Saturday, December 18, 2010

The word of the day is burnish:

< Old French burniss- stem of burnir, variant of brunir; compare Provençal bornir; see burn v.2
  
1.
a. trans. To make (metal) shining by friction; to furbish; to polish (a surface) by rubbing with a hard and smooth tool. .
2.
  a. transf. To make bright and glossy; to overspread with lustre.
3. Of a stag: To rub the dead ‘velvet’ or skin from his horns  [compare French brunir in same sense] ; applied loosely to the annual renewal of the horns, perhaps by confusion with burnish v.2 
4. intr. To become bright or glossy; to shine, gleam. Also fig. (OED)


"Over the past month, I visited most of the toy stores around town and combed through dozens of catalogues and Web sites, encountering dolls that drink and wet (the Children's General Store, 168 East 91st Street; $50.75), pirate ships that can be put together with Velcro (fao.com; $29.99), Teddy bears dressed more stylishly than I am (Dinosaur Hill, 306 East 9th Street; $80-$200), cherrywood baby rattles so burnished they could be handles on a George Nakashima bureau (Dinosaur Hill; $20), and a boy who threw a half-hour-long tantrum in the Lego Store after his mother refused to buy him the Tantive IV Star Wars set (620 Fifth Avenue, at Rockefeller Center; $179).  'A hundred dollars is not a lot of money!' he wailed."

 - Patricia Marx, "Toy Stories: Rating this year's playthings", 6 December 2010 The New Yorker

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