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Archive through March 08, 2006

The TVClubHouse: General Discussion ARCHIVES: 2006 Mar. ~ 2006 May: Word a day: Archive through March 08, 2006 users admin

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Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 5:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tishala a private message Print Post    
Quiddity is one of my favorite words, especially because its two primary meanings--"the essence of something" and "a trifling distinction"--are virtually antonyms.

Seamonkey
Moderator

09-07-2000

Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 6:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Seamonkey a private message Print Post    
I like the third meaning

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, December 30, 2005 - 4:53 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Friday, Dec 30, 2005


sine qua non \sin-ih-kwah-NON; -NOHN; sy-nih-kway-, noun:
An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing

Women's enfranchisement was crucial to them -- indeed, a sine qua non, since all other progress for which they worked, such as higher education and entrance into the professions, would be meaningless if women continued to be second-class citizens.
--Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women

"Of the various attributes we fiction-writers require," he said, "one of the most important is detachment. Of course tenacity of purpose is the sine qua non, otherwise we'd never keep on with it for the year or two years or longer that it takes to finish the work."
--Barry Unsworth, Sugar and Rum

However we choose to define a classic, a sine qua non is that the material lend itself to reinterpretation in the light of changing circumstances.
--Matthew Gurewitsch, "A Country of Lesser Giants," New York Times, April 4, 1999


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Sine qua non is from the Late Latin, literally "without which not."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 5:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 4, 2006


pule \PYOOL, intransitive verb:
To whimper; to whine.

The first lady initially flourished as a wronged wife precisely because she endured her humiliation so stoically; she did not whine or pule or treat her pain as license to behave badly.
--Michelle Cottle, "God Almighty," New Republic, September 6, 1999

But my self-absorbed fretting and puling always come to an abrupt end with some surprise gift.
--Thomas J. McCarthy, "Stay-at-Home Dad," America, February 26, 2000


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Pule is perhaps from French piauler, "to whine, to pule," ultimately of imitative origin.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - 6:24 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Tuesday January 10, 2006


dubiety \doo-BY-uh-tee; dyoo-, noun:


1. The condition or quality of being doubtful or skeptical.
2. A matter of doubt

Kennedy and O'Connor may think that Title 3 has been violated, but O'Connor and the chief justice are not convinced that the Supreme Court was meant to litigate challenges under that federal statute, and their dubiety here is shared by Justices Scalia and Souter.
--Hadley Arkes, "A Morning at the Court," National Review, December 2, 2000

Despite a lack of forensic evidence, dubiety among the police themselves and inaccuracies in Raymond's confession, he was finally found guilty.
--Maggie Barry, "I've been a screen for the person who killed Pamela," The Mirror, August 10, 2002

Here, the historical evidence would seem to be tricky but free from all dubieties.
--Paul Taylor, "A mechanical science lesson," Independent, November 21, 2001

I want every inconsistency, every dubiety, every ambiguity left in.
--David Maclean, quoted in David Hencke, "Tories plot hunt bill dirty tricks," The Guardian, January 17, 2001


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Dubiety is from Late Latin dubietas, from Latin dubius, "doubtful, uncertain."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 5:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 11, 2006

foofaraw \FOO-fuh-raw, noun:
1. Excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration.
2. A fuss over a matter of little importance.

A somber, muted descending motif opens and closes the work, which is brief but effective. It provided much needed relief from the fanfares and foofaraw in which brass-going composers so often indulge.
--Philip Kennicott, "Brass Spectacular is a Spectacle of Special Sound," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 17, 1997

After working in the news business for a number of years, I've become a bit cynical about mass-media coverage of events like the Y2K foofaraw.
--Roy Clancy, "Ready for Y2K...," Calgary Sun, December 15, 1999

Making the Times best-seller list, or a movie, or all that other foofaraw is not necessarily proof of [a novel's] lasting significance.
--Roger K. Miller, "'Peyton Place' was remarkably good bad novel," Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 29, 1996


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Foofaraw is perhaps from Spanish fanfarrón, "a braggart."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 6:46 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Thursday January 12, 2006


renascent \rih-NAS-uhnt, adjective:
Springing or rising again into being; showing renewed vigor.

Their goal: to give voters in the June presidential elections a realistic choice between the rough-and-tumble reforms of President Boris Yeltsin and the Soviet-era nostalgia of Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the renascent Russian Communist Party.
--James O. Jackson, "Can Opposites Attract?" Time, May 13, 1996

Where are the new ideas upon which a renascent Toryism can build?
--David Aaronovitch, "There's no setting for Hague's Tories at the nation's kitchen table," Independent, March 11, 1999

Rabbinical students saw themselves at the center of a renascent American Judaism, pioneers of a nationwide -- no, worldwide -- Jewish faith rooted in the best of the past and vigorous with contemporary innovations.
--Chaim Potok, "Legitimate Voyeurism," Forward, November 4, 1994

Heading the pack of institutional investors were dedicated "emerging-market funds", set up specifically to reap high returns in renascent stock and bond markets.
--"The miracle unmasked," The Economist, December 9, 1995


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Renascent comes from Latin renascens, present participle of renasci, "to be born again," from re-, "again" + nasci, "to be born."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, January 13, 2006 - 6:46 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
WORD OF THE DAY Friday, January 13, 2006


coeval \koh-EE-vuhl, adjective:
Of the same age; originating or existing during the same period of time -- usually followed by 'with'.

noun:
One of the same age; a contemporary.

According to John Paul, this longing for transcendent truth is coeval with human existence: All men and women "shape a comprehensive vision and an answer to the question of life's meaning."
--"Culture, et cetera," Washington Times, October 6, 2000

Coeval with human speech and found among all peoples, poetry appeals to our sense of wonder, to our unending quest for answers to the timeless questions of who we are and why we are.
--Mark Mathabane, "A Poet Can Lead Us Toward Change," Newsday, January 20, 1993

Unhappily, however, the writers speak almost wholly to those who already regard Lewis as not just the coeval but the equal of T. S. Eliot, Joyce and Pound.
--Julian Symons, "Prophecy and Dishonor," New York Times, February 10, 1985

The 1,500 years of [Barcelona's] existence had produced only five names that came easily to mind: the cellist Pau Casals, the artist Joan Miró and his somewhat tarnished coeval Salvador Dali, both of whom were still very much alive, and the dead architect Antoni Gaudí.
--Nicholas Shrady, "Glorious in Its Very Stones," New York Times, March 15, 1992


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Coeval comes from Medieval Latin coaevus, from Latin co- + aevum, "a period of time, lifetime."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Sunday, January 15, 2006 - 4:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Sunday, January 15, 2006

susurration \soo-suh-RAY-shun, noun:
A whispering sound; a soft murmur.

. . . the soft susurration of the wind through a stand of whistling thorn.
--Ann Jones, "Kenya on horseback," Town & Country, August 1, 1994

Across the road I can make out the grassy park that runs along the sand and hear, in the distance, the steady susurration of the Atlantic Ocean.
--Michael Dirda, "Excursions," Washington Post, January 2, 2000

There was the predictable noise of offence being taken on the Conservative side of the House. But it was low and muted, a mild susurration in the backwoods rather than an outraged gust of anger.
--Andrew Marr, "Making a prime minister of the President," Independent, March 30, 1994


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Susurration is from Late Latin susurratio, from Latin susurrare, "to whisper, to mutter," from susurrus, "a whispering, a muttering."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, January 20, 2006 - 5:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Friday January 20, 2006


susurration \soo-suh-RAY-shun, noun:
A whispering sound; a soft murmur.

. . . the soft susurration of the wind through a stand of whistling thorn.
--Ann Jones, "Kenya on horseback," Town & Country, August 1, 1994

Across the road I can make out the grassy park that runs along the sand and hear, in the distance, the steady susurration of the Atlantic Ocean.
--Michael Dirda, "Excursions," Washington Post, January 2, 2000

There was the predictable noise of offence being taken on the Conservative side of the House. But it was low and muted, a mild susurration in the backwoods rather than an outraged gust of anger.
--Andrew Marr, "Making a prime minister of the President," Independent, March 30, 1994


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Susurration is from Late Latin susurratio, from Latin susurrare, "to whisper, to mutter," from susurrus, "a whispering, a muttering."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 9:27 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 25, 2006


rodomontade \rod-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-; -TAHD, noun:
Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.

These are rejoinders born out of a need to deflate a balloon filled with what others view as pomposity or rodomontade.
--Corey Mesler, "Dispatch #1: Buying the Bookstore (The Early Days)," ForeWord, August 2000

The very absurdity of some of his later claims (inventors of jazz, originators of swing) . . . has made him an easy target in a way far beyond anything generated by that other (and in some ways quite similar) master of rodomontade, Jelly Roll Morton.
--Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords

. . . the me-me-me rodomontade of macho rap [music].
--Nicholas Barber, "In the very bleak midwinter," Independent, January 7, 1996

[B]ut what he said -- that if any official came to his house to requisition his pistol, he'd better shoot straight -- was more rodomontade than a call to arms or hatred.
--William F. Buckley, Jr., "What does Clinton have in mind?" National Review, May 29, 1995


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Rodomontade comes from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, a great yet boastful warrior king in Italian epics of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At root the name means "roller-away of mountains," from the Italian dialect rodare, "to roll away" (from Latin rota, "wheel") + Italian monte, "mountain" (from Latin mons).

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, January 27, 2006 - 4:55 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day Friday, January 27, 2006


risible \RIZ-uh-buhl, adjective:
1. Capable of laughing; disposed to laugh.
2. Exciting or provoking laughter; worthy of laughter; laughable; amusing.
3. Relating to, connected with, or used in laughter; as, "risible muscles."

Before long, I began to read aloud with my father, chanting the strange and wondrous rivers -- Shenandoah, Rappahannock, Chickahominy -- and wrapping my tongue around the risible names of rebel generals: Braxton Bragg, Jubal Early, John Sappington Marmaduke, William "Extra Billy" Smith, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.
-- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

All twelve selected are thoughtful, small and funny in both senses of the word: odd and risible.
-- Stefan Kanfer, "Of Cats, Myths and Pizza," Time, December 11, 1989

But Lionel . . . is not a risible character, even though he is often called "freakshow" and "crazyman."
-- Adam Mazmanian, "Postmodern PI," Washington Post, November 7, 1999


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Risible comes from Late Latin risibilis, from the past participle of Latin ridere, "to laugh, to laugh at." The noun form is risibility

Laralyn
Member

08-04-2005

Friday, January 27, 2006 - 5:17 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Laralyn a private message Print Post    
\ ROTFLOL... Risible....just toooo funny.

I really like that word...cannot wait to use it in a sentence to one of my sons...they are gonna say what the and look at me askance...thanks

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - 6:59 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Tuesday January 31, 2006


consanguineous \kon-san(g)-GWIN-ee-us, adjective:
Of the same blood; related by birth; descended from the same parent or ancestor.

These Neolithic people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life and are widely supposed to have had consanguineous clans as their basic social grouping.
-- Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun

Am not I consanguineous? am I not of her blood?
-- William Shakespeare, Twelfth-Night

Among other preliminary activities, the prospective groom's party formally inquires as to the girl's clan-name; this is a ritualization of the taboo on consanguineous marriage.
-- Mark Laurent Asselin, "The Lu-school reading of 'Guanju' as preserved in an eastern Han fu," Journal of the American Oriental Society, July 1, 1997

Nowhere, not even in Holland, where the correspondence between the real aspects and the little polished canvases is so constant and so exquisite, do art and life seem so interfused and, as it were, so consanguineous.
-- "Noted with Pleasure," New York Times, October 6, 1991


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Consanguineous is from Latin consanguineus, from com-, con-, "with, together" + sanguineus, from sanguis, sanguin-, "blood." The noun form is consanguinity, "relationship by blood, or close relation or connection."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - 6:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for February 1, 2006



tyro \TY-roh, noun:
A beginner in learning; a novice.

It's difficult to imagine a tyro publishing a book on medical procedures or economic theory.
-- Philip Zaleski, "God Help the Spiritual Writer," New York Times, January 10, 1999

He was a sensitive, fine soul alert to the pleasures of being green, a tyro, an amateur, unwilling to close his mind before it had been tempted.
-- Paul West, Sporting With Amaryllis

And, though we were mere tyros, beginners, utterly insignificant, he was invariably as kind and considerate and thoughtful, and as lavish in the gift of his time, as though he had nothing else to do.
-- Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 03, 2006 - 7:16 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for fEB. 3, 2006

tenebrous \TEN-uh-bruhs, adjective:
Dark; gloomy.

He found the Earl, who is eight feet tall and has the family trait of a Cyclops eye, standing stock still, dressed from head to foot in deepest black, in one of the most tenebrous groves in all his haunted domains.
-- Peter Simple, "At Mountwarlock," Daily Telegraph, March 20, 1998

We are so used to the tenebrous atmosphere that can be created in indoor theatres that it's a shock to realise that this murkiest of tragedies first saw the literal light of day at the Globe theatre.
-- Paul Taylor, "Cool, calm, disconnected," Independent, June 7, 2001

And lurking behind our every move is the knowledge of our own mortality. It gives life its edgy disquiet, its tenebrous underside.
-- Douglas Kennedy, "Sudden death," Independent, June 3, 1999


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Tenebrous derives from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae, "darkness."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for tenebrous

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 6:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Tuesday February 7, 2006


tendentious \ten-DEN-shuhs, adjective:
Marked by a strong tendency in favor of a particular point of view.

Most writing about Wagner has been like political pamphleteering--tendentious, one-sided and full of revisionist zeal.
-- Erich Leinsdorf, "The Cruel Face of Genius," New York Times, May 15, 1988

Since I believe all novels are political, I certainly believe that it is possible for a novelist to admix deliberate political purpose and aesthetics, although there is certainly the danger, in the process, of making art that is tendentious . . . and therefore not terribly artistically interesting.
-- Rick Moody, "quoted in Politics and the Novel: A Symposium," Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2000

All types of social disagreements seem to be routed almost inexorably into the tendentious jargon and intellectually impoverished categories of legal reasoning, until everyone from Alan Dershowitz to the guy fixing your radiator insists on giving you his opinion about fundamental rights, or presumptions of innocence, or probable cause, or--God help us--"what the Constitution requires."
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania: The Madness of American Law


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Tendentious comes from Medieval Latin tendentia, from Latin tendens, tendent-, present participle of tendere, "to stretch, to direct one's course to, to be inclined." It is related to tendency.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 10, 2006 - 7:19 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
in honor of our juju

{


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


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Juju is of West African origin, akin to Hausa djudju, fetish, evil spirit.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 5:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day

embonpoint \ahn-bohn-PWAN, noun:
Plumpness of person; stoutness.

With his embonpoint, Mr Soames appears to be wearing a quadruple-breasted suit.
-- Simon Hoggart, "Roll up, roll up, to explore the Soames Zone," The Guardian, February 1, 2000

His embonpoint expands by the day and his eyes are buried in the fat of his cheeks.
-- Quoted in Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Revolution and Renunciation by Nicholas Boyle


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Embonpoint is from French, literally "in good condition" (en, "in" + bon, "good" + point, "situation, condition").

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 24, 2006 - 5:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Friday February 24, 2006


munificent \myoo-NIF-i-suhnt, adjective:
Very liberal in giving or bestowing; very generous; lavish.

Another munificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable.
-- George Eliot, Letters

The fleeting movement of air inside the black tunnel before and after the passage of a train made it a source of refreshment more munificent than a roaring window air conditioner.
-- Norma Field, From My Grandmother's Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo

John Sr.'s paycheck, while hardly munificent, was steady, and frugality did the rest.
-- Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind


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Munificent is from Latin munificus, "generous, bountiful," from munus, "gift." The quality of being munificent is munificence.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Saturday, February 25, 2006 - 8:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Saturday February 25, 2006


cogent \KOH-juhnt, adjective:
Having the power to compel conviction; appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.

One woman, Adrian Pomerantz, was so intelligent that the professors always lit up when Adrian spoke; her eloquent, cogent analyses forced them not to be lazy, not to repeat themselves.
-- Meg Wolitzer, Surrender, Dorothy

I suggested to the student that she take her refusal as the theme of her term paper and ponder it as carefully as possible. A few weeks later she submitted one of the most cogent, intelligent papers I have read.
-- Denis Donoghue, The Practice of Reading


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Cogent derives from Latin cogere, "to drive together, to force," from co-, "with, together" + agere, "to drive."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, February 27, 2006 - 4:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day Monday, February 27, 2006


small beer \small beer, noun:
1. Weak beer.
2. Insignificant matters; something of little importance.

adjective:
1. Unimportant; trivial.

We dined early upon stale bread and old mutton with small beer.
-- Ferdinand Mount,, Jem (and Sam)

I was not born for this kind of small beer, says Joan the wife of the colonial governor, who imagines leading armies or "droves of inflamed poets."
-- Nancy Willard, "The Nameless Women of the World," New York Times, December 18, 1988

Call me a geek, but for biologists, marvels like the parasitic flatworm are on tap every day, making the reveries of Hollywood seem like small beer.
-- Jerry A. Coyne, "The Truth Is Way Out There," New York Times, October 10, 1999


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Small beer is beer of only slight alcoholic strength; the other senses are derivative.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, March 01, 2006 - 6:39 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day

congeries \KON-juh-reez, noun:
A collection; an aggregation.

As the great French historian Fernand Braudel pointed out in his last major work, The Identity of France (1986), it was the railroad that made France into one nation and one culture. It had previously been a congeries of self-contained regions, held together only politically.
-- Peter F. Drucker, "Beyond the Information Revolution," Atlantic Monthly, October 1999

William Rothenstein described the Academie as a "congeries of studios crowded with students, the walls thick with palette scrapings, hot, airless and extremely noisy."
-- Jeffrey Meyers, Bogart: A Life in Hollywood

More important, he doesn't tell us that the Kennedy Administration was a very uneasy congeries of vastly differing types of Democrats with conflicting foreign-policy agendas.
-- James C. Thomson Jr., "Whose Side Were They On? review of Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972, by Gordon H. Chang," New York Times, July 29, 1990


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Congeries is from Latin congeries, "a heap, a mass," from congerere, "to carry together, to bring together, to collect," from com-, "with, together" + gerere, "to carry." It is related to congest, "to overfill or overcrowd," which derives from the past participle of congerere.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, March 06, 2006 - 5:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Monday March 6, 2006


toothsome \TOOTH-suhm, adjective:
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.

Fleming was impressed not only by its taste but by its astonishing durability: Caudle's apple, after ten months in storage, was still toothsome and fragrant.
-- David Guterson, "The Kingdom of Apples," Harper's Magazine, October 1999

Their topic, naturally: business niches that offer toothsome opportunities and comparatively limited competition.
-- Dick Youngblood, "Business niches can be opportunities," Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 2, 2003

The myth, which Kournikova herself often takes great measures to perpetuate, is that she is an imposter on the WTA Tour, a toothsome starlet who simply uses the tennis court as a catwalk.
-- Jon Wertheim, "Any day now for Anna," Sports Illustrated, April 14, 2000


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Toothsome is derived from tooth + -some.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 4:36 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for March 8, 2006


ratiocination \rash-ee-ah-suh-NAY-shun; rash-ee-oh-, noun:
The process of reasoning.

For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot.
-- "People," Time, October 26, 1987

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes proved so popular that it became a given that mystery tales should include a sleuth who investigates a murder or other crime, and by virtue of intelligence, ratiocination and perseverance solves a case that initially seemed unsolvable.
-- Maxim Jakubowski, "A beginner's guide to crime fiction," The Guardian, October 29, 1999

There is no question that Joyce and Nabokov. . . brilliantly explored and expanded the limits of language and the structure of novels, yet both were led irresistibly and obsessively to cap their careers with those cold and lifeless masterpieces, "Finnegans Wake" and "Ada," more to be deciphered than read by a handful of scholars whose pleasure is strictly ratiocination.
-- "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love 'Barry Lyndon'," New York Times, January 11, 1976


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Ratiocination is from Latin rationcinatio, from ratiocinari, "to compute, to calculate, to reason," from ratio, "reckoning, calculation, reason," from reri, "to reckon, to think."