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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, August 15, 2005 - 6:23 pm
Word of the Day for Monday August 15 2005 mendacious \men-DAY-shus, adjective: 1. Given to deception or falsehood; lying; as, a mendacious person. 2. False; counterfeit; containing falsehood; as, a mendacious statement. His writings, speeches, and decisions supply crucial evidence but also contain mendacious lements, gaps, and camouflage. --Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, two very different men, each from a different party, were seen as mendacious and deceitful, driven to self-destructive actions by forces they could not control. --Robert Shogan, The Double-Edged Sword: How Character Makes and Ruins Presidents, From Washington to Clinton -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mendacious is from Latin mendax, mendac-, lying. Synonyms: deceitful, dishonest, false, fraudulent
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 9:24 am
WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUG 16, 2005 limn \LIM, transitive verb: 1. To depict by drawing or painting. 2. To portray in words; to describe. In telling these people's stories Mr. Butler draws upon the same gifts of empathy and insight, the same ability to limn an entire life in a couple of pages. --Michiko Kakutani, "Earthlings May Endanger Your Peaceful Rationality," New York Times, March 10, 2000 The New York society into which Sumner Welles was born still clung to the rigid taboos and expensive monotony limned by his great-aunt. --Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist But used faithfully and correctly, language can "limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers." --John Darnton, "In Sweden, Proof of The Power Of Words," New York Times, December 8, 1993 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limn comes from Middle English limnen, an alteration of enluminen, from Medieval French enluminer, from Late Latin illuminare, to illuminate books, ultimately from Latin lumen, light.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 4:45 pm
WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUG 17, 2005 schadenfreude \SHOD-n-froy-duh, noun: A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others. That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind. --Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit He died three years after me -- cancer too -- and at that time I was still naive enough to imagine that what the afterlife chiefly provided were unrivalled opportunities for unbeatable gloating, unbelievable schadenfreude. --Will Self, How The Dead Live Somewhere out there, Pi supposed, some UC Berkeley grad students must be shivering with a little Schadenfreude of their own about what had happened to her. --Sylvia Brownrigg, The Metaphysical Touch The historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals in the 1936 Olympics -- has said that it "can be one of the great joys of life." --Edward Rothstein, "Missing the Fun of a Minor Sin," New York Times, February 5, 2000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Schadenfreude comes from the German, from Schaden, "damage" + Freude, "joy." It is often capitalized, as it is in German.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 4:50 pm
WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUG 18, 2005 exigency \EK-suh-jun-see; ig-ZIJ-un-see, noun: 1. The quality or state of requiring immediate aid or action; urgency. 2. A case demanding immediate action or remedy; a pressing or urgent situation. 3. That which is demanded or required in a particular situation -- usually used in the plural. Finally, in late 1961 and early 1962, naked exigency forced the Chinese Communist Party to recognize the extent of the crisis it had created. The most deadly innovations from the Great Leap Forward were quietly abandoned or reversed; almost immediately, this artificially manufactured famine came to an end. --Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Great Leap Backward," review of Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, by Jasper Becker, New York Times, February 16, 1997 But rearing and educating babies required women to prepare for exigencies that could occur decades down the road. --Helen Fisher, The First Sex Better than any other species, they had adapted to the exigencies of the Ice Ages. --David Fromkin, The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exigency comes from Medieval Latin exigentia, from the present participle of Latin exigere, to drive out, to force out, to exact, to demand, from ex-, out of + agere, to drive. The adjective form is exigent.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, August 19, 2005 - 5:42 am
Word of the Day for Friday August 19, 2005 eleemosynary \el-e-MOS-i-ner-ee; el-ee-uh-MOS-i-ner-ee, adjective: 1. Relating to charity, alms, or alms-giving; intended for the distribution of charity; as, ``an eleemosynary corporation.'' 2. Given in charity or alms; having the nature of alms; as, ``eleemosynary assistance'' 3. Supported by charity; as, ``eleemosynary poor.'' eleemosynary, noun; plural eleemosynaries. One who subsists on charity; a dependent. ``Threw forth...food, for the flock of eleemosynary doves.'' --Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun ``[S]he worries that the publishing industry is betraying its obligation to literature by its emphasis on the bottom line. `They're in a capitalist society and entitled to make money', she said of publishers. `They're not eleemosynary'.'' --``As Writers Despair, Book Chains Can Only Exult,'' New York Times, October 13, 1997 ``An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.'' --Henry Fielding, Tom Jones ``Having obtained some money to partly reimburse it for the seizure of its Cuban telephone operations in 1960, ITT refused to share the loot with the Cubans who had owned a large part of the company's stock. `We're not an eleemosynary institution', one ITT official said.'' --``Financial Follies '97: A Year of Mad Bulls and Big Gaffes,'' December 28, 1997 New York Times ``It is noteworthy that the heyday of laissez-faire, the middle and late nineteenth century in Britain and the United States, saw an extraordinary proliferation of private eleemosynary organizations and institutions.'' --Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The source of eleemosynary is Medieval Latin eleemosynarius, from Late Latin eleemosyna, alms, from Greek eleemosyne, from eleemon, pitiful, from eleos, pity.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, August 22, 2005 - 5:00 pm
Word of the Day for Monday august 22, 2005 atelier \at-l-YAY, noun: A workshop; a studio. A garage in Montparnasse served as Leo's atelier, and there he labored on his huge triptychs, mixing his paints in buckets and applying them with a kitchen mop. --Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version After Groton, he would attend the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, then settle in Paris, rent an atelier and paint. --Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist His atelier was the headquarters of a lively little cottage industry. --Rollene W. Saal, "Listening for Voices That are Muted," New York Times, January 25, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Atelier comes from French, from Old French astelier, "carpenter's shop," from astele, "splinter," from Late Latin astella, alteration of Latin astula, itself an alteration of assula, "a shaving, a chip," diminutive of assis, "board."
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, August 24, 2005 - 4:24 pm
Word of the Day for Tues August 23, 2005 Argus-eyed \AHR-gus-ide, adjective: Extremely observant; watchful; sharp-sighted. Even the foliage at the Stork is apt to conceal a celebrity, as Argus-eyed\b} star-gazers discovered the other night when they peeked behind three carefully combed fronds and found writer Ernest Hemingway, actor Monty Woolley and sculptor Jo Davidson. --Ralph Blumenthal, Stork Club -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One who is Argus-eyed is as observant as Argus, a hundred-eyed monster from Greek mythology.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 4:53 pm
Word of the Day for Thursday, August 25, 2005 tergiversation \tur-jiv-ur-SAY-shun, noun: 1. The act of practicing evasion or of being deliberately ambiguous; subterfuge; evasion. 2. The act of abandoning a party or cause. Like most writers, I have always championed thrift. . . . Not long ago, however, I experienced an extraordinary tergiversation. Now I'm an ally of excess, a proponent of redundancy. --Michael Norman, "When an Author's Words Are Sold by the Pound," New York Times, September 15, 1991 One remarkable matter in these records is the cramped nature of the calculations and tergiversations preoccupying Khrushchev and his colleagues. --John Lukacs, "Fear and Hatred," The American Scholar, June 1, 1997 No doubt if I worked on it, I could evolve some kind of double-talk that would get around the offensive phrase, and make the, to me, face-saving implication; but to hell with that, I have too much respect for the English language, and for your understanding of it, to go in for tergiversation and weasely circumlocution. --Richard Gillman, "Standing Up to Ezra Pound," New York Times, August 25, 1991 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tergiversation comes from Latin tergiversatus, past participle of tergiversari, to turn one's back, to shift, from tergum, back + versare, frequentative of vertere to turn. The verb form is tergiversate
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 4:54 pm
anyone still with me here? 
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Heyltslori
Moderator
09-15-2001
| Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 4:56 pm
I am Nancy! I love learning new words.
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Lumbele
Member
07-12-2002
| Friday, August 26, 2005 - 4:30 am
Ditto, Nancy! But I am not including them in the update again. Too much of a mouthful!
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, August 26, 2005 - 6:26 pm
Word of the Day for Friday Augsst 26, 2005 bibelot \BEE-buh-loh, noun: A small decorative object without practical utility; a trinket. They break in expecting to find a collection of bibelots, objets de vertu, exquisite porcelain, Elizabethan miniatures, 18th century Italian fiddles, cabinets of curiosa, shelves of first editions, rare erotic manuscripts, rooms full of exquisite things: the fine and delicate treasures of a fine and delicate creature. --Simon Barnes, "Villains who are wiser after the event," Times (London), January 10, 2001 An inveterate collector, Feldman purchased paintings and bibelots in quantity, often sight unseen. --Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe . . . inexplicable bibelots: a venetian glass lady's slipper, a floral cup and saucer stood on a shelf beside life-size heads of the Mater Dolorosa and of Jesus suffering beneath the Crown of Thorns. --Mary Gordon, Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bibelot is from French, from Old French beubelot, beubelet, "a small jewel, a trinket," from a reduplication of bel, "beautiful," from Latin bellus, "pretty, handsome." It is related to bauble.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Saturday, August 27, 2005 - 4:24 pm
Word of the Day for Sat Aug 27, 2005 Zeitgeist \TSYT-guyst; ZYT-guyst, noun: The spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time. [Also written with a lower-case initial: zeitgeist] ``The best writers of that predawn era were originals who had the zeitgeist by the tail.'' --Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century ``As most critics and all professors of cultural theory note, Madonna is nothing if not a skilled reader of the zeitgeist.'' --``Techno `rave' just the same old Madonna,'' Chicago Sun-Times, March 3, 1998 ``Besides, the zeitgeist seems to be working against any hope of Hormel officials to limit...the usage of [the word] `spam' on the Web.'' --``Gracious Concession on Internet 'Spam','' New York Times, August 17, 1998 ``Like other figures who seem, in retrospect, to have been precociously representative of their times, Kerouac was not simply responding to the Zeitgeist, but to the peculiarly twisted facts of his own upbringing.'' --``Jack Kerouac: The Beat Goes On,'' New York Times, December 30, 1979 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zeitgeist is from the German: Zeit, time + Geist, spirit.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, August 29, 2005 - 4:44 pm
Word of the Day for Aug 28, 2005 digerati \dij-uh-RAH-tee, plural noun: Persons knowledgeable about computers and technology. As high tech spreads outward from Silicon Valley to American society at large and people spend more and more time in cyberspace, the journalist Paulina Borsook steps back to look at the digerati and their view of the world. --Michiko Kakutani, "Silicon Valley Views the Economy as a Rain Forest," New York Times, July 25, 2000 [T]his week, over 3,000 digerati will converge at a swank theater where chef Julia Child and pundit Arianna Huffington, among others, will judge 135 Web sites. --David Whitman, "The calm before the storms," U.S.News & World Report, May 15, 2000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digerati was formed by analogy with literati, "persons knowledgeable about literature."
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - 10:20 am
Word-A-Day Tuesday, August 30, 2005 asseverate \uh-SEV-uh-rayt, transitive verb: To affirm or declare positively or earnestly. "But of course it is!" asseverates Herman Woodlife. --Miles Kington, "Child slavery: the half-truth," Independent, June 12, 1998 "Castro's been known to snow people, but he didn't snow me," Mr. Weicker asseverated. --"Fading Fidel and his gulled groupies," Washington Times, July 6, 2001 Mr. Vidal asseverates that McVeigh is "very, very bright." He writes with "perfect" spelling, punctuation and grammar. --R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., "When grim opportunity knocks . . .," Washington Times, May 11, 2001 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Asseverate comes from Latin asseverare, "to assert seriously or earnestly," from ad- + severus, "severe, serious."
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Thursday, September 01, 2005 - 9:54 am
The Daily Word-a-Day Thursday, September 1, 2005 littoral \LIH-tuh-rul, adjective: Of, relating to, or on a coastal or shore region, especially a seashore. Professor Henslow tells me, he believes that nearly all the plants which I brought from these islands, are common littoral species in the East Indian archipelago. --Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle A country that is landlocked or has few neighbors will be more vulnerable than one that is littoral or extensive. --Franklin L. Lavin, "Asphyxiation or Oxygen? The Sanctions Dilemma," Foreign Policy, September-October 1996 Like 49ers staking claims in California, the five littoral nations have asserted overlapping territorial claims in the Caspian itself. --Richard Stone, "Caspian Ecology Teeters On the Brink," Science, January 18, 2002 Also, noun: A coastal region, especially the zone between the limits of high and low tides. As the Portuguese moved south along the Upper Guinea Coast along the littoral of Sierra Leone, a region known as the Windward Coast, they entered another major area of rice cultivation. --Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Littoral derives from Latin littoralis, litoralis, from litor-, litus, "the seashore."
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, September 02, 2005 - 12:18 pm
Word of the Day for Friday Sept. 2, 2005 plangent \PLAN-juhnt, adjective: 1. Beating with a loud or deep sound, as, "The plangent wave." 2. Expressing sadness; plaintive. The open kitchen and plangent rock music amplify the festive mood. --Bryan Miller, "In Cleveland, Industrial Chic and Inventive Chefs," New York Times, January 2, 2000 She moans along with the woman who is singing--wailing, really--her hands gripping the steering wheel to the plangent cries of the singer and the sobbing of violins. --Alice Walker, By the Light of My Father's Smile What undoubtedly touched those soldiers is the play's plangent nostalgia, the ache for home, for home's rootedness and security. --J. D. McClatchy, "Wilder and the Marvels of the Heart," New York Times, April 13, 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plangent derives from the present participle of Latin plangere, to beat, to strike (noisily), especially to strike the breast, head, etc. as a sign of grief.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, September 05, 2005 - 9:57 am
WORD-A-DAY Monday, September 5, 2005 imbroglio \im-BROHL-yoh, noun: 1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things. 2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding. 3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction. 4. A confused mass; a tangle. The political imbroglio also appears to endanger the latest International Monetary Fund loan package for Russia, which is considered critical to avoid a default this year on the country's $17 billion in foreign debt. --David Hoffman, "Citing Economy, Yeltsin Fires Premier," Washington Post, May 13, 1999 Worse still, hearings and investigations into scandals -- from the imbroglio over Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination in 1991 to the charges of perjury against President Clinton in 1998 -- have overshadowed any consideration of the country's future. --John B. Judis, The Paradox of American Democracy To the extent that Washington had a policy toward the subcontinent, its aim was to be evenhanded and not get drawn into the diplomatic imbroglio over Kashmir. --George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb The imbroglio over the seemingly arcane currency issue threatens to plunge Indonesia -- and possibly its neighbors as well -- into a renewed bout of financial turmoil. --Paul Blustein, "Currency Dispute Threatens Indonesia's Bailout," Washington Post, February 14, 1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imbroglio derives from Italian, from Old Italian imbrogliare, "to tangle, to confuse," from in-, "in" + brogliare, "to mix, to stir." It is related to embroil, "to entangle in conflict or argument."
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Heyltslori
Moderator
09-15-2001
| Monday, September 05, 2005 - 12:27 pm
This could be a word I use a lot! 
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, September 07, 2005 - 5:07 pm
Word of the Day for Saturday September 7,2005 vade mecum \vay-dee-MEE-kuhm; vah-dee-MAY-, noun: 1. A book for ready reference; a manual; a handbook. 2. A useful thing that one regularly carries about. The reader who wants honestly to understand it, and not merely read into it his own ideas, needs some kind of vade mecum to provide the necessary background and explain unfamiliar words and allusions and strange turns of thought. --Robert C. Dentan, "Including Uz and Buz," New York Times, November 17, 1968 Roget's Thesaurus, which had come into being as a linguistic example of the Platonic ideal, became instead a vade mecum for the crossword cheat. --Simon Winchester, "Word Imperfect," The Atlantic, May 2001 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vade mecum is from Latin, literally meaning "go with me."
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Tabbyking
Member
03-11-2002
| Wednesday, September 07, 2005 - 8:30 pm
Littoral derives from Latin littoralis, litoralis, from litor-, litus, "the seashore." good thing it already had the "C" in 'sea'shore. i would hate to have to add a "C" to the front of "littoral" LOL

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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - 3:09 pm
Word of the Day for Wednesday September 14, 2005 afflatus \uh-FLAY-tuhs, noun: A divine imparting of knowledge; inspiration. Whatever happened to passion and vision and the divine afflatus in poetry? --Clive Hicks, "From 'Green Man' (Ronsdale)," Toronto Star, November 21, 1999 Aristophanes must have eclipsed them . . . by the exhibition of some diviner faculty, some higher spiritual afflatus. --John Addington Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets The miraculous spring that nourished Homer's afflatus seems out of reach of today's writers, whose desperate yearning for inspiration only indicates the coming of an age of "exhaustion." --Benzi Zhang, "Paradox of origin(ality)," Studies in Short Fiction, March 22, 1995 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Afflatus is from Latin afflatus, past participle of afflare, "to blow at or breathe on," from ad-, "at" + flare, "to puff, to blow." Other words with the same root include deflate (de-, "out of" + flare); inflate (in-, "into" + flare); soufflé, the "puffed up" dish (from French souffler, "to puff," from Latin sufflare, "to blow from below," hence "to blow up, to puff up," from sub-, "below" + flare); and flatulent
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, September 16, 2005 - 6:18 pm
}Word of the Day for Friday, September 16, 2005 encomium \en-KOH-mee-um, noun. plural encomiums or (now rarely) encomia \en-KOH-mee-uh\: 1. Warm or high praise. 2. A formal expression of praise. He brought in the bread, cheese and beer, with many high encomiums upon their excellence. --Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop Many tales, and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men. --Benjamin Jowett, Plato Cairo was, quite simply, the navel of the world. It dazzled Ibn Battuta like no other city. To his secretary Ibn Juzayy he was to dictate this encomium: Mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands, boundless in profusion of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor, she shelters all you will of the learned and the ignorant, the grave and the gay, the prudent and the foolish, the noble and the base.... Like the waves of the sea she surges with her throngs of folk, yet for all the capacity of her station and her power to sustain can scarce hold their number. Her youth is ever new despite the length of days. Her reigning star never shifts from the mansion of fortune. --Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Encomium comes, via Latin, from Greek enkomion, a eulogy, from en-, in + komos, revel. Synonyms: Encomium; praise; panegyric; applause. Find more at Thesaurus.com. Usage: Eulogy, eulogium, encomium, panegyric. The idea of praise is common to all these words. The word encomium is used of both persons and things which are the result of human action, and denotes warm praise. Eulogium and eulogy apply only to persons and are more studied and of greater length. A panegyric was originally a set speech in a full assembly of the people, and hence denotes a more formal eulogy, couched in terms of warm and continuous praise, especially as to personal character. We may bestow encomiums on any work of art, on production of genius, without reference to the performer; we bestow eulogies, or pronounce a eulogium, upon some individual distinguished for his merit public services; we pronounce a panegyric before an assembly gathered for the occasion.
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Nancy
Member
08-01-2000
| Friday, September 23, 2005 - 7:42 pm
Word of the Day Friday, September 23, 2005 juju \JOO-joo, noun: 1: an object superstitiously believed to embody magical powers 2: the power associated with a juju ``[David] Robinson, sounding confident and sure, said that the time for juju and magic dust had passed. `To be honest with you, I think it's beyond that', he said. `It's very hard to come up with magic at the end'.'' --``Knicks Find There's No Place Like Home,'' New York Times, June 22, 1999 `` `You ever heard of juju?' Skyler shook his head. `Magic. You talk about this and it'll be the last talkin' you do. You'll just open your mouth and nothin' will come out'.'' --John Darnton, The Experiment ``We are told, for example, of the Edo youngster, apparently both Christian and traditionally African in his beliefs, who was heard to mutter `S.M.O.G.' over and over when he and his companions were threatened by `bad juju'. When questioned he replied, ''Have you never heard of it? It stands for Save Me O God. When you are really in a hurry, it is quickest to use the initials'.'' --``The Spirits And The African Boy,'' New York Times, October 10, 1982 ``On any terminal she is using, a co-worker puts up a sign proclaiming, `Bad karma go away, come again another day'. When she was pregnant, she said, she crashed her computer twice as often -- she attributes that to a double whammy of woo-woo juju.'' --``Can a Hard Drive Smell Fear?'' New York Times, May 21, 1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Juju is of West African origin, akin to Hausa djudju, fetish, evil spirit.
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Buttercup
Member
09-10-2000
| Monday, September 26, 2005 - 6:50 pm
Juju is West African???! Nancy, I want you to know that I really enjoy this thread 
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