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WORD FOR THE DAY(8/20/18)Orgulous adjective OR-gyuh-lus Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Orgulous adjective OR-gyuh-lus Definition : proud Did You Know? "In Troy, there lies the scene. From Isles of Greece / The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf'd, / Have to the port of Athens sent their ships." Thus William Shakespeare begins the Trojan War tale Troilus and Cressida, employing orgulous, a colorful word first adopted in the 13th century from Anglo-French orguillus. After the Bard's day, orgulous dropped from sight for 200 years; there is no record of its use until it was rejuvenated by...

WORD FOR THE DAY(8/6/18)Promulgate Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Promulgate verb pro·mul·gate \ ˈprä-məl-ˌgāt ; prō-ˈməl- , prə-ˈməl- , ˈprō-(ˌ)məl- \ Definition of promulgate promulgated; promulgating transitive verb 1 : to make (an idea, belief, etc.) known to many people by open declaration : proclaim • … the huge meeting served primarily as the occasion on which to promulgate the official doctrine … • —Roger Shattuck • From the beginning our objective has been to develop and promulgate new models for the calculus-based introductory course. • —John S. Rigden et al. 2 a : to make...

WORD FOR THE DAY(7/30/18)Festinate Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Festinate verb FESS-tuh-nayt Definition Did You Know? Festinate is one among many in the category of words whose early recorded use is in the works of William Shakespeare. He used it as an adjective (which is pronounced \FESS-tuh-nut\) in King Lear, for example: "Advise the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation." Perhaps the Bard knew about festinatus, the Latin predecessor of festinate, or was familiar with the Latin proverb festina lente—"make haste slowly." Shakespeare also used the adverb festinately in Love's Labour's Lost:...

WORD FOR THE DAY(7/23/18)Transmogrify Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Transmogrify play verb transs-MAH-gruh-fye Definition : to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect Did You Know? We know that the prefix trans- means "across" or "beyond" and appears in many words that evoke change, such as transform and transpire, but we don't know the exact origins of transmogrify. The 17th-century dramatist, novelist, and poet Aphra Behn, who is regarded as England's first female professional writer, was an early adopter of the word. In her 1671 comic play The Amorous Prince, Behn wrote,...

WORD FOR THE DAY(7/9/18)Métier Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Métier play noun MET-yay Definition 1 : vocation, trade 2 : an area of activity in which one excels : forte Did You Know? The words métier, employment, occupation, and calling all perform similar functions in English, though each word gets the job done in its own way. These hardworking synonyms can all refer to a specific sustained activity, especially an activity engaged in to earn a living, but these words also have slightly different shades of meaning. Employment implies simply that one was hired and is...

WORD FOR THE DAY(7/2/18)Autodidact Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Autodidact noun au·to·di·dact \ ˌȯ-tō-ˈdī-ˌdakt , -dī-ˈ , -də-ˈ \ Definition of autodidact : a self-taught person • was an autodidact who read voraciously — autodidactic play \-dī-ˈdak-tik, -də-\ adjective Recent Examples of autodidact from the Web • Among the finalists, who range in age from 23 to 77, and span autodidact, emerging, and established, Lee happens to be particularly accomplished; her work can be found in more than 40 public collections around the world.
— amy verner, Vogue, "Dame Helen Mirren Presents Scottish Ceramist Jennifer Lee With...

WORD FOR THE DAY(6/25/18)Jabberwocky Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Jabberwocky noun JAB-er-wah-kee Definition : meaningless speech or writing Did You Know? In a poem titled "Jabberwocky" in the book Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), Lewis Carroll warned his readers about a frightful beast: Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! This nonsensical poem caught the public's fancy, and by 1908 jabberwocky was being used as a generic term for meaningless speech or writing. The word bandersnatch has also...

WORD FOR THE DAY(6/18/18)Roseate Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Roseate adjective ROH-zee-ut Definition 1 : resembling a rose especially in color  2 : overly optimistic : viewed favorably Did You Know? "Everything's coming up roses." "He views the world through rose-tinted glasses." "She has a rosy outlook on life." In English, we tend to associate roses and rose color with optimism, and roseate is no exception. Roseate comes from the Latin adjective roseus, and ultimately from the noun rosa, meaning "rose." Figurative use of roseate (with the meaning "happy" or "smiling") began in the 18th century,...

WORD FOR THE DAY(6/11/18)Muliebrity Word of the Day : May 28th, 2018 Muliebrity noun myoo-lee-EB-ruh-tee • • • Definition : the quality of being a woman : femininity Did You Know? Muliebrity has been used in English to suggest the distinguishing character or qualities of a woman or of womankind since the 16th century. (Its masculine counterpart, virility, entered the language at about the same time.) Muliebrity comes from Latin mulier, meaning "woman," and probably is a cognate of Latin mollis, meaning "soft." Mollis is also the source of the English verb mollify—a word that implies a "softening" of...

WORD FOR THE DAY(5/21/18)Nascent Word of the Day : May 7th, 2018 Nascent Definition : coming or having recently come into existence Did You Know? Nascent comes from nascens, the present participle of the Latin verb nasci, which means "to be born." It is a relative newcomer to the collection of English words that derive from that Latin verb. In fact, when the word nascent was itself a newborn, in the first quarter of the 17th century, other nasci offspring were already respectably mature. Nation, native, and nature had been around since the 1300s; innate and natal, since the...

WORD FOR THE DAY(5/14/18)flocculate Word of the Day : May 7th, 2018 flocculate verb FLAH-kyuh-layt Definition : to aggregate or coalesce into small lumps or loose clusters Did You Know? In the late 16th century, scientists noticed that the loose masses separated from a solution or suspension through precipitation often resembled tufts of wool, and they began to refer to them as flocks, using a word for "tufts" that comes ultimately from the synonymous Latin word floccus. (This flock is not related to the flock that refers to a group of animals, which comes from Old English flocc, meaning...

WORD FOR THE DAY(5/7/18)Anathema Word of the Day : May 7th, 2018 anathema noun uh-NATH-uh-muh • • Definition 1 a : one that is cursed by ecclesiastical authority b : someone or something intensely disliked or loathed — usually used as a predicate nominative 2 a : a ban or curse solemnly pronounced by ecclesiastical authority and accompanied by excommunication b : the denunciation of something as accursed c : a vigorous denunciation : curse Did You Know? From a historical perspective, anathema can be considered a one-word oxymoron. When it first appeared in English in the 1500s, it...

WORD FOR THE DAY(4/30/18)Cathexis Word of the Day : April 30, 2018 cathexis • • Definition : investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea Did You Know? You might suspect that cathexis derives from a word for "emotion," but in actuality the key concept is "holding." Cathexis comes to us by way of New Latin (Latin as used after the medieval period in scientific description or classification) from the Greek word kathexis, meaning "holding." It can ultimately be traced back (through katechein, meaning "to hold fast, occupy") to the Greek verb echein, meaning "to...

WORD FOR THE DAY(4/23/18) Word of the Day : April 23, 2018 vulnerable • • • Definition 1 : capable of being physically or emotionally wounded 2 : open to attack or damage : assailable Did You Know? Vulnerable is ultimately derived from the Latin noun vulnus ("wound"). Vulnus led to the Latin verb vulnerare, meaning "to wound," and then to the Late Latin adjective vulnerabilis, which became vulnerable in English in the early 1600s. Vulnerable originally meant "capable of being physically wounded" or "having the power to wound" (the latter is now obsolete), but since the late 1600s,...

WORD FOR THE DAY(4/16/18) loquacious adjective lo·qua·cious \ lō-ˈkwā-shəs \ Definition of loquacious 1 : full of excessive talk : wordy 2 : given to fluent or excessive talk : garrulous — loquaciously adverb — loquaciousness noun Examples of loquacious in a Sentence 1. … long-cultivated dislikes and resentments, combined with a general expectation of coming apocalypse. He talked about these topics in a manner that managed to be tight-lipped and loquacious at the same time. —Ian Frazier,  New Yorker,  22 & 29 Dec. 2003 2. … the flaw of the genre is not in betraying the loquacious John...

WORD FOR THE DAY(4/9/18) querulous adjective quer·u·lous \ ˈkwer-yə-ləs , -ə-ləs also ˈkwir- \ •   •   •   •   •   •   Definition of querulous 1 : habitually complaining 2 : fretful, whining • a querulous voice — querulously adverb — querulousness noun Examples of querulous in a Sentence 1. car trips that were frequently spoiled by a couple of querulous passengers in the back Recent Examples of querulous from the Web • Kate Kearney-Patch's Marína, the old nurse who knows how to soothe the querulous personalities around, doesn't want the spotlight, but her presence...

WORD FOR THE DAY(4/2/18) agon noun AH-gahn • • • Definition : conflict; especially : the dramatic conflict between the chief characters in a literary work Did You Know? Agon comes from the Greek word agōn, which is translated with a number of meanings, among them "contest," "competition at games," and "gathering." In ancient Greece, agons (the word is also pluralized in English as agones) were contests held during public festivals. The contests—among them the ancient Olympics, on which our modern Olympics is modeled—involved everything from athletics to chariot and horse racing to music and literature. Agon in the...

WORD FOR THE DAY(3/26/18) woolgathering noun WOOL-gath-uh-ring Definition : indulgence in idle daydreaming Did You Know? Woolgathering once literally referred to the act of gathering loose tufts of wool that had gotten caught on bushes and fences as sheep passed by. As you might imagine, woolgathering was not the most profitable of enterprises; its practitioners must have seemed to wander aimlessly, gaining little for their efforts. In the mid-16th century, woolgathering began to appear in figurative phrases such as "my wits went a woolgathering"—in other words, "my mind went wandering aimlessly." From there, it wasn't long before the word...

Croesus Definition : a very rich man Did You Know? The original Croesus was a 6th-century B.C. king of Lydia, an ancient kingdom in what is now Turkey. Croesus conquered many surrounding regions, grew very wealthy, and became the subject of legends. In one legend, he was visited by Solon, the wise Athenian lawgiver. (Historians say this isn't chronologically possible, but it makes a good story.) Solon supposedly told Croesus, who thought he had everything: "Account no man happy before his death." These words made Croesus angry, and he threw the lawmaker out of his court. Croesus would rethink...

WORD FOR THE DAY(3/12/18) mnemonic adjective nih-MAH-nik • • Definition 1 : assisting or intended to assist memory; also : of or relating to a technique of improving the memory 2 : of or relating to memory Did You Know? The word mnemonic derives from the Greek mnēmōn ("mindful"), which itself comes from the verb mimnēskesthai, meaning "to remember." (In classical mythology, Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, is the goddess of memory.) In addition to its adjectival use, mnemonic is also a noun meaning "a mnemonic device," and the plural form mnemonics is used in the sense of...