Word of the day: dormer

The word of the day is dormer:

1. Also called dormer window. a vertical window in a projection built out from a sloping roof.
2. the entire projecting structure.

1592, originally "window of a sleeping room," from M.Fr. dormeor "sleeping room," from dormir "to sleep," from L. dormire (see dormant).

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dormered)

"It was a red-brick Georgian Colonial, boxy but handsome in a quiet kind of way, two and a half stories high with dormered windows and a chimney on each end."

 - Octavia Butler, Kindred

Word of the day: chador

The word of the day is chador:

1. the traditional garment of Muslim and Hindu women, consisting of a long, usually black or drab-colored cloth or veil that envelops the body from head to foot and covers all or part of the face.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chador)

"We can't talk about feminism without recognizing that many of our notions about women when we were in college were ignorant and naïve...  If we gave a thought to chadors, burkas, and all they represent, I would be amazed."

 - Jane Smiley, "Feminism Meets the Free Market", Mommy Wars:

Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families, ed. Leslie Morgan Steiner

Word of the day: kvell

The word of the day is kvell:

1. to be extraordinarily pleased; especially, to be bursting with pride, as over one's family.

"We tell ourselves that little Ethan or Olivia will be traumatized if we miss their first steps, but it's really the adults who feel cheated of the opportunity to fuss and kvell."

 - Sara Nelson, "Working Mother, Not Guilty", Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off On their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families, ed. Leslie Morgan Steiner

Word of the day: samite

The word of the day is samite:

1. a heavy silk fabric, sometimes interwoven with gold, worn in the Middle Ages.

"rich silk cloth," c.1300, from O.Fr. samit, from M.L. samitum, examitum, from Medieval Gk. hexamiton (source of O.C.S. oksamitu, Rus. aksamit "velvet"), prop. neut. of Gk. adj. hexamitos "six-threaded," from hex "six" + mitos "warp thread" (see mitre). The reason it was called this is variously explained. Obsolete c.1600; revived by Tennyson. Ger. Sammet "velvet" is from French.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/samite)

"The bishop's envoy wore a black velvet chasuble over his dazzlingly white vestments, and the monk was resplendent in yards of samite and gilt embroidery."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: chasuble

The word of the day is chasuble:

1. a sleeveless outer vestment worn by the celebrant at Mass.

c.1300, cheisible, from O.Fr. chesible (Mod.Fr. chasuble), from M.L. cassubula, from L.L. *casipula, from L. casula, dim. of casa "cottage, house" (see casino), used by c.400 in transf. sense of "outer garment."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chasuble)

"The bishop's envoy wore a black velvet chasuble over his dazzlingly white vestments, and the monk was resplendent in yards of samite and gilt embroidery."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: wadmal

The word of the day is wadmal:

1. a bulky woolen fabric woven of coarse yarn and heavily napped, formerly much used in England and Scandinavia for the manufacture of durable winter garments.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wadmal)

"They unloaded two large chests while Kivrin and the girls watched, several wadmal bags, and an enormous wine cask."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: cresset

The word of the day is cresset:

1. a metal cup or basket often mounted on a pole or suspended from above, containing oil, pitch, a rope steeped in rosin, etc., burned as a light or beacon.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cressets)

"The church was cold, in spite of all the lights.  They were mostly cressets, set along the walls and in front of the Holly-banked statue of St. Catherine, though there was a tall, thin, yellowish candle set in the greenery of each of the windows, but the effect was probably not what Father Roche had intended."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: cottar

The word of the day is cottar:

a peasant or farm laborer who occupies a cottage and sometimes a small holding of land usually in return for services

Middle English cottar, from Medieval Latin cotarius, from Middle English cot

First Known Use: 14th century

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cottar)

"Father Roche called Mother to tend a sick cottar."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: woad

The word of the day is woad:

1. a European plant, Isatis tinctoria, of the mustard family, formerly cultivated for a blue dye extracted from its leaves.
2. the dye extracted from this plant.

O.E. wad, from P.Gmc. *waido- (cf. Dan. vaid, O.Fris. wed, M.Du. wede, Du. wede, O.H.G. weit, Ger. Waid "woad"), probably cognate with L. vitrium "glass" (see vitreous). Old type of blue dye processed from plant leaves, since superseded by indigo. Fr. guède, It. guado are Gmc. loan-words.

"My dress is all wrong, of far too fine a weave, and the blue is too bright, dyed with woad or not."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: fillet

The word of the day is fillet:

2. a narrow band of ribbon or the like worn around the head, usually as an ornament; headband.

early 14c., "headband," from O.Fr. filet, dim. of fil "thread." Sense of "cut of meat or fish" is early 15c., apparently so called because it was prepared by being tied up with a string.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fillet)

"Her long, fair hair was held back by a fillet and fell loosely onto her shoulders."

 - Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Word of the day: yeoman

The word of the day is yeoman:

1. a petty officer in a navy, having chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy.

c.1300, "attendant in a noble household," of unknown origin, perhaps a contraction of O.E. iunge man "young man," or from an unrecorded O.E. *geaman, equivalent of O.Fris. gaman "villager," from O.E. -gea "district, village," cognate with O.Fris. ga, ge, from P.Gmc. *gaujan. Sense of "commoner who cultivates his land" is recorded from early 15c.; also the third order of fighting men (late 14c., below knights and squires, above knaves), hence yeomen's service "good, efficient service" (c.1600). Meaning "naval petty officer in charge of supplies" is first attested 1660s. Yeowoman first recorded 1852: "Then I am yeo-woman O the clumsy word!" [Tennyson, "The Foresters"]

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/yeoman)

"Helen taught the fourth grade before serving as a yeoman in the Navy during World War II."

 - "SPLC supporter known for her 'attitude of gratitude'", Spring 2016 SPLC Report

Word of the day: pink-collar

The word of the day is pink-collar:

1. of or pertaining to a type of employment traditionally held by women, especially relatively low-paying work: secretaries, phone operators, and other pink-collar workers.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pink-collar)

"Their wives were nurses, pink-collar workers, retail clerks, service workers, or blue-collar workers themselves."

 - Francine M. Deutsch, Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works

Word of the day: lassitude

The word of the day is lassitude:

1. weariness of body or mind from strain, oppressive climate, etc.; lack of energy; listlessness; languor.
2. a condition of indolent indifference.

1533, from M.Fr. lassitude, from L. lassitudinem (nom. lassitudo) "faintness, weariness," from lassus "faint, tired, weary," from PIE base *lad- "slow, weary" (cf. O.E. læt "sluggish, slow;" see late (adj.)).

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lassitude)

"If I broke up with these girls, it was more out of a sense of discouragement, of lassitude: I just didn't feel up to maintaining a relationship, and I didn't want to disappoint them or lead them on."

 - Michel Houellebecq, as translated by Lorin Stein, Submission

Word of the day: apotheosis

The word of the day is apotheosis:

1. the elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god.
2. the ideal example; epitome; quintessence.

1600s, from L.L. apotheosis "deification," from Gk. apotheosis, from apotheoun "deify, make (someone) a god," from apo- special use of this prefix, meaning, here, "change" + theos "god" (see Thea). Verb apotheosize is attested from 1760.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apotheosis)

"Relationships of various duration (a year being, according to my own observations, an acceptable amount of time) and of variable number (an average of ten to twenty might be considered a reasonable estimate) were supposed to succeed one another until they ended, like an apotheosis, with the last relationship, this one conjugal and definitive, which would lead, via the be getting of children, to the formation of a family."

 - Michel Houellebecq, as translated by Lorin Stein, Submission

Word of the day: dithyrambic

The word of the day is dithyrambic:

1. a Greek choral song or chant of vehement or wild character and of usually irregular form, originally in honor of Dionysus or Bacchus.
2. any poem or other composition having similar characteristics, as an impassioned or exalted theme or irregular form.
3. any wildly enthusiastic speech or writing.

c.1600, from L. dithyrambus, from Gk. dithyrambos, of unknown origin, perhaps a pre-Hellenic loan-word. A wild choric hymn, originally in honor of Dionysus. Related: Dithyrambic.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dithyramb)

"I'd written a good dissertation and I expected an honorable mention.  Yet to my surprise I received a special commendation, and I was even more surprised when I saw the committee's report, which was excellent, practically dithyrambic."

 - Michel Houellebecq, as translated by Lorin Stein, Submission

Word of the day: ecdysiast

The word of the day is ecdysiast:

1. stripper (def 3).

H.L. Mencken's invented proper word for "strip-tease artist," 1940, from Gk. ekdysis "a stripping or casting off" (used scientifically with ref. to serpents shedding skin or crustacea molting), from ekdyein "to put off" (contrasted with endyo "to put on"), from ex- + dyo "sink, plunge, enter."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ecdysiast)

"But to my dismay, I discovered his friend was the famous ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee."

 - Doris Grumbach, "The Remains of My Days", Spring 2016 The American Scholar (https://theamericanscholar.org/the-remains-of-my-days/#.VzZSJdm9LCQ)

Word of the day: tachistoscope

The word of the day is tachistoscope:

1. an apparatus for use in exposing visual stimuli, as pictures, letters, or words, for an extremely brief period, used chiefly to assess visual perception or to increase reading speed.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tachistoscope)

"Arthur was the head of the foreign division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, so he managed to slip me into the small department where the captions of the spoken soundtrack were made and then translated into French and German.

"I was totally inept at reducing the spoken words to single sentences that fit in one camera shot... I was using a machine called a tachistoscope on a reel of Red Dust, a steamy film in which Jean Harlow bathed almost nude in a barrel."

 - Doris Grumbach, "The Remains of My Days", Spring 2016 The American Scholar (https://theamericanscholar.org/the-remains-of-my-days/#.VzZSJdm9LCQ)

Word of the day: Weebles

The word of the day is Weebles:

Weebles is a trademark for several lines of children's roly-poly toys originating in Hasbro's Playskool division on July 23, 1971.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeble, accessed May 13, 2016)

"I am I am the iambs

and trochees of assertion wobbling

like Weebles who always

get up as I now do"

- Maureen M. McLane, "Mz N Enough", Spring 2016 The American Scholar (https://theamericanscholar.org/maureen-mclane-three-poems/#.VzZNQdm9LCQ)

Word of the day: qualia

The word of the day is qualia:

1. a quality, as bitterness, regarded as an independent object.
2. a sense-datum or feeling having a distinctive quality.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/qualia)

"If I say fir and fescue

and clover and lover

whither identity and qualia?"

 - Maureen M. McLane, "Mz N Enough", Spring 2016 The American Scholar (https://theamericanscholar.org/maureen-mclane-three-poems/#.VzZNQdm9LCQ)

Word of the day: fescue

The word of the day is fescue:

1. Also called fescue grass. any grass of the genus Festuca, some species of which are cultivated for pasture or lawns.
2. a pointer, as a straw or slender stick, used to point out the letters in teaching children to read.

1513, "pointer," from O.Fr. festue, a kind of straw, from L. festuca "straw, stalk, rod," probably related to ferula (see ferule). Sense of "pasture, lawn grass" is first recorded 1762.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fescue)

"If I say fir and fescue

and clover and lover

whither identity and qualia?"

 - Maureen M. McLane, "Mz N Enough", Spring 2016 The American Scholar (https://theamericanscholar.org/maureen-mclane-three-poems/#.VzZNQdm9LCQ)