Category: Vocabulary
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Word of the Day: Nychthemeron
You may have noticed that 'day' is ambiguous: it can refer to a 24-hour period or to the non-nocturnal portion of a 24-hour period. The ambiguity spreads to the Latin injunction, Carpe diem! Does it include Carpe noctem! or exclude it? Does one seize the night when one seizes the day? Or perhaps neither: to seize the day is…
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Word of the Day: ‘Inennarable’
I stumbled upon this word on p. 140 of John Williams' 1965 novel, Stoner. (Don't let the title of this underappreciated masterpiece put you off: it is not about a stoner but about a professor of English, surname 'Stoner.') Williams puts the following words in the mouth of Charles Walker, "Confronted as we are by the…
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Word of the Day: Conurbation
"An extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities." See here. You weren't taught Latin in high school? Then you were cheated by 'progressive' idiots. But if you were taught, then you know that the Latin for 'city' is urbs, urbis. Knowing this, you are in…
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Word of the Day: Cack-Handed
British. 1. Left-handed; 2. clumsy, awkward. See here. Example: “Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not – nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack,” said the letter published in the newspaper Le Monde. I'm with Catherine Deneuve and Christina Hoff Sommers on this one. Real women…
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Of ‘Whither’ and ‘Whence’
I had a teacher in the fifth grade who, when one of us inappropriately wandered off, would query, "Whither goest thou?" alluding, as I did not realize at the time, to the Gospel of John (13:36): Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow…
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Word of the Day: Levigate
To grind into a smooth powder.
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Word of the Day: Camarilla
cam·a·ril·la ˌkaməˈrilə,-ˈrēə/ noun noun: camarilla; plural noun: camarillas a small group of people, especially a group of advisers to a ruler or politician, with a shared, typically nefarious, purpose. "a military camarilla that has lost any sense of political reality" Origin mid 19th century: from Spanish, diminutive of camara ‘chamber.’ Source.
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Word of the Day: ‘Eructation’
Merriam-Webster: Eructation is simply a fancier, and some might argue a more decorous, word for "belch." "Eructation" was borrowed from Latin in the 15th century; the verb eruct, meaning "to belch," followed in the late 16th century. Both have their source in the Latin verb eructare, which is the frequentative form of erugere, meaning "to…
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Word of the Day: ‘Bilharzia’
I found it in a remarkable paragraph from Conrad Black: The bizarrerie of the intellectual right is illimitable. My dear and esteemed friend George Will, after an acrobatic exercise in the columnar snobbery that Trump was unaware that Andrew Jackson died 16 years before the start of the Civil War, (Jackson was concerned about the…
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Word of the Day: ‘Delope’
Wikipedia: Delope (French for "throwing away") is the practice of throwing away one's first fire in a pistol duel, in an attempt to abort the conflict. Some days I half-seriously think that dueling ought to be brought back. Some liberal-left scumbag slanders you, you challenge him to a duel, and then there is one less…
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Anything
People will say anything, which is why one should not let oneself become upset over (almost) anything anyone says. Do you know the word bushwa? We ought to raise it from its desuetude.
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Does ‘Aunt’ Have a Latin-Based Adjectival Form?
The following weighty question flashed across my mind this morning: which word is to 'aunt' as 'avuncular' is to 'uncle'? A little Internet pokey-wokey brought me to materteral. Maternal, paternal, fraternal, sororal, avuncular, materteral! Hard to pronounce and useless for purposes of communication with hoi polloi, but interesting nonetheless. I pity those who interests are…
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Word of the Day: Dehiscence
Noun 1. Biology: the release of materials by the splitting open of an organ or tissue. 2. Botany: the natural bursting open of capsules, fruits, anthers, etc., for the discharge of their contents. 3. Surgery: the bursting open of a surgically closed wound. Most people have pitifully limited vocabularies. It is due to laziness in most cases. Don't pass over words…
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Word of the Day: Conscient
If you are tired of 'conscious' and desire a stylistic variant, you may use 'conscient,' though it is a term that has fallen into desuetude. "They will make way for the unrepentant barbaric hordes of those who were conditioned throughout their conscient lives to believe that their time would never come." (Conrad Black) An enjoyable…
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Of ‘Broach’ and ‘Brook’
I just found this sentence at Puffington Host: "He is so insecure, he will broach no criticism." You may easily guess whom the author is huffing and puffing over. But one does not broach no criticism; one brooks no criticism. I brook no contradiction on this point. Language matters.