The Internet Book Database of Fiction

Word of the Day for Thursday January 20, 2005

perfunctory \pur-FUNGK-tuh-ree\, adjective: 1. Done merely to carry out a duty; performed mechanically or routinely. 2. Lacking interest, care, or enthusiasm; indifferent.

The city's moderate hotels, however, tend to offer minimal comforts, perfunctory service and dreary decor.
--Paula Butturini, "What's Doing in Naples," New York Times, April 14, 1996

The mainstream media's coverage of hard economic data used to be perfunctory: a spot of news about the direction of interest rates, or a calculation of how the dollar was holding up against the yen.
--Robert H. Frank, "Safety in Numbers: The wild stock market is turning us all into macroeconomic-data junkies," New York Times Magazine, November 28, 1999

His hugs, although expansive and affectionate, did not linger, seemed perfunctory.
--Susan Bordo, The Male Body

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Perfunctory derives from Late Latin perfunctorius, from Latin perfungi, "to perform fully, to get done with," from per-, "through" + fungi, "to perform."

/ok did that.

Josephine ordered an entire case of her favorite perfume, Channel #5, from the main perfunctory in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

/me upends the whole shipment of perfume to conceal the stink of the bad pun.

And now it smells like a French bordello in here ...

Word of the Day for Friday January 21, 2005

omnipresent \om-nuh-PREZ-uhnt\, adjective: Present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous.

It was rather that myth was omnipresent; the whole people thought in this way and were long confirmed in their belief.
--Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization

But the music of Bortnyansky was exultant, and the canticles were borne aloft to God the omnipotent, the omniscient, the omnipresent.
--Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, How it All Began (translated by George Shriver)

The novella moves at a pace as sluggish as that of the omnipresent moon making its way across the limpid summer sky.
--Tobin Harshaw, "Pay the Piper," New York Times, November 14, 1999

Civilization is the preserve of the rich, with their polished cars, their locked houses and their omnipresent police force.
--Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places

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Omnipresent is from Medieval Latin omnipresens, from Latin omni-, "all" + praesens, present participle of praeesse, "to be before, to be present," from prae-, "before" + esse, "to be."

Is Ghost the omnipresent Phantom of the IBDoF ?

And will Andrew Lloyd Webber write a musical about him ?

Word of the Day for Monday January 24, 2005

seriatim \sir-ee-AY-tim; -AT-im\, adverb: In a series; one after another.

Mr. and Mrs. Kenwigs thanked every lady and gentleman, seriatim, for the favour of their company.
--Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby

Two days from the opening of the impeachment debate, gangs of television crews moved through mostly deserted corridors, doling out their 15 minutes of fame seriatim as individual lawmakers stepped up to batteries of microphones.
--New York Times, December 16, 1998

In his company one found oneself supposing, on hearing Walters handle German and Spanish, French and Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Russian, that his mind traveled from any one language to any other seriatim, because his mind worked that way, taking it all in.
--William F. Buckley Jr., "Dick Walters, R.I.P.," National Review, February 15, 2002

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Seriatim derives from the Latin series, meaning "row, chain," and is formed on the same model as verbatim ("word for word") and literatim ("letter for letter").

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 25, 2005

coruscate \KOR-uh-skayt\, intransitive verb: 1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle. 2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.

They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.
--Bill Roorbach, "Big Bend," The Atlantic, March 2001

Beneath you lie two miles of ocean -- a bottomlessness, for all practical purposes, an infinity of blue. . . . A thousand coruscating shafts of sunlight probe it, illuminating nothing.
--Kenneth Brower, "The Destruction of Dolphins," The Atlantic, July 1989

What coruscating flights of language in his prose, what waterfalls of self-displaying energy!
--Joyce Carol Oates, review of A Theft, by Saul Bellow, New York Times, March 5, 1989

Whether we know or like it or not, those of us who turn our hands to this task are scribbling in a line of succession which, however uncertainly and intermittently, reaches back to the young Macaulay, who first made his public reputation as a coruscating writer in the 1820s.
--David Cannadine, "On Reviewing and Being Reviewed," History Today, March 1, 1999

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Coruscate comes from Latin coruscatus, past participle of coruscare, "to move quickly, to tremble, to flutter, to twinkle or flash." The noun form is coruscation. Also from coruscare is the adjective coruscant, "glittering in flashes; flashing."

what word better describes the way sparks move agross smouldering cardboard than 'coruscate'

(that's a paraphrase - can't find the reference)

damn. I wish I could have got THAT into my volleyball. ("The flames coruscated across the skyline, as the greatest city on the world burned")

Word of the Day for Wednesday January 26, 2005

turpitude \TUR-puh-tood; -tyood\, noun: 1. Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; depravity. 2. A base act.

In the eyes of the far left, it [the 60s] is the era when revolution was at hand, only to be betrayed by the feebleness of the faithful and the trickery of the enemy; to the radical right, an era of subversion and moral turpitude.
--Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974

They based their action on a clause in the uniform player contract which says players must "conform to standards of good citizenship and good moral character" and disallows "engaging in acts of moral turpitude."
--Ira Berkow, "Go Ahead, Choke the Boss -- Only in the N.B.A.," New York Times, March 5, 1998

They were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that is, of but one thing, which was not a crime.
--Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

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Turpitude comes from Latin turpitudo, from turpis, "foul, base."

Oh, the possibilities ...

An I thought it just meant "turnip-like":

This turnip is the very pinnacle of turpitude

Word of the Day for Thursday January 27, 2005

moiety \MOY-uh-tee\, noun: 1. One of two equal parts; a half. 2. An indefinite part; a small portion or share. 3. One of two basic tribal subdivisions.

Tom divided the cake and Becky ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety.
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Cut off from news at home, fearful of a blood bath, anxious to salvage a moiety of the reform program, the Prague leadership accepted Moscow's diktat.
--Karl E. Meyer, "Pangloss in Prague," New York Times, June 27, 1993

Barunga society is sharply divided into two complementary, descent-based branches (a structure anthropologists call "moiety"), which permeate relationships, spirituality, and many other aspects of life.
--Claire Smith, "Art of The Dreaming," Discovering Archaeology, March/April 2000

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Moiety comes from Old French meitiet, from Late Latin medietas, from Latin medius, "middle."


To keep my brother and I from fighting over the bigger piece of whatever my mother had to cut in half, she came up with an excellent idea. She would have one of us cut the item in two and the other got to pick the piece he wanted. We learned the Rule of Moiety at an early age.

smart mom.

Felonius opened his morning mail, and read sadly about how the producers had decided to axe the footage of his 1:1 interview, on the grounds that he'd repeatedly demonstrated a lack of proper Moiety in his responses to Bill Moyers.

Word of the Day for Monday January 31, 2005

perdurable \pur-DUR-uh-bul; pur-DYUR-\, adjective: Very durable; lasting; continuing long.

The idea of a classic is historically bound up with the view . . . that there are certain perdurable human truths and values, immune from geographical or historical vitiation.
--John Romano, "A Novel of Hope and Realism," New York Times, April 4, 1982

In her first book, Lisa See . . . tackles a family -- her own -- whose intricate genealogy, bravura entrepreneurship, bitter adulteries and perdurable rivalries might have intimidated a lesser chronicler into euphemism.
--Elizabeth Tallent, "Chinese Roots," New York Times, August 27, 1995

A Colombian poet's perdurable love for a woman is tested by "life's changing conditions."
--"Best Sellers List: January 1, 1989," New York Times, January 1, 1989

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Perdurable ultimately comes from Late Latin perdurabilis, from Latin perdurare, to last a long time, to endure, from per-, throughout + durare, to last.


/me can't find me Perdurable Gobstopper

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 1, 2005

circumambient \sur-kuhm-AM-bee-uhnt\, adjective: Surrounding; being on all sides; encompassing.

The self owes its form and perhaps its very existence to the circumambient social order.
--Rom Harre, Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology

Facing reality, then, implies accepting one's essential powerlessness, yielding or adjusting to circumambient forces, taking solace in some local pattern or order that one has created and to which one has become habituated.
--Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

It's a voice that does something physical to me, that jumps out of the circumambient air and seizes hold of me like a thing that lives off the blood of other things.
--T.C. Boyle, A Friend of the Earth

Romantic love . . . rarefies lust into an angelic standoff, a fruitless longing without which our energizing circumambient dreamland of song, film and fiction would be bereft of its main topic.
--John Updike, "The Deadly Sins/Lust," New York Times, June 20, 1993

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Circumambient is from Latin circum, "around, round about, on all sides" + ambire, "to go around, to surround," from amb-, "on both sides, around" + ire, "to go."

/OMG - it's everywhere

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 2, 2005

ukase \yoo-KAYS; -KAYZ; YOO-kays; -kayz\, noun: 1. In imperial Russia, a published proclamation or order having the force of law. 2. Any order or decree issued by an authority; an edict.

I took a playwriting course from the noted Prof. A. M. Drummond, a huge man on crutches who right off the bat delivered a ukase never to begin a play with the telephone ringing.
--Arthur Laurents, Original Story By

This new ukase, however, ignited bureaucratic warfare and spawned rival and conflicting rules and concepts, frittering away time and effort.
--Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

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Ukase derives from Russian ukaz, "decree," from Old Church Slavonic ukazu, "a showing, proof," from u-, "at, to" + kazati, "to point out, to show."

Word of the Day for Thursday February 3, 2005

discursive \dis-KUR-siv\, adjective: 1. Passing from one topic to another; ranging over a wide field; digressive; rambling. 2. Utilizing, marked by, or based on analytical reasoning -- contrasted with intuitive.

The style is highly discursive, leap-frogging forwards and backwards across the decades, without ever sacrificing thrust or clarity.
--Nicholas Blincoe, "Spirit that speaks," The Guardian, August 21, 1999

Rather than being a limiting influence, the time restrictions seem often to have compelled ensembles and soloists to condense and distill arrangements and to edit potentially discursive solo performances.
--Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords

He is in general a discursive politician: Start him talking and you cannot get him to stop.
--Dan Balz, "President Endures Embarrassing Week," Washington Post, March 15, 1998

He is an intuitive being who can pierce to the heart of a matter without taking the circuitous route of deeper and more discursive minds.
--"1962 Man of the Year: Pope John XXIII," Time, January 4, 1963

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Discursive comes from Latin discurrere, "to run in different directions, to run about, to run to and fro," from dis-, "apart, in different directions" + currere, "to run."

/show me a politician who isn't

Word of the Day for Friday February 4, 2005

pukka, also pucka \PUHK-uh\, adjective: 1. Authentic; genuine. 2. Good of its kind; first-class.

He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.
--Lynn Barber, "Bell, book . . . and then what?" The Observer, August 27, 2000

If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a . . . shack on the pavement but a solid construction.
--Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

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Pukka comes from Hindi pakka, "cooked, ripe," from Sanskrit pakva-, from pacati, "he cooks."

/Now, today everyone has to go tell their boss, "You're a pukka!" (but with feeling. )

/Now, today everyone has to go tell their boss, "You're a pukka!" (but with feeling. )

actually, I don't think the 'a' is appropriate usage.

you ARE pukka, not you are A pukka - it's a description not an object

You know, this is the first word of the day that was actually new to me! Wow, Pukka, I never knew such a word existed, or even had an inkling about its meaning.
Pukka. Pukka! Pukka....

Kvetch: You are right. Pukka is a adjectve, so it would have to be, "Joh you are a pukka boss."

Well, crap. I just used it incorrectly in my VB post then.

But, I'm claiming my diplomatic immunity as the Evil Empress to use it as a noun.

Since it would require extensive rewriting to repair it and I don't have time right now.

ChoChiyo wrote: I'm claiming my diplomatic immunity as the Evil Empress

There's nothing diplomatic about an Empress...

my reaction to today's WOTD is WTF!