GAME: Word of the Day (WOTD)

[Darb]

Hey Ghostie ... when are ya gonna step up to the plate, and take swing at the ol linguistic pinata ?

Oh, and where's Voralfred ? Did he drown face down in a bowl of vichyssoise somewhere ?

[Ghost]

Hey Ghostie ... when are ya gonna step up to the plate, and take swing at the ol linguistic pinata ?

Brad, I doubt I will have the time. In addition to my consternation over the economy and being so busy to keep my job, I sometimes have to choose between the tautological works to put a burnish on the boss’s spittoon, and the beseeching of the all to post the WOTD.

Ops . . . (<-- ellipsis) I may have unwittingly just done so.

[Darb]

Understood. Economy, and various circumstances, are miserable in my neck of the woods too.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Wednesday February 25, 2009

openhanded \OH-puhn-HAN-did\, adjective: 1. giving freely; generous
2. done with an open hand

From his mother's mother he inherited a sense of fete and a gift for cosmopolitan and open-handed hospitality.
-- John Russell, A Magnificent Mischief-Maker, New York Times, July 27, 1997

Lucius remembers his father as a warmhearted, larger-than-life but openhanded man.
-- Janet Burroway, Still Looking for Mr. Watson, New York Times, November 23, 1997

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by 1593, open + handed

[CodeBlower]

openhanded

Why is it that, when I saw this word, I got a picture of the guy at the stoplight holding up the "Will work .." cardboard sign ..

.. or am I being hard-handed?

[Darb]

The diminutive dryad backhanded, then forehanded, the grizzled lumberjack with surprising strength, then watched him slid down the bole of her beech tree, insensate. She disliked displaying her faerie-abilities in such openhanded fashion, but the proximity of cold iron, and its dire threat to her beloved tree, demanded prompt action. A spell of forgetfulness, and an unreasoning fear of the immediate environs, completed the task.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Thursday February 26, 2009

declaim \di-KLEYM\, verb: to orate; to speak in a loud and emotional manner

What is the clue to understanding a country rife with despair and disrepair, which nonetheless moved a Mughal emperor to declaim, "If on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this ...?"
-- Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to Millennium

The heavies declaim prolix monologues on evil in a godless universe.
-- Robert Polito, Trackers, New York Times, March 29, 1998

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c 1385, from Latin declamare, from de- intensifying prefix + clamare "to cry, shout". At first in England, spelled declame, but altered under influence of claim.

[Darb]

"I'm not going back there !" declaimed the lumberjack later the same day. "That whole grove is haunted, I tell you !"

[CodeBlower]

LOL.

I think Ghost should almost get an assist for that one ..

[Darb]

Freely given.

I feel a bit like a point guard on a team of one at the moment ... we need more participants in here.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Friday February 27, 2009

hidebound \HAHYD-bound\, adjective: narrow-minded and stubborn

In recent years, there has been another voice on the scene -- one that has infused this hidebound, somewhat predictable genre with an unsettling energy
-- Daphne Merkin, Retirement Benefits, New York Times, December 17, 2000

They were class-bound, hidebound and incapable of expressing their emotions
-- Jeremy Paxman, The English

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by 1559, from hide "cattle skin" + past tense of bind. Original reference is to emaciated cattle with skin sticking closely to backbones and ribs; metaphoric sense of "restricted by narrow attitudes" is first recorded 1603.

[CodeBlower]

I feel a bit like a point guard on a team of one at the moment ... we need more participants in here.

I thought "lurking" was participating ..


The hidebound hound bounded down the steps with his hide-bound toy.

[Darb]

"Good doggie !" declaimed the owner openhandedly, while petting her dog with an open hand.

[voralfred]

PG-13

Despite her husband being not just a virtuoso defalcating pig but also a disgusting adulterous peculator, hidebound Dee Murdock kept bemoaning his demise and declaiming her everlasting love for the departed. Even her consternation at the picture of him, nocuously burnishing the ... (<- ellipsis) of the unwitting winsome Dryad, that Kate DeFalco openhandedly showed her, was not directed at his wanton behaviour, but at her friend's vacuous, sempiternal attempts to present his death as the condign punishment of his quondam cupidity and unfaithfulness.
Vituperations against Kate left her tenebrous and enervated, and she contemned her with rancor.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Monday March 2, 2009

sanguine \SANG-gwin\, adjective, noun; Also used as a noun, red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings: 1. cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident 2. reddish; ruddy 3. (in old physiology) having blood as the predominating humor and consequently being ruddy-faced, cheerful, etc. 4. blood-red; red 5. Heraldry. a reddish-purple tincture. adjective: 1. a red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings


I had now arrived at my seventeenth year, and had attained my full height, a fraction over six feet. I was well endowed with youthful energy, and was of an extremely sanguine temperament.
-- Henry Bessemer

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by 1319, "type of red cloth," from Old French sanguin (feminine form, sanguine), from Latin sanguineus "of blood," also "bloody, bloodthirsty," from sanguis "blood." Meaning "blood-red" is recorded from 1382. Meaning "cheerful, hopeful, confident" first attested 1509, since these qualities were thought in medieval physiology to spring from an excess of blood as one of the four humors.

[Darb]

Vlad looked hungrily across the table at his busty and unsuspecting dining companion. She was on her 3rd glass of Shiraz, and was was looking deliciously sanguine. He signaled impatiently the waiter, already anticipating some truly delightful 'necking' in a nearby darkened alleyway.

[voralfred]

The winsome, but mendacious Dryad chased her twelfth wonton (filled with fugu, following the eleventh one, scorpionfish-filled) with her fourth glass of wine. After her encounter with the lumbering lumberjack, she needed this roborant food she could not afford. She was surreptitiously watching across the table the hermetic, sallow physiognomy of her dining companion in the black, sanguine-lined cape, wantonly wondering whether she'd manage to defalcate the skyrocketing price of that meal from him. Rather to her consternation, he did not look the openhanded type, but contrariwise quite hidebound. Still, as a virtuoso peculator (peculatrix?), she tried to guess the best way to beseech him into yielding to her pernicious legerdemain.

[Darb]

Voralfred, my friend, your folklore's a wee bit off. A {hama}dryad doesn't eat real food. Rather, she draws her sustenance from the individual soul tree to which she is linked, and she lives and dies with that tree - nor can she travel very far from it. This particular dryad was/is the spirit of a particular beech tree**. Also, trees with dryads only exist deep in pristine legendary old-growth forests that are steeped in myth and rumor, and are thus never seen in or near developed communities. However, since this *is* a WOTD thread, so I suppose there's no need to be overly picayune about the haphazard use of mythological motifs. I've certainly done it myself on enough occasions.

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** I guess you could call her a <strike>beach</strike> beech beauty ... the Dryad from Ipanema perhaps ?***

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*** Ok, that gives me an idea ...

The Dryad from Ipanema
{tribute to "Girl from Ipanema"}

Pert and winsome, young and lovely
The dryad from ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each tree she passes goes - ah

When she walks, shes like a samba
The trees so cool and swaying so gentle
That when she passes, each tree she passes goes - ooh

(ooh) but I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her
Yes I would give my heart gladly
But each day, when she walks to her tree
She looks straight ahead, not at a lumberjack like me

Pert and winsome, young and lovely
The dryad from ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, I smile - but she doesnt see (doesnt see)
(she just doesnt see, she never sees a lumberjack like me,...)

[voralfred]

Voralfred, my friend, your folklore's a wee bit off. A {hama}dryad doesn't eat real food. Rather, she draws her sustenance from the individual soul tree to which she is linked, and she lives and dies with that tree - nor can she travel very far from it. This particular dryad was/is the spirit of a particular beech tree**. Also, trees with dryads only exist deep in pristine legendary old-growth forests that are steeped in myth and rumor, and are thus never seen in or near developed communities. However, since this *is* a WOTD thread, so I suppose there's no need to be overly picayune about the haphazard use of mythological motifs. I've certainly done it myself on enough occasions.

------
** I guess you could call her a <strike>beach</strike> beech beauty ... the Dryad from Ipanema perhaps ?***

-------
*** Ok, that gives me an idea ...

The Dryad from Ipanema
{tribute to "Girl from Ipanema"}

Pert and winsome, young and lovely
The dryad from ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each tree she passes goes - ah
(...)

Well, WotD is a rather strange place. And anyway, her beech could have been originally deep inside a pristine forest, but if human civilisation expanded at the expense of that forest, a restaurant might well end up being built close enough to her tree that reaching it would not be a peregrination. Normally she does not need real food, but the effort she made to knock out the lumbering lumberjack might have communicated to her human hunger for real food, might it not?
What I am really looking forward to is to see Vlad choke on the gustatory experience of the sap he'll find in the vessels of her neck!



BTW, I looked up the lyrics of "Girl from Ipanema", your tribute is quite nice.


I edited my post so that at least a few WotD would appear

[Darb]

Tuesday March 3, 2009

acute \uh-KYOOT\, adjective:
1. acting keenly on the senses; sharp
2. quick in discernment; drawing fine distinctions
3. of an angle, less than 90 degrees
4. happening quickly, briefly, and severely

I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
-- Thomas Jefferson

by 1570, from Latin acutus "sharp, pointed." Medical sense of "fever or disease that comes and goes quickly" (rather than a chronic one) first recorded 1667.

[Darb]

What I am really looking forward to is to see Vlad choke on the gustatory experience of the sap he'll find in the vessels of her neck!

Ok, let's give it a whirl ...

While waiting for the check, Vlad leaned close to his dining companion, ostensibly to whisper a sweet nothing in her ear, but his vampire-acute sense of smell picked up the faint unwelcome taint of heroin in her scent. Cursing to himself, he locked eyes with her, bent her will to his, and silently commanded her to leave. She would wake the next day with no memory of her meal, and her life still intact.

Thirst racked his senses ... but the evening was still young. The waiter left the check with a murmur, but Vlad's eyes ignored him, and instead combed the dining room with his eyes, settling at last on a diminutive winsome looking blonde, dressed in non-descript earthtones who, despite a large array of dishes spread before her, appeared to be dining alone. Something about her piqued his interest, and it wasn't just his thirst. She was different somehow. She was perhaps a shade under five feet, and barely six stone in weight. Her eyes were a startling green, and she had something of the ageless look of his own kind - but rather than having the aura of a predator, she had the aura of life. She was radiant with it, like a young child drunk on sunshine and the sanguine flush of youth. He found her irresistable ... her aura of life called out to his aura of death like the opposite poles of magnets that will unerringly find each other in the dark.

Before he even knew it, he was standing at her table, near the empty chair. Her eyes crinkled with laughter, looking first at his attire, and then into his eyes. "I thought All Hallows Eve was nearer to Samhain than Beltane" she quipped.

[Darb]

Vlad chuckled to himself. Along with being one of the oldest of his kind, he'd gained a well-deserved reputation for being an out-of-date dresser. His victims often snickered at him and said he resembled Béla Lugosi, but rather than getting more 'hip' with the times, he deliberately hung a lampshade on his attire, and played down to his victim's humorous expectations.

"I vas at a kostume partee earlier dis evening ... vat doo yew tink ?" he countered, swirling his bi-color cape, gesturing arcanely with his hand, and blatantly baring his fangs ... confident that she'd think they were part of his costume, rather than real. Right on cue, she laughed and clapped like a school girl. His cape fluttered again, and in a flash he was sitting, and surveying the dishes spread on the table ...

"A vize man named Brillat-Svarin once said 'Tell mee vat yew eat, an ah'll tell yew who yew ahre' ... theze vontons tell me yew are a wanton vooman. Iz dat so ?" he quipped lecherously, garnering further giggles from the winsome dryad. He was like a moth, trapped by her verdant green eyes - a truly disconcerting reveral of roles for a vampire like himself.

[voralfred]

Vlad's acute (2 and also 1) sense of opportunity inspired him to offer her to pay for her meal. She could not, afterwards, object to a nice walk together in the beautiful wood around the restaurant, wood which was rumored to be just a remnant of a very old and almost mythical forest.
As soon as they were out of sight and hearing of the restaurant, Vlad plunged his acute (3) fangs in of the neck of the Dryad and greedily sucked up what he expected to be rich, red blood.
An acute (4), agonizing, excruciating pain ran through his body, as if rats were eating all his undead flesh off his bones. Instead of rich red blood, he had filled his mouth, throat and belly of greenish vegetal sap that burned through him like fire.
Writhing on the ground for hour after hour, the pain keeping him from all escape, he couldn't do anything as the night slowly came to an end. And, horrified, he saw the sky lighten in the east. The last thing he saw was an unsufferably bright spot over the horizon... and he was instantly consumed.
RIP Vlad Drakul.

[Darb]

Wednesday March 4, 2009

temerity \tuh-MER-uh-tee\, noun:
Unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger; rashness.

The elaborate caution with which the British commander now proceeded stands out in striking contrast with the temerity of his advance upon Bunker Hill in the preceding year.
-- John Fiske, "Washington's Great Campaign of 1776", The Atlantic, January 1889

When English merchants had the temerity to set up a trading post or 'factory' -- junior merchants were known as factors -- the Dutchmen defended their monopoly by massacring them.
-- Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day

Drivers with the temerity to accelerate out of turns are likely to encounter torque steer, an unsettling glitch in control as the engine fights to take charge of the steering.
-- Peter Passell, "Mitsubishi Diamante: Back From Down Under", New York Times, February 23, 1997

Throughout the anti-trust trial its executives treated the courts and the US government with sneering contempt, coupled with a ratty annoyance that any public authority should have the temerity to interfere in its business.
-- John Naughton, "Gates must not win at monopoly", The Observer, October 28, 2001

Temerity comes from Latin temeritas, from temere, blindly, rashly.

[Darb]

With uncharacteristic temerity, and heedless of the close proximity of the extremely dangerous Roving Punster, Voralfred quipped:

"Say, I guess the 'D' in Vampire Hunter D stands for 'Dryad' right ?"