Monday, March 8, 2010

Fractious

Word of the Day for Monday, February 22, 2010

fractious \FRAK-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to cause trouble; unruly.
2. Irritable; snappish; cranky.
In Marshall's case, the experience of dealing with a clamorous band of younger siblings, earning their affection and respect while holding them to their tasks, proved remarkably useful in later years when dealing with fractious colleagues jealous of their prerogatives.
-- Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation
Marcus frequently took a rod to Ambrose's back--with the predictable result of making the boy even more fractious and slow to obey.
-- Roy Morris Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company
Fractious heirs drink too much and squabble over dock space for their sailboats.
-- Marilyn Stasio, review of Stormy Weather, by Carl Hiaasen, New York Times, September 3, 1995
Fractious is from fraction, which formerly had the sense "discord, dissension, disharmony"; it is derived from Latin frangere, "to break."
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Gastronome

Word of the Day for Friday, February 19, 2010

gastronome \GAS-truh-nohm\, noun:
A connoisseur of good food and drink.
If "poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter," to quote the 19th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again?
-- John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger, "From Poussin to Capon a Chicken in Every Size", New York Times, September 22, 1999
Even though Paris was then considered the culinary capital of Europe, the food at the Cercle was so highly revered that many well-known gastronomes regularly made the trip to Lyon to eat there.
-- Daniel Rogov, "Three culinary tales for Hanukka", Jerusalem Post, December 6, 1996
I am no gastronome at the best; moreover, I have, over the years, eaten in so many unpropitious circumstances and from so many truly awful kitchens that I have come to consider myself almost as much a connoisseur of bad food as other men are of good.
-- James Cameron, "Albania: The Last Marxist Paradise", The Atlantic, June 1963
Gastronome is ultimately derived from Greek gaster, "stomach" + nomos, "rule, law."
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Thursday, February 25, 2010

Duplicity

Word of the Day for Thursday, February 18, 2010

duplicity \doo-PLIS-i-tee, dyoo-\, noun:
1. Deliberate deceptiveness in behavior or speech; also, an instance of deliberate deceptiveness; double-dealing.
2. The quality or state of being twofold or double.
Perhaps Phil was a spy, working at Gagosian but secretly in the employ of White Cube. Actually, now that the idea of duplicity had entered Jeff's mind, it occurred to him that his gallery was having a party to which Jeff had been conspicuously uninvited.
-- Geoff Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Here on the beach under a good sun Hiro-matsu forced himself into a polite bow, hating his own duplicity.
-- James Clavell, Shogun
It didn't occur to him that Laura might have had an ulterior motive in seeking him out. Laura had a direct gaze, such blankly open eyes, such a pure, rounded forehead, that few ever suspected her of duplicity.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Duplicity comes from Middle English duplicite, from Old French, from Late Latin duplicitās, doubleness, from Latin duplex, duplic-, twofold.
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Hypnagogic

Word of the Day for Wednesday, February 17, 2010

hypnagogic \hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\, adjective:
Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep.
It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered later on.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", New York Times, June 6, 1993
. . .the phenomenon of hypnagogic hallucinations, or what Mr. Alvarez describes as "the flickering images and voices that well up just before sleep takes over."
-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "The Faces of Night, Many of Them Scary", New York Times, January 9, 1995
His uncensored and uncensoring subconscious allows him to absorb the world around him and in him, and to spit it out almost undigested, as if he were walking around in a constant hypnagogic state.
-- Susan Bolotin, "Don't Turn Your Back on This Book", New York Times, June 9, 1985
Hypnagogic (sometimes spelled hypnogogic) ultimately derives from Greek hupnos, "sleep" + agogos, "leading," from agein, "to lead."
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Inexorable

Word of the Day for Tuesday, February 16, 2010

inexorable \in-EK-sur-uh-bul; in-EKS-ruh-bul\, adjective:
Not to be persuaded or moved by entreaty or prayer; firm; determined; unyielding; unchangeable; inflexible; relentless.
But the idea of providence, whether the biblical version or the Enlightenment's or Marx's, is at bottom a tragic notion, for it implies that individual human choices count for nothing against the weight of an inexorable, overwhelming force, whether benign or cruel, whether known as God, History, Destiny, Progress or DNA.
-- James Carrol, "Laughing Our Way to Defeat", New York Times, February 16, 1986
. . .such notions as the 'logic of the facts', or the 'march of history', which, like the laws of nature (with which they are partly identified), are thought of as, in some sense, 'inexorable', likely to take their course whatever human beings may wish or pray for, an inevitable process to which individuals must adjust themselves.
-- Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality
Confronted again with pictures of flag-draped coffins and mutilated bodies, with the sounds of random gunfire and angry chants, the world had to readjust to the fact that not every problem is solvable, that the global tide of peace is not inexorable, and that progress does not inevitably make civilizations more civilized.
-- "Fires Of Hate", Time, October 23, 2000
Inexorable comes from Latin inexorabilis, from in-, "not" + exorabilis, "able to be entreated, placable," from exorare, "to entreat successfully, to prevail upon," from ex-, intensive prefix + orare, "to speak; to argue; to pray."
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Vivify

Word of the Day for Monday, February 15, 2010

vivify \VIV-uh-fy\, transitive verb:
1. To endue with life; to make alive; to animate.
2. To make more lively or intense.
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
-- Annie Dillard, "Write Till You Drop", New York Times, May 28, 1989
Stories not only provide context for statistical statements but can illustrate and vivify them as well.
-- John Allen Paulos, Once Upon a Number
They collaborated on, and for our benefit specialized in, like paleontologists, the painstaking reconstruction of vanished jokes from extant tag lines. They could vivify old New Yorker cartoons, source of many tag lines.
-- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Vivify comes from French vivifier, from Late Latin vivificare, from Latin vivus, alive.
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Billet-doux

Word of the Day for Sunday, February 14, 2010

billet-doux \bil-ay-DOO\, noun;
plural billets-doux \bil-ay-DOO(Z)\:
A love letter or note.
Perhaps she just looked first into the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden among the flowers; but there was no letter.
-- William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Young lovers in Victorian England, forbidden to express their affection in public and fearful that strict parents would intercept their billets-doux, sent coded messages through the personal columns in newspapers.
-- Susan Adams, "I've got a secret", Forbes, September 20, 1999
This is very amusing, Paul, writing critics little billet-doux in one's head is always good for a giggle, but you really ought to find yourself a pot and get it boiling, don't you think?
-- Stephen King, Misery
In French, billet-doux means "sweet note;" or "short note" (billet, "note" + doux, "sweet," from Latin dulcis).
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Cupidity

Word of the Day for Saturday, February 13, 2010

cupidity \kyoo-PID-uh-tee\, noun:
Eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth; greed; avarice.
Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind.
-- John Crowley, "Of Marvels And Monsters", Washington Post, October 18, 1998
At the end, all but rubbing his hands with cupidity, Rockefeller declares he will now promote abstract art--it's better for business.
-- Stuart Klawans, "Rock in a Hard Place", The Nation, December 27, 1999
This strain of cupidity sprang from the mean circumstances of his youth in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York.
-- Jack Beatty, "A Capital Life", New York Times, May 17, 1998
For such is human cupidity that we Thoroughbreds have but one chance to survive it -- to run so fast and to win so much money that we are retired in comfort in our declining days.
-- William Murray, "From the Horse's Mouth", New York Times, August 8, 1993
Cupidity ultimately comes from Latin cupiditas, from cupidus, "desirous," from cupere, "to desire." It is related to Cupid, the Roman god of love.
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Monday, February 22, 2010

Quietus

Word of the Day for Friday, February 12, 2010

quietus \kwy-EE-tuhs\, noun:
1. Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation.
2. Removal from activity; rest; death.
3. Something that serves to suppress or quiet.
I have put a quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you no more.
-- Herman Melville, "The Apple-Tree Table"
Consider a small police-blotter report from an 1875 issue of The Grant County Herald in Silver City, N[ew] M[exico]: "We learn that on Friday, Jose Garcia, who lives at the Chino copper mines, caught his wife in flagrante delicto -- we leave the reader to guess the crime -- Jose, then and there, gave her the quietus with an axe."
-- Thomas Kunkel, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Six-Shooter", New York Times, August 30, 1998
It was after eleven when Fanning put the quietus to his day, retreating to the "Hospitality Suite" where he'd been hanging his hat these past weeks.
-- David Long, The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux
During his final illness, someone asked Schiller how he felt: "calmer and calmer" was the reply. It was a quietus he richly deserved.
-- Roger Kimball, "Schiller's 'Aesthetic Education", New Criterion, March 2001
Quietus is from Medieval Latin quietus (est), "(it is) at rest" (said of an obligation that has been discharged), from Latin quietus, "at rest."
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Coquetry

Word of the Day for Thursday, February 11, 2010

coquetry \KOH-ki-tree; koh-KE-tree\, noun:
Dalliance; flirtation.
'You were probably very bored by it,' he said, catching at once, in mid-air, this ball of coquetry that she had thrown to him.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Her pose, quite natural for a woman of the East, might perhaps in a Frenchwoman, have suggested a slightly affected coquetry.
-- Alexandre Dumas père, The Count of Monte Cristo
Madame coquetted with him in the most captivating and naive manner, with eyes, gestures, and a profusion of compliments, till the Colonel's old head felt thirty years younger on his padded shoulders. Edna marveled, not comprehending. She herself was almost devoid of coquetry.
-- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Coquetry, French coquetterie, is from coquette, the feminine form of French coquet, "flirtatious man," diminutive of coq, "rooster, cock." The adjective form is coquettish. The verb coquet (also coquette) means "to flirt or trifle with."
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Tarradiddle

Word of the Day for Wednesday, February 10, 2010

tarradiddle \tair-uh-DID-uhl\, noun;
also taradiddle:
1. A petty falsehood; a fib.
2. Pretentious nonsense.
Oh please! Even in the parallel universe, tarradiddles of this magnitude cannot go unchallenged.
-- "Taxation in the parallel universe", Sunday Business, June 11, 2000
Mr B did not tell a whopper. This was no fib, plumper, porker or tarradiddle. There was definitely no deceit, mendacity or fabrication.
-- "Looking back", Western Mail, May 11, 2002
Other amendments, such as a chef at the birthday party, a dancing bear in the hunting scene, and a brief solo for the usually pedestrian Catalabutte, seemed more capricious, and the synopsis suggested further changes had been planned but perhaps found impractical. Some tarradiddle with roses for death and rebirth also necessitated different flowers for the traditional Rose Adagio.
-- John Percival, "The other St Petersburg company", Independent, November 22, 2001
Tarradiddle is of unknown origin.
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Vitiate

Word of the Day for Tuesday, February 9, 2010

vitiate \VISH-ee-ayt\, transitive verb:
1. To make faulty or imperfect; to render defective; to impair; as, "exaggeration vitiates a style of writing."
2. To corrupt morally; to debase.
3. To render ineffective; as, "fraud vitiates a contract."
MacNelly is one of the few contemporary political cartoonists who can use humor to accentuate, not vitiate, his points.
-- Richard E. Marschall, "The Century In Political Cartoons", Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1999
It seems churlish to say of a book that is beautifully written, richly allusive, learned, elegant, Proustian in tone and mode, that precisely these qualities vitiate its ostensible purpose, distracting attention from the subject and focusing it upon the very gifted author.
-- Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A Man's Own Household His Enemies", Commentary, July 1999
Whatever a "real contradiction" might be, "apparent contradictions" are quite sufficient to vitiate a doctrine of biblical authority that is based on the supposedly apparent reading of the text.
-- Robert M. Price, "The Psychology of Biblicism", Humanist, May 2001
Vitiate comes from Latin vitiare, from vitium, fault. It is related to vice (a moral failing or fault), which comes from vitium via French.
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Approbation

Word of the Day for Monday, February 8, 2010

approbation \ap-ruh-BAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act of approving; formal or official approval.
2. Praise; commendation.
The speech struck a responsive chord among many and won him much approbation.
-- George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed
More importantly, these drawings represented a first success, which brought the intoxicating rewards of approbation and cash.
-- Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography
To some of his contemporaries, the episode seemed more the schemings of someone craving attention and the approbation of his peers than an act of sabotage.
-- Richard Siklos, Shades of Black
Approbation is from Latin approbatio, from approbare, "to approve or cause to be approved," from ap- (for ad-), used intensively + probare, "to make or find good," from probus, "good, excellent, fine."
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Ignoramaus

Word of the Day for Sunday, February 7, 2010

ignoramus \ig-nuh-RAY-mus\, noun:
An ignorant person; a dunce.
My "perfect" reader is not a scholar but neither is he an ignoramus; he does not read because he has to, nor as a pastime, nor to make a splash in society, but because he is curious about many things, wishes to choose among them and does not wish to delegate this choice to anyone; he knows the limits of his competence and education, and directs his choices accordingly.
-- Primo Levi, "This Above All: Be Clear", New York Times, November 20, 1988
I am quite an ignoramus, I know nothing in the world.
-- Charlotte Bronte, Villette
Only the crassest ignoramus can still hold to the old-fashioned notion that seeing is believing. That which you see is the first thing to disbelieve.
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ignoramus was the name of a character in George Ruggle's 1615 play of the same name. The name was derived from the Latin, literally, "we are ignorant," from ignorare, "not to know," from ignarus, "not knowing," from ig- (for in-), "not" + gnarus, "knowing, acquainted with, expert in." It is related to ignorant and ignore.
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Sunday, February 7, 2010

Distrait

Word of the Day for Friday, February 5, 2010

distrait \dis-TRAY\, adjective:
Divided or withdrawn in attention, especially because of anxiety.
Yet when she stopped for a cup of coffee, finding herself too distrait to begin work, the picture was in the course of being removed from the window.
-- Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly
He had painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet delicate and distrait.
-- Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Virtually nobody noticed a more private and simultaneous cameo in a little bay in West Cork: of a delicate, somewhat distrait, gentleman of middle age being swept into the turbulent waters off Kilcrohane.
-- Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, July 21, 1999
Distrait is from Old French, from distraire, "to distract," from Latin distrahere, "to pull apart; to draw away; to distract," from dis- + trahere, "to draw, to pull." It is related to distraught and distracted, which have the same Latin source.
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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Pecuniary

Word of the Day for Thursday, February 4, 2010

pecuniary \pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\, adjective:
1. Relating to money; monetary.
2. Consisting of money.
3. Requiring payment of money.
He lacked the finer element of conscience which looks upon Art as a sacred calling, she remembered, and because of "pecuniary necessities" he "scattered his forces in many different and unworthy directions."
-- James F. O'Gorman, Accomplished in All Departments of Art
The young man of the house was absorbed in his vegetable garden and the possibilities for pecuniary profit that it held.
-- Samuel Chamberlain, Clementine in the Kitchen
He sees the great pecuniary rewards and how they are gained, and naturally is moved by an impulse to obtain the same for himself.
-- David J. Brewer, "The Ideal Lawyer", The Atlantic, November 1906
Over the decades, Pitt built an impressive roster of similarly well-heeled clients who stood accused by the SEC of securities fraud, misstating their finances, other pecuniary offenses.
-- Jonathan Chait, "Invested Interest", The New Republic, December 17, 2001
Pecuniary comes from Latin pecuniarius, "of money, pecuniary," from pecunia, "property in cattle, hence money," from pecu, "livestock, one's flocks and herds."
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