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Today's Word "disparate"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

disparate \DIS-puh-rit; dis-PAIR-it\ (adjective) - 1 : Fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind. 2 : Composed of or including markedly dissimilar elements.

"When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary." ...Read more

Today's Word "malleable"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

malleable \MAL-ee-uh-buhl\ (adjective) - 1 : Capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer, or by the pressure of rollers; -- applied to metals. 2 : Capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces; easily influenced. 3 : Capable of adjusting to changing circumstances; adaptable.

"The natives proved less malleable and ...Read more

Today's Word "gelid"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

gelid \JEL-id\ (adjective) - Extremely cold; icy.

"The house was silent, filled with a gelid, wintery hush even as lilac and dogwood leaves brushed darkly against the windowpanes." -- Michael Cunningham, 'A Home at the End of the World'

Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."

Today's Word "luculent"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

luculent \LOO-kyuh-luhnt\ (adjective) - Clear; easily understood.

"From the high ground all is clear, interpretable, luculent: this is what this means." -- Thomas Lux, 'The Cradle Place'

Luculent comes from Latin luculentus, from lux, luc-, "light."

Today's Word "pecuniary"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

pecuniary \pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\ (adjective) - 1 : Relating to money; monetary. 2 : Consisting of money. 3 : Requiring payment of money.

"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'

Pecuniary comes from Latin ...Read more

Today's Word "sapid"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

sapid \SAP-id\ (adjective) - 1 : Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor. 2 : Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.

"Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid" -- David William Cheever, 'Tobacco', The Atlantic, August 1860

Sapid comes from ...Read more

Today's Word "potboiler"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

potboiler \POT-boi-lur\ (noun) - A usually inferior literary or artistic work, produced quickly for the purpose of making money.

"The play was a mixed blessing. Through it O'Neill latched on to a perennial source of income, but the promise of his youth was essentially squandered on a potboiler." -- Jane Scovell, 'Oona. Living in the Shadows'

...Read more

Today's Word "nimiety"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

nimiety \nih-MY-uh-tee\ (noun) - The state of being too much; excess.

"Just as daily life contains all the comforts of what one owns, there is also a natural shedding or forgetting and a natural dulling, otherwise one becomes burdened with a sense of nimiety, a sense (as Kenneth Clark put it in his autobiography) of the 'too-muchness' of life."...Read more

Today's Word "acuity"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

acuity \uh-KYOO-uh-tee\ (noun) - Acuteness of perception or vision; sharpness.

"Horses tend to shy a lot because the construction of their eyes is optimized for a near 360-degree field of view, useful for spotting danger, but the price the horse pays for that is relatively poor acuity and some out-of-focus spots that can cause objects within ...Read more

Today's Word "lubricious"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

lubricious \loo-BRISH-us\ (adjective) - 1 : Lustful; lewd. 2 : Stimulating or appealing to sexual desire or imagination. 3 : Having a slippery or smooth quality.

"I was born to be a Turk and spend my days watching exquisite girls perform those lubricious oriental dances that are like the dreams of virtuous men..." -- Victor Hugo, 'Les Misé...Read more

Today's Word "urbane"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

urbane \ur-BAYN\ (adjective) - Polished and smooth in manner; polite, refined, and elegant.

"Taylor comes across as an intelligent man, suave and urbane, articulate and smooth as butter." -- Bill Berkeley, 'The Graves Are Not Yet Full'

Urbane comes from Latin urbanus, "of a city," hence "refined, polished," from urbs, "city." The noun form is ...Read more

When the Past Tense Makes Us Tense

Knowledge / The Word Guy /

Today, let's weed our grammatical garden.

Betty Lundy of West Point, Mississippi, wonders how to say that her son removed weeds yesterday with a Weed Eater. Should she say, "he weed eated the lawn," or "he weed ate the lawn"? ("Weed Eater" is a trademark for a line of lawn care equipment, but, like "kleenex" and "band-aid," it has become a ...Read more

Today's Word "loquacious"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

loquacious \loh-KWAY-shuhs\ (adjective) - 1 : Very talkative. 2 : Full of excessive talk; wordy.

"The Frenchman fought him back valiantly that night, with that over- loquacious, over-adrenalized valor which the French are addicted to, and could not avoid..." -- James Jones, 'The Merry Month of May'

Loquacious comes from Latin loquax, "...Read more

Today's Word "effulgence"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\ (noun) - The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra." -- Washington Irving, 'The Alhambra'

From Latin ex, "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.

Today's Word "puerile"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

puerile \PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\ (adjective) - Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.

Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral . . . doing battle with the immoral." -- George F. Will, 'The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism'

Puerile comes from Latin puerilis, from puer, "child, boy."

Today's Word "immure"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

immure \ih-MYUR\ (verb) - 1 : To enclose within walls, or as if within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate. 2 : To build into a wall. 3 : To entomb in a wall.

"When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction." -- Andrew Solomon, 'The Noonday Demon'

Immure ...Read more

Today's Word "capitulate"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

capitulate \kuh-PICH-uh-layt\ (intransitive verb) - To surrender under agreed conditions.

"I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance'

We say "capitulate" because the terms (of surrender) were drawn up in capitula, which is Latin for "chapters." Chapter itself is related to ...Read more

Today's Word "hauteur"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

hauteur \haw-TUR; (h)oh-\ (noun) - Haughty manner, spirit, or bearing; haughtiness; arrogance.

"My silence, I hoped, would be taken as expressive of the hauteur of a man who was above it all -- a man with a mission, in fact, a mission authorized from somewhere on high." -- Jeffrey Tayler, 'Facing the Congo'

Hauteur is from the French, from ...Read more

Query on 'Hunky Dory' Gets Me in Dutch

Knowledge / The Word Guy /

A few years ago, I was answering listeners' questions on a radio call-in show. Everything was hunky-dory until a caller stumped me by asking, "What's the origin of 'hunky-dory'?"

In my most mellifluous radio voice, I replied, "Uhhhhhh..."

What I meant to say, of course, was this: An old Dutch word for the goal or home base in a children's ...Read more

Today's Word "sybarite"

Knowledge / Vocabulary /

sybarite \SIB-uh-ryt\ (noun) - A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

"And when the final blessing of a perfect French cook appeared to make our domestic picture complete, we became utter sybarites, frank worshippers of the splendors of the French cuisine." -- Samuel Chamberlain, 'Clémentine in the Kitchen'

Sybarite is derived from Greek ...Read more

 

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