Word of the Day

[D. Allan]

They sound like good old English words - "wry" is from Old English. "Askew" however may have some O. N. French influence.

Next time you sneeze say AsKEW! :)

[D. Allan]

waspish or waspy adj.

1. Relating to, or suggestive of a wasp

2. Resembling a wasp in form; slightly built (e.g. having a slender waist)

3. Easily irritated or annoyed

4. Indicative of irritation, annoyance.

waspishly (adv.) waspishness (noun)

wæps is an Old English word. Waspish in the sense of "irascible, spiteful" is attested from 1566. Wasp-waist is recorded from 1870. –Online Etymology Dictionary

synonyms: bad-tempered, cruel, unkind, evil, awful, inhuman, snappish, spiteful, irascible, petulant, disapproving

quotes:

Flights of military planes, including waspish jets and thundering super-bombers, were on the wing all over the United States yesterday in preparatory staging phases of an 850-plane review by President Truman. –Meyer Berger, NYTImes, July 30, 1948

Since the issue of Garbo's feet seems to be a subject of endless fascination to both the staff and the readership of the Book Review …, surely what were perhaps the most waspish words ever said about them ought to be displayed once again. I am referring to the lines from Cole Porter's 1941 song "Let's Not Talk About Love," from "Let's Face It":

"If you know Garbo, then tell me this news,

Is it a fact the Navy's launched all her old shoes?" -S. Shipman,

‘Letter to the Editor,’NYTimes, Aug. 15. 1993

“The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book” fit right in with our program of callow preciousness; we loved its waspishly magisterial tone, its hauteur and malice. –Janet Malcolm, The New Yorker, June 2, 2003

The acronym WASP = White Anglo-Saxon Protestant does not seem to be used much these day in the opinion of this reader.

[Stan]

dAb

This is the most viewed thread on the forum, today it will hit the 500,000 mark.

Thanks!

[D. Allan]

Wow! that is a special occacion. I'll celebrete with a frostie from Wendys.

Thanks for giving me that chance to play around here on the forum!

[D. Allan]

dolor noun;

1. a feeling of great sorrow, anguish, grief, suffering, or woe

2. intense sadness

dolorous adjective; sad, or causing sadness, or sorrow

dolorously adverb;

Middle English dolour; from Latin dolor pain, grief, from dolere to feel pain, to grieve Date: 14th century

related words: distress, melancholy, mourning

Quotes:

“I may say.” Alan goes on, “that I worked for his defense, and was successful in getting him acquitted. Imagine my dolor when I learned that he had turned his back on his anarchist friends and was living with gangersters.” -Norman Mailer, ‘The Man Who Studied Yoga’

For long stretches, Robert De Niro, speaking in quiet, even tones, keeps this dolorous family melodrama on track. –David Denby ‘City By The Sea,’ The New Yorker

Impassioned and affecting as some of it is, this desperately sincere drama of life and death in Nowheresville, U.S.A., is also an arrogant failure. Benicio Del Toro, dolorously made up with clown circles under his eyes, plays the Jesus-freak ex-con who accidentally runs down a man and his two little girls. –David Denby, ‘21 Grams,’ The New Yorker, Dec. 1 2003

And finally, with tongue in cheek, I do believe: well maybe not!

Our favorite French literary movement at the moment is Dolorism, which we much prefer to Existentialism. Dolorism holds that misery is good for you and that the noblest function the writer can perform is to give his readers as much of it is possible. Many writers, American as well as French, have probably been Dolorists for years without knowing it. –Stanley Edgar Hyman, The New York Times, Jun 15, 1946, p. 15

[D. Allan]

Mater Dolorosa

Litho. by Currier & Ives

8.25 x 12.5 in

[D. Allan]

harry verb

1. to persistently attack (an enemy)

2. to persistently harass, or annoy

harried adjective

1. beset by problems; harassed

2. tired and annoyed

“harry” comes from the Old English hergian “make war, lay waste, ravage, plunder.” It is the word used in the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” for what the Vikings did to England. Not nice of those Vikings; and very unpleasant for those harried by them!

Quotes:

“Now no stars are visible. Above lie only sullen masses of clouds harried by a cold wind, briefly veined with lightning, pregnant with deluge. –Dean Ray Koontz

Cleo. “ Indeed, he is so: I repent

me much,

That so I harry’d him.

Why, methinks, by him,

This creature’s no such thing.” -Shakespeare

To harry, is to use roughly, harass, subdue.

“---the harrowing of helle.”

The same word occurs also in the Revenger’s Tragedy, 1607”

“He harried her, and midst a throng,” &c.

Again, in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601:

“Will harry me about instead of her.”

-The plays and poems of William Shakespeare, with comments by Steevens and others

1821, p.284 –Google Books

[D. Allan]

mollify verb

1. to calm, to soothe

2. to lessen in intensity, to temper

3. to reduce the rigidity of ; soften

Middle English: “mollifien”; Latin, mollis = soft

mollifiable (adj)

mollification (noun)

mollifier (noun)

mollifyingly (adverb)

Lucy mollified the angry police officer by kissing his hand. • My father was not mollified by my promise never to crash his car into a brick wall again. ... –Adam Robinson, Prinction Review, 2001, ‘Word smart;building an educated vocabulary… p. 180 –Google Books

After my event, a middle-aged blond woman of an international svelteness not typical of such locations asked me to sign a book for her husband. I raised my obliging pen over the title page. “His name’s Rupert Murdoch.” “But he once sacked me.” “Oh, I’m sure it was nothing personal,” came the mollifying reply. True: it hadn’t been. And in that moment—politeness mixing perhaps with the brief vanity of imagining that a novel might strike to the heart of a monster—my pen blabbed, “To Rupert Murdoch from Julian Barnes.” It is the phrase I most regret having written. –Julian Barnes ‘Union Blues.’ The New Yorker, Arpil 21, 2003

Though college administrators promised to build a new garden in its place, that did not mollify the gardeners, who complained about the new design, and the fact that it was less than half the size of the old garden. –Kareem Fahim and Bas Ong, NYTimes May 26, 2010

[D. Allan]

“So Sam enters the universe of sleep, a man who seeks to live in such a way as to avoid pain, and succeeds merely in avoiding pleasure. What a dreary compromise is life!” -Norman Mailer, The Man Who Studied Yoga.

dreary adj.

from Middle English dreri meaning bloody, frightened, sad, from Old English dreorig, sad, from dreor, blood, gore! The sense of "dismal, gloomy" is first recorded 1667 in Milton’s "Paradise Lost.”

1. gloomy, dismal, bleak

2. feeling, displaying, or reflecting listlessness or discouragement

3. boring, dull and making one unhappy

drearily (adverb)

dreariness (noun)

It doesn’t matter if it’s pouring rain or a beautiful spring day: it’s always a little dreary in my windowless cubicle, where I sit and listen to the hum of computers and printers and long for something to break the din. I’ll occasionally think, Wouldn’t it be lovely if the magazine hired someone to sit and read aloud to me from my favorite novel? And wouldn’t it be even better if my reader were a Cuban fellow in a white linen suit and a panama hat? –Elizabeth Minkel, ‘The Whole Cigar,’ NYTimes, April 1, 2010

Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping,suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this, and nothing more." - Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

“Days of absence, sad and dreary,

Clothed in sorrow's dark array,

Days of absence, I am weary;

She I love is far away.

-William Shakespeare

[D. Allan]

oubliette (oobliet) noun

a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in the ceiling

- from French oublier ‘forget’

One rarely knows in advance what will turn out to be of interest or importance and what should have gone directly into the oubliette. – Cullen Murphy, Backlog of History

She was prepared to go to great lengths to avoid seeing the Mosleys during a 1959 visit to Paris, where not only Nancy but Diana’s family would be present: “We envisage scenes as in corny French bedroom farces, the Mosleys popping out of one room, down an oubliette, [the Treuhafts] hiding in the stove, etc. – Thomas Mallon, Red Sheep, How Jessica Mitford found her voice, The New Yorker, Oct. 16, 2006

It's hard to say which is more intriguing -- the entertainment and drinking or the setting. An oubliette is a dungeon with a trap door at the top as its only opening, and the name is accurate. Located in the Latin Quarter, just across the river from Notre-Dame, this night spot is housed in a genuine 12th-century prison, complete with dungeons, spine-tingling passages, and scattered skulls, where prisoners were tortured and sometimes pushed through portholes to drown in the Seine. –Rommer’s Review, Paris Nightlife, Caveau des Oubliettes, NYTimes 28 June 2010

The original copy of the Geneva Conventions rests in the vaults of the State Department, but Mayer describes how Cheney, Addington and their allies made sure this was less a place of honor than an oubliette. Jennifer Schuessler, Jane Mayer: ‘The Dark Side,’ NYTimes, July 24, 2008

[Gail]

I love this word! On the surface, with its "ette" suffix it appears almost clean or feminine.

I looked up the noun and while in the French it is a feminine noun (!) the definition is more foreboding:

"Cachot où étaient détenues les personnes condamnées à la prison à perpétuité"

What this is saying is that condemned persons are placed there INDEFINITELY, those you just want to forget about (another definition uses those words).

French prisons doubtless have a dubious history and are world-famous as such. Anyone remember the book or movie, "Papillion"?

[D. Allan]

I loved that movie!

[D. Allan]

sodden adjective

1. extremely wet; saturated

2. lumpy, soggy or doughy (as food improperly cooked)

3. stupefied with liquor

4. bloated

O.E. soden, . . . originally "boiled;" sense of "soaked" is first recorded 1820 -Online Etymology Dictionary

soddenly adverb

soddenness noun

In fact no one could get through Mr. Newby's accounts of peeling off sodden clothing in one chilly bed-and-breakfast place after another without longing for a stiff shot of Irish whisky. –Evelyn Toynton, NYTimes August 21, 1988

But as if taking their cue from the gathering chill cast by Mr. Cumberbatch’s David Scott-Fowler, the drink-sodden, well-off husband whose life is closing down around him, the audience is alert to the limitations of the frivolity on view before them. After all, one doesn’t lightly propose a gas mask party then or now. –Matt Wolf, NYTimes, June 15, 2010

The youthful excitement of her voice and the innocent clarity of her eyes went queerly with her body, which was middle-aged. Her plump legs had gone lumpy and sodden, and her small face was finely wrinkled . . . . – John Updike, The Doctor’s Wife

[D. Allan]

svelte adjective

slender, graceful and elegant

origin: French, from Italian svelto, from past participle of svellere, to stretch out.

sveltely adverb

svelteness noun

synonyms: lithe, sleek, thin

Title II of the stimulus bill is a svelte five pages, but it is dense with action— . . . . –Steve Coll, The New Yorker, March 6, 2009

The spectacle of svelte Marlene Dietrich bouncing a baby on her well-exposed knees and gurgling with maternal affection might seem a comic incongruity. And, indeed, under certain circumstances, it might offer opportunity for rich farce. –Boslery Crowther, NYTimes, April 24, 1942

Nevertheless, it was a riveting evening, partly thanks to Nagano’s svelte orchestra and mostly thanks to the German soprano Angela Denoke, who projects Salome as cleanly and purely as any singer today. –Alex Ross, The New Yorker, July 30, 2007

Isn't the reason for this that international designers want tall, skinny women with no derriere modeling their clothes which favors svelte Nordic blondes as opposed to other more luscious Brazilians? –Reader’s Comments, NYTimes, June 8, 2010

Pity the poor notebook computer designer. Everyone complains his notebook is too heavy. But when manufacturers try to make more svelte machines, users say the screens are too small and the floppy disks and CD-ROM drives are missing. –Saul Hansell, NYTimes, April 19, 1999

[D. Allan]

redux adjective

brought back, revived, restored, etc :

used postpositively, (it is used behind the word it modifies.)

“restored, brought back,” Latin, from reducere. In book titles at least since 1662 (Dryden, ”Astraea Redux).” – online etymology dictionary

A tantalizing recut entitled "Apocalypse Now Redux," which Coppola showed to high acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival, in May, will shortly be screening across America. – Anthony Lane, ‘Darkness Revisited,’ The New Yorker, August 6, 2001

. . . what you are left with is something that bears little resemblance to the subversive, explosive original. “The Joy of Sex” redux becomes generic— . . . –Ariel Levy, ‘Doing It,’ The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2009

Hudak was an apostle of the Common Sense Revolution, . . . . So, asks Graham, "Will he try revolution redux" or take a more moderate and nuanced approach to government? – Mohammed Adam, ‘Conservatives face even tougher battle,’ Ottawa Citizen, March 5, 2010

[D. Allan]

I have seen "redux" used as a noun also as in:

Kate Gosselin showed up to do a redux of her much-maligned â Paparazziâ paso doble and to shill her two new shows. LATimes, May 26, 2010

[D. Allan]

frangible adjective

fragile; brittle

from Latin frangibilis, from frangere ‘to break’

related words: frangibility or frangibleness (nouns)

Garry Winogrand might have felt relieved to secure those thousands of images on a hard drive, rather than on frangible film, . . . Anthony Lane, ‘Candid Camera,’ The New Yorker, September 24, 2007

The mother feared for the baby, feared it would see every carpeted room as a prairie strewn with monuments huge and upholstered, every tree as a green net of frangible light, every flower as a wound in the air. – Mark Strand, Fiction, ‘The Tiny Baby,’ The New Yorker, February 15, 1982

The specimens are some of them mounted on plaster of Paris bases, as they are too frangible to withstand jar or concussion without extraneous support. ‘A Study in Stalactites’, NYTimes, July 22, 1879, p.3

. . . an initial engineering assessment suggested that using frangible poles as power poles could be risky. . . . – Nicky Phillips, ‘Lost chance for non-lethal poles,’ Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 13, 2010

[D. Allan]

redolence noun

being redolent; a sweet scent; pleasant aroma; fragrance

redolent adjective

1. having or emitting fragrance; aromatic

2. suggestive; reminiscent

c.1400, from O.Fr. redolent "emitting an odor," from L. redolentem, prp. of redolere "emit a scent," –online etymology dictionary

redolently adverb

Now that we are having this charming weather, combining the redolence of flower gardens with the crispish days of Autumn, . . . NYTimes, July 21, 1877

Nolan summons these memories — the days herding sheep through the valleys, the redolence of fresh fry bread, the unfamiliar language of his grandfather — . . . . - Dan Frosch, ‘Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry,’ NYTimes, June 17, 2008

Heinz is also doing well and, even as I write, the ghastly smell of soup, redolent of struggle, hard times and desk-top lunch is wafting through the office. Carl Mortished, The Times, 24 December 2008

The image he portrayed is not quite one of a shopper struggling through the bomb sites with ration books and gas masks - but is nonetheless redolent of that period. –Ian King, ‘Asda tries to revive the spirit of the Blitz,’ The Times, Dec. 12, 2008

. . . the director’s lean, atmospheric direction; his dissection of a criminal social stratum that is so redolently British; . . . . – The Times, 24 April 2004

[D. Allan]

dawk

1. noun: a hollow, crack or cut in timber

2. verb: to cut or mark with an incision; to gash

3. noun: a printer’s mark in the shape of a dagger

4. noun: a Northern English dialect word for “ hand”

5. noun: the mail post in the East Indies

6. noun: politics, someone who is neither a ‘hawk’ nor a ‘dove’

They waded through a vacant plot, the ground dawked and uneven. - Brian Evenson, ‘Two Brothers’

Should a savage cat tear out a piece of flesh from the hand, she is said to “dawk” it out. Dawk expresses a ferocious stab and tear combined. The English dialect dictionary, vol. 6 Joseph Wright Editor, 1900

"Whether you re a hawk or a dove or a dawk or a hove, I don't see what we lose by 'taking this same step we were willing to a year ago. ... –NYTimes, March 3, 1967

If all of that means playing words such as cat, dog, house instead of khat (a narcotic-yielding evergreen shrub), dawk (the mail-post in India) or howff (a regular haunt), then so be it. –Libby Purves, The Times, April 12, 2010

The Dawk consists of a body of native runners; active, agile, patient, and enduring men, who run from town to town bearing the packets of letters, or ‘post,’ and who carry travelers on their shoulders in palanquins or open vehicles. –Penny magazine of the Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, Vol. 12, by Charles Knight, p. 157, 1843

[D. Allan]

frisson noun

a sudden moment of intense excitement; a shudder or shiver

late 18th century: French frisson ‘a shiver or thrill’

These white mulberries are milder in taste, . . . . And I’ll admit, these white fruits look a lot like larvae. Eating them always gives me an initial frisson! -Ned Lochaya, ‘Garden Talk: Morus and Rubus,’ NYTimes, July 1, 2010

Last week I had one of those moments when you look at your childhood, then look at what your own children are up to, and suddenly feel a thrilling frisson of despair. – Caitlin Moran, ‘Swimming with sharks: my pool of memories,’ The Times, November 24, 2008

Time was when Salome could induce a heart attack from moral outrage, and most can still get a frisson of horror from this vampiric little girl who finds her extended moment de joie in straining to overhear a man’s head being chopped off and in kissing its mouth. – Richard Thicknesse, ‘Salome,’ The Times, March 31, 2003

[D. Allan]

talisman noun

1. an object with engraved symbols thought to bring good luck or to keep its owner safe from harm

2. anything believed to have magic power

1630s, from Fr. talisman, in part via Arabic tilsam (pl. tilsaman), a Gk. loan-word; in part directly from Byzantine Gk. telesma "talisman, religious rite, payment" –online etymology dictionary

. . . garlic was used as a talisman: a panacea against bad spirits in the Middle Ages and against illness during the Crusades. –Amy Scattergood, LATimes, March 11, 2010

She specializes in this ancient art, which is called Gem Weaving. Intricate crystal combinations are put together to make a talisman necklace or pendant that can be worn to promote healing. – Martha Jette, ‘Crystal Healing Club a Popular Meet-up Group in Richmond Hill,’ The Washington D. C. Examiner, June 25, 2010

McQueen's black lace-and-feather evening gown is a triumph of bespoke taxidermy whose phallic boa morphs from a snake's body into a swan's beaked head. Freud would have liked it, and it reminded me that he collected Egyptian talismans of sex and death and kept them in his consulting room for inspiration. –Judith Thurman, ‘Altered States,’ The New Yorker, Dec. 17, 2001

The persuasive effectiveness of nineteenth-century empires also rested in large part on the talismanic role of science. – Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Anglophone Empire,’ The New Yorker, April 7, 2003

And what, in that dismantled world, could be

More fabulous than he?

Had he existed? Was he but a name

Tacked on to forgeries which pressed the claim

Of every ancient quack—

That one could from a smoky cell

By talisman or spell

Coerce the Zodiac? -Richard Wilbur, ‘Trismegistus,’ The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2009

So many people think that "eating right and exercising" is a talisman against cancer or diabetes, but it just isn't . . . –Readers’ Comments, NYTimes, June 17, 2010

This, don't forget, is a team performing without its talisman and driving force, Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien, who was ruled out through injury before a ball was kicked. –Michael Lynch, Johannesburg, ‘Black Stars shoulder hopes of a continent,’ The Sydney Morning Herald

[Gail]

Freud did that?

[D. Allan]

evidently he collected talismans. Wonder where he got them...Egypt of course!... I had to reread the quote! Hmmm, would like to see some.

[SivartM]

I think these are some:

http://www.freud.org.uk/photo-library/category/10047/antiquities/

[D. Allan]

Thank you for that link, SivartM!