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Post by petpeeve on Mar 26, 2009 9:14:17 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 26, 2009 is: dross • \DRAHSS\ • noun 1 : the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal 2 : waste or foreign matter : impurity *3 : something that is base, trivial, or inferior Example Sentence: The critic complained that the movies released after Oscar season were just so much dross. Did you know? "Dross" has been a part of the English language since Anglo-Saxon times; one 19th-century book on Old English vocabulary dates it back to 1050 A.D. Its Old English ancestors are related to Germanic and Scandinavian words for "dregs" (as in "the dregs of the coffee") -- and, like "dregs," "dross" is a word for the less-than-desirable parts of something. Over the years, the relative worthlessness of dross has often been set in contrast to the value of gold, as for example in British poet Christina Rossetti's "The Lowest Room": "Besides, those days were golden days, / Whilst these are days of dross" (1875).
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Mar 27, 2009 10:09:51 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 27, 2009 is: Rosetta stone • \roh-ZET-uh-STOHN\ • noun 1 : a black basalt stone found in 1799 that bears an inscription in hieroglyphics, demotic characters, and Greek and is celebrated for having given the first clue to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics *2 : one that gives a clue to understanding Example Sentence: "This is the home of the Elliott wave principle, an arcane system of technical analysis that thousands of investors have come to believe is the Rosetta stone of the stock market." (Cynthia Crossen, The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1987) Did you know? The word "hieroglyphics" refers to an Egyptian writing system that was unintelligible to later civilizations until an inscribed stone about the size of a coffee table was discovered over 200 years ago in an Egyptian town called Rosetta ("Rashid" in Arabic). The Rosetta stone, as it came to be called, held a key to the ancient writing system. Probably written by Egyptian priests in the 2nd century B.C., its hieroglyphic text repeated a text written in familiar Greek. As a result, Egyptologists were able to decipher the symbols. Today we also use "Rosetta stone" figuratively, as we have since the early 20th century, for other things that provide clues or help us to understand something that would otherwise be undecipherable.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Mar 28, 2009 13:08:02 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 28, 2009 is: effete • \ih-FEET\ • adjective 1 : no longer fertile 2 a : having lost character, vitality, or strength b : marked by weakness or decadence *c : soft or delicate from or as if from a pampered existence; also : characteristic of an effete person 3 : effeminate Example Sentence: "Virginia Woolf is often depicted as a dreamy, effete snob, agonizing all day over a single adjective while sipping tea…." (Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, November 2, 2008) Did you know? "Effete" derives from Latin "effetus," meaning "no longer fruitful," and for a brief time in English it was used to describe an animal no longer capable of producing offspring. For most of its existence in English, however, the use of "effete" has been entirely figurative. For many years, the usual figurative sense of the word was "exhausted" or "worn out," but today "effete" is more likely to suggest overrefinement, weakness of character, snobbery, and effeminacy. "Effete" first showed signs of acquiring these shades of meaning in the 1920s, but it wasn't until the 1940s that the new "effete" clearly established itself in reputable writing. One example can be found in John Steinbeck's 1945 novel Cannery Row: "now and then some effete customer would order a stinger or an anisette."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Mar 29, 2009 11:26:17 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 29, 2009 is: distend • \dih-STEND\ • verb 1 : extend 2 : to enlarge from internal pressure : swell *3 : to become expanded Example Sentence: With mouths agape and eyes distended, the audience listened to the canoeist's incredible story of survival after being capsized by the river's rapids. Did you know? The history of the word "distend" stretches back to the Latin verb "tendere" -- a root whose kin have really expanded our language. To find evidence of this expansion, look to words that include "tend" or "tent"; many have "tendere," which means "to stretch, extend, or spread," in their family tree. Perhaps the simplest example is "tent," which names a shelter made from a piece of material stretched over a frame. You'll also find the influence of "tendere" in "extend," "tendon," "contend," "portend," and "tendency."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Mar 30, 2009 9:56:48 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 30, 2009 is: symbiosis • \sim-bee-OH-sis\ • noun 1 : the living together in close association of two dissimilar organisms especially when mutually beneficial *2 : a cooperative relationship Example Sentence: A perfect symbiosis was at work between the café’s co-owners, with Stephanie creating the menu and Maria doing the bookkeeping. Did you know? "Symbiosis" was adopted by the scientific community in the late 1800s, though it had appeared in English in a non-scientific sense as far back as 1622. When a biological symbiosis is mutually beneficial, it is termed "mutualism." For example, when the yucca moth lays her eggs in the seed pods of the yucca, she acts as pollinator, and when the larvae hatch they feed on some, but not all, of the seeds. When one organism lives off another at the other’s expense, it’s called "parasitism." Either way, living together is what "symbiosis" is all about; the word came to us, via German and New Latin, from the Greek "symbiôsis," meaning "state of living together." "Symbiôsis," in turn, traces to "symbios" ("living together"), a combination of "syn-," meaning "with," and "bios," meaning "life."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Mar 31, 2009 18:10:12 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for March 31, 2009 is: perennial • \puh-REN-ee-ul\ • adjective 1 : present at all seasons of the year 2 : continuing to live from year to year *3 : recurring regularly : permanent Example Sentence: The diva's late-night partying and angry run-ins with the paparazzi have been perennial fodder for the tabloids. Did you know? Nowadays when we talk about "perennial plants," or simply "perennials" ("perennial" can be a noun, too), we mean plants that die back seasonally but produce new growth in the spring. But originally "perennial" was equivalent to "evergreen," used for plants that remain with us all year. We took this "throughout the year" sense straight from the Romans, whose Latin "perennis" combined "per-" ("throughout") with a form of "annus" ("year"). The poet Ovid, writing around the beginning of the first millennium, used the Latin word to refer to a "perennial spring" (water source), and the scholar Pliny used it of birds that don't migrate. Our "perennial" retains these same uses, for streams and occasionally for birds, but it has long had extended meanings, too.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 1, 2009 18:04:12 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 01, 2009 is: extremophile • \ik-STREE-muh-fyle\ • noun : an organism that lives under extreme environmental conditions (as in a hot spring or ice cap) Example Sentence: "Cold-loving extremophiles could show us what kinds of creatures might live ... in parts of the solar system previously thought uninhabitable." (Michael Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, Time Magazine, July 2002) Did you know? No, an extremophile is not an enthusiast of extreme sports (though "-phile" does mean "one who loves or has an affinity for"). Rather, extremophiles are microbes that thrive in environments once considered uninhabitable, from places with high levels of toxicity and radiation to boiling-hot deep-sea volcanoes to Antarctic ice sheets. Scientists have even created a new biological domain to classify some of these microbes: Archaea (from Greek "archaios," meaning "ancient"). These extremophiles may have a lot in common with the first organisms to appear on earth billions of years ago. If so, they can give us insight into how life on our planet may have arisen. They are also being studied to learn about possible life forms on other planets, where conditions are extreme compared to conditions on Earth.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 2, 2009 9:25:18 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 02, 2009 is: diaphanous • \dye-AF-uh-nus\ • adjective *1 : of so fine a texture as to be transparent 2 : characterized by extreme delicacy of form : ethereal 3 : insubstantial, vague Example Sentence: The honeymoon suite has a balcony overlooking the ocean and is furnished with an antique four-poster bed enveloped in a diaphanous curtain. Did you know? Can you guess which of the following words come from the same Greek root as "diaphanous"? A. epiphany B. fancy C. phenomenon D. sycophant E. emphasis F. phase The Greek word "phainein" shows through more clearly in some of our quiz words than others, but it underlies all of them. The groundwork for "diaphanous" was laid when "phainein" (meaning "to show") was combined with "dia-" (meaning "through"). From that pairing came the Greek "diaphançs," parent of the Medieval Latin "diaphanus," which is the direct ancestor of our English word.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 3, 2009 22:25:56 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 03, 2009 is: feign • \FAYN\ • verb *1 : to give a false appearance of : induce as a false impression 2 : to assert as if true : pretend Example Sentence: Shortly after her mom told her that she would have to go to the doctor's, Kim confessed that she was only feigning illness because she forgot to study for a midterm. Did you know? "Feign" is all about faking it, but that hasn't always been so. In one of its earliest senses, "feign" meant "to fashion, form, or shape." That meaning is true to the term's Latin ancestor: the verb "fingere," which also means "to shape." The current senses of "feign" still retain the essence of the Latin source, since to feign something, such as surprise or an illness, requires one to fashion an impression or shape an image. Several other English words that trace to the same ancestor refer to things that are shaped with either the hands, as in "figure" and "effigy," or the imagination, as in "fiction" and "figment."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 4, 2009 8:32:06 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 04, 2009 is: moue • \MOO\ • noun : a little grimace : pout Example Sentence: "She made a little moue, shrugged one shoulder, dipped her head ever so slightly to set the artificial bird atop her hat in motion." (T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Road to Wellville) Did you know? Moue is one of two similar-sounding words in English that refer to a pout or grimace; the other is "mow," which is pronounced to rhyme either with "no" or "now." "Mow" and "mou" share the same origin (the Anglo-French "mouwe") and a distant relationship to a Middle Dutch word for a protruding lip. (They do not, however, share a relationship to the word "mouth," which derives from Old English "mûth.") While use of "moue" in English only traces back a little more than 150 years, "mow" dates all the way back to the 14th century. "Moue" has also seen occasional use as a verb, as when Nicholson Baker, in the August 15, 1988 New Yorker, described how a woman applying lip gloss would "slide the lip from side to side under it and press her mouth together and then moue it outward…"
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 5, 2009 12:08:22 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 05, 2009 is: epistemic • \ep-uh-STEE-mik\ • adjective : of or relating to knowledge or knowing : cognitive Example Sentence: John’s fascination with the human animal’s epistemic limits and capabilities has led him to a double major in philosophy and psychology. Did you know? "Epistemic" has shifted from the arcane worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and rhetoric to the practical realms of business and marketing; for example, a 2007 Letter to Shareholders from the asset management firm Legg Mason referred to investors who "have a high epistemic threshold and do exhaustive analysis to create near certainty, or at least very high conviction, about their investments." Wherever it is used, "epistemic" traces back to the knowledge of the Greeks. It comes from "epistçmç," Greek for "knowledge." That Greek word is from the verb "epistanai," meaning "to know or understand," a word formed from the prefix "epi-" (meaning "upon" or "attached to") and "histanai" (meaning "to cause to stand"). The study of the nature and grounds of knowledge is called "epistemology," and one who engages in such study is an epistemologist.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 6, 2009 11:54:14 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 06, 2009 is: purlieu • \PERL-yoo\ • noun 1 a : an outlying or adjacent district *b plural : environs, neighborhood 2 a : a frequently visited place : haunt b plural : confines, bounds Example Sentence: "The boy, desperately nervous, continued to descend the zig-zag paths that would take him into the very purlieus of his father's house." (Ford Madox Ford, The Last Post) Did you know? In medieval England, if you were fortunate enough to acquire a new piece of land, you would want to have as many ceremonies as possible to make it clear that the land belonged to you. To assert the extent of your land, you might hold a ceremony called a "perambulation," in which you would walk around and record the boundaries of your property in the presence of witnesses. If your land bordered a royal forest, you might find that there was some confusion about where your land started and the royal forest ended. Luckily, the law said that if you performed a perambulation, you could gain at least some degree of ownership over disputed forest tracts, although your use of them would be restricted by forest laws and royals would probably still have the right to hunt on them. Such regained forest property was called a "purlewe" (or as it was later spelled, "purlieu"), which derives from the Anglo-French word for "perambulation."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 7, 2009 9:08:48 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 07, 2009 is: hachure • \ha-SHUR\ • verb : to shade with or show by short lines used for shading and denoting surfaces in relief (as in map drawing) and drawn in the direction of slope Example Sentence: "In the early years of the survey, hachuring was used to indicate the steepness of slopes on maps, whereas in later years, the more abbreviated and legible contour line was employed." (Robin E. Kelsey, The Art Bulletin, December 1, 2003) Did you know? As our example sentence indicates, hachuring is an old map drawing technique that was largely replaced in later years by the use of contour lines, or lines that connect points of similar elevation. The word "hachure," which can also be a noun referring to one of the short lines used in hachuring, comes from the French "hacher," meaning "to chop up" or "hash." This French word is also the source of the verbs "hash," which can mean "to chop (as meat and potatoes) into small pieces," among other meanings, and "hatch," meaning "to inlay with narrow bands of distinguishable material" and "to mark (as a drawing or engraving) with fine closely spaced lines."
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 8, 2009 10:27:23 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 08, 2009 is: withy • \WITH-ee (the TH is as in "the")\ • noun 1 : willow; especially : any of various willows whose pliable twigs are used for furniture and basketry *2 : a flexible slender twig or branch Example Sentence: The withies must be soaked in water for about a week before they will be ready to be woven into baskets. Did you know? "Withy" is a word with several synonyms. In its broadest use, it is simply another word for "willow," but it can also be used for a particular category of willows which are also known by the name "osier." Additionally, the word "withe" can be substituted for the "flexible slender twig or branch" sense of "withy." "Osier" entered English from Anglo-French in the 14th century, whereas "willow," "withy," and "withe" all have their origins in Old English. "Willow" comes from the Old English "welig," a word that can be found in writing going back to the middle of the 8th century, and "withy" and "withe" come from "wîthig," a word that is known to have been used at least as far back as the 10th century.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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Post by petpeeve on Apr 9, 2009 12:03:31 GMT -7
The Word of the Day for April 09, 2009 is: telecommute • \TEL-ih-kuh-myoot\ • verb : to work at home by the use of an electronic linkup with a central office Example Sentence: Marie recently installed a high-speed computer line in her home so she could telecommute two days a week. Did you know? "Telecommute" derives from the prefix "tele-," a descendant of the Greek word "tçle," meaning "far off," and the verb "commute," which arose from Latin "commutare," meaning "to change" or "to exchange." The practice of working at home and interfacing with the office electronically has only recently become commonplace, but the word "telecommute" has been around since the mid-1970s. Its earliest documented use can be found in a January 1974 article in The Economist that predicted, "As there is no logical reason why the cost of telecommunication should vary with distance, quite a lot of people by the late 1980s will telecommute daily to their London offices while living on a Pacific island if they want to."
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