acronym of the day: WYSIWYG

The acronym of the day is WYSIWYG.  It stands for "what you see is what you get".


"Kedit (pronounced "kay-edit"), a product of the Mansfield Software Group, is the only text editor I have ever used.  I have never used a word processor.  Kedit did not paginate, italicize, approve of spelling, or screw around with headers, WYSIWYGs, thesauruses, dictionaries, footnotes, or Sanskrit fonts."

 - John McPhee, "Structure: Beyond the picnic-table crisis", 14 January 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: platen

The word of the day is platen:

Etymology:  < Anglo-Norman and Middle French platine (c1230 in Old French in sense 2; 1347 in sense 1; 1514 in sense 3a; French platine ) and its variant Anglo-Norman platain, plataine, platein, plateine, platene and Middle French plataine (13th cent. in Old French in sense 1; 1280 in Old French in sense 2; earlier in sense ‘gravestone’ (c1165 in Old French); French †plataine ) < plat flat (see plat adv.) + -ine -ine suffix⁴. 

 

1. A plate, often of gold or silver, on which the bread is laid during the celebration of the Eucharist; = paten n. 1. Obs. 

2. A flat plate, usually of metal, having various purposes. Obs. 

3.A metal (formerly wooden) plate in a printing press, which presses the paper against the inked type to obtain an impression; (more generally) a flat surface by means of which pressure is applied in any type of press. Now also in extended use: the glass surface of a photocopier or scanner, on which items are placed to be copied. 

b. In a typewriter and some types of computer printer: a surface (usually a cylindrical roller) against which the paper is held as it is struck by the printing elements.

4. The movable table of a planer, milling machine, or rotary saw. (OED)

"The notes from one to the next frequently had little in common.  They jumped from topic to topic, and only in places were sequentially narrative.  So I always rolled the platen and left blank space after each item to accommodate the scissors that were fundamental to my advanced methodology."

 - John McPhee, "Structure: beyond the picnic-table crisis", 14 January 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: rusticate

The word of the day is rusticate:

Etymology:  < classical Latin rusticāt-, past participial stem (see -ate suffix³) of rusticārī to live or stay in the country, to work in the country, to practise farming, in post-classical Latin also to speak like a rustic (5th cent.) 

1. intr.a. To stay or live in the countryside; to live a quiet country life. 

b. To live or spend time in seclusion, esp. enforcedly. 

2. trans. To make rustic or rural in nature or character; to countrify. Usu. in pass. 

3. trans.a. To dismiss or send down (a student) from university on a temporary basis, as a punishment; to suspend. 

b. To send (a person) into the countryside. Also in extended use. Also refl.: to settle oneself in the countryside. 

4. trans. Archit. To make rustic in appearance or style; esp. to roughen (the surface of masonry, etc.) (OED)

"Hoving had been, to put it mildly, an unpromising youth.  For example, after slugging a teacher he had been expelled from Exeter.  As a freshman at Princeton, his highest accomplishment was 'flagrant neglect'.  How did Peck's rusticated youth ever become an art historian and the director of one of the world's greatest museums?"

 - John McPhee, "Structure: beyond the picnic-table crisis", 14 January 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: swivet

The word of the day is swivet:

Etymology:  Origin unknown.

dial. (chiefly U.S.).

A state of agitation; a fluster or panic. Also, a hurry. Freq. in phr. in a swivet. (OED)

"It was meant to be only five thousand words and a straightforward biographical sketch, appearing during the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential campaigns, but the five thousand words seemed formidable to me then.  With only a few days to listen to recordings, make notes, digest files from Time correspondents, read morgue clippings, and skim through several books, I was soon sprawled on the floor at home, surrounded by drifts of undifferentiated paper, and near tears in a catatonic swivet."

 - John McPhee, "Structure: beyond the picnic-table crisis", 14 January 2013 The New Yorker