Category: Vocabulary

Word of the Day: Obvelation

A concealing, concealment, hiding, veiling. Antonym: revelation.

My example: Her selective self-revelation was as much an intended obvelation.

Example from Stewart Umphrey, Complexity and Analysis, Lexington Books, 2002, 140:

Since divine revelation is never without obvelation, those bound back to God in inquiry need a hermeneutics to distinguish what belongs to Him from what belongs to the medium of His self-presentation.

Word of the Day: ‘Perseverate’

Merriam-Webster: "continuation of something (such as repetition of a word) usually to an exceptional degree or beyond a desired point."  

Example:

Now the media and other anti-Trump partisans are going to perseverate on whether or not Trump obstructed justice during the Mueller probe. They should leave this alone. Having bet so heavily on the collusion narrative, and lost, nobody wants to listen to them bang on about collusion for two more years.

Filed under: Vocabulary

‘Peninsulate’

If 'insulate' is a word, from the Latin insula, insulae, island, then why not 'peninsulate,' v. i. meaning to insulate partially?  Example featuring an adjectival cognate:

His is a peninsular life, a balanced life, neither continental not insular. While connected to the mainland of the traditional, the quotidian, and the commonsensical, a part of him stretches out into the oceanic Apeiron.

Does your mother look askance at your new boyfriend? Perhaps the above sentence will take the edge off her disapprobation.

Word of the Day: Dégringolade

Merriam-Webster:  

a rapid decline or deterioration (as in strength, position, or condition) : DOWNFALL

Example from Why I Left by Jim Holt:

I will now confess to the obvious: the foregoing account of my spiritual dégringolade, while true in every detail, is a caricature. My alienation from the Catholic Church was not mainly intellectual. It was moral, even emotional.

Word of the Day: Demesne

Merriam-Webster:

1: legal possession of land as one's own

2: manorial land actually possessed by the lord and not held by tenants

3a: the land attached to a mansion

b: landed property : ESTATE

c: REGION sense 2, TERRITORY

4: REALM sense 2, DOMAIN

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

If you think you know the meaning of a word, you are well-advised to check your understanding. Even if you really do know the meaning of a word, you probably don't know all of its shades and variants.

If you work steadily at this, then perhaps someday you will have a vocabulary half as extensive as that of your humble correspondent.

Word of the Day: Costive

Merriam-Webster:

1a: affected with constipation

b: causing constipation

2: slow in action or expression

3: not generous : STINGY

Where did I find it? In a fine analysis of the concept of charm by Joseph Epstein.  Here is a taste that features the word under definition:

Some people I talked with thought charm was synonymous with “cool.” In fact, the two, charm and cool, are all but opposed. Cool aims for detachment, distance; charm is social, bordering on the intimate. Cool is icy; charm warm. Cool is costive; charm often ebullient. Cool doesn’t require approval; charm hopes to win it. Cool began life in jazz under the great saxophonist Lester Young, who first used the term, but it soon descended to the argot of drugs. Cool gave way to hip and hep. In Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip,” the singer proclaims that he watches “arty French flicks with [his] shades on” and is so hip “I call my girlfriend ‘Man.’ ” Miles Davis was cool, Louis Armstrong charming.

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

Word of the Day: ‘Ultracrepidarian’

Here:

adjective 
  1. 1.
    expressing opinions on matters outside the scope of one's knowledge or expertise.
    "“Dad, how do we know the universe is expanding?” inquires your six-year-old. Try answering that without resorting to an ultracrepidarian trick here or there"
noun 
  1. 1.
    a person who expresses opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise.
    "most patients are ultracrepidarians when it comes to medicine"

‘Wankerati’ and Other Terms of Abuse

I  picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn.

I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.'  Read his The Turning Point and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi (Dianne Feinstein), et al. And there's "a chamber full of posturing tosspots."

'Tosspot' is a general term of abuse that conjures up drunkard and sot. It puts me in mind of pot-valiant. One is correctly so described if one's courage derives from the consumption of spirits.

There is a use for abuse. It is a mistake to think that verbal abuse ought never to be employed.

Hands are best employed in caressing and blessing. But sometimes they need to be balled into fists and rudely applied to the faces of miscreants. 

If one resorts to verbal abuse and invective one does not always thereby betray a paucity of careful thought informed by fact. Verbal abuse has a legitimate use in application to the self-enstupidated, the willfully ignorant, and those out for power alone regardless of truth and morality. 

It is not reasonable to think that all are amenable to the dulcet tones of sweet reason; some need to be countered with the hard fist of unreason.  

On the other side of the question, one should never resort to invective if one is trying to persuade a reasonable person. One should proceed as calmly as possible.  Any resort to billingsgate will cause the interlocutor to assume that one lacks good reasons.  

……………….

If you studied the above properly you will probably have learned three or four new words.

If you have a large vocabulary you will love my blog; if you don't, you need it.

Political Jargon: Entryism

From the New Statesman:

The founding example of entryism was provided by Leon Trotsky and the “French turn”. In 1934, the Russian revolutionary persuaded his supporters to dissolve the Communist League into the Socialist Party in order to maximise their influence. The term has since been applied to any group that enters a larger organisation with the intention of subverting its policies and objectives. 

Labour’s most notable experience of entryism came with the Trotskyist Militant, which won control of the party’s youth wing (Labour Party Young Socialists) and a number of constituency parties. After its proscription by the National Executive Committee in 1982, hundreds of the group’s members were expelled during Neil Kinnock’s leadership, including two MPs (Terry Fields and Dave Nellist). Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, was a Militant supporter though never formally joined. 

“Operation Ice Pick” was the name given to Labour’s efforts to prevent entryists from voting in the 2015 leadership election, after the means of assassination used against Trotsky. Those barred included members of the Socialist Party, the successor group to Militant. The pro-Corbyn organisation Momentum has similarly banned outsiders from joining after MPs warned that it could become a vehicle for entryism. 

Usage

Responding to charges of infiltration, Jeremy Corbyn said: "The entryism I see is lots of young people who were hitherto not very excited by politics, coming in for the first time."

Ice pick? How many times do I have to explain that it was an ICE AXE, a much nastier implement, that Ramon Mercader drove into the skull of Leon Trotsky on 20 August 1940.  Wikipedia: "On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his study by Mercader, who used an ice axe as a weapon.[137] "