WORD OF THE DAY on CLUB/ADVENTIST


a.plomb, (uh-plom), noun.

1. imperturbable self-possession, poise, assurance.
2. the perpendicular, or vertical position.
- Random House Unabridged Dictionary


The French people who are known for their perspicuous, precise expressions have given us today's word. The French expression, á plomb means 'according to the plummet', i. e. straight up and down, vertical. The two definitions given above seem to flow together. An assured person of poise would carry herself with a perpendicular, vertical posture and have an unmovable equanimity like a plummet at rest.

Plommet, Middle-English from Middle-French, diminutive of plomb, French for the metal lead. Carpenters and masons use plummets. They call them plumb bobs. A level or a plumb-bob may be used to check or adjust a wall or post for verticality. They may say, “plumb that wall,” or “that corner is out of plumb.”

Synonyms 1. composure, equanimity, imperturbability.
Antonyms 1. confusion, discomposure; doubt, uncertainty.
- from Dictionary.com


"In ballet, aplomb refers to the basic law of ballet - stability, achieved through one of the five positions codified by Pierre Beauchamp." -from Wikipedia.org/wiki/Aplomb

"….he weathers their boozy blandishments and inevitable potato jokes with admirable grace and aplomb.”
- "Quayle Running Against His Own Image", Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1999

“His initial broadcasting success was due at least as much to his considerable professional aplomb as it was to his father's broadcasting connections”
- John A. Jackson, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire


plommets or plumb-bobs

And 'plumb' comes from the lead used to weight the end of a plumb bob. Plumb (or 'plumbum') is Latin for lead, hence lead's chemical symbol Pb. (heh, thread crossing alert with Science Factoids!)

:)

chi.me.ra (ki-meer-uh), noun, often capitalized.

[from Greek chimaira, fem., noun, goat.]

1. a fire-breathing mythical creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpents tail.
2. any similarly grotesque creature of disparate parts.
3. a horrible or unreal creature of the imagination, an idle or vain fancy.

“He is far different than the chimera your fears have made of him.” -Random House Unabridged.

4. in genetics, an organism of two or more genetically distinct tissues, as part male and partly female, an artificially produced organism having tissues of several species.

Synonyms: dream, fantasy, delusion.

chimera: 1382, > L. chimaera, > Gk. chimaira, a fabulous monster (with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail), supposedly personification of snow or winter, orig. "year-old she-goat," from cheima "winter season." Meaning "wild fantasy" first recorded 1587. -Online Etymology Dictionary

This word is also spelled chimaera; which spelling also denotes a family of fish, chimaeridae, the male of which has a spiny clasping organ over its mouth, or a group of fish, holocephali, which includes this family. –Random House Unabridged

ep.o.nym (ep-eh-nim), noun.

1. An eponym is a real, mythical or fictional person from whom something such as a tribe, nation or place takes its name; or a person who has become associated with a period movement, theory, etc.
2. It also is sometimes used to refer to the word that is derived for that real mythical or fictional person or the period, movement or theory associated with a person.

Plato is the eponym of Platonic according to definition one.
Platonic is the eponym of Plato according to definition two.

eponymous (eh–pon–eh–mus), also eponymic, adj. [>Greek eponymos > epi-, upon + onyma, a name.]
1. giving ones name to a people, nation etc.
2. of an eponym.

Can you give the matching half for each of the following eponyms?

Louis Pasteur
Moses
Jesus
Washington, D. C.
Apollo
George Boole
Louis Braille
John Philip Sousa
William Miller
Yogi the Bear

e.gre.gious (e-gree-juh s, e-gree-jee-uh s), adjective

The original meaning is now archaic. The Latin word egreius means chosen or separated from the herd or flock, hence select, choice, eminent; however today it means remarkable or extraordinary in some bad way; outstanding for undesirable qualities.

One is likely to find it referring to an egregious mistake, or an egregious liar. Googling it turned up egregious grammar, errors, person, abuse, and egregious misuse.

Related forms:
e.gre.gious.ly, adverb
e.gre.gious.ness, noun

Hoping you are not having an egregious day...... :)

gre.gar.i.ous (gree-gair-ee-ehs), adjective

Today’s word and yesterdays, gregarious and egregious, both derive from Latin grex or gregis, meaning flock or herd. I hope you remember that egregious means outstanding (like an animal different from the rest of the flock) in a bad way, like a hairless(!) sheep or you could say like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Todays word, gregarious, has more friendly connotations:

1. living in herds or flocks
2. fond of the company of others
3. having to do with a herd, flock or crowd.
4. in botony, growing in clusters

- Webster’s New World Dictionary

—Related forms
gre·gar·i·ous·ly, adverb
gre·gar·i·ous·ness, noun

—Synonyms 1. social, genial, outgoing, convivial, companionable, friendly, extroverted.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.


“Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions." –George Santayana

"...the reclusive man who marries the gregarious woman, the timid woman who marries the courageous man, the idealist who marries the realist -- we can all see these unions: the marriages in which tenderness meets loyalty, where generosity sweetens moroseness, where a sense of beauty eases some aridity of the spirit, are not so easy for outsiders to recognize; the parties themselves may not be fully aware of such elements in a good match." -Robertson Davies, "The Pleasures of Love"

Post your own usage of gregarious; it will help you to remember it and to keep it available when the need for it arrives. Here is my usage - , “Is a gregarious person more likely to forgive egregious faults than a non-gregarious one? It is probably truer to say an unforgiving person is less likely to be gregarious." -(dAb)

Sab.bath, (sab-uhth) noun, is a word that made its way into English with little change from the Hebrew. Middle-English sabat < Old-French & Anglo-Saxon sabat; both of those from Latin sabbatum; Greek sabbaton; Hebrew shabbath < shabath, to rest.

1) the seventh day of the Jewish week, set aside by the 4th commandment; Saturday.
2) Sunday: name applied by most Protestant denominations.
3) A period of rest.

Related words:
Sabbath, adj., of the Sabbath.
Sabbatarian, adj. Of the Sabbath & noun, one who observes it.
Sabbatarianism, noun, observance of the Sabbath.
Sabbath school, noun, 1. Sunday school. 2. among Seventh-day Adventists, a similar school held on Saturday.
Sabbatic, adj.
Sabbatic, noun, Sabbatical
Sabbatical, adj. 1. Of or suited to the Sabbath. 2. –bringing a regular period of rest that recurs in cycles. Noun, a sabbatical year.
Sabbatical year, noun, 1. among the ancient Jews every seventh year, when the land was to remain fallow and debtors released. 2. a year or half year of absence for study, rest or travel, given at intervals to teachers, in some colleges and universities.
- Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1968



From Wikipedia’s Shabbat article:

Shabbat (Hebrew: שבת, shabbāt, "rest"; Shabbos or Shabbes in Ashkenazic pronunciation), is the weekly day of rest in Judaism.
The Hebrew word Shabbat comes from the Hebrew verb shavat, which literally means "to cease," or shev which means "sit." Although Shabbat (or its anglicized version, "Sabbath") is almost universally translated as "rest" or a "period of rest," a more literal translation would be "ceasing", with the implication of "ceasing from work." Thus, Shabbat is the day of ceasing from work; while resting is implied, it is not a necessary denotation of the word itself.
A common linguistic confusion leads many to believe that the word means "seventh day." Though the root for seven, or sheva, is similar in sound, it is derived from a different root word. Shabbat is the source for the English term Sabbath, and for the word in many languages meaning "Saturday", such as the Arabic As-Sabt (السبت), the Armenian Shabat, the Persian shambe, Spanish and Portuguese Sábado , the Greek Savato and the Italian word Sabato. It is also responsible for the word "sabbatical," although that concept is also derived from the Jewish concept of the sabbatical year.

Jewish law's definition defines a day as ending at dusk and nightfall, which is when the next day then begins. Thus, Shabbat begins before sundown Friday night and ends at after nightfall Saturday night (traditionally, after three stars can be seen in the sky) [very interesting -dAb]. The added time between sunset and nightfall on Saturday night owes to the ambiguous status of that part of the day according to Jewish law.

· Enjoying Shabbat (Oneg Shabbat). This can include activities such as eating tasty food, resting, or engaging in intimate relations with one's spouse. -Wikipedia.org

There is more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat#Observance .

Word Review, 04, 22, 07

So far we have had 10 words as a Word of the Day and here they are in chronological order:

effervesce
yogiism
church
spoonerism
aplomb
chimera
eponym
egregious
gregarious
Sabbath

My favorite is aplomb. It's sound is so perfectly matched to its meaning; like a heavy weight at the bottom of a
slender string: a - plommmbb…..!

Yogiism is not a eastern religion! Cf. Yogi Berra (the baseball hall-of-famer)

I like the bubbly quality of effervesce.

What is your favorite?

Today’s word is unusual for the number of consecutive vowels it has: four in a row. Teachers, psychologists and psychoanalysts may be familiar with this word, but probably few others.

ma.ieu.tic (mey-yoo-tik), adj. also ma.ieu.ti.cal, designating or of the Socratic method of helping a person to bring forth and become aware of his latent ideas or memories. -Webster’s New World

The Random House says the method uses interrogation and insists on close logical reasoning. - http://dictionary.reference.com The origin shows an apt metaphor for the meaning of today’s word; it comes from Greek maieutikos < maia, midwife!