Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 24, 2004 9:56:55 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for May 24 is:
taradiddle \tair-uh-DIH-dul\ noun 1 : fib *2 : pretentious nonsense
Example sentence: The story was criticized by business writer Don Larson as "the worst collection of falsehoods, fabrications, misrepresentations, deceptions and just plain old-fashioned taradiddle that I have ever read."
Did you know? The true origin of "taradiddle" is unknown, but that doesn't mean you won't encounter a lot of balderdash about its history. Some folks try to connect it to the verb "diddle" (meaning "to cheat"), but that hasn't been proven and may turn out to be poppycock. You may hear some tommyrot about it coming from the Old English verb "didrian," which meant "to deceive," but that couldn't be true unless "didrian" was somehow suddenly revived after eight or nine centuries of disuse. No one even knows when "taradiddle" was first used. It must have been long before it showed up in a 1796 dictionary of colloquial speech (where it was defined as a synonym of "fib"), but if we claimed we knew who said it first, we'd be dishing out pure applesauce.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 26, 2004 10:35:50 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for May 25 WAS:
riparian \ruh-PAIR-ee-un\ adjective : relating to or living on the bank of a natural watercourse or sometimes of a lake or tidewater
Example sentence: Residents of the riparian community learned to brace themselves for a flood whenever the river was close to cresting its banks.
Did you know? "Riparian" came to English from the same source that gave us "river" -- the Latin "riparius," a noun deriving from "ripa," meaning "bank" or "shore." First appearing in English in the 19th century, "riparian" can apply to things that occur alongside a river (such as riparian towns, trees, etc.) as well as things that are found within it (riparian rocks, fish, etc.). Some river communities have laws called "riparian rights," referring to the rights of those owning land along a river to have access to the waterway. Note the distinction of this word from "littoral," which usually refers to things that occur along the shore of a sea or ocean.
|
|
|
Post by FloridaPerson on May 26, 2004 13:08:50 GMT -5
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 26, 2004 13:30:39 GMT -5
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 28, 2004 9:16:14 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for May 28 is:
kibosh \KYE-bahsh\ noun : something that serves as a check or stop
Example sentence: "She was all for turning them in to the authorities and you put the kibosh on that." (Mickey Spillane, _The Big Kill_)
Did you know? For over a century "kibosh" has taxed the ingenuity of etymologists. It was prominent enough in lower-class London speech to attract the attention of Charles Dickens, who used it in 1836 in an early sketch, but little else is certain. Claims were once made that it was Yiddish, despite the absence of a plausible Yiddish source. Another hypothesis points to Irish "caidhp bhais," literally, "coif (or cap) of death," explained as headgear a judge put on when pronouncing a death sentence, or as a covering pulled over the face of a corpse when a coffin was closed. But evidence for any metaphorical use of this phrase in Irish is lacking, and "kibosh" is not recorded in English as spoken in Ireland until decades after Dickens' use.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2004 5:09:27 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for June 4 is:
braggadocio \brag-uh-DOH-see-oh\ noun *1 : a loud arrogant boaster 2 a : empty boasting b : arrogant pretension : cockiness
Example sentence: In the novel, the murderer was a braggadocio, smugly sure of his own brilliance, but he ultimately gave himself away by confessing his crime within earshot of the police inspector.
What an idiot!
Did you know? Though Braggadocio is not as well-known as other fictional characters like Pollyanna, the Grinch, or Scrooge, in lexicography he holds a special place next to them as one of the many characters whose name has become an established word in English. The English poet Edmund Spenser originally created Braggadocio as a personification of boasting in his epic poem _The Faerie Queene_. As early as 1594, about four years after the poem was published, English speakers began using the name as a general term for any blustering blowhard.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
Anybody else read _The Faerie Queene_? As epic poems go, it's a page turner.
Not really.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2004 8:47:06 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for June 6 is:
pusillanimous \pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muss\ adjective : lacking courage and resolution : marked by contemptible timidity
Example sentence: The senator criticized his opponent in the election as being feeble, pusillanimous, and unwilling to fight for his beliefs.
Did you know? Do you know someone who has a small, weak spirit, someone whose reserve of inner strength is too small to draw from in times of danger and adversity? If so, you'll find "pusillanimous" to be the perfect descriptor for that person. The Latin roots of this derisive adjective are "pusillus," meaning "very small" (and related to "pusus," meaning "boy") and "animus," which means "spirit" and is the ancestor to many words in our language, including "animal" and "animate." "Pusillanimous" first appeared in English in the 16th century, but it gained prominence in the 1970s when Vice President Spiro Agnew famously accused his ideological rivals of "pusillanimous %*$#footing."
|
|
|
Post by vierra on Jun 9, 2004 18:27:38 GMT -5
No word of the day for several days? I think you should resume with "denouement." The key is in the pronunciation. The dumbass Kauffman brother in "Adaptation" pronounced it:
dee-now-ee-ment
Anyway, a favorite term in literary circles.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2004 19:32:12 GMT -5
Just noticed that VT translated Spiro as saying "pusillanimous girl thingyfooting." Girl thingy?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2004 19:34:14 GMT -5
day-new-mwah
Deux ex machina. Like Kobe making a 3 when all is lost. What a lousy denouement!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2004 19:39:40 GMT -5
I copied this AM. But I forgot to paste. Doofishness is setting in.
The Word of the Day for June 9 is:
propinquity • \pruh-PING-kwuh-tee\ • noun 1 : nearness of blood : kinship *2 : nearness in place or time : proximity
Example sentence: Jane said, "If it hadn't been for the library's propinquity to my family's home, I might not have become the avid reader I am today."
Did you know? "Propinquity" and its cousin "proximity" are related through the Latin root "prope," which means "near." That root gave rise to "proximus" (the parent of "proximity") and "propinquus" (an ancestor of "propinquity"). "Proximus" is the superlative of "prope" and thus means "nearest," whereas "propinquus" simply means "near" or "akin," but in English "propinquity" conveys a stronger sense of closeness than "proximity." (The latter usually suggests a sense of being in the vicinity of something.) The distinctions between the two words are subtle, however, and they are often used interchangeably. "Propinquity" is believed to be the older of the two words, first appearing in English in the 14th century; "proximity" followed a century later.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
|
|
|
Post by islandgirl on Jun 10, 2004 2:46:11 GMT -5
Just noticed that VT translated Spiro as saying "pusillanimous girl thingyfooting." Girl thingy? Until I saw this post blaming VT censorship for "pusillanimous girl thingyfooting", I thought that's what Spiro actually said. Lol! I was just staring at my monitor with my head tilted to the side. (I guess we can't use any other words for a kitten or refer to a former main character of the Sopranos who got whacked a few seasons ago.)
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2004 7:40:37 GMT -5
(I guess we can't use any other words for a kitten or refer to a former main character of the Sopranos who got whacked a few seasons ago.) Big Girlthingy? What was the story with him? I hear the whole dream sequence three episodes or so back made a lot more sense if you saw seasons 1-4. How come HBO doesn't rerun the shows anyhow? I finally coughed up the extra money so I could see "The Sopranos" and "Curb...". "Deadwood" has been good, too. Never did really watch "Sex in the City." It's like a whole other quality network for people with extra money... This Fall, CSTV will have to replace it. I'm not spending $20+ extra a month for TV. No way. No how.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2004 7:44:41 GMT -5
One of my faves:
The Word of the Day for June 10 is:
incipient • \in-SIP-ee-unt\ • adjective : beginning to come into being or to become apparent
Example sentence: A sudden increase in bickering and quarrels marked an incipient jealousy between the two stars of the television series.
Bonus sentence: Gorf's doofdom, once incipient, is now in full bloom, made manifest by sheer effort.
Did you know? A good starting point for any investigation of "incipient" is the Latin verb "incipere," which means "to begin." "Incipient" first emerged in English in a scientific text of 1669 that referred to "incipient putrefaction." Later came the genesis of two related nouns, "incipiency" and "incipience," both of which are synonymous with "beginning." "Incipere" also stands at the beginning of the words "inception" ("an act, process, or instance of beginning") and "incipit," a term that means literally "it begins" and which was used for the opening words of a medieval text. "Incipere" itself derives from another Latin verb, "capere," which means "to take" or "to seize."
|
|
|
Post by IdahoBoy on Jun 10, 2004 13:37:09 GMT -5
Big Girlthingy? What was the story with him? I hear the whole dream sequence three episodes or so back made a lot more sense if you saw seasons 1-4. How come HBO doesn't rerun the shows anyhow? Never did really watch "Sex in the City." Sex in the City will be played on TBS now. I'm sure after editing, though. You can buy the other series on DVD or VHS or rent them from big video stores.
|
|