D. Allan Posted June 18, 2008 Author Posted June 18, 2008 fraught (frawt), comparatives(rare): fraughter, fraughtest 1. noun (Scot.): cargo, load, freight 2. tr. verb (obs): fraught, fraughted, fraughting to load, to fill 3. adjective a. laden, loaded, well supplied b. full of (used with with) a trek fraught with danger c. causing or filled with emotional distress. a fraught situation. [c.1300, "laden" (of vessels), from M.E. fraughten "to load (a ship) with cargo," from fraght "cargo, lading of a ship," var. of freight, infl. by M.Du. vrachten "to load or furnish with cargo,". Figurative sense is first attested 1576.] -Online Etymology Dictionary Surprisingly, this word is still used fairly often: “The verb to ‘fraught’ = ‘burden’ is common in Shakespeare; the participle only surviving with us. ‘Freight’ and ‘fraught’ are variants of the same word.” –Augustin Daly, Arthur Wilson Verity, Twelfth Night Or, What You Will, glossary p. 143 (1895) “I would you would make use of that good wisdom whereof I know you are fraught. . .” Shakespeare, King Lear “Send forth your lab’ring thought; Let it return with empty notions fraught, Of airy columns every moment broke, Of circling whirlpools, and spheres of smoke: Yet this solution by't once more affords New change of terms and scaffolding of words. –Pope “Oh eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears. . . “ Kyd, Spanish Tragedy, 16th century “Gulley attends a Roman Catholic boys' school in the city, and mother and son arrange secret, emotionally fraught meetings in Central Park. “ -Stephen Holden, The New York Times, May 9, 2008 “Dr. Greene's article is fraught with unarticulated values and beliefs about the nature of reality and the meaning of life.” -Letters/Opinion, The New York Times, June 4, 2008 Professor Otheguy said. ''Swearing in somebody else's language seems somehow less fraught.'' –Clyde Haberman, The New York Times, May 16, 2008 “Why has their relationship been so fraught with silences and arguments? Why has it been so difficult for them to communicate?” -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, May 20, 2008 “The beginning of De Kooning's many-splendored career is represented by increasingly fraught surfaces: the inky darks and searing whites of ''Black Friday,'' of 1948; the monstrous ''Woman'' of 1949-50 and...” – Roberta Smith, The New York Times, May 2, 2008 “. . . and it made the young Nora Kaye a star very much along Bette Davis lines: intense, fraught, compelling.” –Editorial, The New York Times, May 17, 2008 “. . . the Queens district attorney, under pressure to talk about what everyone knew would be a fraught and contentious case, told reporters, ''The case should be tried in the courtroom and not on the courthouse steps...” “ -Alan Feuer, The New York Times, April 27,2008 “Whatever attitude comes through -- and it is almost always fraught with ambiguity -- religion suffuses Mr. Clarke's realm. He demands the canvas of Genesis and upon it he enacts experiments in thought.” -Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, March 20,2008 “. . . ...for myself; it's not a question. Of course not. Which is a good thing, because the concept of race in America -- the fraught fictions of whiteness and blackness-- is not going away soon. It is still deep in our system.” -Holland Cotter, The New York Times, March 30, 2008 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 19, 2008 Author Posted June 19, 2008 Picture at right: parallel canulated screws in bone cannular or canular or canulate (CAN-yoo-ler: CAN-yoo-late) adjective 1. tubular; resembling a tube 2. having hollow tubes (as for the flow of fluids or gas) canulated, adj. canula or cannula, noun : (medical: a tube for insertion into the body) These words are mostly used by those in the medical profession, but the rest of us need not shy away from them for that reason. Dandelion stems are cannular, tube-like. Bamboo can be cut into canular sections useful for making musical devices. A silver flute is canulate. If you are admitted to a hospital you will likely become the target of canulated devices : all sorts of tubes – from those supplying oxygen to those for taking blood samples. Is it ever used as a verb? Can any doctors or nurses inform us? Comments eagerly anticipated. “Three unsuccessful attempts were made to reach fluid blood with a canular needle, four inches long, passed directly into the tumor.” –Medical Sentinel, p. 292 (1901) “It was not even a proper cave -- just cannular limestone walls thick with bat guano, sloping inward toward the dead end of a rock wall. He rested for a time and then clicked off the light and went hand over hand back up the face of the bluff.” -William Gay, The Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1999 “. . . which are not real hairs, although at first sight they look like it. They are really canula, open at one side, carrying the secretion of the gland already referred to. The labial development is at first sight similar to the in some Hymenoptera; but the covering of glandular and canulate hairs is quite unlike anything I have seen elsewhere, . . .” -Dr. John B. Smith, “Epipharynx and Hypopharynx of Odonata” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1892) “The combustion system of the Olympus 102 is of the 'cannular' type, which an earlier version of the Olympus was the first British turbojet engine to use. The combustion chamber consists of inner and outer casings forming an annular space which contains ten flame tubes.” –Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd, Brochure, (1958) “Using a double-cannular structure and an independent front suspension the car was offering the same driving sensations as a car from a superior class.” - http://www.carsandtuning.org/bmw-a-live-legend-part-3/ “The fact is that liposuction is a far more gentle elective surgical procedure, which removes fat cells from various parts of the body with a long thin tube called a cannula, attached to a suction apparatus inserted through tiny incisions in the skin.” -Linda Spear, New York Times, Aug. 17, 1997 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 20, 2008 Author Posted June 20, 2008 cark (kahrk) noun : worry, anxiety verb : to burden or to be burdened with worry, or anxiety carked adj. burdened with anxiety and worry; (slang: dead) carking adj. burdensome, annoying “cark it” verb, Aussie slang: to die From Middle English carken; Old French carkier; Late Latin carcare > carricare, to load Synonyms: unhinge, disorder, perturb, upset, inconvenience, discommode, disquiet, bother, cark, put out, incommode, disoblige, pain, disarray, throw out of kilter, trouble, disturb, trouble oneself, derange “Cark” - never heard of it, before. It may seem archaic but is fascinating none the less. One hundred years ago it was commonly used with “cares” as in “carking cares” or “cares and carks.” I would guess that about 90% of its use was “carking cares” or “cares and carks,” until it became a tiresome cliqué. Modern usage seems to be mostly limited to being slang for ‘passing on into the great blue yonder’, however, just below in the first quotation is a wonderful modern usage. "Crows in hundreds carking desolately from the blasted white skeletons of dead trees." Colleen McCullough; The Thorn Birds; HarperCollins Publishers; 1977. [carking seals would be a neat usage, also. dAb] “When Billy carked it years later though he did it in an anonymous boarding house.” -George Papaellinas, The Trip, p. 162 (2008) “. . . we shall see how in morbid melancholy this sense of the unreality of things may become a carking pain, and even lead to suicide.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience “For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick “Life had been too hard, for all the efforts of his love. It had silenced her emotions. But for the first time in all these years its sting had departed, the carking care of poverty, the meanness of a hard struggle for bread.” -Joseph Conrad, End of the Tether “Clym had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude.” -Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native “Now, as I stood with scanty breath--for few men could have won that climb--at the top of the long defile, and the bottom of the mountain gorge all of myself, and the pain of it, and the cark of my discontent fell away into wonder and rapture.” -Richard Blackmore, Lorna Doone Hence away, begone, begone, Carking care and melancholy! Charles D’Orleans, North American Review, 1831 “He down did lay His heavy head, devoid of careful cark.” -Spencer “As pulmonary consumption wastes away the body, so carking care consumes the mind.” -Ebenezer Coloham Brewer, 1878 “Peter never began to sink, till he began to doubt; that was the fruit of his carking and unbelief.” - Rev. Edward Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, Works, p. 80, (pub. 1826) “Carking anxiety makes a person overweeningly selfish; shuts up all the generous sympathies of the heart; and binds every thought to the wheel of this despotic monomania.” Ebenezer Coloham Brewer, A Guide to English Composition, p. 265, (1878) The Rev. Dr. George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, telegraphed President Roosevelt last night a pledge to seek "a world order in which unmerited poverty and carking fear and the threat of war shall be banished." The New York Times, Dec. 24, 1939 “Set your mind to live merrily, in the name of God and good folks; let no other cark nor care be harboured within the sacrosanctified domicile of your celestial brain. May the calmness and tranquility thereof be never incommodated with, or overshadowed by any frowning clouds of sullen imaginations and displeasing annoyance!” -François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 25, 2008 Author Posted June 25, 2008 hieratic (hahy-uh-RAT-ik, hahy-RAT-ik) or heratical 1. priestly, of or used by priests 2. of the abridged form of cursive hieroglyphics used by the Egyptian priests. From Greek hieros, sacred Related: hieratically, adverb “The whole room was like an apse with altar, and pure, hieratic ornament. To sleep there was a sacramental thing. Sleep there and die! one reflected.” -Edward Thomas, Autumn Thoughts, The Atlantic Monthly, September 1902 “. . . But she also incorporates awkward gesticulation with angled shoulders and extreme facial contortions, splayed hands and hieratic profiled poses.” -Roslyn Sulcas, Dance Review, The New York Times, March 29, 2008 “. . . an Andres Segovia recital. And now, at 93 years old, the pope of the Spanish guitar still attracts audiences for whom his hieratic presence seems its own reward.” –John Rockwell, The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1982 “The hieratic form of the letter m, for example, bears a striking resemblance to that of the Phoenician M. It is really a degenerated picture of an owl, which was called mulag in Egyptian, and was accordingly chosen to represent the sound of m. Little else besides the two ears and wing of the bird can be traced in the hieratic and Phoenician letters, and it is just these two ears which still survive in every M we write.” - The Library Magazine, “The Origin of the Alphabet” p. 154 (1886) “The great repository of materials for this popular religion is the Atharva-veda, which was at the beginning not hieratic but popular.” -James Alan Montgomery, Religions of the Past and Present Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 26, 2008 Author Posted June 26, 2008 http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/PMSearch/IMAGES/chert1.jpg chert (churt) noun 1. a dull-colored flintlike quartz often found in limestone 2. other rock composed of hydrated silica with impurities [Western British dial. for sherd, shard ] cherty, adj. containing chert; flintlike; chertier, chertiest A curt word, pert and to the point, good figurative uses are limited only by imagination. Mine's dull right now, how's your's? Chert includes chalcedony, agate, jasper, and flint. Chert and flint are so alike that there is no great difference. Dark pieces are often called flint. Light colored ones are called chert. Other colors are pink, brown and purple. Arrowheads were made of chert. “I noticed as we got in the car that the chert road had streaks of red dirt in it.” Rick Bragg, Ava’s Man, p. 258, (2002) “A hard, brittle sedimentary rock consisting of microcrystalline quartz. It is often reddish-brown to green but can also occur in a variety of other colors, especially white, pink, brown, or black. Chert often contains impurities such as calcium, iron-oxide, or the remains of silica-rich organisms. It usually occurs as nodules in limestone and dolomite and has curved fractures. “ -The American Heritage Science Dictionary “Chert is a common surface rock that is often a headache to farmers and gardeners as they try to work the soil. Chert also forms the bulk of the gravel bars and beds that clog our streams.” - http://www.watersheds.org/earth/chert.htm http://www.alaskanartifacts.com/Lithics/Gray3_Chert_Group.jpg Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 27, 2008 Author Posted June 27, 2008 “But in the movie what happens to the money? She wondered if they’d ever know. Maybe the answers were buried in the caliche, along with some character who had figured in a story toward the end of the movie. She hadn’t been able to follow the story about the character who was buried in the caliche because she was busy trying to puzzle out what happened to the satchel of money, but the word caliche stuck in her head. It was pronounced ka-lee-chee. Since they lived in New York City and were not about to go dig a hole in Central Park, it didn’t seem like a particularly useful word, but you never know.” -Nora Ephron, “No, But We Saw the Movie”, Shouts and Murmurs, The New Yorker Magazine [color:#33CCFF] caliche ( kuh-LEE-chee ), noun “Caliche is also known as hardpan, calcrete, duricrust or in India, kankar. It is actually a form of calcium carbonate. The word is Spanish, but comes from the Latin word calx, which means limestone.” -http://desertgardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/caliche___hard_desert_gardening http://www.goldgold.com/stories/images/drywash4gold/caliche2.gif “Many southern Arizona soils have layers of caliche either on or under the surface. Caliche is a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime (calcium carbonate, CaCO3).” -http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/soils/caliche.html Reminding Wallace that long before the governor had ridden segregation to power, he had been a populist, Johnson said: ''You came into office a liberal -- you spent all your life trying to do things for the poor. Now why are you working on this? Why are you off on this Negro thing? . . . What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads 'George Wallace -- He Built?' Or do you want a little piece of pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, 'George Wallace -- He Hated.' '' Samuel G. Freedman, The New York Times, Feb. 6, 2005 “The road winds past brakes of cedar and clumps of lowing Brahman cows, turns into caliche and ends at a small white house behind a picket fence.” -Robert Reinhold, July 1, 1987 “In those days, when I wasn't too busy farming, I earned a little money at other things. I did road work for Fisher County quite a few months one year. One day I was hauling caliche in the county truck to fill in holes in the road by a bridge.” Clarence Edgar Johnson, The Life of Me An Autobiography “The most desirable way to manage caliche would be to keep plant roots out of the caliche soil. In areas with excessive caliche formations, successful home horticultural plantings can be made by first removing the caliche and replacing it with a soil mixture.” -http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_a/a-127.html Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted June 30, 2008 Author Posted June 30, 2008 Picture at right: In cross section – annular (ring-shaped) annual growth in tree trunk. annular (AN-yoo-ler) adjective ringlike annulate, annulated adj. having rings or made up of rings annulation, (an-yoo-LAY-shun) noun, a ring or formation of rings annulet, (AN-yoo-lit) noun, a small ring annulose, adj. having rings; ringed annulus, noun a ring or ringlike part, mark or shape; plurals: annuli, annuluses These words are all children of a Latin fellow, annulus (ring), and not of that other one, annus (year). The rings seen in the cross sections of sawn down trees and stumps, are both annual rings (yearly) and annular (ring shaped). Married people usually have at least one annulosefinger, having exchanged annulations at their wedding. synonyms: circular, ringlike, ringlet “In a spectacular event known as an annular eclipse, the Moon will move directly in front of the Sun at midday on Tuesday, rendering the Moon as a dark disk ringed by brilliant gold.” The New York Times, May 10, 1994 “The combustion chamber consists of inner and outer casings forming an annular space which contains ten flame tubes.” –Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd, Brochure, (1958) “One form of the diamond drill makes an annular groove, leaving a central cylindrical plug of stone.” -Edward Henry Knight, Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary,p. 115 (1876) “(ring shank nail) A term used to define a nail that has annular rings around the shank that hold the nail in place when driven into wood.” –Professional Engineering Inspections, Inc. Dictionary of Terms “In this place the annular isle was mostly under water, carrying here and there on its submerged line a wooded islet.” –Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 1, 2008 Author Posted July 1, 2008 plutoid (PLOO-toyd) n. a dwarf planet beyond Neptune in our solar system. “Pluto is still not a planet, but now it is a plutoid. Two years ago, the International Astronomical Union decreed that Pluto was no longer a planet, but a member of a new category known as dwarf planets, bodies that were large enough to be round, but which did not gravitationally dominate their orbital neighborhoods. On Wednesday, the union announced the creation of the term “plutoid” for a dwarf planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. There is only one plutoid other than Pluto: Eris, the sphere of rock and ice formerly nicknamed Xena that is slightly larger than Pluto. –Kenneth Chang, The New York Times, June 12, 2008 “From now on all similar distant bodies in the solar system will be called "plutoids." That's the decision by the International Astronomical Union, which met last week in Oslo, Norway, and announced the decision Wednesday.” —Seth Borenstein, "Pluto's namesakes: Similar bodies are 'plutoids'," The Associated Press, June 11, 2008 related words: pluto , verb; plutoed , adj. past. part. to “pluto” is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened when Pluto was demoted from ‘planet’ to ‘dwarf planet’. “The verb "to pluto" (preterite and past participle: "plutoed") is a neologism coined in the aftermath of the decision. In January 2007, the American Dialect Society chose "plutoed" as its 2006 Word of the Year, defining "to pluto" as "to demote or devalue someone or something", "as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto How Dwarf Planet Pluto (now a plutoid) got its name: “The name Pluto was first suggested by Venetia Burney (later Venetia Phair), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy, and considered the name, one of the alternate names of Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, appropriate for such a presumably dark and cold world. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Madan passed the name to Professor Herbert Hall Turner, who then cabled it to colleagues in America. Venetia Burney “The object was officially named on March 24, 1930. Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three: "Minerva" (which was already the name for an asteroid), "Cronus" (which had garnered a bad reputation after being suggested by an unpopular astronomer named Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received every vote. The name was announced on May 1, 1930. Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia five pounds as a reward. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto Plutoid pictures: http://www.iau.org/static/archives/images/screen/iau0804a.jpg Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 2, 2008 Author Posted July 2, 2008 derogate (DER-uh-geyt) verb v.i. 1. to detract from, or take away part from a whole 2. to deviate, go astray from v.t. 3. to disparage, to belittle from the past participle of Latin derogare, "to propose to repeal part of a law, to diminish," from de-, "away from" + rogare, "to ask, to ask the people about a law." related: derogation, noun Laudare se vani, vituperare stulti, as I do not arrogate, I will not derogate. –Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy “If someone wants to derogate from that and make a choice, then they are free to do it.” - Ciaran Fitzgerald, "Food champion's recipe for success", Irish Times, November 13, 1998 The biggest mistake that can be made in writing about the child-care issue is to use a phrase that derogates mothers who do not choose to pursue careers outside the home. –William Safire, The New York Times, May 29, 2988 “In my view, many people, including legislators and judges, make far too much of blood ties in derogation of ties created by loving effort.” -Randall Kennedy, The Atlantic Magazine, May 1997 “...myth is repudiated by decades of social science data that convincingly establish that being homosexual does not, in itself, derogate from one's ability to participate in and contribute responsibly and positively to society.” -Robert Hanley, The New York Times, Aug. 5, 1999 ''Why do too many Americans derogate as losers those parents who put family ahead of career. . . ?'' William Safire, The New York Times, June 30, 2003 These swingers, if they still exist, are not the politically inert, exemplified by the legendary scold who said, "I never vote - it only encourages them." Rather, they are what strategists in both parties secretly derogate as "the unreliables": sometime supporters who can be inveigled to vote if you assuage their guilt while dragging them to the polls. –William Safire, The New York Times, Sept. 1, 2004 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 3, 2008 Author Posted July 3, 2008 mollescent (meh – LES- cent ) adjective becoming soft or tending to soften. the mollescent icing was slipping from the cake [from Latin mollescere, to soften < mollere, to be soft < mollis, soft, flexible] mollescence, noun: a softening or tendency to soften. the mollescence of burning candles “Think of it! The prune, nucleus of a million boarding house jeu-de-mots, the prune, mollescent media for millions of medicinally minded mortals, the prune, . . . “ -Consumers’ Digest, v. Jul-Dec 1937, p. 29 “. . . her skin has the mollescent quality of a downy leaf.” -Brian Howell, “Black on White”, Paumanok Review “Well aware that the Creole term siwo is used by men to describe a kind, mollescent woman, Béroard appropriates it to characterize a good man (or even a sugar daddy) in her song entitled “Siwo”: “ –Brenda F. Berrian, Awakening Spaces French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Culture, p. 99 (pub. 2000) “From years of Latin I could see how my name was related to all those words meaning “soft”: mollify, mollescent (the down side of tumescent), mollusk.” Helen Barolini, “How I Learned to Speak Italian”, Chiaroscuro, Essays of Identity, p. 33 (pub. 1999) “The extensive poetical remains by Catullus offer evidence as to the changed mollescent character of the Romans.” -The Classical Journal, Classical Ass. of the Middle West and South, p. 22 (pub. 1905) “Monastic weather before you arrived, years too late, but I recognized you. Mollescent lips, in an ancient rite, claimed me, calmed me. I became yours.” - Dom Moraes, In Cinnamon Shade, New and Selectied Poems, p. 133, (pub. 2001) “On the other hand what more common than for a ‘molly-coddle’ to change a good housewife into a novel-reading, lecture-haunting, shop-visiting “gad-about.” In the was the long-continued attrition of Mr. Stichen’s manner had served to foster in Madame a tendency to a state of quiet mollescence, which, as his spirits began to feel the pressure of wealth, and every crack and cranny of his mind to be as it were caulked up with bank-notes, began in her to develop itself into a most lady-like style – a style, as Hamilton Boggs said, perfectly comme il faut.” William Starbuck Mayo, Never Again, p. 274 (pub. 1873) “So here we might dispense with her Gina being a female But she was more than that Being an incipience a correlative An instigation of the reaction of man From the palpable to the transcendent Mollescent irritant of his fantasy Gina has her use Being useful contentedly conscious She flowered in Empyrean From which no well-mated woman ever returns “ -Mina Loy (1882-1966), The Effectual Marriage or The Insipid Narrative of Gina and Miovanni “To the question ‘does mollescence of the brain ever get well?’ he give as a reply a vague statement (unintelligible, from its conciseness, it must be to those who have not previously studied the very difficult subject) of the opinions of Cruveilhier and Sims.” The British and Foreign Medical Review , Dr. Gross’s Elements of Pathological Anatomy, p. 72 (pub. 1847) “No wonder that some students seem like human blotters, absorbing in their mollescent brains the thoughts of those who tell them what to think.” - The Classical Weekly, v. 10, 1916-1917, p. 193 (pub. 1917) “The important properties contributed by perfluoroether polymer oils such as high lubricity, epidermal substantivity and emolliancy make them highly desirable as active components in many formulations for the treatment of animals and plants, particularly in hair and skin formulations for superior conditioning and mollescent affects.” -http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/5779944.html Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 4, 2008 Author Posted July 4, 2008 pyro - (PAHY-roh), prefix Pyro, a prefix relating to heat or fire, stands at the beginning of many words. Standing alone it is slang for a pyromanic (a pyro started the forest fire ) or for pyrotechnics (lets scoot over to the park and watch the pyros tonight). pyrocephalus - a genus of Tyrannidae pyrochemical - of chemical change at high temperatures pyroclastic - of volcanic origin, volcaniclastic pyroconductivity - conductivity by the application of heat, esp. in unconductive solids pyroelectricity - electrification or polarity caused by heat changes in some crystals pyrogen - a substance which causes one's temperature to rise, as a bacterial toxin pyrography - the art of burning designs in wood , leather or other materials pyrokinesis - ability to set objects on fire by concentration of psychic power pyrolator - a fire worshiper pyrolatry - the worship of fire pyrology - the science of fire pyrolysis - subjection of organic compounds to high temperatures (cooking?) pyromancy - divination by fire pyromania - a compulsion to set things on fire pyrophobia - abnormal fear of fire pyrosis - heartburn pyrotechnics - art of making and or displaying fireworks pyrotherapy - treatment by inducing artificial fever pyrotic - relating to heartburn - and many other words, especially in chemical science. Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 7, 2008 Author Posted July 7, 2008 picture at right: "a corncrib plonker" plonk (plongk) , plonking, plonked verb: 1. to place or put oneself or something with a dull un-resonant noise and rather clumsily 2. to make dull sounds by plucking stringed instruments or dropping the hands on keyboard instruments. noun: 1. a abrupt non-resonant sound; the noise of something dropping 2. a cheap or inferior wine Plonk is not the past tense of plink, as in plink-plank-plonk; but possibly is from the French blanc as used with vin blanc, white wine. Blanc and plonk sound almost the same esp. when the B of blanc has a plosive quality. “ . . . but a few mistakenly objected to my use of the slang verb plonk. Though wine lovers use the noun to derogate cheap wine, and musicians use it to mean "an abrupt vibratory sound associated with plucking a string," I used the verb sense of "to walk with heavy footsteps," like Mary Shelley's Monster, and intend to continue plonking through. “ –William Safire, The New York Times, Dec. 18, 2000 “Finally a ball landed in the pocket in front of the left fielder with a satisfying plonk. One out.” -William Zinsser, Field of Tin, The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2001 “You can imagine in the old days when pros used wood rackets, which made a delicate ''plonk,'' why tennis on grass -- watching or playing it -- seemed downright pastoral.” Michael Kimmelman, Movies, The New York Times, July 6, 2007 “He recounts the downfall of "the plink-plonk man," a musician accompanied by a dancing monkey. One day the plink-plonk man's monkey escapes into a tree, where it performs a tiny striptease, divesting itself of its costume piece by piece; Martin watches the musician collecting the little clothes and "folding them as he might those of a child." - Sophie Harrison, Fortunate Son, The New York Times, April 9, 2006 “Somehow Waller did make the pipe organ swing. (There is a great moment during his recording of "Sugar" on the Camden organ, accompanying the blues singer Alberta Hunter, when she chimes in during his solo, "Plonk that thing, Fats!") “ -Stephen Budiansky, Resurrecting Fats, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2000 “The fur lining of the trenchcoat was itself dark blue, almost black. The label said Bill Blass. The coat was my size. I plonked down the nine dollars, plus tax. When I got back to the house, I tried on my new coat in front of a full-length mirror. It was perfect. “ -Calvin Trillin, Rag Time, The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2006 “Suddenly, a sandy-haired, balding man with a pensioner’s forlorn pink bulb on the end of his nose plonked down two plates in front of us.” -Zadie Smith, Hanwell in Hell, The New Yorker, Sept. 27, 2004 With a label like that its got to be plonk. “As a result of my adventures in boxed wine, my husband and I have had some success exploring the realm of drinkable plonk. I think my medial orbitofrontal cortex is struggling with this new development, but it is balanced by the financial lobe...” -M. P. Dunleavey, The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2008 “Gold in short supply? Silver will do. Fine wines scarce? Plonk will do. But a shortage of chocolate? What's the world to do?” -Jan M. Rosen, The New York Times, May 10, 1998 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 8, 2008 Author Posted July 8, 2008 canard (kun – NAHRD ) noun 1. a baseless , deliberately misleading story, hoax or rumor 2. a duck for eating 3. on airplanes a short forward wing, or an airplane having such wings 4. a term used in mathematics Etymology. Before 1850, from French "a hoax," literally "a duck," said by Littré to be from the phrase vendre un canard à moitié "to half-sell a duck," thus, from some long-forgotten joke, "to cheat." From Old French quanart, probably echoic of a duck's quack. – online etymology dictionary I think I got carried away with the quotations! Be sure and look at those preceded by smilies. “Main courses include steamed baby snapper fillets with king prawn, coriander gremolata and rice noodles, and an assiette de canard — duck breast with hoisin sauce, rillettes cannelloni and a foie gras custard.” -Stuart Emmrich, ‘Sydney’s Beachside Cuisine’ The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2008 “Elsewhere, our hero lectures to a group of prisoners about the ''Mona Lisa.'' There the old canard about the portrait as Leonardo in drag appears, . . . . Again, we know that the sitter was a woman from contemporary documents, . . . “ -Bruce Boucher, NYTimes, 3 Aug 2003 “On the first page, Lady Antonia dismisses the cake quotation as a canard, saying that it was first said about 100 years earlier about a Spanish princess who married Louis XIV and was repeated about other princesses through the 18th century. “ Mel Gussow, Review of “Marie Antoinette: The Journey,” NYTimes, 04 Sep 2001 “Yankees really adopt pinstripes because they made Babe Ruth look slimmer? Not really. But just because the oft-told story is a canard doesn't mean ballplayers are outside fashion's ineluctable pull.” -Guy Trebay, NYTimes, 24 Oct 2000 “Also, much must be forgiven a historian who writes of the egregious Titus Oates that he ''was eventually hoist on his own canard,'' and of Queen Anne that her pleasures were ''limited to gambling and dining, losing pounds at one set of tables and gaining them at the other.'' “ -Paul S. Seaver, NYTimes, 21 Sep 1997 “There are those who seem to think that a book party in the home of a famous person gets preferential treatment in this column. We call this a canard, within a lie, within a falsehood, within a calumny bordering on libel -- cooked up by a jealous author we have yet to mention. “ Joyce Wadler et al, NYTimes, 22 Jun 2004 “The old canard that George Washington could have been king is simply nonsense: a revolutionary movement that sought to decapitate the executive branch of government was not about to make anyone king, not even Washington.” - Kenneth R. Bowling, Jan, 2005 http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=170571115837756 “The cops were wrong. And they must have known that they were wrong, that the picture they were creating of youngsters climbing on top of cars and blocking vehicular and pedestrian traffic was completely false. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, carried the canard further. That had to have been deliberate, too. “ -Bob Herbert, The New York Times, Feb. 16, 2008 “But Mr. Levin's film, unlike Michael Moore's, provides few clear answers to the questions it stirs, though Mr. Levin takes pains to refute the canard that no Jews died at the World Trade Center.” -David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2005 “Finally, the old canard that the Emancipation Proclamation freed not a single slave, repeated by Bennett, could not be more wrong. From Jan. 1, 1863, freedom would march southward with the Union Army, which became an army of liberation. Once the war was over, the proclamation would cease to have any legal force. That is why Lincoln endorsed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, and won re-election on that platform in 1864.” –James M. McPherson, NYTimes, 27 Aug 2000 “The rear-wing design, known as ''canard'' for the French word for duck because of its unexpected ''backwards'' look, with its smaller wings in front of the larger ones, . . . . “ -Seth Mydans, NYTimes, 17 Apr 1984 “"You know how some aircraft have fins up by the nose?" Dr. Robison asked. "Those are canard fins.” -William J. Broad, NYTimes, 30 Aug 1994 “The idea that atheists, secular humanists, agnostics and other free thinkers are not ''nice'' or, as is often more bluntly put, ''cannot be moral without a belief in God'' is highly offensive to the millions of Americans who are nonbelievers. To have this canard perpetuated by an evolutionary biologist who must surely know better is surprising and disappointing.” -Lois Porter, To the Editor, NYTimes, 31 Dec 2002 “. . . Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS. Senator Frist is now a lame duck, . . . “ -Frank Rich, NYTimes, 17 Dec 2006 “-- speaking very basic, atrociously pronounced French that nevertheless seemed to get me where I needed to go. (And won approving smiles from the Parisians I'd always supposed would laugh disdainfully at such incompetence. So much for that canard.)” -Daisann McLane, NYTimes, 19 Jan 2003 “One theory in vogue on the Cape is that Sigmund Freud took his patients with him on vacation in Austria and Bavaria, insuring no interruption in their daily analysis…. This may be a canard, even if Freud did see an occasional patient during the summer.” -Elizabeth Bumiller, NYTimes, 26 May 1996 “The greatest canard of all is that people want the truth. Actually, what we want is to confirm conclusions we've already reached, based on speculation, fashion, group identity, emotion, and raw self-interest. We tell ourselves we're out to discover the truth, but mostly we're just pushing the story line toward the conclusion we desire. Truth isn't even in the game.” - William Powers, “Warmed-Over Truth”, The Atlantic Monthly, 29 Mar 2001 "Analysis of a canard mechanism by which excitatory synaptic coupling can synchronize neurons at low firing frequencies," -SIAM J. Appl. Math., 65: 69-92, 2004. “The officials were from the Institute of Heraldry, the government's chief guardian of insignia and heraldic tradition, and they were dismissing an oft-repeated canard about the presidential seal. According to legend, the eagle in the seal faced the arrow-holding talon in times of war and switched its stern gaze toward the olive branch in times of peace. The eagle's glare did indeed get reversed — just once, by President Harry S. Truman in 1945. But only, it turns out, to correct the grievous heraldic error that President Rutherford B. Hayes had made 65 years before, when he designed the first seal to adorn White House invitations. “ -Erik Eckholm, NYTimes, June 13, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/washington/13heraldry.html?scp=32&sq=canard&st=nyt Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 9, 2008 Author Posted July 9, 2008 psychopomp (SAHY-koh-pomp) , noun and adjective 1. Mythology, a leader or guide of souls to the afterlife 2. Psychology, a symbolic mediator between the conscious and subconscious realms 3. a person who acts as a spiritual guide of a living person's soul. OED [from the Greek word psychopompos, literally meaning the "guide of souls"] psychopompic, adj. psychopompically, adv. In Greek mythology Charon ferried the boat across the river Styx to the afterlife if the soul of the newly dead could pay for the trip. Otherwise it must wander the bank of the river 100 years. A coin to pay Charon was put on or in the mouth of the dead. In Roman mythology Hermes and Mercury were psychopomps. “Saint Michael the Archangel. . . . He also figures in images of the Day of Judgement, where he is the Psychopomp, conducting the souls and frustrating the devils' attempts to unbalance the scales used in the Psychostasy or "weighing of souls." http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/michael.html “In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man (or woman), or sometimes as a helpful animal. –www.wikipedia.com “Nazare will look closely at the poem, considering it against the backdrop of Poe’s own explanatory essay on “The Raven” and his Gothic tales. The titular raven, Nazare suggests, is not just some generic “bird of ill omen” but a psychopomp — a bird (according to mythological lore) that conducts human souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. In re-reading “The Raven” we might recognize that the speaker is not simply a bereaved lover plagued by “mournful and never-ending remembrance.” He faces something else entirely.” -www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/851, 14 Nov 2008 “Within the nocturnal vision, a typical image of courtly romance stands out: that of the white hart. This fairy character embodies the symbol of the psychopomp animal which drives the soul—as well as the predestined hero figure—to the Afterlife. . . .” -Luca Orecchini, Folkloric Segments in a Novella by Giovanni Boccaccio, Upenn Working Papers in Romance Languages, p. 42 (1988-99) “. . . to a special degree Socrates and Plato speak in the name of the light, showing what vision for change may be understood to be. In their ways, these are all psychopomps or agents of change. " Robert M. Cooper, “Psychopomps and Change-Agents, or Can Virtue Be Taught?”, Theology Today Symposium On How People Change “In his "Last Poem," and in Etruscan Places, the writer [D. H. Lawrence] prepares himself for the last transfiguration, the final "ingress of the unknown." Cataclysmic apocalyptic surrender gives place to a synergetic cooperation of the self with its destiny; the poems themselves function as the poet's psychopomp, and enact his own rites of passage through dissolution and possible renewal.” -Sarah Urang, “Kindled in the flame the apocalyptic scene in D. H. Lawrence,” thesis, Columbia University Libraries (1980) “The typewriter, in short, acts as a psychopomp, moving information from one physical location (the hand) to another (the page).” –ENGL 758A: Inscribing Media, University of Maryland, 14 March 2006 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 10, 2008 Author Posted July 10, 2008 oneirism (o-NIE-riz’m ) noun 1. absentminded dreaming while awake, reverie 2. Medical: abnormal dreamlike consciousness, often with disturbing illusions while awake Origin: Greek Oneiros, dream [syn: reverie, revery, daydream, daydreaming, oneirism, air castle, castle in the air, castle in Spain] “oneirophrenia n. A dreamlike state of consciousness. Also called oneirism.[From Greek oneiros a dream + phren mind, originally midriff, the supposed seat of the soul + -ia indicating a condition or quality] – A Dictionary of Psychology, Oxford University Press 2001 Read the famous short story of oneirism: The Secrect Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber, pub. in New Yorker Mag. 1939 “Form and pattern in Horwood's book are gentle, with many open spaces: thresholds of oneirism, of daydreaming, in the company of warm people and lovely places.” -Judith Maclean Miller, The Antigonish Review 114, http://www.antigonishreview.com/bi-114/114-miller.html[/size} “Movies are the most advanced emanation of 20th century global oneirism.” [size:8pt]–anon. “ Browse Yan Dsoloh's body of work: From his works emerge several sets of themes ; the surrealism of Dali, the mystical oneirism of Bosch, distressed expressionism of Munch and the religious iconography of Chagall.” - http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/y/yandsoloh/ “When Agnes Beecham's 9-year-old daughter Rosa began telling fantastic stories about a visitor from another planet living in the basement, she dismissed them as childhood oneirism.” http://www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/details.php?id=818 “On first look at Robin Ward's Otherkin paintings, what quickly comes to mind are Alfred Tennyson's lines describing the “mild-eyed melancholy Lotus-Eaters” being deep asleep… yet all awake.” In Ward's paintings and drawings at Lisa Dent Gallery, listless animals occupy ascetic anti-landscapes in a kind of morphine inertia of private oneirism and collective isolation.” -Jordan Essoe, “Robin Ward at Lisa Dent Gallery” Artweek Magazine, April 2005 “Between the outer and inner layers of glass is a tantalizing trapped space, inaccessible to the public. Its function is to prevent condensation, but its effect is to provoke a state of exquisite oneirism.” –Irene Cheng, Frieze Magazine, Issue 104, Jan.-Feb. 2007 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 11, 2008 Author Posted July 11, 2008 hippocampus (hip-uh-KAM-puhs), plural: hippocampi 1. a mythical sea creature with the head and forelegs of a horse and a body ending in a fishlike or dolphin -like tail. Also hippocamp. 2. a genus of fish belonging to the family Syngnathidae, commonly called seahorses. 3. a part in each half of the brain that in cross section has the shape of a seahorse [from Greek hippokampos : hippos, horse + kampos, sea monster.] hippocampal, adj. “The very hormones that flood the brain to mobilize it in the face of an overwhelming threat can be toxic to cells in the hippocampus, the studies suggest.” -Daniel Goleman, “Severe Trauma May Damage The Brain as Well as the Psyche,” The New York Times, Aug. 1, 1996 “Scientists have found that monkeys are constantly making new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain used for forming long-term memories…” -Gina Kolata, “Studies Find Brain Grows New Cells” The New York Times, March 17, 1998 “When people learn to navigate through a new environment, they presumably form patterns in their hippocampuses which are later processed in sleep and stored throughout brain. Thus ability to find one's way around a new city should improve after a night's sleep. The same may be true for students who cram for an examination. Experiments done in Canada show that students who get some sleep after studying for an exam retain more information than those who stay awake overnight.” -Sandra Blakeslee, “2 Studies Suggest Sleep Is Vital in Consolidating Memories,” The New York Times, July 29, 1994 “''To simplify greatly, the hippocampus seems to be the focal point for cognition and the amygdala for emotion,'' Dr. LeDoux said. ''The hippocampus, for instance, is involved in recognizing a face and its significance, such as that it's your cousin. The amygdala adds that you really don't like him. It offers emotional reactions from memory, independent of your thoughts at the moment about something.” –Daniel Goleman, “Brain’s Desigh Emerges As a Key to Emotions” The New York Times, August 15, 1989 “Galatea, fleeing on a hippocampus, looks back towards the Cyclops. He right hand rests on the croup of the sea horse, while the left, embracing its neck, supports a red mantle which falls to below the loins. The red drapery and the black mane of the hippocampus throw the whiteness of the nymph’s flesh into high relief.” -Baston Boissier, D. Havelock Fisher; Rome and Pompeii Archaeological Rambles, p. 107, (1896) “The female hippocampus, when the abdomen is enlarged with eggs, opens the male marsupial pouch, by means of the small anal fin of five rays, and appendage not existing in the male, and transfers from herself to the being to become the father, the ova for fecundation.” - Richard Hill, A Week at Port-Royal, (1855) Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 14, 2008 Author Posted July 14, 2008 All 34 Anglo-Saxon runes rune (roon), noun 1. characters of the earliest German alphabet 2. a writing in those characters 3. a poem, song; a saying with mysterious meaning, esp. a magical charm 4. a secret or mysterious sign or symbol runic, runelike, adj. runestone, noun : In Viking times a raised stone with a runic inscription in memory of men. “The runic alphabet, or Futhark, gets its name from its first six sounds (f, u, th, a, r, k), much like the word 'alphabet' derives from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. Each rune not only represents a phonetic sound but also has its own distinct meaning often connected with Norse mythology.” - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vikings/runes.html ''Like yin and yang, like the Christian cross and the star of Israel, Mickey can be seen everywhere -- a sign, a rune, a hieroglyphic trace of a secret power, an electricity we want to plug into,'' John Updike wrote in his introduction to ''The Art of Mickey Mouse,'' a 1991 collection of Mickey Mouse images by various artists.” -Edward Lewine, “Who Is He?” The New York Times, Aug. 10, 1997 “I asked a waitress what she knew about the museum and its Kensington Runestone, a large, flat rock that bears a runic inscription supposedly carved by Vikings in 1362, . . . "Never heard of it," she said.” –Steve Dougherty, “Highway 61, Visited” The New York Times, Sep. 11, 2005 “To learn to write was an ancient Celtic fear, an accomplishment charged with retribution and with danger. Caesar, encountering the Celts, judged their belief to be that knowledge, rite, wisdom, rune -- those who could write of those things held power, those who could write of the arcane, of rite and of worship, were people who deserved to be, who must be feared." -Marianne Wiggins, “Bet they’ll Miss Us When We’re Gone,” HarperCollins “But the most impressive, perhaps, was the most common: a version of Coltrane's ''Moment's Notice,'' which began in runic phrases and worked up to an outpouring, at which point the melody finally emerged.” –Ben Ratliff, “ Jazz Review; A Well-Traveled Drummer,” The New York Times, Dec. 24, 2004 “At Jelling lie the burial mounds of the first historical king and queen of Denmark, and the rune stone that has been called Denmark's baptismal certificate. The mighty grave mounds are reputedly those of King Gorm and Queen Thyra, and the smaller of two rune stones is Gorm's tribute to his dead consort. The larger stone, carved with lions and serpents and the crucified Christ, was raised by Gorm's son, King Harald Bluetooth, in memory of his father. And Harald records in the runes that he himself united Denmark, and conquered Norway, and ''made the Danes Christian.''” –Geoffrey Bibby, “Jutland of the Vikings” The New York Times, March 15, 1987 “I most likely viewed the Waffen S.S. as an élite unit that was sent into action whenever a breach in the front line had to be stopped up. I did not find the double rune on the uniform collar repellent.” -Günter Grass, “How I Spent the War” The New Yorker, June 4, 2007 [color:#33CCFF] Write your name in runes. Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 15, 2008 Author Posted July 15, 2008 puerile (PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl) adjective 1. belonging to a child or childhood; juvenile 2. lacking maturity; childish [from Latin peurilis, from puer, “child, boy.”] puerilely adverb puerility noun puerileness noun puerilism noun, Psychiatry: childishness in the behavior of an adult. “And, in one of the most puerile episodes of his adult career, he punishes his old schoolmates for being rich and vulgar by breaking into their houses to soak the labels off their boasted wine collections.” - Thomas R. Edwards, "Mordecai Richler Then and Now", New York Times, June 22, 1980 “Interestingly puerile is almost exclusively used in a pejorative way, whereas virile is used almost exclusively positively. Seems to suggest something similar about the tacit undesirability of boyishness. “ — Posted by Sam, The New York Times, May 23, 2008 Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral . . . doing battle with the immoral. - George F. Will, "The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism", Washington Post, April 15, 2001 “His defense, however, could be in the lessening of offense-taking: Carlin may have reduced the power of odious obscenities and puerile profanity by devaluing their shock value, which was a perverse kind of linguistic service, as far as I’m concerned. “ -William Safire, “Fist Bump”, The New York Times, July 6, 2008 “. . . the dalliance of ''Fergie'' with a Texas millionaire while she was pregnant with her daughter Eugenie; this episode, coupled with the Duchess's continuing Concorde-jet life style while more than $7 million in debt, moved the editorialist to decry her ''puerile nature and incontinent ways'' and to denounce her behavior as ''louche and loose.''. . . . So there is our last Duchess hanging on The Times's wall, not only louche but also puerile, ''childish'' in the sense of ''silly'' (not ''childlike,'' which is cute), a 17th-century adjective from the Latin puer, ''boy.''” –William Safire, “Soccer Moms”, The New York Times, Oct. 27, 1996 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 16, 2008 Author Posted July 16, 2008 trifecta (TRAHY-fek-tuh) noun 1. a bet, esp. on a horse race, in which the 1st three winners must be selected in correct order. Also called a triple. 2. a race in which such bets are placed origin 1970-75: tri + (per)fecta [color:#666666] In metaphoric usage inveterate gamblers might use this word as an old friend, (or foe, depending upon their luck); musicians might prefer “triad” a chord of three notes, and theologians “trinity.” "Trio" and "threesome" are other possibilities. Trifecta, however, carries with it the idea of three winners, which causes me to doubt some usages such as the trio of losers “disbelief, contempt and impatience” in the fifth quote below. Are “heat, humidity and haze” winners? Well, they are the perfect threesome for a stuffy afternoon. And another thing: at the races the trifecta must be bet in the exact order in which the winners eventually cross the line. Now is the trifecta of “Wine, Women and Song” in the correct winning sequence? There are nine possibilities and each could be the winning sequence: each race is different! “It was shortly before noon on a summer day with the treacherous trifecta of heat, humidity and haze foretelling afternoon thundershowers.” –Harry Hurt III, Executive Pursuits, NYTimes, July 12, 2008 “. . . vendors on hand, serving up elotes, the Mexican grilled ears of corn impaled on sticks and slathered with the unlikely trifecta of mayo, cheese and chili powder ($3).” -Peter Meehan, Treats for the Treasure Hunters, NYTimes, May 21, 2008 “Only one winning ticket was sold on the fourth-race trifecta at Garden State Park last Saturday, and it paid $85,198.50. The ticket holder asked to remain anonymous…” –G .F. T. Ryal, The Race Track, The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 1976 “. . .favorable reviews, in many of the most rarified venues . . . and a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. And then he hit the trifecta: his novel was selected for Oprah's Book Club, assuring him additional sales of perhaps a million copies or more. Franzen would be rich. “ –Scott Stossel, Elitism for Everyone, The Atlantic Magazine, Nov. 29, 2001 ''It consists of equal parts disbelief, contempt and impatience -- practically a Yiddish trifecta,'' Mr. Wex writes.” –William Grimes, Books of the Times, NYTimes, Oct 17, 2007 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 17, 2008 Author Posted July 17, 2008 pejorate , (peh-JOR- ate; PEJ-or-ate) verb 1. to worsen in meaning, 2. to depreciate; to make or become worse pejoration, noun, a change for worse “I have long needed a verb for ''to worsen in meaning,'' and have just back-formed pejorate from pejorative, based on the Latin pejorare, ''to make worse.'' Now I can pejorate all I want; is this a great language, or what?” -William Safire, “Soccer Moms” The New York Times, Oct. 27 1996 “The relationship may even pejorate to the degree that the young man will tell Ariel to go away somewhere; the young artist may decide that he can do very well without an affair in which ‘sour silences appear.’ “ -Thomas R. Thornburg, Prospero, the Magician-artist, Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror, p. 30, (1969) ''I thank you for your friendly admonition relating to some un-usual words in the Pamphlet,'' Franklin wrote in 1760 to David Hume, the English philosopher, who apparently objected to the Americans' habit of turning nouns into verbs. ''The pejorate, and the colonize . . . I give up as bad. . . . The unshakeable, too, tho clear, I give up as rather low.'' -William Safire, “The Way We Live Now: 7-6-03: On Language; Miffy Prometheus” The New York Times, July 6, 2003 “Another example of pejoration is the word crafty, meaning at first simply skilled, especially in some handicraft. It has been suggested that words having to do with knowledge, wisdom skill and cleverness have a tendency to pejorate in English as if there were a resentment . . .” -Thomas S. Kane, Leonard J. Peters, A Practical Rhetoric of Expository Prose, p. 485, (1966) “Although the verb forms ‘meliorate’ and ‘pejorate’ did appear in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively, ‘pejorism’ has found no acceptance, while ‘meliorism’ has been used, following William James, to express the view that although the world is a mixture of good and evil, it can be bettered. . .” –Paul Edwards, The encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vols 1&2, p. 114, pub. 1967 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 18, 2008 Author Posted July 18, 2008 louche (loosh), adjective of dubious taste or morality; decadent; disreputable [French, from Old French losche, “squint-eyed”, feminine of lois, from Latin luscus, “blind in one eye.”] louchely, adverb louchettes, pl. noun , goggles for correcting strabismus, a defect of vision in a squint-eyed or cross –eyed person, by allowing vision only directly to the front. “Wodehouse was the most undersexed and sweet-tempered of men, a stranger to the drunkenness and philandering that often enliven the biographies of English men of letters. McCrum tells the story judiciously, though he dithers around certain mysteries, such as the entanglements of Wodehouse’s wife with various louche men.” –Books Briefly Noted, Wodehouse by Robert McCrum, The New Yorker Magazine, Nov. 15, 2004 “In English, early in the 19th century, louche, pronounced ''loosh,'' came to mean ''oblique, not straightforward,'' and in a shameful linguistic abuse of a physical disability, has since pejorated to ''disreputable, indecent.'' “ -William Safire, “Soccer Moms”, The New York Times, Oct. 27, 1996 “Ignoring the ruckus, Mr. Cavalli ambled through the ancient farmhouse that he shares with his wife, their three children and a menagerie of parrots, Persian cats, a German shepherd and the zebra and lynx pelts that are his louchely extravagant signature as a fashion designer.”-Ruth La Ferla, “King of Zebra Prints Is Riding High”, The New York Times, Sept. 9, 2001 ''It looks like we lead this louche, hedonistic life,'' he says, ''when, in fact, we're ordering seed catalogs. It's all the things we're not.'' -Simon Doonan quoted by Pilar Viladas, “That 70’s House”, The New York Times, Feb 18, 2005 “The liqueur, which is extremely bitter, is traditionally poured through a lump of sugar on a special slotted spoon, and mixed with five parts water. This creates what is known as the louche, a milky-white effect that occurs when compounds in the liqueur precipitate out of the absinthe-water solution.” –Henry Fountain, “Secrets of Fuel for Creative Fires Unlocked”, The New York Times, April 18, 2000 Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 21, 2008 Author Posted July 21, 2008 quittance (KWIT-ns) noun 1. a release from debt, obligation or penalty 2. a document or certifying such a release 3. a repayment or recompense [Middle English quitance, from Old French, from quiter, to free] “Omittance is no quittance.” -Shakespeare “. . . I have sometimes esteemed as profit the ingratitudes, the offences, and indignities I had received of those to whom, either by nature or accidents, I was by way of friendship somewhat beholding; taking the occasion of their fault for a quittance and discharge of my debt.” -Michel de Montaigne, Essays Book III “We both like quittance of the suit and tie, freedom from duty and detail and to breathe deeply the insouciant air of summer.” Thomas Lynch, Left Behind, NYTimes, Aug 17, 2005 “So long as he worked or waited, Madeline remained in New York, but when in February death gave him his quittance, she took her freedom too, with wide intentions and many coupons.” –Sara Jeanette Duncan, The Pool in the Desert “Herman was thirteen at the time of his father's death and the abandonment haunts Moby-Dick. A general aura of quittance and ruin surrounded Melville all his life. His family had the bearings of failed aristocrats and this failure was vital to his world view.” –Lawrence Chua, The Stepmother World, Politics and Culture, www.aspen.conncoll.edu Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 22, 2008 Author Posted July 22, 2008 At left: Eustache Le Sueur - The Muse Terpsichore (1652-55) Louvre, Paris terpsichorean (turp-si-kuh-REE-uhn, turp-si-KAWR-ee-uhn, -KOHR), adjective and noun 1. adj. of dancing or of, Terpsichore, the muse of dance 2. noun a dancer terp, noun slang term for a dancer [. . . from L. form of Gk Terpsikhore, muse of dancing and dramatic chorus. Hence theatrical slang terp "stage dancer, chorus girl" (1937). Her name is lit. "enjoyment of dance," from terpein "to delight" . . . + khoros "dance, chorus". . . ] -Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper “Alexander Pope, in his "Essay on Criticism," breathed life into the thought by using a terpsichorean metaphor: “True ease in writing comes from art, Not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd To dance.”” -William Safire, On Language, NYTimes, Dec. 18, 1994 “Like a terpsichorean Thelma and Louise, these dancers are on a journey, progressing through various American landscapes.” –Holland Cotter, Art in Review, NYTimes, Mar. 30, 2007 “I don’t think his elders are doing him any favors by participating in these little demonstrations in front of the dugout. Of course, old Bob Gibson would have known how to deal with these little terpsichorean outbursts.” -George Vecsey, Up-and-Down Mets Might Have to Face the Music, NYTimes, July 12, 2007 “Dance companies, even the big ballet troupes, must furiously run in place, like terpsichorean hamsters, just to sustain themselves.” -John Rockwell, Dance; The Intimate, Unified Universe of Dance, NYTimes, Jan. 9, 2005 “But his real love is a belly dancer with a Southern drawl, Shivaree, who lives across the way and reads feet. ''Pedastry'' is what she calls it, and she describes herself as a high-class terpsichorean, not just another ''hootchy- kootchy dancer.'' “ –Alvin Klein, Theater in Review; ‘Shivaree’: New But Overwritten, NYTimes, April 1, 1984 “The choreography often resembles no more than synchronised fidgeting, and you can always spot a dearth of terpsichorean invention when dancers start doing sit-ups.” -The Sunday Times, 18 Nov. 2007 London Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 23, 2008 Author Posted July 23, 2008 Picture at right: Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn ca. 1963 ballerina (bal-un REE nuh) noun, fem. 1. a female ballet dancer 2. a ladies shoe or slipper - very low-heeled or heelless and resembling a ballet slipper. [1792, from Italian, literally “dancing girl,” feminine of ballerino “dancer,” from ballo “a dance.”] bridal gem ballerina And the sight was so thoroughly familiar - the sleek [Merrill] Ashley carriage, the elegant neck, the long, quick legs, the huge hazel eyes staring levelly into that immeasurable space that is the realm of ballerinas only. –Glenn Collins, ‘The Anguish of an Injured Ballerina’ NYTimes, July 22, 2008 Anastasia Volochkova, the star ballerina, has carried out her threat to sue the Bolshoi Theater, which dismissed her in September amid accusations that she had grown too heavy to be lifted. . . . Ms. Volochkova, 27, who stands 5 feet 6 inches tall and says she weighs 109 pounds, told the Itar-Tass news. . . '' -Sophia Kishkovsky, ‘Arts Briefing: Highlights; Moscow: The Ballerina Sues,’ NYTimes, Oct. 27, 2003 In the nineteenth century, ballerinas were scolded for being too skinny. No amount of technique was as important as feminine allure--notably, an ample bosom. Today, a bosom is a rare sight on the ballet stage. The premium is on technique--the ability to do a lot of hard steps fast and clearly--and for that you must be thin. If you aren't, not only will you have to strain like mad but, by straining, you will risk injury, as will the men who have to lift you. –Joan Acocella, ‘A Ballerina Body’ The New Yorker, March 5, 2001 Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl's beauty, and, in her own fashion, she expressed it epigrammatically. "She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina," she said. –Henry James, ‘Roderick Hudson’ Someone said that Gellser, the great ballerina, complained that she had no silk stockings. The delegates were of the opinion that this was a slight matter. Not so Lenin. He frowned and said he would see to it that Gellser had everything she needed immediately. –Louise Bryant, ‘Mirrors of Moscow’ Lucca, as we know, had been a ballerina. Her toes were all twisted and deformed by her early years of dancing. She once showed them to me, a pitiful record of the triumphs of a ballet dancer. –Clara Louise Kellogg, ‘Memoirs of an American Prima Donna’ p. 246, (1913) Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
D. Allan Posted July 24, 2008 Author Posted July 24, 2008 Shangai Ballet balletomane, noun an enthusiast or admirer of ballet balletomania, noun [French ballet + Greek mane(s), ardent admirer] A man was shaving in front of the mirror when he noticed his twelve-year-old daughter watching him with an expression of startled pride. "Why, Daddy!, she exclaimed. "You're standing in the third position!" - Roger Angell, The Talk of the Town, "Balletomane," The New Yorker, August 30, 1958, p. 20 . . . Rudolf Nureyev, . . . . . . . the most influential, personality—as well as the greatest technician—since Nijinsky, to whom he is the first ever to be so compared. Ten days ago, he turned the comparison to visible truth at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, which was packed with balletomanes and vibrant with the kind of collective balletomania that used to seize upon the Diaghilev crowds on a great first night here. –Janet Flanner, Letter From Paris, ‘January 25,’ The New Yorker, Feb. 3, 1962 I had become a balletomane. Then in 1953, . . . the Martha Graham company came to the Saville. . . . Here was dance for our time, out of the museum. I ceased to be a balletomane, and became a lover of dance. –The New York Times, Books, Chapter One, ‘Speaking of Diaghilev’ by John Drummond Quote dAb O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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