GAME: Word of the Day (WOTD)

Post by **Ghost** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 8:13 am

Word of the Day Wednesday June 24, 2009

daedal \DEE-duhl\, adjective: 1. Complex or ingenious in form or function; intricate. 2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious. 3. Rich; adorned with many things.

Most Web-site designers realize that large image maps and daedal layouts are to be avoided, and the leading World Wide Web designers have reacted to users' objections to highly graphical, slow sites by using uncluttered, easy-to-use layouts.
-- "Fixing Web-site usability", InfoWorld, December 15, 1997

He gathered toward the end of his life a very extensive collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts, and took heightened pleasure in their daedal patterns as his own strength declined.
-- Florence S. Boos, preface to The Collected Letters of William Morris

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn Of Pan"

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Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Wed Jun 24, 2009 8:30 am

Though he constructed the wings with daedal care, his test pilot still crashed.

What are the names of the aeronautical engineer and the test pilot?

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 9:01 am

Well .. I was going to do something with dreidel and daedal -- but I guess I'm not pronouncing it correctly.

Maybe I should go with daedal beetle?

My guess to E Pericoloso Sporgersi's query would be the Wright brothers.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Wed Jun 24, 2009 9:22 am

CodeBlower wrote:My guess to E Pericoloso Sporgersi's query would be the Wright brothers.

Nope.
They are Daedalus and his son Icarus.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 5:31 pm

Deadalus, a paragon of sagaciousness, but lost in his deadal attention to the construction of his wings, did not have the prescience to guess his son Icarus would get impatient. In a nimeity of enthusiasm the latter ignored the salutary precautions of his father, and, on a megrim, disported himself up.
Alas! His fall into a copse turned him into a corpse that his father, despite al his science, could not make redivivius
Instead of the sybaritic future he had envisioned for both of them, poor Deadalus spent his old age abstemious, puling over his son's death.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 7:59 pm

Truly a deadal post, Voralfred.

My own meager offering was late (dead on arrival), and I opted not to serve it.

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Jun 25, 2009 8:24 am

Word of the Day Thursday June 25, 2009

sough \SAU; SUHF\, intransitive verb: 1. To make a soft, low sighing or rustling sound, as the wind.
noun: 1. A soft, low rustling or sighing sound.

At a recent visit to Marsha's grave in Rathdrum, as the wind soughed through the towering pines nearby, Marsha's brother Pat left a silk bluebird by her headstone to honor her love of the outdoors.
-- David Whitman, "Fields of Fire", U.S. News & World Report, September 3, 2001

In the dark of winter, tin roofs sough with rain.
-- Les A. Murray, "Driving Through Sawmill Towns"

This voice she hears in the fields, in the sough of the wind among the trees, when measured and distant sounds fall upon her ears.
-- Ernest Renan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races

Gunfire, cannonade, and the weeping of bereft wives and mothers might fill the air of the disunited states, but the dominant sound in greater Manhattan would be the cheerful sough of money changing hands.
-- Bill Kauffman, "The Blue, The Gray, and Gotham", American Enterprise, July 2000

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Sough comes from Middle English swoughen, from Old English swogan.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Thu Jun 25, 2009 1:55 pm

[start soughing sigh]
Lots of people wonder why I'm not sighing soughing sighs, now that I've ended my professional career.
[end soughing sigh]

Well, after considerable reflection, I decided to end it without regrets!
[repeated multiple soughing sighs]

The End.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Thu Jun 25, 2009 3:50 pm

Your <strike>patience lost</strike> patient's loss is our gain. (pun intended)

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After a long and fruitful career, the chain-smoking fruit-cart crier finally soughed what he reaped when cancer took his voicebox.

Post by **Ghost** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:32 am

Word of the Day Friday June 26, 2009

encomium \en-KOH-mee-uhm\, noun; plural encomiums or encomia \-mee-uh\: An often formal expression of warm or high praise.

He ended with an encomium about her "high integrity and simple humanity" which ensured that "she loved her country, and her country loved her."
-- David Cameron, "Mourning service", The Guardian, April 3, 2002

The giant throws the butler into the lake, whereupon Charles delivers the perfunctory encomium, "Wickham was a good servant."
-- Jeremy Treglown, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green

He brought in the bread, cheese and beer, with many high encomiums upon their excellence.
-- Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

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Encomium derives, via Latin, from Greek enkomion, from en-, "in" + komos, "revel."

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:27 am

One of my last patients, having heard of my retirement, presented me with a bottle of champagne as a wordless encomium.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 12:56 pm

Emporium is the best encomium one can give an artist

But is the meconium a baby passes an encomium to the colostrum he receives from his mother?

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Sat Jun 27, 2009 1:25 am

voralfred wrote:Emporium is the best encomium one can give an artist

But is the meconium a baby passes an encomium to the colostrum he receives from his mother?

Where's my dictionary?
... [furious sounds of desperate rummaging]
"HONEY!!! Have you seen my dictionary? There's this guy throwing linguistic conundrums at me!"

Post by **Ghost** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 8:27 am

Word of the Day Monday June 29, 2009

clandestine \klan-DES-tin\, adjective: Characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception.

One of the many shiny art panels at the back of the room is actually a clandestine two-way mirror (look carefully, the color is slightly different). Back in the day (perhaps now) it allowed managers to survey service and presentation, which are still impeccable.
-- Ike DeLorenzo, Five classics revisited, Boston Globe, 27-May-09

I was commanded by Paramount's publicists -- the Legion of Women With Clipboards -- to come alone to an advance, clandestine screening of "Star Trek" a couple of weeks ago.
-- Hank Stuever, The Trouble With Quibbles, Washington Post, 11-May-09

They can also stealthily enlist a computer into so-called botnets - computers that have been clandestinely networked to perform tasks without the knowledge of their owners and operators.
-- Scott Duke Harris, Internet security problems have an upside for Silicon Valley, Mercury News

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Clandestine is from Latin clandestīnus, probably a blend of clam-de, secretly and intestīnus, internal.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:47 am

Ghost wrote:... I was commanded by Paramount's publicists -- the Legion of Women With Clipboards -- to come alone to an advance, clandestine screening of "Star Trek" a couple of weeks ago.
-- Hank Stuever, The Trouble With Quibbles, Washington Post, 11-May-09
...

And there these women showed remarkable pictures of an official marriage ceremony on Betazed. The pictures were steganographically altered to reveal clandestine clothes worn by the male attendants.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:26 pm

It seemed preordained that Clan MacCloud was destined to win the Clan Wars by clandestine means.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:54 pm

Wouldn't it have been even more preordained if it had been Clan d'Estaing (as our former President Valery Giscard)? That would be pre-Clan-destination!

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Mon Jun 29, 2009 10:05 pm

voralfred wrote:Wouldn't it have been even more preordained if it had been Clan d'Estaing (as our former President Valery Giscard)? That would be pre-Clan-destination!

Why voralfred, you sly scoundrel!

You clandestinely hope us to read and garble your puns with an English pronunciation while they only become clear when read aloud with a French accent.

"My tailor is rich", n'est-ce pas?

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 8:14 am

Word of the Day Tuesday June 30, 2009

badinage \bad-n-AHZH\, noun: Light, playful talk; banter.

Ken was determined to put the cares of the world behind him and do what he loved best -- having a few celebrity friends round and enjoying an evening of anecdote and badinage over a bottle or two of vintage bubbly and some tasty cheese straws.
-- Bel Littlejohn, "My moustache man", The Guardian, March 24, 2000

The badinage was inconsequential, reduced to who knew whom and wasn't the weather glorious in St. Tropez, or the Bahamas, Hawaii, or Hong Kong?
-- Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Countdown

Hope was the great comic actor of the 1940's, an original whose persona often transcended lame scripts. He can still get you with his gangly physicality, his many shades of discomfort, fear or lechery, the trademark gurgle, the off-handed badinage with Crosby and the luckless romancing with any number of sham femme fatales.
-- Gary Giddins, The Hope We Should Remember, New York Times, 3-Aug-03

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Badinage comes from French, from badiner, "to trifle, to joke," badin, "playful, jocular."

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:15 am

The girls indulged in some badinage while watching Michael Jackson's "Bad" on MTV.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Tue Jun 30, 2009 10:41 am

hiram wrote:The girls indulged in some badinage while watching Michael Jackson's "Bad" on MTV.

I can't find fault with them.

Oh, I have to include the word, don't I? OK.

This thread is usually just badinage.

P.S. Badinage is not derived from French, it *is* French.

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 8:11 am

Word of the Day Thursday, July 02, 2009

vagary\VAY-guh-ree; vuh-GER-ee\ , noun:1.An extravagant, erratic, or unpredictable notion, action, or occurrence.

Her words are a dreadful reminder that much of life's consequences are resultant of vagary and caprice, dictated by the tragedy of the ill-considered action, the irrevocable misstep, the irrevocable moment in which a terrible wrong can seem the only right.
-- Rosemary Mahoney, "Acts of Mercy?", New York Times, September 13, 1998

Weather is one of the vagaries of blue-water racing, ruling the sport like a malicious jester.
-- Martin Dugard, Knockdown

This thing called love was a total mystery to me, but the vagaries of passion and despair that accompanied each devotion kept my life in high drama.
-- Jane Alexander, Command Performance

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Vagary comes from Latin vagari, "to stroll about, to wander," from vagus, "wandering."

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Thu Jul 02, 2009 9:52 am

So you capriciously accuse me of vagary, eh?

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 5:49 pm

No no no, not vagary ... vagrancy. Although close, the words are not the same.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Sun Jul 05, 2009 3:25 am

hiram wrote:No no no, not vagary ... vagrancy. Although close, the words are not the same.

I thought to catch "caprice" and "vagary" together in one single meaningful sentence.
(My dictionary says they're synonymous)