word of the day: hortatory

The word of the day is hortatory:

urging to some course of conduct or action; exhorting; encouraging

Latin hortātōrius encouraging, equivalent to hortā(rī) (dictionary.com)

"After about half an hour, we landed on a small island named Adele, where we were greeted by a large sign: 'Have You Checked for Rats, Mice and Seeds?"  A few years ago, after an intensive campaign of poisoning and trapping, Adele was declared 'pest-free.'  The arrival of a single pregnant rat could undo all that work; hence the hortatory signage."

 - Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Big Kill: New Zealand's crusade to rid itself of mammals", 22 & 29 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: caravansary

The word of the day is caravansary:

1. (in the Near East) an inn, usually with a large courtyard, for the overnight accommodation of caravans.

2. any large inn or hotel.

French caravanserai  

Persian kārwānsarāy, equivalent to kārwān caravan + sarāy mansion, inn (dictionary.com)

"'The time bomb will go off momentarily, so let's blow this caravansary,' said one Belladonna to another at the Palaz of Hoon after they'd read each other's tea leaves and faxed the pastry chef several suggestions for cachinnating his Rush of Cochineal cookies and trolloping his tiramisu."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: favela

The word of the day is favela:

a shantytown in or near a city, especially in Brazil; slum area.

Brazilian Portuguese: alleged to be a name given to a hill in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, where such towns were built circa 1900; literally, a shrub of the family Euphorbiaceae, derivative of Portuguese fava bean 

Latin faba (dictionary.com)

"'To put it quite brutally, sir, we may not be able to find your friend even if he does have a great sense of rhythm,' said the American consulate in Rio de Janeiro, which had followed Buenos Aires in the dentist's and robot's sentimental tour of the Southern Hemisphere.  'By now, his various limbs nd attachments may be turned into sidings and windowsills in the favelas - the hillside shantytowns.  You may certainly initiate a search yourself if you think you might recognize individual bolts and springs, nuts and screws, mechanical accoutrements, and, of course, the authentic human teeth you fitted him out with yourself as a professional and affectionate favor."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: dirndl

The word of the day is dirndl:

1. a woman's dress with a close-fitting bodice and full skirt, commonly of colorful and strikingly patterned material, fashioned after Tyrolean peasant wear.

2. a full, gathered skirt attached to a waistband or hip yoke.

3. any skirt with gathers at the waistband.

German Dirndl, short for Dirndlkleid, equivalent to Dirndl young woman (orig. Bavarian, Austrian dialect, diminutive of Dirne young woman, Middle High German dierne, Old High German thiorna; akin to thane ) + Kleid dress (see cloth) (dictionary.com)

"'Oh!  What masterly use you are making of your silences and your predicates tonight!' commented Startling Glower during an effervescent lull in the conversation he was taping with Joubert Plume and his bride, the tongue-tied Nada Seria, hard at work on To Die in a Dirndl and intolerant of interruptions."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: moribund

The word of the day is moribund:

1. in a dying state; near death.

2. on the verge of extinction or termination.

3. not progressing or advancing; stagnant:

a moribund political party.

Latin moribundus dying, equivalent to mori- (stem of morī to die) + -bundus adj. suffix (dictionary.com)

"I'm taking a carefree tutorial in thermodynamics and an intensive seminar in Samotrian, a moribund but influential language."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: barouche

The word of the day is barouche:

a four-wheeled carriage with a high front seat outside for the driver, facing seats inside for two couples, and a calash top over the back seat.

dialectal German Barutsche  

Italian baroccio  

Late Latin birot (us) two-wheeled (see bi-¹, rota¹) + -ium -ium (dictionary.com)

"'This spell won't inure right away, so don't get jumpy.  In fact, you must feign indifference to its initiation and outcome, forget it was ever uttered,' explained the footman - an amateur magician - to Dariushka during one of their thaumaturgical trysts that was recorded in Dariushka's diary as: 'Speak to Trask about peacock blue or Vertigo Forest green upholstery for the barouche box."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: thamaturgy

The word of the day is thaumaturgy:

the working of wonders or miracles; magic.

Greek thaumatourgía (dictionary.com)

"'This spell won't inure right away, so don't get jumpy.  In fact, you must feign indifference to its initiation and outcome, forget it was ever uttered,' explained the footman - an amateur magician - to Dariushka during one of their thaumaturgical trysts that was recorded in Dariushka's diary as: 'Speak to Trask about peacock blue or Vertigo Forest green upholstery for the barouche box."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: timorous

The word of the day is timorous:

1. full of fear; fearful:

2. subject to fear; timid.

3. characterized by or indicating fear:

Latin timōr- (stem of timor) fear + -ōsus -ous (dictionary.com)

"The historical museum in Pakriatz is a timorous affair endowed as an afterthought of a bloated brigand on his deathbed who'd sacked the town all by himself after one drunken carousal in his teens."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: roman à clef

The word of the day is roman à clef:

a novel in which real people are depicted under fictitious names

literally: novel with a key (dictionary.com)

"Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness is, among other things, a historical roman à clef about the internecine wars that dragged on for decades among the Utrians, Humbrians, and Dinutrians - all descended from the same ragtag clutch of peasants and fishermen and kings...

"Dulac's lambent adumbration of the incipient dénouement sets the reader up for an exposé of the most trifling indiscretions and not the perfidious betrayals that actually unfurl at the end of her roman à clef Tatiana's Bear."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: frou-frou

The word of the day is frou-frou:

Frilly dress and adornment; frivolous bedizenment (dictionary.com)

"The historic journey undertaken by a febrile and contumacious royal pack rat required a convoy of coaches to draggle her frou-frou, autograph albums, pharmacopoeia, and bric-a-brac through the countryside of her maternal granny's fabled escapades."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: contumacious

The word of the day is contumacious:

stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient (dictionary.com)

"The historic journey undertaken by a febrile and contumacious royal pack rat required a convoy of coaches to draggle her frou-frou, autograph albums, pharmacopoeia, and bric-a-brac through the countryside of her maternal granny's fabled escapades."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: gesellschaft

The word of the day is gesellschaft:

 

1. an association of individuals for common goals, as for entertainment, intellectual, or cultural purposes or for business reasons.

2. Sociology. a society or group characterized chiefly by formal organization, impersonal relations, the absence of generally held or binding norms, and a detachment from traditional and sentimental concerns, and often tending to be rationalistic and secular in outlook.

German, equivalent to Geselle companion + -schaft -ship (dictionary.com)

"The rock glanced off the surface with six gazelleschaft leaps before plunging into the fathomless waters of Lake Sandali, the twin sister of Lake Shayesteh."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative


 See, this is a pun.

word of the day: couchette

The word of the day is couchette:

 

1. a sleeping berth in a passenger compartment that can be collapsed to form a benchlike seat for daytime use.

2. a compartment containing such berths.

French; see couch, -ette (dictionary.com)

"'I swear, I caught only a glimpse of her face in a train compartment full of cigar smokers, and she was wearing huge fox fur gloves and an amorphous hooded garment that obscured her swiveling profile,' said the sniveling guttersnipe who'd been stealing passports from the couchettes until he was kidnapped into a private investigation."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: concupiscence

The word of the day is concupiscence:

 

1. sexual desire; lust.

2. ardent, usually sensuous, longing.

Late Latin concupīscentia (dictionary.com)

"I glimpsed a scintilla of concupiscence in his averted face."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: scintilla

The word of the day is scintilla:

a minute particle; spark; trace

Latin: spark (dictionary.com)

"'Where shall we put Pasha Partout once he attains his ultimate pythonic dimensions?' beseeched Sonia at the slightest scintilla of sympathy in the eye of a weekend guest."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: collusive

The word of the day is collusive:

 

involving collusion; fraudulently contrived by agreement (dictionary.com)

"Mind your gesticulations, darling, or you'll call unwanted attention to our collusive sortie with a coup d'etat at its apogee."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

word of the day: pemmican

The word of the day is pemmican:

 

dried meat pounded into a powder and mixed with hot fat and dried fruits or berries, pressed into a loaf or into small cakes, originally prepared by North American Indians.

Cree pimihka·n (dictionary.com)

"There were footholds in the rocks where local tribes used to climb.  There were also mortar holes they had used for grinding pemmican, and narrow pits where they sharpened arrows."

 - Elizabeth McKenzie, "Savage Breast", 15 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: hod

The word of the day is hod:

 

1. a portable trough for carrying mortar, bricks, etc., fixed crosswise on top of a pole and carried on the shoulder.

2. a coal scuttle.

perhaps later variant of Middle English hot basket for carrying earth (dictionary.com)

"Behind him, a tangle of bodies

Made out of plaster, which plasterers call mud.
The apprentice hurries with a hod of mud."

 - Robert Pinsky, "Genesis According to George Segal", 15 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: gelignite

The word of the day is gelignite:

 

gelatin dynamite (dictionary.com)

"'"Censored" is a strong word,' the librarian said.
"'Yes.  It's the correct word,' Brand remarked.  ''Cause there's a lot of scatological and puerile language.  "Scatological" means "of the body." So muck, snot, poo, that kind of stuff.  But I like to use those kinds of ideas as gelignite to detonate new territories for thought.  What about that?  "Gelignite": an explosive thing.  "Detonate": the process of explosion.'"

 - Michael Schulman, "Follow the leader", 15 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: punctilious

The word of the day is punctilious:

 

extremely attentive to punctilios; strict or exact in the observance of the formalities or amenities of conduct or actions (dictionary.com)

You remember punctilio.


"'There is a point in the perfection of artistic skills beyond which further progress is without artistic value,' the composer and critic Virgil Thomson wrote of the Boston Symphony, in 1944.  'The surface becomes so shiny that nothing else can be perceived.'...  The Boston Symphony is 'overtrained,' he says, its punctiliousness leading to 'executional hypertrophy.'  Phrases are so polished that they become inert; narrative dissolves into immaculate moments.  'The music it plays never seems to be about anything, except how beautifully the Boston Symphony Orchestra can play.'"

 - Alex Ross, "Brushfires: Andris Nelsons energizes the Boston Symphony", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker


I once had a choir director like that.  We sang better than we did with the previous director, but we completely lost touch with what we were singing about.

word of the day: specious

The word of the day is specious:

 

1. apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible

2. pleasing to the eye but deceptive.

Latin speciōsus fair, good-looking, beautiful, equivalent to speci (ēs) (see species ) + -ōsus -ous (dictionary.com)


"Albee's parents paid little attention to him; he was a bourgeois prop, meant to complete their specious idea of 'family.'"

 - Hilton Als, "Just the Folks: Edward Albee's bad marriages", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: ineluctable

The word of the day is ineluctable:

incapable of being evaded; inescapable

Latin inēluctābilis, equivalent to in- in-³+ ēluctā (rī) to force a way out or over, surmount ( ē- e-¹+ luctārī to wrestle) + -bilis -ble (dictionary.com)

"In 1940, a young sociologist named Robert K. Merton published an essay called 'Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,' in which he coined the phrase 'displacement of goals.'  Bureaucracy develops, Merton wrote, because large organizations require rules and procedures, lest they fall into the administrative and financial chaos and governance-by-whim of the kind that brought down William Durant.  But eventually the rules and procedures devised to help the organization achieve its goals take on a life of their own, and become 'an immediate value in the life-organization of the bureaucrat.'  In other words, when people orient their lives around the rules, the purpose of the organization gets lost...

"The last half-century of management wisdom can be understood as a long series of attempts to find a way around the ineluctable logic of displacement of goals."

 - Nicholas Lemann, "When G.M. was Google: The art of the corporate devotional", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker