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Word a day

The TVClubHouse: General Discussion ARCHIVES: 2006 Mar. ~ 2006 May: Word a day users admin

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Archive through March 08, 2006Nancy25 03-08-06  4:36 pm
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Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, March 10, 2006 - 4:46 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Friday March 10, 2006



ululate \UL-yuh-layt; YOOL-, intransitive:
To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals.

He had often dreamed of his grieving family visiting his grave, ululating as only the relatives of martyrs may.
-- Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran

She wanted to be on the tarmac, to ululate and raise her hands to the heavens.
-- Deborah Sontag, "Palestinian Airport Opens to Jubilation," New York Times, November 25, 1998

She used harrowing, penetrating nasal tones and a rasp that approached Janis Joplin's double-stops; she made notes break and ululate.
-- Jon Pareles, "On the Third Day There Was Whooping and There Was Moshing," New York Times, August 18, 1998


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Ululate derives from Latin ululare, to howl, to yell, ultimately of imitative origin. The noun form is ululation; the adjective form is ululant.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, March 21, 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

March 21, 2006

aubade \oh-BAHD, noun:

A song or poem greeting the dawn; also, a composition suggestive of morning.

He was usually still awake when the birds began to warble their aubade.
-- Christopher Buckley, "What was Robert Benchley?," National Review, June 16, 1997

And there he lingered till the crowing ...
Sang his aubade with lusty voice and clear.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emma and Eginhard


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Aubade comes from the French, from aube, dawn + the noun suffix -ade: aube ultimately derives from Latin albus, white, pale, as in "alba lux," the "pale light" of dawn.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 - 4:58 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Wednesday March 29, 2006


}}}
invidious \in-VID-ee-uhs, adjective:
1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.
2. Containing or implying a slight.
3. Envious.

But to the human hordes of Amorites -- Semitic nomads wandering the mountains and deserts just beyond the pale of Sumer -- the tiered and clustered cities, strung out along the green banks of the meandering Euphrates like a giant's necklace of polished stone, seemed shining things, each surmounted by a wondrous temple and ziggurat dedicated to the city's god-protector, each city noted for some specialty -- all invidious reminders of what the nomads did not possess.
-- Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews

In his experience people were seldom happier for having learned what they were missing, and all Europe had done for his wife was encourage her natural inclination toward bitter and invidious comparison.
-- Richard Russo, Empire Falls

The lover's obsessiveness may also take the form of invidious comparisons between himself, or herself, and the rival.
-- Ethel S. Person, "Love Triangles," The Atlantic, February 1988

For five decades, Indian liberals, and some from Europe and America, have been shaming the Western world with its commercialism, making invidious comparisons with Indian spirituality.
-- Leland Hazard, "Strong Medicine for India," The Atlantic, December 1965


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Invidious is from Latin invidiosus, "envious, hateful, causing hate or ill-feeling," from invidia, "envy," from invidere, "to look upon with the evil eye, to look maliciously upon, to envy," from in-, "upon" + videre, "to look at, to see."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Thursday, March 30, 2006 - 4:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Thursday, March 30, 2006


palimpsest \PAL-imp-sest, noun:

1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.
2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface.

The manuscript is a palimpsest consisting of vellum leaves from which the "fluent and assured script" of the original Archimedes text and 55 diagrams had been washed or scraped off so that the surface could be used for new writings.
-- Roger Highfield, "Eureka! Archimedes text is to be sold at auction", Daily Telegraph, October 3, 1998

Each is a palimpsest, one improvisation partly burying another but leaving hints of it behind.
-- Robert Hughes, "Delight for Its Own Sake", Time, January 22, 1996

It's a mysterious many-layered palimpsest of a metropolis where generations of natives and visitors have left their mark, from Boadicea and the Romans, through the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan era to the present.
-- Philip French, "Jack the knife", The Observer, February 10, 2002


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Palimpsest is from Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsestos, "scraped or rubbed again," from palin, "again" + psen, "to rub (away)."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, March 31, 2006 - 6:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Friday March 31, 2006


edacious \i-DAY-shus, adjective:
Given to eating; voracious; devouring.

Swallowed in the depths of edacious Time.
-- Thomas Carlyle

[S]omething that... will dismay edacious lips.
-- "The late showman", Independent, August 21, 1999

Our... high-toned irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered constitutions.
-- Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm


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Edacious is from Latin edax, edac-, gluttonous, consuming, from edo, edere, to eat.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, April 03, 2006 - 6:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day Monday, April 3, 2006


autochthonous \aw-TOK-thuh-nuhs, adjective:
1. Aboriginal; indigenous; native.
2. Formed or originating in the place where found.

For cultures are not monoliths. They are fragmentary, patchworks of autochthonous and foreign elements.
-- Anthony Pagden, "Culture Wars", The New Republic, November 16, 1998

I thought of the present-day Arcadians, autochthonous, sprung from the very earth on which they live, who with every draught from a stream drink up millennia of history and legend.
-- Zachary Taylor, "Hot Land, Cold Water", The Atlantic, June 17, 1998


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Autochthonous derives from Greek autochthon, "of or from the earth or land itself," from auto-, "self" + chthon, "earth." One that is autochthonous is an autochthon.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, April 05, 2006 - 4:39 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
The Word of the Day for April 5 is:

orchidaceous • \or-kuh-DAY-shus\ • adjective
1 : of, relating to, or resembling the orchids
*2 : showy, ostentatious

Example sentence:
"There's no clutter; no outlandish designer flatware or china; no orchidaceous, wordy wine lists. . . ." (James Villas, Town and Country Monthly, March 1998)

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

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


panoply \PAN-uh-plee, noun:
1. A splendid or impressive array.
2. Ceremonial attire.
3. A full suit of armor; a complete defense or covering.

Every step taken to that end which appeases the obsolete hatreds and vanished oppressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe, which encourages nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply, is good in itself.
-- Winston Churchill, quoted in This Blessed Plot, by Hugo Young

The beige plastic bedpan that had come home from the hospital with him after his deviated-septum operation . . . now held ail his razors and combs and the panoply of gleaming instruments he employed to trim the hair that grew from the various features of his face.
-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth

To the east, out over the Ocean, the winter sky is a brilliant panoply of stars and comets, beckoning to adventurers, wise and foolish alike, who seek to divine its mysteries.
-- Ben Green, Before His Time

Labor was hard pressed to hold the line against erosion of its hard-won social wage: the panoply of government-paid benefits such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, Medicare, and Social Security.
-- Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old


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Panoply is from Greek panoplia, "a full suit of armor," from pan, "all" + hoplia, "arms, armor," plural of hoplon, "implement, weapon."

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, April 17, 2006 - 4:07 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Monday April 17, 2006
choler \KOLL-ur; KOLE-ur, noun:
Irritation of the passions; anger; wrath.

And at last he seems to have found his proper subject: one that genuinely engages his intellect, truly arouses his characteristic choler and fills him with zest.
-- "Black Humor': Could Be Funnier", New York Times, January 12, 1998

I found my choler rising.
-- Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments... in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison


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Choler is from Latin cholera, a bilious disease, from Greek kholera, from khole, bile.

Nancy
Member

08-01-2000

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - 4:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Nancy a private message Print Post    
Word of the Day for Wednesday April 26, 2006


equipoise \EE-kwuh-poiz; EK-wuh-, noun:



1. A state of being equally balanced; equilibrium; -- as of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
2. Counterbalance.

What matters is the poetry, and the truest readings of it "are those which are sensitive to the strangeness of Marvell's genius: its delicate equipoise, held between the sensual and the abstract, its refusal to treat experience too tidily, the uncanny tremor of implication that makes the poems' lucid surfaces shimmer with a sense of something undefined and undefinable just beneath."
-- James A. Winn, "Tremors of Implication", New York Times, July 9, 2000

I cannot see how the unequal representation which is given to masses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth.
-- Edmund Burke, "Reflections on The Revolution In France"

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Haunted Houses"