GAME: Word of the Day (WOTD)

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:15 am

Word of the Day Thursday April 12, 2007

brio \BREE-oh\, noun: Enthusiastic vigor; vivacity; liveliness; spirit.

Though my judgment was no doubt affected by all the wine we'd consumed, I remember being elated by our performance that night: our inspired spur-of-the-moment dialogue, the actors fleshing out their roles with such brio.
-- Gail Godwin, Evensong

For him, life must be a party, a ball, an endless carnival. Each person must invent a role for himself and play it with brio.
-- Lydia Flem, Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women (translated by Catherine Temerson)

The Internet has always been home to plenty of unvarnished brio.
-- Timothy L. O'Brien, "Corporate Love Letters: Youstink.Com", New York Times, April 4, 1999

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Brio is from the Italian, ultimately of Celtic origin.

Post by **Ghost** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:37 am

Word of the Day Monday April 16, 2007

cavort \kuh-VORT\, intransitive verb: 1. To bound or prance about. 2. To have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner.

. . .Enkidu, who was seduced by gradual steps to embrace the refinements of civilization, only to regret on his deathbed what he had left behind: a free life cavorting with gazelles.
-- Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

But why struggle with a term paper on the elements of foreshadowing in Bleak House when I could be cavorting on the beach.
-- Dani Shapiro, Slow Motion

By 1900, Leo-Chico would have been thirteen years old, and just past his bar mitzvah, or old enough to know better than to cavort with street idlers and gamblers.
-- Simon Louvish, Monkey Business

The men spent the next few weeks there drinking beer, eating hibachi-grilled fish, and cavorting with the young ladies.
-- Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld

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Cavort is perhaps an alteration of curvet, "a light leap by a horse" (with the back arched or curved), from Italian corvetta, "a little curve," from Middle French courbette, from courber, "to curve," from Latin curvare, "to bend, to curve," from curvus, "curved, bent."

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:12 am

Word of the Day Tuesday April 17, 2007

efficacious \ef-ih-KAY-shuhs\, adjective: Possessing the quality of being effective; producing, or capable of producing, the effect intended; as, an efficacious law.

Lawyers make claims not because they believe them to be true, but because they believe them to be legally efficacious.
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania

Henri IV wrote to his son's nurse, Madame de Montglat, in 1607 insisting 'it is my wish and my command that he be whipped every time he is stubborn or misbehaves, knowing full well from personal experience that nothing in the world is as efficacious'.
-- Katharine MacDonogh, Reigning Cats and Dogs: A History of Pets at Court Since the Renaissance

Plagued by rats, the citizens of Hamelin desperately seek some efficacious method of pest control.
-- Francine Prose, review of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, as retold by Robert Holden, New York Times, August 16, 1998

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Efficacious is from Latin efficax, -acis, from efficere, "to effect, to bring about," from ex-, "out" + facere, "to do or make."

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 1:13 pm

I'm an efficacious cavorter.

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 4:53 pm

R/L is getting in way of the WOTD

Word of the Day Archive Wednesday April 18, 2007

bedaub \bih-DOB\, transitive verb: 1. To smudge over; to besmear or soil with anything thick and dirty. 2. To overdecorate; to ornament showily or excessively.

The patient's signature is less neat than usual, not only because of his agitated state but also, quite possibly, because the pen is so bedaubed with chocolate that it slips through his fingers.
-- Marcel Beyer, "The Karnau Tapes.", Grand Street, Fall 1997

Only their wagon keeps on rolling, empty, bedaubed with tears, under our windows.
-- Laszlo Darvasi and Ivan Sanders, "Stories of Kisses, Stories of Tears.", Grand Street, March 1, 1997

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Bedaub is from be-, "thoroughly" + daub, from Medieval French dauber, "to plaster," perhaps from Old French dauber, "to clothe in white, white-wash, plaster," from Latin dealbare, "to whitewash, to plaster," from de- (intensive prefix) + albus, "white."

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Word of the Day Thursday April 19, 2007

trice \TRYS\, noun: A very short time; an instant; a moment; -- used chiefly in the phrase "in a trice."

There is no reason to doubt Alma here since so many other witnesses over the years tell similar tales . . . of the moody Mahler who would switch from eloquence to silence in a trice for no apparent reason.
-- Jonathan Carr, Mahler: A Biography

Our super sleuth decided to take action and the mystery was solved in a trice.
-- "Furthermore", The Guardian, October 30, 2001

Catastrophic fires could wipe out as much as 1 million sq km of rain forest in a trice.
-- Sandy M. Fernandez, "Global Concern", Time, September 18, 2000

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Trice is from Middle English (at a) trise, literally, "(at one) pull," from trisen, "to pull," from Middle Dutch trisen, "to hoist," from trise, "a windlass, a pulley."

Post by **Ghost** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:21 am

Word of the Day Friday April 20, 2007

impugn \im-PYOON\, transitive verb: To attack by words or arguments; to call in question; to make insinuations against; to oppose or challenge as false; to gainsay.

As might be expected of fanatical flag idolaters, the GAR did not accept refusals lightly, and in one instance in Illinois impugned the patriotic loyalty of recalcitrant local school administrators by spreading rumors that one of them was a foreign alien yet to be naturalized and the other a draft dodger who evaded Civil War service by fleeing to Canada.
-- Albert Boime, The Unveiling of the National Icons

After hearing that her brother had been impugned by his political rivals, she also wrote a verse defense of his honor, entitled "Lines on reading an attack upon the political career of the late Albert Baker Esqr."
-- Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child

Still, I was unpleasantly surprised when, in the morning, several of my coworkers took it upon themselves to crassly impugn G.B.'s capacity for leadership.
-- Lydia Millet, George Bush, Dark Prince of Love

Even though it is nowhere alleged that disclosures of sinful activity by priests impugn the integrity of the entire ministry, that nevertheless is the passing legacy of the current scandals.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., "The House of Disillusion", National Review, May 14, 2002

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Impugn comes from Latin impugnare, "to assail," from in-, "against" + pugnare, "to fight."

Post by **Ghost** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:49 am

Word of the Day Monday April 23, 2007

gregarious \grih-GAIR-ee-us\, adjective: 1. Tending to form a group with others of the same kind. 2. Seeking and enjoying the company of others.

True locusts, which are actually certain kinds of grasshoppers, are usually solitary and rather sluggish, but when they are crowded they enter a gregarious and highly active migratory phase.
-- Gilbert Waldbauer, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles

In the newly discovered gene, the change of a single unit of DNA converts the worm from a solitary forager into a gregarious diner.
-- "Can Social Behavior of Man Be Glimpsed in a Lowly Worm?", New York Times, September 7, 1998

My efforts to cultivate an identity as a strong silent type have consistently been undermined by my gregarious nature and my delight in conversation.
-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words

Although social and gregarious when he wants to be, Phil learned, during our early years together, not only to savor but also to require long periods of hermitlike solitude.
-- Frances K. Conley, Walking Out on the Boys

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Gregarious is from Latin gregarius, "belonging to a herd or flock," from grex, greg-, "herd, flock."

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 8:09 am

Word of the Day Tuesday April 24, 2007

circumspect \SUR-kuhm-spekt\, adjective: Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences; cautious; prudent.

When the evidence is plentiful and the theories well confirmed, we can be more confident of the historical scenarios we propose; when theories are weak or evidence scarce, we ought to be more circumspect.
-- Robert J. Richards, "You Can't Get There From Here", New York Times, February 27, 2000

One had the feeling, indeed, that he rather enjoyed being mysterious, for although he regularly granted interviews to scholars and journalists after leaving the State Department, he was always circumspect and often cryptic in what he said.
-- John Lewis Gaddis, "Dean Rusk's Personal Truce", New York Times, July 1, 1990

Sadie is the gracious one, as if being the elder requires that she be circumspect and observe the manners.
-- Vincent Canby, "A Visit With Two Indomitable Sisters,", New York Times, April 7, 1995

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Circumspect comes from the past participle of Latin circumspicere, "to look around, to consider carefully," from circum-, "around" + specere, "to look." The noun form is circumspection.

Post by **Ghost** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 8:24 am

Word of the Day Wednesday April 25, 2007

prepotency \pree-POTE-n-see\, noun: 1. The quality or condition of having superior power, influence, or force; predominance. 2. (Biology) The capacity, on the part of one of the parents, as compared with the other, to transmit more than his or her own share of characteristics to their offspring.

The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised corner of the United States.
-- "Dark heart of the American dream", The Observer, June 16, 2002

Though Sir Tristram lost his record, his prepotency was reinforced at the Doomben races as three of the big race winners carry his blood.
-- "Sir Tristram loses record", Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), May 29, 2001

These several remarks are apparently applicable to animals; but the subject is here much complicated, partly owing to the existence of secondary sexual characters; but more especially owing to prepotency in transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex than in the other, both when one species is crossed with another, and when one variety is crossed with another variety.
-- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

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Prepotency is from Latin praepotentia, from prae-, "before" + potentia, "power," from potens, "able, powerful," present participle of posse, "to be able."

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:18 am

Word of the Day Thursday April 26, 2007

argot \AHR-go; -gut\, noun: 1. A specialized and often secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group. 2. A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps, and vagabonds.

In William Aberg's "Siempre," set in an unusual Arizona jail that housed both men and women, a veteran talks a novice through fear of the penitentiary (the pinta, in Mexican argot) to which she is being sent.
-- Bell Gale Chevigny, Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing

The side road was a bit narrow but in good repair. But as happened from time to time, the last few miles to our destination, in this case the park, were unpaved--"unsealed" in Aussie argot.
-- Don Langley, "Life in the Vast Lane", Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1999

In the argot of geology, paleomagnetic specialists are sometimes called paleomagicians.
-- John Mcphee, Annals of the Former World

No one likes jargon, especially other people's jargon, and few bodies of professional lingo are less beloved than the argot of educators.
-- Howard Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand

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Argot is from the French.

Post by **Ghost** » Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:29 am

Word of the Day Friday April 27, 2007

quagmire \KWAG-myr; KWOG-\, noun: 1. Soft, wet, miry land that shakes or yields under the feet. 2. A difficult or precarious position or situation; a predicament.

. . .drenching rains that reduced all the roads to quagmires.
-- "The Career of a Soldier", New York Times, July 24, 1885

Slowly, inevitably, over the course of several months, Don Jaime's pupil draws him into a quagmire of plot and counterplot.
-- Walter Satterthwait, "Crossing Swords", New York Times, June 6, 1999

While the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded in 1957, should have signaled the pinnacle of Camus's career, it came at a time when he was struggling in the deepening quagmire of the Algerian war.
-- Isabelle de Courtivron, "Rebel Without a Cause", New York Times, December 14, 1997

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Quagmire is from quag, a dialectical variant of quake (from Old English cwacian) + mire, from Old Norse myrr, "a swamp."

Post by **Ghost** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:09 am

Word of the Day Monday April 30, 2007

supplant \suh-PLANT\, transitive verb: 1. To take the place of (another), especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics; as, a rival supplants another. 2. To take the place of and serve as a substitute for.

He's your rival. The one you'll have to supplant.
-- Peter Brooks, World Elsewhere

In traditional accounts, early Greek times appear as a succession of migrations; one tribe drives out and supplants another until driven out in turn by a third, and this process may have lasted many hundreds of years.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization

Economic opportunities for a saddler and harness maker were beginning to decline . . . as railroads supplanted the stagecoach trade.
-- Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White

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Supplant derives from Latin supplantare, "to put one's foot under another, to throw down a person by tripping up his heels," from sub-, "under" + plantare, "to stamp the ground with the foot," from planta, "the sole of the foot."

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:08 am

The forum has been very circumspect recently. Except for CodeBlower who deigned show his prepotency by describing himself, with brio, as an efficacious cavorter, nobody else tried to supplant him.
So, not being gregarious I will now take more than a trice to extract the forum from this quagmire, or, as we say in argot, "de ce foutoir", expand the existing mere rivulet of puns into a large river and widely bedaub this thread with bad WoTD jokes, in the hope that I won't be impugned for this putsch.

Post by **gollum** » Tue May 01, 2007 8:10 am

Post by **Ghost** » Tue May 01, 2007 9:45 am

Word of the Day Tuesday May 1, 2007

credulous \KREJ-uh-lus\, adjective: 1. Ready or inclined to believe on slight or uncertain evidence. 2. Based on or proceeding from a disposition to believe too readily.

Credulous monarchs were easy game for the numerous charlatans and tricksters who toured the courts of Europe trying to dupe them into parting with real gold by means of little more than a promise that they would repay such investments thousandfold.
-- Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum

To her critics, she was a madam and con artist who charged credulous clients . . . small fortunes to cast spells and bring about the deaths of rivals.
-- Laurence Bergreen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life

And unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous.
-- Theodore Schick Jr., "The End of Science?", Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1997

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Credulous derives from Latin credulus, "believing easily," from credere, "to believe."

Post by **Ghost** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:12 am

Word of the Day Wednesday May 2, 2007

termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun: 1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew.
adjective: 1. Overbearing; shrewish; scolding.

The termagant who had dragged him out on long, boring walks, who had tried in vain to censor his reading, who had labelled him an impious liar and criminal, was dead at last, and the boy, hearing a servant say 'she has passed away', sank to his knees on the kitchen floor to thank God for so great a deliverance.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal

Family legend recounts that Sister Garrison once quite literally brokeup her husband's drinking party by smashing the offending bottles, and this is sometimes taken to mean that Abijah Garrison was driven to desert his family by his termagant of a wife.
-- Henry Mayer, All on Fire

The music critic Maclintick, with his termagant wife and his book which will never be finished, who in a moment of drunken despair throws his cherished text down the lavatory and then gasses himself.
-- David McKie, "Secret harmonies", The Guardian, March 30, 2000

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Termagant comes from Middle English Termagaunt, alteration of Tervagant, from Old French. Termagant was an imaginary Muslim deity represented in medieval morality plays as extremely violent and turbulent. By the sixteenth century, termagant was used for a boisterous, brawling, turbulent person of either sex, but eventually it came to refer only to women.

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Wed May 02, 2007 9:16 am

Gonna have to remember that one for the next argument with the wife ..

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Wed May 02, 2007 4:27 pm

Being more circumspect than credulous, I thought, for a trice, that Ghost was trying, with brio, not just to sprinkle us with a rivulet of "blague", as we say in argot, but to efficaciously bedaub us into a quagmire of "excrÃ©ment de taureau" (if you deign to forgive this euphemistic translation), by inventing such an improbable word as "termagant".
But not wanting to impugn him unduly, before cavorting and galumphing all around shouting "This word does not exist, this word does not exist!", I followed a wise adage: "Tourne sept fois ta langue dans ta bouche avant de parler". Following this presentiment, I did check before attempting another putsch.
And I did discover that, obviously belonging to a prepotent clerisy, our indefatigable Ghost really mentioned an actual word, however improbable it looks.
This WoTD thread is even more intellectually roborant than appears at first sight!

Anybody has some aspirin, or Tylenol, or whatever

"excrÃ©ment de taureau"=

Spoiler: show

"Tourne sept fois ta langue dans ta bouche avant de parler"=

Spoiler: show

Post by **Ghost** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:17 am

Word of the Day Thursday May 3, 2007

pantheon \PAN-thee-on; -uhn\, noun: 1. A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially (capitalized), the building so called at Rome. 2. The collective gods of a people; as, a goddess of the Greek pantheon. 3. A public building commemorating and dedicated to the famous dead of a nation. 4. A group of highly esteemed persons.

Well into the fourteenth century the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Prince Gediminas, still put his faith in Perkunas, the god of thunder and forests, who ruled over the many other gods and goddesses in the Lithuanian pantheon.
-- Yaffa Eliach, There Once Was a World

What [Galileo] discovered . . . would soon do nothing less than revolutionize astronomy, change forever the way the inhabitants of this planet conceived the universe beyond it, and . . . land him in the pantheon of immortal scientists.
-- William E. Burrows, This New Ocean

Argentina had spawned its own pantheon of civic-minded historical heroes, from General Jose de San Martin, the country's liberator in the independence struggle with Spain, to Domingo Sarmiento, the crusading journalist, educator, and president who had finally wrested Argentina into the modern age as a unified republic.
-- Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

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Pantheon comes from Greek pantheion, "temple of all the gods," from pan-, "all" + theos, "god."

Post by **Ghost** » Mon May 07, 2007 8:29 am

Word of the Day Monday May 7, 2007

pastiche \pas-TEESH; pahs-\, noun: 1. A work of art that imitates the style of some previous work. 2. A musical, literary, or artistic composition consisting of selections from various works. 3. A hodgepodge; an incongruous combination of different styles and ingredients.

The figure was a pastiche, assembled from fragments: a Greek head, a Roman imperial cuirass, and halo, limbs, weapons, and crocodile fashioned by a Venetian craftsman.
-- Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity

Whoever said the unexamined life is not worth living apparently never intended to go into book publishing, where there is almost no research and where much of the conventional wisdom is a pastiche of folklore, myth and wishful thinking.
-- Edwin McDowell, "Publishing: And They All Said It Wouldn't Sell", New York Times, February 6, 1989

Rather, the aim is to create a composite reflection of how New York got this way, how its bridges and subways were built, how its power structure and political culture evolved, how its pastiche of unique neighborhoods developed, collapsed and rose again, and how some of its citizens survive on the bottom rung and others succeed or fail on the top.
-- Sam Roberts, "The 10 Best Books About New York", New York Times, February 5, 1995

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Pastiche comes from Italian pasticcio, "a paste," hence "a hodgepodge, literary or musical," ultimately from Latin pasta, "paste."

Post by **Ghost** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:00 am

Word of the Day Tuesday May 8, 2007

intransigent \in-TRAN-suh-juhnt; -zuh-\, adjective: Refusing to compromise; uncompromising.

He was intransigent at times, and almost playfully yielding at others.
-- "The Decline and Fall of a Sure Thing", New York Times, September 10, 1989

Sometimes I was intransigent, and proud of it. At other times I seemed to myself to be nearly devoid of any character at all, timid, uncertain, without will.
-- Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

The dispute brewed through the summer as Nehru remained intransigent and U.S. officials confronted an unbending legal mandate.
-- George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb

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Intransigent is from French intransigeant, from Spanish intransigente, from in-, "not" (from Latin) + transigente, present participle of transigir, "to compromise," from Latin transigere, "to come to an agreement," from trans-, "across" + agere, "to drive."

Post by **Ghost** » Wed May 09, 2007 8:27 am

Word of the Day Wednesday May 9, 2007

celerity \suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun: Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.

Though not in the best of physical form, he was capable of moving with celerity.
-- Malachy McCourt, A Monk Swimming: A Memoir

Furthermore, as is well known, computer technology grows obsolete with amazing celerity.
-- Alan S. Blinder and Richard E. Quandt, "The Computer and the Economy", The Atlantic, December 1997

The lightning celerity of his thought processes took you on a kind of helter-skelter ride of surreal non-sequiturs, sudden accesses of emotion and ribald asides, made all the more bizarre for being uttered in those honeyed tones by the impeccably elegant gent before you.
-- "A life full of frolics", The Guardian, May 19, 2001

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Celerity is from Latin celeritas, from celer, "swift." It is related to accelerate.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:24 pm

I am very intransigent with myself: since I know that my command of the english language is insufficient to produce a credible pastiche Ido not even try to compete with the pantheon of authors of the Volleyball 2007.
But my celerity allows me to take a lion's share of the WoTD contributions.

Post by **Ghost** » Thu May 10, 2007 8:17 am

Word of the Day Thursday May 10, 2007

denouement \day-noo-MAWN\, noun: 1. The final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work. 2. The outcome of a complex sequence of events.

And perhaps this helps to explain the frequency of the violent denouement in contemporary novels: in the country that embraced the slogan "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," how do you call it quits on a character who is still breathing?
-- Brad Leithauser, "You Haven't Heard the Last of This", New York Times, August 30, 1998

Of course, the crusaders were losers in the short run, but Europe's storytellers have traditionally awarded them the righteous victory and not dwelt on the embarrassing denouement.
-- Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams

Though still only a prospect on the horizon, this, I think, could well be the next revolution. What a denouement if it is!
-- Julian Barbour, The End of Time

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Denouement is from French, from Old French denoer, "to untie," from Latin de- + nodare, "to tie in a knot," from nodus, "a knot."

Post by **Ghost** » Fri May 11, 2007 7:57 am

Word of the Day Friday May 11, 2007

acrimony \AK-ruh-moh-nee\, noun: Bitter, harsh, or biting sharpness, as of language, disposition, or manners.

In years to come, liturgical infighting ranked alongside disputed patents, contested fortunes, and savage political feuds as a source of McCormick family acrimony.
-- Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel

The partnership eventually broke up in acrimony.
-- Henry Grunwald, One Man's America

As losses swelled, acrimony led to lawsuits, countersuits, and the bankruptcy of the ironworks.
-- Patricia O'Toole, Money & Morals in America

Mr. Cioran himself once wrote: "However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice."
-- Eric Pace, "E. M. Cioran, 84, Novelist And Philosopher of Despair", New York Times, June 22, 1995

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Acrimony is from Latin acrimonia, from acer, "sharp."