Wednesday, February 24, 2010

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.
Posted by at No comments:

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."
Posted by at No comments:

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."
Posted by at No comments:

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.
Posted by at No comments:

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.
Posted by at No comments:

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."
Posted by at No comments:

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.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)