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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2008 14:41:37 GMT -5
You don't choose to be a foozler. If the shoe fits, you stick it on your ear.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2008 10:25:05 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for February 6 is:
haplology \hap-LAH-luh-jee\ noun : contraction of a word by omission of one or more similar sounds or syllables
Example sentence: Johnny's teacher, determined to stomp out any instances of haplology in her classroom, corrected him every time he pronounced "probably" as "problee."
Did you know? Try to say "pierced-ear earrings" three times fast. That exercise will demonstrate why haplology happens: sometimes it's just easier to drop a syllable and leave yourself with something that's easier to say (such as "pierced earrings"). American philologist Maurice Bloomfield recognized the tendency to drop one of a pair of similar syllables a little over a hundred years ago. He has been credited with joining the combining form "hapl-" or "haplo-" (meaning "single") with "-logy" (meaning "oral or written expression") to create "haplology" as a name for the phenomenon. Haplology is quite common in English, and often the contracted forms it generates spread into the written language. In fact, haplology played a role in naming the nation that is the cradle of English: "England" was condensed via haplology from "Engla land."
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Post by Wiswell on Feb 6, 2008 10:50:25 GMT -5
Webster should have picked "bloviate." Example sentence: "MSNBC anchors bloviated all night long about the primary results, providing little new information."
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2008 14:37:46 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for February 10 is:
truckle \TRUCK-ul\ verb : to act in a subservient manner : submit
Example sentence: Jumana decided that she had had enough of her older sister's demands and vowed not to truckle to her anymore.
Did you know? When "truckle" was first used in English in the 15th century, it meant "small wheel" or "pulley." Such small wheels were often attached to the underside of low beds, to allow them to be easily moved under high beds for storage. These beds came to be known as "truckle beds" (or "trundle beds"), and a verb "truckle" -- meaning "to sleep in a truckle bed" -- came into being. By the 17th century, the fact that truckle beds were pushed under larger standard beds had inspired a figurative sense of "truckle": "to yield to the wishes of another" or "to bend obsequiously." The initial verb meaning became obsolete; the newer sense is fairly rare but is still in use.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 13, 2008 8:53:44 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for March 13 is:
distaff \DISS-taff\ adjective 1 a : related through a mother b : inherited or derived from the female parent *2 : female
Example sentence: The Solheim Cup pits America's best distaff golfers against the top European women.
Did you know? A distaff was originally a short staff that held a bundle of fibers -- of flax or wool, for example -- ready to be spun into yarn or thread. Since spinning was a basic daily task customarily done by women, the distaff came to be the symbol for the work or domain of women. This symbolic use of the noun "distaff" dates back to the time of Chaucer and is found in several works by Shakespeare. Eventually "distaff" came to be used for the female branch of a family and then as an adjective, as in "the distaff side of the family."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2008 8:53:39 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for June 4 is:
tawdry \TAW-dree\ adjective : cheap and gaudy in appearance or quality; also : ignoble
Example sentence: Tom and Pam found themselves in an unfamiliar section of the city, walking by tawdry storefronts and shady bars.
Did you know? In the 7th century, Etheldreda, the queen of Northumbria, renounced her husband and her royal position for the veil of a nun. She was renowned for her saintliness and is traditionally said to have died of a swelling in her throat, which she took as a judgment upon her fondness for wearing necklaces in her youth. Her shrine became a principal site of pilgrimage in England. An annual fair was held in her honor on October 17th, and her name became simplified to St. Audrey. At these fairs various kinds of cheap knickknacks were sold, along with a type of necklace called "St. Audrey's lace," which by the 17th century had become altered to "tawdry lace." Eventually, "tawdry" came to be used to describe anything cheap and gaudy that might be found at these fairs or anywhere else.
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Post by pineapple on Jun 4, 2008 16:50:57 GMT -5
Congrats to Carla. Upper Mickiwickwa Community College is a fine institution. Yeh, she rejected scholarship from Penn St.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2008 9:31:35 GMT -5
This Procrusty sounds like a real jerk.
The Word of the Day for June 24 is:
procrustean \pruh-KRUSS-tee-un\ adjective 1 : of, relating to, or typical of Procrustes *2 : marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances
Example sentence: The company abandoned its procrustean scheduling policy and began allowing single mothers and other employees to work more flexible hours.
Did you know? Procrustes was one of many villains defeated by the Greek hero Theseus. According to Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who killed his victims in a most cruel and unusual way. He made them lie on an iron bed and would force them to fit the bed by cutting off the parts that hung off the ends or by stretching those people who were too short. Something "Procrustean," therefore, takes no account of individual differences but cruelly and mercilessly makes everything the same. And a "procrustean bed" is a scheme or pattern into which someone or something is arbitrarily forced.
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Post by Phaedrus on Jun 24, 2008 9:34:10 GMT -5
I know a few coaches like that.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2008 12:36:41 GMT -5
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
The Word of the Day for July 8 is:
wahine \wah-HEE-nee\ noun 1 : a Polynesian woman *2 : a female surfer
Example sentence: "Make some serious waves this summer by learning to surf! Ridin' the swells is fab exercise and, well, what's cooler than a wahine girl?" (Girls' Life, June 2005)
Did you know? The word "wahine" came into English in the late 18th century from Maori, the language of a Polynesian people native to New Zealand; it was originally used for a Maori woman, especially a wife. The word is also used for a woman in Hawaiian and Tahitian, though spelled "vahine" in the latter. Enormous waves, which are perfect for surfing, are an attraction of the Polynesian islands. As the surfing culture solidified in the mid-20th century, and as more and more girls and women grabbed their boards, "wahine" took on the new meaning of "female surfer."
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2008 9:31:22 GMT -5
This, opposed to "Bill's Trowel", good for spreading ... well ... whatever.
The Word of the Day for July 15 is:
Occam's razor \AH-kumz-RAY-zer\ noun : a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities
Example sentence: Invoking Occam's razor, Eli concluded that the sill was wet because someone had left the window open during the storm.
Did you know? William of Occam (also spelled "Ockham") didn't invent the rule associated with his name. Others had espoused the "keep it simple" concept before that 14th-century philosopher and theologian embraced it, but no one wielded the principle (also known as the "law of parsimony") as relentlessly as he did. He used it to counter what he considered the fuzzy logic of his theological contemporaries, and his applications of it inspired 19th-century Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton to link "Occam" with the idea of cutting away extraneous material, giving us the modern name for the principle.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2008 9:09:17 GMT -5
bogart \BOH-gart\ verb 1 : bully, intimidate *2 : to use or consume without sharing
Example sentence: Three of the older girls bogarted the ice cream, ignoring the other campers' pleas for them to share.
Did you know? The legendary film actor Humphrey Bogart was known for playing a range of tough characters in a series of films throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The African Queen. The men he portrayed often possessed a cool, hardened exterior that occasionally let forth a suggestion of romantic or idealistic sentimentality. Bogart also had a unique method of smoking cigarettes in these pictures -- letting the butt dangle from his mouth without removing it until it was almost entirely consumed. It is believed that this habit inspired the current meaning of "bogart," which was once limited to the phrase "Don't bogart that joint [marijuana cigarette]," as popularized by a song on the soundtrack to the film Easy Rider, among other things. Today "bogart" can be applied to hogging almost anything.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2008 9:41:38 GMT -5
The Word of the Day for August 17 is:
spavined \SPAV-ind\ adjective 1 : affected with spavin *2 : old and decrepit : over-the-hill
Example sentence: There is no point in expecting the spavined Arts Council to do more than sponsor the same stale events and shopworn fund-raisers.
Did you know? "His horse [is] ... troubled with the lampas, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins... ." Petruchio's poor, decrepit horse in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is beset by just about every known equine malady, including a kind of swelling in the mouth (lampas), skin lesions (fashions), tumors on his fetlocks (windgalls), and bony enlargements on his hocks (spavins). The spavins alone can be enough to render a horse lame and useless. In the 17th century, "spavined" horses brought to mind other things that are obsolete, out-of-date, or long past their prime, and we began using the adjective figuratively. "Spavined" still serves a purpose, despite its age. It originated in Middle English as "spaveyned" and can be traced to the Middle French word for "spavin," which was "espavain."
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Post by cruncher on Aug 18, 2008 9:46:20 GMT -5
You don't choose to be a foozler. If the shoe fits, you stick it on your ear. That might explain your ear popping problem.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2008 8:52:51 GMT -5
he Word of the Day for September 4 is:
haptic \HAP-tik\ adjective *1 : relating to or based on the sense of touch 2 : characterized by a predilection for the sense of touch
Example sentence: Katy could tell one kind of yarn from another purely by haptic clues.
Did you know? "Haptic" (from the Greek "haptesthai," meaning "to touch") entered English in the late 19th century as a medical synonym for "tactile." By the middle of the 20th century, it had developed a psychological sense, describing individuals whose perception supposedly depended primarily on touch rather than sight. Although almost no one today divides humans into "haptic" and "visual" personalities, English retains the broadened psychological sense of "haptic" as well as the older "tactile" sense.
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