Word of the Day!

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Wow! You've known ALL of the words so far?!?! That's pretty impressive! "Check out the big brain on Brad!" That just needed a "Pulp Fiction" quote!

Word of the Day for Wednesday November 13, 2002

impassive \im-PASS-iv\, adjective:
1. Devoid of or unsusceptible to emotion.
2. Showing no sign of emotion or feeling; expressionless.

As before, he seemed neither happy nor unhappy. Just
utterly impassive.
--Lesley Hazleton, [1]Driving To Detroit

Yet highway troopers, too, wore smoked glasses to mask
their emotions and thus look formidably impassive as they
delivered news as highly charged as jazz.
--Edward Hoagland, [2]Compass Points

He was a slight, kindly man, his impassive face sculpted
with deep furrows, who held himself very erect and had a
demeanor which suggested a degree of resigned boredom from
having taught the same unchanging discipline year after
year to each new class of medical students.
--Frances K. Conley, M.D., [3]Walking Out on the Boys

Still, he remained impassive and unexcited, even when
informed of the death of Helen Jewett.
--Patricia Cline Cohen, [4]The Murder of Helen Jewett
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Impassive is derived from Latin in-, "not" + passivus,
"subject to emotion," from passus, past participle of pati,
"to suffer."

 

more examples of impassive - see some of the posts in the Real Life? thread. Now there's some uninspired and dull comments about life.

 

Todays word is:

Panties.

 

Someone send a cleric to cast "Raise Lawyer" on Bel. He must have been defeted by the mighty dragon Litigation.

Today's Word of the Day is a good fantasy word ...

fealty \FEE-uhl-tee\, noun:
1. Fidelity to one's lord; the feudal obligation by which the tenant or vassal was bound to be faithful to his lord.
2. The oath by which this obligation was assumed.
3. Fidelity; allegiance; faithfulness.

He was re-elected Governor in 1855, and his administration of the State affairs, both in that and the preceding term of office, was marked by a regard for the public interest rather than party fealty.
--"Andrew Johnson Dead," New York Times, August 1, 1875

Barbour believed Christian conservatives represented a critical constituency, and he looked for opportunities to display his fealty to them.
--Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein, Storming the Gates

The aristocratic O'Sullivans were enriched in return for their promise of fealty to the mighty Democratic party and its rising new leader.
--Edward L. Widmer, Young America

Whether exploited by traditional religions or political religions, psychological totalism -- the unquestioning fealty to one God, one truth, and one right, embodied in one faith, one cause, one party -- has everywhere provided the tinder of persecution.
--Jack Beatty, "The Tyranny of Belief," The Atlantic, September 13, 2000

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Fealty comes from Old French fealté, from Latin fidelitas, "fidelity," from fidelis, "faithful," from fides, "faith," from fidere, "to trust."

 

Oh no! Bel has abandoned his fealty to Word of the Day!

 

I first encountered the word fealty in Final Fantasy IX. Such an odd word--I guess we just don't go around pledging our fealty to anyone these days. "Feel what?" Also sounds like "filthy" if you were said it with Joe Pesci's accent from My Uncle Vinny.

I also thought that woebegone would have to do with woe being gone.

Merriam Webster has a Word of the Day as well... (http://www.m-w.com) and a good online dictionary and thesaurus. Which reminds me that my crazy 7th grade teacher used to pronounce it the-ar-sus. Anyhow! The M-W word of the day for November 14th is

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regurgitate • \ree-GUR-juh-tayt\ • (verb)
: to throw or be thrown back, up, or out

Example sentence:
The biology teacher described how some birds feed their chicks by regurgitating incompletely digested food.

Did you know?
Something regurgitated has typically been taken in, at least partially digested, and then spit back out . . . either literally or figuratively. The word often appears in biological contexts, as in our example sentence, or in references to ideas or information that have been acquired and restated. A student, for example, might be expected to learn information from a textbook or a teacher, and then regurgitate it for a test. "Regurgitate" is of Latin origin, and it entered the English vocabulary in the mid-17th century.
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Hmmm. Sorry to gross anybody out! Just thought people might want to know there's another site out there proffering up words-of-the-day. (Ah! Proffer's a good one itself!). I suppose the most interesting part is to note it's Latinate origin and slough off the common prefix (re-) and suffix (-ate) and note the very odd root, involving "gurg". Now listen. I've never gurged anything, and no one's ever caught me gurging... BUT, I have certainly gargled and listened to a gurgling stream. *sigh*

Anyone who'd like to proffer up a rejection of regurgitate as an acceptable alternate obviously likes to sit at home and masticate (which means to chew, for those of you who did not or even for those who might've knew.)

(Yes, I know that known is what should've shown, but that would not have turned into another verse in a post that is now as epic as it is terse. Besides, it did not rhyme with chew...!)

 

Word of the Day for Friday November 15, 2002

segue \SEG-way; SAYG-way\, verb:
To proceed without interruption; to make a smooth transition.

Daylight segued into dusk.
--Susan Dworski

Our honeymoon seemed to segue into a month of dinner
parties.
--Robert McCrum, [1]My Year Off: Rediscovering Life After a
Stroke

The gratifying thing about McCourt is that he can drop his
professional character act and segue into a smart,
emotionally direct conversation faster than you can say
"Top o' the morning."
--"Malachy Mccourt: How a Rogue Becomes a Saint," [2]New
York Times, July 29, 1998

A melody will start innocuously enough, then segue into the
inevitable buildup, with swelling strings and bursting
brass.
--"Woe to Shows That Put On Operatic Airs," [3]New York
Times, July 20, 1997
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Segue is Italian, meaning "it follows," from seguire, to
follow, from Latin sequi. It is also used as a noun,
signifying the act or any instance of segueing.

 

At this point I feel the need to be 'seguing' into weekend mode. Like it.

 

Hopefully when Bel is asleep at the switch, I can make a smooth segue and post the Word of the Day for him.

I first heard "segue" on a Seinfeld episode I think.

 

Hmmm... You know, I know the word 'segue', and usually, I'm much better than my peers at grammar and spelling and the like. (It's always confounded me how often people mix up your and you're.) I know that english words tend to have strange spellings for their pronunciations, and I still thing segue looks wrong. And another thing!

The award for Just Plain Amazed goes to me, for discovering that not only is there a word called nougatory, but that someone knew of it without the word of the day. "Nougatory." It's fun to say, ha-yuck! <Big hillbilly grin>.

Here's the stumper to end all stumpers:

Antidisastablishmentarianism.

I swear to the PTBs that I found it once in a dictionary, but the definition was so confusing, even I gave up.

 

Antidisestablishmentarianism? Well...
In the UK the Church of England is the established church. That means that the Queen is the head of the church; bishops from the Church sit in the House of Lords; the Prime Minister selects who is to be Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is directly linked to the functioning of the state. I would presume that in other countries the same is true of other churches. Disestablishmentarianism is the movement of those who think that this link should be broken, so that the Church can be free to follow its own conscience without being concerned about its official role. And Antidisestablishmentarianism is the opposite viewpoint, which believes the Church should keep its current position.

 

yeah, segue looks awfully strange. I'm not even sure that Italian origin helps explain the pronounciation. It's one of those words that you wouldn't like to see on a spelling bee!

 

As far as I know, in Holland the church has absolutely no power in the cabinet and the other way around.

 

It could be;

Supercallifragilistigetsyallidociouss

or, I say, sighing...

...Iddlywiddlypiddlypoop

*(sigh)* sorry Tal and BTA, just trying to do it before 8people or Frosty did.

Sorry sorry

 

I'm worried about Bel!

Today's Word of the Day is the first WOD that makes me think of a Star Wars Planet. So today's Word is Dedicated with love to Big B!

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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."

*******
Weds 11/20:

foment \foh-MENT; FOH-ment\, transitive verb:
To nurse to life or activity; to incite; to abet; to instigate; -- often in a bad sense.

\FOH-ment\, noun:
1. Fomentation; the act of fomenting.
2. State of excitation.
Cynical politicians may even foment conflicts among groups to advance their own power.
--Martha Minow, Not Only for Myself

Here, over many cups of coffee and other brews, John Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere met to foment rebellion, prompting Daniel Webster to call it "the headquarters of the Revolution."
--Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds

Having burned to taste the foment of the sixties, I romanticized Diego's experience of it.
--Katherine Russell Rich, The Red Devil

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Foment is from Latin fomentum, "fomentation," from fovere, "to warm, to foster, to encourage."

[ November 20, 2002, 19:16: Message edited by: Mathetais ]

 

I had to post this one!!! I like this word!!! I think it even beats out knucklehead!

Word of the Day for Thursday December 5, 2002

booboisie \boob-wah-ZEE\, noun:
A class of people regarded as stupid or foolish.

Until then, he'd dismissed Hollywood as a purveyor of
machine-made fodder for the booboisie, but he found, much
to his surprise, that the movies weren't nearly as bad as
he'd claimed.
--Terry Teachout, quoted in "Writing Mencken," by Kathryn
Jean Lopez, [1]National Review Online, November 15, 2002

He was primarily a radical freethinker who noisily waged
war against the booboisie.
--Richard Lingeman, "Disturber of the Peace," [2]Washington
Post, November 3, 2002
_________________________________________________

Booboisie is a blend of boob and bourgeoisie. It was coined by
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), American editor and critic.

 

LOL!!! ROTFLMAO

That's a good one ... can't believe its really in the dictionary.

Where have you been Sir Bel? I was so worried!!!

[ December 05, 2002, 18:40: Message edited by: Mathetais ]

 

We played a game at Thanksgiving where we open the dictionary to a random page, pick a word, and have everyone suggest definitions. The most accurate and/or funniest wins the round.

The word of the evening this year? Cockshy.

Any guesses?!