I had to look it up, which is usually my criterion for a word of the day.  Sometimes I just like them.  Used in a sentence: It was their ineluctable fate to endure Xty’s prose.

 

inchoate [ɪnˈkəʊeɪt -ˈkəʊɪt] adj

1. just beginning; incipient;
2. undeveloped; immature; rudimentary;
3. (of a legal document, promissory note, etc.) in an uncompleted state; not yet made specific or valid

Also verb transitive, to begin, though this use seems extremely rare.

[From Latin incohāre, to make a beginning, literally: to hitch up, from in- + chum, yokestrap.]

inchoately  adv.
inchoative  adj.

Seems redundant, to have two adjectival forma, but there you are, it turns out to be quite an obscure but interesting linguistic distinction between verbs, often signalled by the ‘infix’ [I just learnt all this, including the word ‘infix’] ‘sc’ which adds inchoative force to a word, still apparent in words like nascent, for example, and convalescent if I understood what I read.

Unfortunately we do not often need to use a verb meaning to turn to stone, but if we did, it would be derived from lapidesco, lapidescere, giving it that all important inchoative force!  So there is a class of verbs called inchoative verbs, though why they are not just inchoate, I do not know.

I am thinking of starting a list of words that can only have ‘in’ at the beginning, like inept.  Why can’t one be ept?  Or something be eluctable?  Or choate for that matter, if one has been hitched for a long time?

 

I have always liked this word, and we had a tiny vestibule in the house I grew up in.  But I had no idea it could be a transitive verb!

ves•ti•bule (ˈvɛs təˌbyul) noun

1. a passage, hall, or antechamber between the outer door and the interior parts of a house or building.
2. an enclosed entrance at the end of a railroad passenger car.
3. any hollow part in the body serving as an approach to another hollow part, esp. the front part of the inner ear leading to the cochlea.

ves•ti•bule, ves•ti-buled, -bul•ing verb transitive

to provide with a vestibule.  [Let us hope not in the sense of the third meaning above, a hollow part of the body.]

ves•ti-bular adj.

of or relating to a vestibule, particularly that of the inner ear, or more generally to the sense of balance.

[1615–25; < Latin vestibulum, forecourt, entrance.]

 

Ha, the opposite of distaff it would appear:

agnate (ˈægneɪt) adj.

1. (Law) related by descent from a common male ancestor.
2. related in any way; cognate.

agnate noun

(Law) a male or female descendant by male links from a common male ancestor.

[From Latin agnātus, born in addition, added by birth, from agnāsci, from ad-+ gnāsci, to be born [an inchoative verb, one supposes, Xty.]]

agnatic  [ægˈnætɪk] adj.  agnation noun

 

oxter [ˈɒkstə] noun.

Scot, Irish, and northern English dialect:  the armpit.

[From Old English oxta; related to Old High German Ahsala, Latin axilla.]

My Granny Tiny was a Scottish Presbyterian with a touch of Calvin, and she definitely used this word. Ludicrous example: “He moved from the oxter of the country, but ended up navel-gazing in Florida, in an orange grove.” Well, you get what you pay for, but at least the exemplis are gratis.

 

fet•lock (ˈfɛtˌlɒk) noun

1. the projection of the leg of a horse behind the joint between the cannon bone and great pastern bone, bearing a tuft of hair.
2. the tuft of hair itself.
3. Also called fet′lock joint`. the joint at this point.

[1275–1325; Middle English fitlok, akin to Middle High German viz(ze)loch, ultimately derivative of Germanic *fet-, a gradational variant of *fot- foot]

 

matutinal (ˌmætjʊˈtaɪnəl) adj.

of, occurring in, or during the morning.

matutinally  adv.

[From Late Latin mātūtīnālis, from Latin mātūtīnus, from Mātūta, goddess of the dawn.]

 

So here was I, making merry over the fact that we don’t use the Latin inchoative verb lapidescō, lapidescere, to become stone, much anymore, when a lithopaedion suddenly crops up in my life.  I guess the doctors playing the naming game that day were more into Greek than Latin.  I was too lazy to figure out the alphabet.  Or maybe I should blame that on my dyslexia – yeah, that’s the ticket.

This is one of the reasons I don’t believe in magic symbolism, btw., because a calcified baby is a calcified baby and the mother was not cursed by demons, it is just that the human body is strangely fragile for something so robust.

lith·o·pae·di·on, lith·o·pe·di·um (lith’ō-pē’dē-on, -ŭm) noun

A retained fetus, usually extrauterine in the abdominal cavity, which has become calcified.also lithopedion.

[From Greek litho-, stone, +paidion, small child.]

 

Well, isn’t this just more sinister evidence of the bias against left-handed people!  But it does at least and at last show up my older brothers as illiterate teasers of a little sister’s reverse wiring, when they joked that ambidextrous must mean equally clumsy with both hands.  Apparently there is a word for that, and I am not amused, especially when the shoe, er, glove, fits so handily:

ambilevous (am′bi-lē′vŭs]) noun

Awkwardness in the use of both hands.

[From Latin ambilaevus (ambi-, both + laevus, left.]  Synonyms: ambisinister, ambisinistrous.

 

quinquagenarian [ˌkwɪŋkwədʒɪˈnɛərɪən] noun

A person between 50 and 59 years old.

quinquagenarian adj.

1. being between 50 and 59 years old.
2. of or relating to a quinquagenarian.

[From Latin quinquāgēnārius, containing fifty, from quinquāgēnī, fifty each [I think they mean fifty to each, or of each – but an exhaustive search [for you, ed.] reveals a cut and paste internet with the exact same or less explanation.  But I am guessing the geni part is dative or genitive or some such.  Anyhow, I am one , and with a notch on the post already.]]

 

Best enjoy it, when possible:

merry adj.  Well, you already know what it means, it was the etymology that gave me pause for thought.

From Old English merge pleasing, agreeable, pleasant, sweet; pleasantly, melodiously, from Proto-Germanic murgijaz, which probably originally meant short-lasting, (cf. Old High German murg, short, Gothic gamaurgjan, to shorten). The only exact cognate for meaning outside English was Middle Dutch mergelijc, joyful.

The connection to pleasure is probably because of the notion of making time fly, that which makes the time seem to pass quickly (cf. German kurzweil pastime, literally, a short time; Old Norse skemta, to amuse, entertain, amuse oneself, from skamt, neuter of skammr, short).  The word had much wider senses in Middle English, e.g. pleasant-sounding, fine, handsome, pleasant-tasting.

Let us hope we are a merry lot in all those senses, except short.

 

phleg·mat·ic  adj.

1. Of or relating to phlegm; phlegmy.
2. Having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.

[From Old French fleume, Middle French phlegme (French flegme), and their source, Latin phlegma, from Ancient Greek φλέγμα (phlegma, flame, inflammation, clammy humor in the body), from φλέγειν (phlegein, to burn).]

I think I have meaning 1, and am aiming to achieve meaning 2.

 

farctate adj.

1. Stuffed; filled solid; as, a farctate leaf, stem, or pericarp; as opposed to tubular or hollow.
2. In botany, stuffed; crammed, or full; without vacuities; in opposition to tubular or hollow; as a farctate leaf, stem, or pericarp [?, but time does not allow, perhaps a word for another day, Xty].

From Latin farctus, past participle of farcire, to stuff . See Farce.  And boy can you see farce here:

The strange background of the word farce

In the Middle Ages, the trade guilds of France (labor unions of that time) presented the first crude one-act plays. By the time of Joan of Arc, these interludes of farces were “stuffed” or “crammed” in between the acts of the main performance. The French word farce is derived from farcier, going back to the Latin farcire which meant “to stuff”.

When the word farce was first used in English, it referred to “cookery”, not comedy. In the fourteenth century the French word farce entered English as farse with its meaning, “forcemeat, stuffing” unchanged from the French interpretation….

—Based on information from

Word Origins and Their romantic Stories by Wilfred Funk, Litt. D.;

Grosset & Dunlap; New York; 1950; pages 294-295.

http://wordinfo.info/unit/4288/page:1

 

It just has a nice ring to it:

pro•pin•qui•ty (proʊˈpɪŋ kwɪ ti) noun

1. nearness in time or place; proximity.
2. nearness of relation; kinship.

[1350–1400; Middle English propinquite < Latin propinquitās, nearness.]

 

Offspring #2 suggested this lovely word:

mu•ci•lag•i•nous (ˌmyu səˈlædʒ ə nəs) adj.

1. of, pertaining to, or secreting, mucilage.
2. resembling mucilage; moist, soft, and viscid.

[1640–50; < Late Latin mūcilāgin (s. of mūcilāgō), mucilage + -ous.]

So I had to look up this lovely word:

mu•ci•lage (ˈmyu sə lɪdʒ) noun.

1. a sticky preparation, such as gum or glue, used as an adhesive.
2.  a complex glutinous carbohydrate secreted by certain plants.

[1350–1400; < Middle French musillage < Late Latin mūcilāgō, a musty juice, akin to Latin mūcēre, to be musty.]

I feel sort of mucilaginous, even if I am not a certain plant.

 

And if you made it to here, I expect you are feeling very mucilaginous too.

Happy New Year!