Return of the Word of the Day!

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I thought this was a good one, so I thought I'd start it up again. I can't double post, so make sure to comment on the word so I can post the next day!

Word of the Day for Wednesday September 24, 2003

deus ex machina \DAY-uhs-eks-MAH-kuh-nuh; -nah; -MAK-uh-nuh\,
noun:
1. In ancient Greek and Roman drama, a god introduced by means
of a crane to unravel and resolve the plot.
2. Any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an
apparently insoluble difficulty.

In times of affluence and peace, with technology that
always seems to arrive like a deus ex machina to solve any
problem, it becomes easy to believe that life is
perfectible.
--Stephanie Gutmann, [1]The Kinder, Gentler Military

But we also need the possibility of cataclysm, so that,
when situations seem hopeless, and beyond the power of any
natural force to amend, we may still anticipate salvation
from a messiah, a conquering hero, a deus ex machina, or
some other agent with power to fracture the unsupportable
and institute the unobtainable.
--Stephen Jay Gould, [2]Questioning the Millennium
_________________________________________________________

Deus ex machina is New Latin for "god from the machine"; it is
a translation of the Greek theos ek mekhanes.

Trivia: The dramatic device dates from the 5th century BC and
is especially associated with Euripides, one of the greatest
classical tragedians.

 

The whole deus ex machina theme was beaten to death by ST:TNG. They almost never faced a problem that couldn't be solved by running a Level 1 diagnostic. *yawn* Thank God for Q and the Borg being around to keep things interesting!

Voyager wasn't much better - their fallback line was "It must be a new life form!" *double yawn*

 

where do you sign up for that service?

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/

Click on 'Mailing List' to sign up.

 

There's also Mirriam-Webster Online which is nice because it has an audio icon that will pronounce the word for you. You can register for it here. Here's a sample...

The Word of the Day for September 24 is:

avatar • \AV-uh-tahr\ • noun
: an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user (as in a computer game or an online shopping site)

Example sentence:
James liked to use a cartoon character as his avatar for the online bulletin board.

Did you know?
"Avatar" started life as a word meaning "the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu)." It derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "descent," is ultimately from a word that means "he crosses over," and referred to the descent of a deity to the earth in some earthly form. It later came to refer to any incarnation in human form, and then to any embodiment (such as of a concept or philosophy), which may or may not be a person. Recently, "avatar" has developed another new sense, one that is distantly related to the concept of a descending deity via the idea of "embodiment"—it can be used for the image that a person chooses as his or her "embodiment" in an electronic medium.

 

Word of the Day for Thursday September 25, 2003

hobbledehoy \HOB-uhl-dee-hoy\, noun:
An awkward, gawky young fellow.

For early on, girls become aware -- as much from their
fathers' anguished bellows of "You're not going out dressed
like that, Miss" as from the buffoonish reactions of the
spotty hobbledehoys at the end-of-term disco -- of the
power of clothes to seduce.
--Jane Shilling, "Soft-centred punk," [1]Times (London),
October 27, 2000

His memories, even only reveries, of incomparable women,
made me feel like a hulking hobbledehoy.
--Edith Anderson, [2]Love in Exile

Unfortunately, they have to contend with ignorant
hobbledehoys who, on seeing these rows of shingle heaps,
feel compelled to jump on them.
--Susan Campbell, "He grows seakale on the seashore,"
[3]Daily Telegraph, March 27, 1999
_________________________________________________________

The origin of hobbledehoy is unknown, though it perhaps
derives from hobble, from the awkward movements of a clumsy
adolescent.

 

Shame on you Sir Bel for letting the word of the day go on hiatus. Whoops, didn't mean to use a future word of the day.

 

Hey Rallymama...don't forget about tackion particles. Those damn tackion particles were responsible for gravometric disturbances and every once in a while, temporal distortions the likes of which hasn't been seen in this galaxy or the next for neigh on a millenia.

God I wish they were making new ST:TNG...that and the Simpsons are my two favorite TV shows of all time.

 

Word of the Day for Friday September 26, 2003

toothsome \TOOTH-suhm\, adjective:
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.

Fleming was impressed not only by its taste but by its
astonishing durability: Caudle's apple, after ten months in
storage, was still toothsome and fragrant.
--David Guterson, "The Kingdom of Apples," [1]Harper's
Magazine, October 1999

Their topic, naturally: business niches that offer
toothsome opportunities and comparatively limited
competition.
--Dick Youngblood, "Business niches can be opportunities,"
[2]Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 2, 2003

The myth, which Kournikova herself often takes great
measures to perpetuate, is that she is an imposter on the
WTA Tour, a toothsome starlet who simply uses the tennis
court as a catwalk.
--Jon Wertheim, "Any day now for Anna," [3]Sports
Illustrated, April 14, 2000
_________________________________________________________

Toothsome is derived from tooth + -some.

Synonyms: delectable, delicious, palatable, scrumptious,
tasty, yummy. [4]Find more at Thesaurus.com.

 

Lol. Toothsome... that's quite a "raw" way to qualify sexual attraction.

 

Don't get me startyed on this!

You know, I have done some "testing" via this list.... Thus far our dear Walkiong Dictionar aka Chevalier has not failed to know/explain the meaning of a word, often better than the list

 

thats probably because(i know i read this somewhere) he has photographic memory...prolly reaad a dictionary when he was young.

 

Here are the words of the Day for Saturday and Sunday...I hope everyone had as good a weekend as I did!

Word of the Day for Sunday September 28, 2003

titivate \TIT-uh-vayt\, transitive & intransitive verb:
To smarten up; to spruce up.

It's easy to laugh at a book in which the heroine's husband
says to her, "You look beautiful," and then adds, "So stop
titivating yourself."
--Joyce Cohen, review of To Be the Best, by Barbara Taylor
Bradford, [1]New York Times, July 31, 1988

In The Idle Class, when Chaplin is titivating in a hotel
room, the cloth on his dressing table rides up and down,
caught in the same furious gusts.
--Peter Conrad, [2]Modern Times, Modern Places
_________________________________________________________

Titivate is perhaps from tidy + the quasi-Latin ending -vate.
When the word originally came into the language, it was
written tidivate or tiddivate. The noun form is titivation.

Usage: Titivate is sometimes considered colloquial and is
often used for humorous effect. Be careful not to confuse it
with [3]titillate.
___________________________________________________________
Word of the Day for Saturday September 27, 2003

ascribe \uh-SKRYB\, transitive verb:
1. To attribute, as to a source or cause; as, "they ascribed
the poor harvest to drought."
2. To attribute, as a quality; to consider or allege to
belong; as, "ascribed jealousy to the critics."

Scholars conventionally ascribe Hemingway's creative
dissolution to drinking and depression, but to me that has
always seemed too simple.
--D. T. Max, "Ernest Hemingway's War Wounds," [1]New York
Times Magazine, July 18, 1999

Plainness won't do for today's cookbook writers; when
they're not emoting over mere food, they ascribe all sorts
of fanciful powers to it.
--"Shut Up and Eat!" [2]New York Times, November 24, 1996
_________________________________________________________

Ascribe is from Latin ascribere, "to write in, to add in
writing, hence to attribute," from ad- + scribere, "to write."

 

Nah, that would be boring. But I always look up the new word when the meaning isn't obvious.

Toothsome /me makes mental notes

Nice, nice. There's quite a lot of such nice words in English, words and phrases. Damn, I need a pretext to switch to English from Polish. Everything would be simpler. Blaming my anti-spy paranoia isn't a good idea

 

Ahhhh....I knew this one because I went to law school. Uxor means wife in latin...Hey! That law degree is finally paying dividends!!!

uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:
Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands
will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive
shopper she has always been.
--Angela Huth, "All you need is love," [1]Daily Telegraph,
April 24, 1998

Flagler seems to have been an uxorious, domestic man, who
liked the comfort and companionship of a wife at his side.
--Michael Browning, "Whitehall at 100," [2]Palm Beach Post,
February 22, 2002

Fuller is as uxorious a poet as they come: hiatuses in the
couple's mutual understanding are overcome with such
rapidity as to be hardly worth mentioning in the first
place ("How easy, this ability / To lose whatever we
possess / By ceasing to believe that we / Deserve such
brilliant success").
--David Wheatley, "Round and round we go," [3]The Guardian,
October 5, 2002
_________________________________________________________

Uxorious is from Latin uxorius, from uxor, "wife."

Here's the Word for Tuesday, September 30, 2003. Enjoy!

Word of the Day for Tuesday September 30, 2003

atrabilious \at-ruh-BIL-yuhs\, adjective:
1. Melancholic; gloomy.
2. Irritable; ill-natured; peevish.

Captain Aubrey's steward [was] an ill-faced, ill-tempered,
meagre, atrabilious, shrewish man who kept his officer's
uniform, equipment and silver in a state of exact,
old-maidish order come wind or high water.
--Patrick O'Brian, [1]The Hundred Days

So here we have him, as entertainingly atrabilious as ever
he was . . . mocking the Fords, the Hitlers, the
Mussolinis, the Sir Alfred Monds, the Owen D. Youngs -- all
who would go back on laissez-faire and on toward the
servile state.
--John Chamberlain, "Future Shock," [2]New York Times,
October 6, 1996
_________________________________________________________

Atrabilious is from Latin atra bilis, "black" (atra) "bile"
(bilis). It is a translation of Greek melankholia, from melas,
melan-, "black" + khole, "bile." According to ancient and
medieval physiology, an excess of black bile in the system was
supposed to cause melancholy.

[ September 30, 2003, 14:56: Message edited by: Sir Belisarius ]

 

Bump for Bel.

Keep the SP-ers edumakated!

 

*Bump* *Bump*

----------------------------

Word of the Day for Thursday October 2, 2003

venal \VEE-nuhl\, adjective:
1. Capable of being bought or obtained for money or other
valuable consideration; held for sale; purchasable.
2. Capable of being corrupted.
3. Marked by or associated with bribery and corrupt dealings.

Not everything was so venal in this operation, however.
Sometimes votes were bought outright, but this was frowned
on if the sums were too high.
--Kenneth R. Johnston, [1]The Hidden Wordsworth

The news items accumulate to project an image of French
politics as venal, power-mongering, and posing a crazy
threat to all those values of humanity and civilization
that Picasso's work had always embraced.
--Rosalind E. Krauss, [2]The Picasso Papers

While the enemy in Vietnam was mysterious and, to some
Americans, heroic, America's allies in Saigon seemed venal
and corrupt, more interested in graft than in combat and
unable to rally their people behind a common cause or to
create an effective military force.
--Charles E. Neu, [3]After Vietnam

Magistrates were expected to supplement their modest
incomes, in theory from personal fortunes, in reality from
a variety of venal practices.
--Michelle De Kretser, [4]The Rose Grower
_________________________________________________________

Venal comes from the Latin venalis, from venum, "sale." It is
related to vendor and vending machine. Be careful not to
confuse it with venial, "easily excused or forgiven."

Synonyms: bribable, corrupt, crooked. Find more at
[5]Thesaurus.com


---------------------------------------

Word of the Day for Friday October 3, 2003

pejorative \pih-JOR-uh-tiv\, adjective:
1. Tending to make or become worse.
2. Tending to disparage or belittle.
noun:
A belittling or disparaging word or expression.

Citing the construction industry, car dealers, and
politicians as the purveyors of "sprawl" (a pejorative term
that does not even allow for the possibility of benefits
associated with low-density development), Kunstler fails to
consider the role of market forces.
--Julia Hansen, letter to the editor, [1]The Atlantic,
December 1996

While he said that he is not a "fanboy," mildly pejorative
slang for an aggressively obsessive "Star Wars" fan, he did
mention that the John Williams "Star Wars" theme was played
at his wedding reception two years ago.
--Michel Marriott, "On a Galaxy of Sites, 'Star Wars' Fever
Rises," [2]New York Times, May 6, 1999

"Welfare state" is now, even for the Labour party whose
grand historic achievement it was, obscurely shameful. A
pejorative for our times.
--John Sutherland, "How the potent language of civic life
was undermined," [3]The Guardian, March 20, 2001
_________________________________________________________

Pejorative is derived from the past participle of Late Latin
pejorare, "to make worse, to become worse," from Latin pejor,
"worse."

 

Word of the Day for Friday November 14, 2003

termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun:
A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew.

adjective:
Overbearing; shrewish; scolding.

Mathetais has often described his wife as a termagant.
--As related to Sir Belisarius in the Friendly Arm Inn


Family legend recounts that Sister Garrison once quite
literally broke up her husband's drinking party by smashing
the offending bottles, and this is sometimes taken to mean
that Abijah Garrison was driven to desert his family by his
termagant of a wife.
--Henry Mayer, [2]All on Fire

The music critic Maclintick, with his termagant wife and
his book which will never be finished, who in a moment of
drunken despair throws his cherished text down the lavatory
and then gasses himself.
--David McKie, "Secret harmonies," [3]The Guardian, March
30, 2000
_________________________________________________________

Termagant comes from Middle English Termagaunt, alteration of
Tervagant, from Old French. Termagant was an imaginary Muslim
deity represented in medieval morality plays as extremely
violent and turbulent. By the sixteenth century, termagant was
used for a boisterous, brawling, turbulent person of either
sex, but eventually it came to refer only to women.

Synonyms: battle-ax, harpy, nag, scold, shrew. [4]Find more at
Thesaurus.com.