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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