GAME: Word of the Day (WOTD)

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:19 am

Word of the Day Tuesday June 16, 2009

salutary \SAL-yuh-ter-ee\, adjective: 1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous. 2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.

Surviving a near-death experience has the salutary effect of concentrating the mind.
-- Kenneth T. Walsh and Roger Simon, "Bush turns the tide", U.S. News, February 28, 2000

And they washed it all down with sharp red wines, moderate amounts of which are known to be salutary.
-- Rod Usher, "The Fat of the Land", Time Europe, January 8, 2000

Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations -- charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs -- and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens.
-- Fareed Zakaria, "Bigger Than the Family, Smaller Than the State", New York Times, August 13, 1995

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Salutary derives from Latin salutaris, from salus, salut-, "health."

Algot Runeman · Post by **Algot Runeman** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:38 am

Soldiers find it salutary to salute an approaching officer.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:02 am

Genre: DC Comics

The Thing's salutation of "Hiya Bruce !" did not have the saluatory effect of creating some efflugence. Rather, The Hulk (aka Dr. Bruce Banner) responded by cocking his mighty arm.

"Hulk smash rock man !"

"Wait Bruce !" stammered the Thing. "Me Grimm ... Ben Grimm. Don't you remember me ?!"

The punch stuck with the force of several kilotons** of TNT, sending him crashing 2 miles in a ballistic arc that carried him through several buildings and into the East River, and giving Ben Grimm a helluva megrim in the process. Clearly, Bruce Banner redivivus had once again succumbed to the raging Hulk, whose only form sybaritic disport was the mindless destruction of which he was the undisputed paragon.

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** Kiloton: A kilo-ton is 1,000 tons. However, contrary to public perception, there is no direct connection between the term "Kilotons of TNT" and actual weight (avoirdupois or otherwise) of TNT. Rather, it is unintuitively standardized to calories of energy.

Algot Runeman · Post by **Algot Runeman** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:33 am

Does DC Comics typically use footnotes?
Do the footnotes conform to any particular manual of style?
Isn't this the questions only...? Oops!

In the spirit of salutary (as opposed to snide, salacious or silly) comments, well done, Hiram.

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:24 am

To answer the first two questions: yes, every comic book serires I've seen generally employs footnotes at some point.

As for style, I think that's more of the writer's/penciler's area of control.

salutations!

Post by **Ghost** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:39 am

Word of the Day Wednesday June 17, 2009

gravid \GRAV-id\, adjective: Being with child; heavy with young or eggs; pregnant.

For the moment the Cap'n Toby lies at rest outside the harbor, and the twelve-inch mackerels that Brian and I are cutting up for lobster bait are ripe, their bellies gravid with either blood-red roe or milt the color of sailors' bones.
-- Richard Adams Carey, Against the Tide

In North America, in contrast, the British conquered an empire; New France disappeared from history. But -- Anderson's profound theme -- Britain's triumph was gravid with defeat.
-- Jack Beatty, "Defeat in Victory", The Atlantic, December 2000

She is a bored society matron who seduces him before a carload gravid with already weary, now grossed-out morning commuters.
-- Rita Kempley, review of The Adjuster (MGM/UA Studios movie), Washington Post, June 29, 1992

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Gravid derives from Latin gravidus, from gravis, "heavy."

Algot Runeman · Post by **Algot Runeman** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:08 am

Do fishermen of gravid sturgeon sing "Roe, roe, roe the boat, gently with the steam" as they collect the eggs due to become caviar?
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Participants in the WOTD forum topic have a "way with words".

Do some also have a "road with rhetoric" or a "street with statements", perhaps a "path with participles"?

I have been accused of having a "boulevard with bloviation"!
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With all the hot air some of us produce, one would think wind energy would be more successful.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:14 pm

The apple tree, gravid with fruit, provided Sir Issac Newton (who in turn was gravid with his Universal Law of Gravitation) with a serendipitous ribston pippin epiphany.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:43 am

Sir Isaac was known to be a paragon of abstemiouness and not a sybarite. The apple-induced effulgent megrim that delivered his gravid mind from the Law of gravitation could not be due to an excess of imported french-produced apple cider or "Calvados". And since it is not known he ever visited Normandy, this proves he had in fact discovered not just Newtonian Mechanics, but General Relativity, too, and not just that, but also the secret of time travel through "wormholes", to be able to write about it in 1687 after having been hit on the head by an english-grown ribston pippin.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:51 am

Wormholes ... how could I have missed that one ?

Clearly, the last apple that hit me on the head knocked me for a kerr-loop.

BTW, my two favorite eating apples are the cox-orange-pippin and macoun ... both are fabulously aromatic, crisp and tart fresh off the tree, but sadly turn mealy if held too long. Whenever I spot them in the fall at an apple stand, a quick test of thumb pressure (which every sagaciously sinful son of Eve knows how to administer) will reveal whether or not a salutory paragon of efflugent sybarition and disport redivivus is at hand, or a megrim-inducing object of pejoratives warranting abstemiousness. If the former is the case, no force of man or God shall stave off my teeth. However, if the latter is the case, and I am not utterly famished, I generally, let the fallen fruit fall back into its fall repository, so that it may fall prey to my other less discerning fellows of the seasonal, and biblical, fall.

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:00 am

yer makin' me hungry ..

Post by **Ghost** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:19 am

Word of the Day Thursday June 18, 2009

prescience \PREE-shuns; PREE-shee-uns; PRESH-uns; PRESH-ee-uns; PREE-see-uns; PRES-ee-uns\, noun: Knowledge of events before they take place; foresight. --prescient adjective

But you could not fault his prescience in 1980 when he [Arthur Seldon] wrote: "China will go capitalist. Soviet Russia will not survive the century. Labour as we know it will never rule again. Socialism is an irrelevance."
-- "Prophet of privatisation puts money on Major - well, Â£2.50 of it", Electronic Telegraph, March 28, 1997

Critics and historians have written admiringly of Dostoyevsky's acuity at forecasting the nature of the political turmoil that would envelop Russia over the next 100 years; Ms. Egloff, too, pays homage to the novelist's prescience.
-- "Plotters and Snoops in Old Russia", New York Times, May 23, 1998

As a professor, he earned a reputation for prescience when he returned an examination to a student named John Grisham with the comment, "Although you missed most of the legal issues, you have a real talent for fiction."
-- "The Final Refrains of 'Dixie'", New York Times, November 11, 1998

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Prescience is from Latin praescientia, from praescio, praescire, to know beforehand, from prae, before + scio, scire, to know.

If Voralfred in his post three above would had used this WOTD when talking about Newton that would have been prescience / scary.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:28 am

If Voralfred in his post three above would had used this WOTD when talking about Newton that would have been prescience / scary.

A truly prescient post of post-scientific prescience.

Post by **Ghost** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:11 am

Word of the Day Friday June 19, 2009

nimiety \nih-MY-uh-tee\, noun: The state of being too much; excess.

What a nimiety of . . . riches have we here! I am quite undone.
-- James J. Kilpatrick, "Buckley: The Right Word", National Review, December 23, 1996

Just as daily life contains all the comforts of what one owns, there is also a natural shedding or forgetting and a natural dulling, otherwise one becomes burdened with a sense of nimiety, a sense (as Kenneth Clark put it in his autobiography) of the "too-muchness" of life.
-- Nicholas Poburko, "Poetry Past And Present: F. T. Prince's Walks in Rome", Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, January 1, 1999

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Nimiety is from Late Latin nimietas, from Latin nimius, "very much, too much," from nimis, "excessively."

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:00 am

I think my prior alliterative post of palindromic prescience probably qualifies as a nimiety.

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:20 am

Aggressive alliteration is never a nimiety.

Post by **Ghost** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 8:33 am

Word of the Day Monday June 22, 2009

copse \KOPS\, noun: A thicket or grove of small trees.

A lit window shone from between the trees below them, then vanished again as the car dipped over a ditch and passed through a copse.
-- Kate Bingham, Mummy's Legs

Among the mountains, hills, streams, waterfalls, and little copses, the child rejoiced in "savouring the delights of freedom" that stimulated his boyish dreams and reveries.
-- Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet

They sang freely in the copses and thickets round Bohain, and in the ruins of the mediaeval castle where he played as a boy.
-- Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse

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Copse derives from Old French copeiz, "a thicket for cutting," from coper, couper, "to cut." It is related to coupon, at root "the part that is cut off."

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:03 am

The cops found the corpse in the copse.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:08 am

The cops surrounding the corpse in the copse fidgeted while the coroner copped a feel of the corpse's neck.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Tue Jun 23, 2009 2:09 am

The dental corps, identifying the corpse in the copse by its cusps, suspected the cops to be in their cups.

hiram · Post by **hiram** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:59 am

Nicely done.

As the dental corps cupped the cuspids of the corpse in the copse, and recapped their findings, the nearest cap-wearing cup-sipping cop noted that the corps was a gang of drug-pushing pricks in the novocaine trade, and that he was sorely tempted to cap one of them, as an example to the rest.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Tue Jun 23, 2009 7:10 am

hiram wrote:As the dental corps cupped the cuspids of the corpse in the copse, and recapped their findings, the nearest cap-wearing cup-sipping cop noted that the corps was a gang of drug-pushing pricks in the novocaine trade, and that he was sorely tempted to cap one of them, as an example to the rest.

I concede the cusp is yours.
I couldn't cap you, with our without help of any copses, corpses, cops, my corps or any coeds in Copacabana.
Though I won't relinquish the cabana ...

Post by **Ghost** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 8:22 am

Word of the Day Tuesday June 23, 2009

pule \PYOOL\, intransitive verb: To whimper; to whine.

The first lady initially flourished as a wronged wife precisely because she endured her humiliation so stoically; she did not whine or pule or treat her pain as license to behave badly.
-- Michelle Cottle, "God Almighty", New Republic, September 6, 1999

But my self-absorbed fretting and puling always come to an abrupt end with some surprise gift.
-- Thomas J. McCarthy, "Stay-at-Home Dad", America, February 26, 2000

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Pule is perhaps from French piauler, "to whine, to pule," ultimately of imitative origin.

E Pericoloso Sporgersi · Tue Jun 23, 2009 8:49 am

Inuit at the North Pole: "Hey, don't pule! Put your wager in the pool for the pool game. If I lose the poule, don't pee a pool or hit me with a pole, but take a car from the pool, drive me to the pool and dunk me!

CodeBlower · Post by **CodeBlower** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:05 am

"Bah, humbug!" was Scrooge's yule pule.