word of the day: sandhog

The word of the day is sandhog:

U.S. a man who works underground, as in a caisson or in foundation-work; also fig. (OED)



"'We're like the aboveground sandhogs,' Bill Fitzgerald, the former director of operations at Palladium Window Solutions, which held the contract for the Hearst Tower for several years, told me one afternoon in the cluttered and windowless basement room that served as his midtown office."

 - Adam Higginbotham, "Life at the top: What a window washer sees", 4 February 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: chamfer

The word of the day is chamfer:

Etymology:  apparently < French chanfrein, formerly also chamfrain , chanfrain , -frin , ‘a chanfering or a channel, furrow, hollow gutter, or streake in stone-worke, etc.’ (Cotgrave), < Old French chanfraindre to chamfer v. 

1. A small groove, channel, gutter, furrow, such as may be cut in wood or stone. Obs.

2. The surface produced by bevelling off a square edge or corner equally on both sides; if made concave, it is called a hollow or concave chamfer. (OED)

"When the architect Norman Foster initially presented sketches for the Hearst Tower, the first skyscraper approved for construction in Manhattan after September 11th, one of the questions the building's prospective owners asked was: How are we going to clean those windows?  Foster's proposal featured curtain walls of glass and stainless steel hung in a diagonal grid that met at each corner of the structure in a dramatic chamfer, a zigzag bevelled edge formed of four concave diamond shapes, each sixteen feet deep and eight stories high, known as 'bird's mouths' by the architects."

 - Adam Higginbotham, "Life at the top: What a window washer sees", 4 February 2013 The New Yorker