GAME: Word of the Day (WOTD)

[voralfred]

The most salient fact about the WOTD salient is that it was already WOTD for Friday September 7, 2007.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

My grandma's predilection for fur coats was not her only salient characteristic. When she elegantly divested herself of such outer garments, she herself was quite saliently arresting. You may imagine her looking like a gorgeously gowned but pale-skinned Josphine Baker. Of course my grandpa didn't need to imagine, he enjoyed the real McCoy, with and without garments ...

[Darb]

Dr. Michiba tried in vain to find a salient scientific finding, after having spent weeks studying saline solutions brewed from the salts of the Nevada Salt Flats. Alas, his impending failure to make tenure seemed sure to brew some seriously salacious scuttlebut among colleagues who weren't worth their salt.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Hey, don't denigrate salt!
My grandma (the other one) used Cerebos Salt.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Friday, March 12, 2010

solecism\SOL-uh-siz-uhm\ , noun; 1. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech. 2. A breach of good manners or etiquette. 3. Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety.

An accurate report of anything that has ever been said in any parliament would be blather, solecism, verbiage and nonsense.
-- "Hansard of the Highlands", Times (London), February 17, 2001

Her English is good, apart from a few stubborn idiosyncrasies of preposition and tense, but these are music to me, sung solecisms -- how else to describe "I am already loving you," her first declaration of feeling for me, now two years old?
-- Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist

In those days smoking in the streets was an unpardonable solecism.
-- Edmund Yates, Recollections

. . .another of her fabrications or flat-footed solecisms or, at any rate, a simple indication of the boundless ineptitude with which she manages Leonardo's affairs.
-- R.M. Berry, Leonardo's Horse

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Solecism comes from Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikizein, "to speak incorrectly," from soloikos, "speaking incorrectly," literally, "an inhabitant of Soloi," a city in ancient Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.

[umsolopagas]

Verbal interaction between members of cliquish demographic sets - which may be handicapped by lack of language proficiency - has seen the rise of numerous solecisms used in everyday conversation by the rest of the populace.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

I humbly apologise for any solecisms I may have perpetrated.
My only excuse is the last sentence in my signature.

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Monday, March 22, 2010

cacophony\kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\ , noun; 1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance. 2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.

New York was then a cacophony of sounds -- a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling.
-- Herbert G. Goldman, Banjo Eyes

The mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable.
-- Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg

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Cacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.


I was on vacation last week.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

I wonder why there hasn't been a cacophony of complaints about the sporadic appearance of WotDs lately.

[Darb]

Probably because the chief perpetrator has already been beaten to death over it on numerous occasions.

[voralfred]

Probably because the chief perpetrator has already been beaten to death over it in numerous occasions.

At least once, obviously!

[CodeBlower]

lawl!1

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Tuesday, March 30, 2010

popinjay\POP-in-jay\ , noun; 1. A vain and talkative person.

One popinjay shrieking from the left and another from the right about last week's headlines is not the whole of Washington's political dramas. Occasionally, American politics is more complicated and more momentous.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., "Feds Go Drug Crazy", American Spectator, May 26, 2000

A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay.
-- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

The dignified, high density of personality of [Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart] is completely missing from our popinjay contemporary actors.
-- Camille Paglia, Salon, March 1998

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Popinjay is from Middle English papejay, popingay, meaning "parrot," from Old French papegai, deriving ultimately from Arabic babagha.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Would stating that Ghost is a WotD popinjay, be a sarcasm, a satire or just a rhetorical figure of speech?

[Darb]

Given the fact of Ghost's disheveled appearance, and that fact that he rarely speaks (even during seances) , I'd be hard pressed to call him a poppinjay.

[Ghost]

Since Darb just commented on my appearance:

Word of the Day Wednesday, March 31, 2010

bedizen\bih-DY-zuhn\ , transitive verb; 1. To dress or adorn in gaudy manner.

At 18, he attended a party "frizzled, powdered and curled, in radiant pink satin, with waistcoat bedizened with gems of pink paste and a mosaic of colored foils and a hat blazing with 5,000 metallic beads," according to Michael Battersberry in "Fashion, The Mirror of History."
-- Donna Larcen, "Details Details: Everything Old Is New Again", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 19, 1994

. . .Ford's 2001-model F-150 SuperCrew "Harley-Davidson" model. This special edition pickup truck is bedizened with enough chrome, leather, and H-D logos to bring a RUBbie (Rich Urban Biker) weeping to his knees.
-- "Summer Autos 2001", Newsday, May 19, 2001

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Bedizen is the prefix be-, "completely; thoroughly; excessively" + dizen, an archaic word meaning "to deck out in fine clothes and ornaments," from Middle Dutch disen, "to dress (a distaff) with flax ready for spinning," from Middle Low German dise, "the bunch of flax placed on a distaff."

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Ah, at last once more a WotD which perfectly fits my fur bedizened grandma.

P.S. Isn't hiram back from the hills yet?

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Thursday, April 01, 2010

hugger-mugger\HUH-guhr-muh-guhr\ , noun; 1. A disorderly jumble; muddle; confusion. 2. Secrecy; concealment.
adjective: 1. Confused; muddled; disorderly. 2. Secret.
adverb: 1. In a muddle or confusion. 2. Secretly.
transitive verb: 1. To keep secret.
intransitive verb: 1. To act in a secretive manner.

While Ventura is speaking out -- his wisdom seems to be a hugger-mugger of twisted cliches from his reading of airport trash picked up as he traveled from bout to bout -- others who do possess minds too often are failing to speak theirs, and usually they do so only as a consequence of perceived electoral pragmatism.
-- Jamie Dettmer, "Campaigning and the Media Circus", Insight on the News, November 1, 1999

From here on in, it's all about security clearances, undercover surveillance, computers, microphones hidden in coat buttons and so much technical hugger-mugger you'd have to be a hacker to decipher it.
-- Rex Reed, "On The Town With Rex Reed", New York Observer, February 3, 2003

I followed him to that hugger-mugger cabin he had hidden in the oaks on the other side of the swale and nipped behind the trees.
-- Roy Parvin, The Loneliest Road in America

While we waited in the cab for a final passenger to appear (Nesher disapproves of empty seats), my new American friend, unhappy with the hugger-mugger tossing of his luggage, got out of the taxi and climbed into its rear to arrange things better.
-- Edith Pearlman, "Neshering", The Atlantic, December 1998

The charts fit into this upper compartment that they may be ready at hand on any pressing engagement and, below, safe from prying eyes, you may stow your books. Whether they be maritime, legal, religious, or consecrated to the delight of the senses, 'tis all one, they lie there together hugger-mugger.
-- Ferdinand Mount, Jem (and Sam)

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The origin of hugger-mugger is unknown; it is perhaps from Anglo-Irish cuggermugger, "a whispering, a low-voiced gossiping," from Irish cogair!, "whisper!"

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Though my grandma's couturier worked his furs in a workshop looking more like a hugger-mugger than an artisan's atelier, she was very much satisfied with his artistic creations.

Huggle-muggle: a person who indiscriminately hugs and cuddles muggles.

[Darb]

Dirty Harry, his masculine pride mortally wounded by a surprise hug, angrily emptied all 6 rounds from his mighty 44 Magnum at the fleeing hugger-mugger.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

Hey! HIRAM! Where are you hiding? In a hugger-mugger cabin in the hills?
Yelling for hiram reminds me of Liza (Odetta) calling Henry (Harry Belafonte).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlICWoBb ... re=related

[Ghost]

Word of the Day Tuesday, April 06, 2010

land of Nod\land-uhv-NOD\ , noun; 1. A mythical land of sleep.

We were fast going off to the land of Nod, when - bang, bang, bang - on the scuttle, and "All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths.
-- Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before The Mast

For the jet-lagged insomniac, here are a few suggestions of what to do in Manhattan once the last bar has chucked you out and the land of nod seems further away than the night bus to Camberwell.
-- William Hide, "The night shift", The Guardian, February 24, 2001

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Land of Nod is a pun on the biblical place-name, the country to which Cain journeyed after slaying Abel. See Genesis, 4:16.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

I was just thinking of going to the land of Nod.
Then I happened to read this WotD. It pushed me over the edge.
... <yawn> ... See . you .. to ... mor .... <snore> .....

[Algot Runeman]

Up too late last night, I need a nifty nest in a nearby nook of the land of Nod. Maybe a nap is next for me after lunch.

The quote from Two Years Before the Mast reminds me to recommend that you all read that book.

[Darb]

Grandfather Noddy, a noted narcoleptic, had nodded off (as was his wont) in the land of nod, not having noticed the new notice probibiting nodding off in public. Worse still, he was in for the rude shock of not being grandfathered, even though he was indeed, and fact, a grandfather who nodded ... due to medical disability and by virtue of the name of his birth. Horrors !