word of the day: abeyance

The word of the day is abeyance:

Etymology:  < Anglo-Norman abeiaunce, abeyaunce (in en abeiaunce ) (of a legal right or title) the state of waiting for a claimant or owner (late 14th cent.; compare Old French abeance aspiration, desire, longing (late 13th cent.)) < Anglo-Norman abayer , abeier , abaier , Anglo-Norman and Old French abaer to gape (c1200 in Anglo-Norman), to open (the mouth) wide (c1220 in Anglo-Norman), to expect, to wait for (late 13th cent.), to wait impatiently (c1300) < a- a- prefix⁵ + Old French beer, baer (Middle French baer, Middle French, French béer, French bayer) to open (the mouth) wide (1121–35), (of a person) to gape (1173), to long for, desire (something) (c1190; compare Old Occitan badar, Catalan badar (14th cent.), Italian badare (1294)) < post-classical Latin badare to open the mouth wide, gape, of uncertain origin; perhaps ultimately imitative.
1. Law. Of a right or title: the position of waiting for or temporarily being without a claimant or owner. Also: a period of being without a claimant or owner.  

2. Temporary inactivity or disuse; suspension; latent condition. (OED)

"We surmise that our patient (like everybody) is stacked with an almost infinite number of 'dormant' memory-traces, some of which can be reactivated under special conditions, especially conditions of overwhelming excitement.  Such traces, we conceive - like the subcortical imprints of remote events far below the horizon of mental life - are indelibly etched in the nervous system, and may persist indefinitely in a state of abeyance, due either to a lack of excitation or to positive inhibition."

 - Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

word of the day: supererogatory

The word of the day is supererogatory:

Etymology:  < post-classical Latin supererogatorius (14th cent. in British sources) < supererogat- , past participial stem of supererogare supererogate v. + classical Latin -ōrius -ory suffix².

 

A. adj.  Characterized by, or having the nature of, supererogation; going beyond what is commanded or required; (more generally) superfluous.  (OED)

"We can usually tell a man's story, relate passages and scenes from his life, without bringing in any physiological or neurological considerations: such considerations would seem, at the least, supererogatory, if not frankly absurd or insulting."

 - Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

word of the day: zek

The word of the day is zek:

Etymology:  < Russian, probably representing the pronunciation of z/k, abbrev. of zaklyuchënnyĭ prisoner. 

In Russian-speaking contexts: (originally) a person confined in a forced labour camp in the U.S.S.R. (hist.); (now) a person held in a Russian prison. (OED)

"At the same time, Snyder also asks us to extend our circles of compassion, making us see that the child dying in the gas chamber was no different from the one being starved to death in the siege of Leningrad, or that the fate of the zek in the Gulag was not very different from that of the Russian prisoner in a German lager."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: loess

The word of the day is loess:

Etymology:  < German dialect lösz.

Geol.

 A deposit of fine yellowish-grey loam which occurs extensively from north-central Europe to eastern China, in the American mid-west, and elsewhere, esp. in the basins of large rivers, and which is usually considered to be composed of material transported by the wind during and after the Glacial Period. Also attrib. (OED)

"Kaplan's big picture includes the idea that a natural geographic force has driven European power over the centuries from the arid Mediterranean toward the more fertile north, and we hear about the north's rich, mineral 'loess earth.'"

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: pilothouse

The word of the day is pilothouse:

Etymology:  < pilot n. + house n.¹ and int.

Naut.

1. A house in which a pilot lives or stays. Now chiefly hist. 

2. The wheelhouse of a ship or boat. (OED)

"The West made history, but the East drove it.  Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: cabal

The word of the day is cabal:

Etymology:  < French cabale (16th cent. in Littré), used in all the English senses, < medieval Latin cab(b)ala (Italian cabala , Spanish cabala , Portuguese cabala )

1. = Cabbala n. 1: The Jewish tradition as to the interpretation of the Old Testament. Obs. 

2. = Cabbala n. 2:a. Any tradition or special private interpretation. 

b. A secret. Obs. 

3.a. A secret or private intrigue of a sinister character formed by a small body of persons; ‘something less than conspiracy’ (Johnson).

b. as a species of action; = caballing n.

 4.a. A secret or private meeting, esp. of intriguers or of a faction. arch. or Obs.

 b. phrase. in cabal. arch. or Obs.

 5. A small body of persons engaged in secret or private machination or intrigue; a junto, clique, côterie, party, faction. 

6.a. Applied in the reign of Charles II to the small committee or junto of the Privy Council, otherwise called the ‘Committee for Foreign Affairs’, which had the chief management of the course of government, and was the precursor of the modern cabinet. 

b. in Hist. applied spec. to the five ministers of Charles II, who signed the Treaty of Alliance with France for war against Holland in 1672: these were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (Earl of Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale, the initials of whose names thus arranged chanced to spell the word cabal.  (OED)

"My studies have shown misprints and mispellings in the average publication in England to be approaching 0.67345 per page!  The trade of booksellers and publishers - whose scurrilous cabal I expose in 'Machinery and Manufacturers' (price 6 bound in cloth, 'an unmixed gratification' - The Athanaeum) have done nothing!"

 - Charles Babbage, "User Experience", Sydney Padua

word of the day: oxa

The word of the day is oxa:

Chem.

Forming names of compounds in which an oxygen atom is regarded as having replaced a methylene (—CH₂—) group.  (OED)

"Furthermore, addition of a benzene ring at C5 adjacent to an oxa group in the carbon chain, as in FTY20, does not prevent binding and phosphorylation by SK2 or SK1, but does affect the reaction efficiency."

 - M. R. Pitman and S. M. Pitson, "Inhibitors of the Sphingosine Kinase Pathway as Potential Therapeutics", Current Cancer Drug Targets 10:354 (2010)


Here's the structure of FTY20:

And of sphingosine:

I don't see any ethers anywhere.  Am I losing my mind?

word of the day: cant

The word of the day is cant:

Etymology:  < cant n.¹; compare Dutch and German kanten in several of the same senses.

 I. trans.

1. To give a cant edge to; to bevel; esp. to bevel off a corner. 

2.a. To bring or put (a thing) into an oblique position, so that it is no longer vertical or horizontal; to slope, slant, tilt up. 

b. To turn over completely, turn upside down.c. fig. (?) To incline, adapt with a bias. Obs.3. To throw off, e.g. to empty out, the contents of a vessel by tilting it up. to cant off : to decant.

4. To pitch as by the sudden lurching of a ship; to toss, to throw with a sudden jerk.  

II. intr. 

5. To tilt, take an inclined position, pitch on one side, turn over; often to cant over . 

6. To have a slanting position, lie aslant, slope. 

7. Naut. To take, move into, or have an oblique position in reference to any defined course or direction; to swing round from a position. (OED)

"The world cants.

"Knox drops to his knees and rocks back and forth as waves of guilt wash over him."

 - William T. Vandemark, "Let slip the dogs",  15 November 2012 Nature

word of the day: revanche

The word of the day is revanche:

Etymology:  < French revanche revenge n. (c1525 in Middle French in sense ‘action of making requital or retaliation for an injury’, 1588 in sense ‘action of making requital or recompense for a benefit received’).

1. The action or an act of returning a favour or (now chiefly) avenging an injury; requital, recompense; revenge, retaliation. in revanche: in return; in revenge.

 2. Polit. Also with capital initial. The return of a nation's lost territory; a policy, movement, or act of aggression aimed at achieving this. Now chiefly hist. 

Freq. with reference to the desire of France to regain the province of Alsace-Lorraine after its annexation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. (OED)

"Nussbaum’s belief that religious liberty, especially for Muslims, is in crisis in the Western world led to a book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012). It offers a protest against  revanchist anti-Muslim trends in Europe and the United States."

 - Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Faith Healer", November-December 2012 The University of Chicago Magazine

word of the day: whing

The word of the day is whing:

Etymology:  Imitative.

 

A word expressing a high-pitched ringing sound. (OED)

"After the final letter was published on Nov. 22, 1997, Rushdie told journalist (and mutual friend of le Carré’s) William Shawcross, 'If le Carré wants to get his friends to do a little proxy whinging, that’s his business. I’ve said what I have to say.'"

 - Prachi Gupta, "Salman Rushdie and John le Carré reconcile after 15-year feud", 12 November 2012 Salon

HT: Wormbook

word of the day: whimbrel

The word of the day is whimbrel:

Etymology:  ? < whimp v. or whimper v., from the bird's cry. Compare for the ending dotterel, titterel.
Applied to various small species of curlew, esp. the European Numenius phæopus. (OED)


"Birds are sometimes blown astray, but many apparently have a coping strategy. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the habitat of breeding colonies in Louisiana's Pearl River Basin, for instance, but bird numbers held steady, researchers noted in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. Some birds are especially adept: Scientists at the College of William & Mary Center for Conservation Biology tracked a migratory shorebird, a whimbrel, as it flew through Hurricane Irene in 2011."

 - Marissa Fessenden, "Myth-Conceptions: 5 Falsehoods about Superstorm Sandy", 7 November 2012 Scientific American

word of the day: philodendron

The word of the day is philodendron:

Etymology:  < scientific Latin Philodendron, genus name (H. W. Schott 1829, in Wien. Zeitschr. 3 780) < Hellenistic Greek ϕιλόδενδρον , neuter of ϕιλόδενδρος fond of trees ( < ancient Greek ϕιλο- philo- comb. form + δένδρον tree: see dendro- comb. form), in reference to the epiphytic habit of most members of the genus.(Show Less)

 

A genus of tropical American evergreen plants (family Araceae), chiefly lianas, some species and hybrids of which are cultivated as house plants; (also philodendron) a plant of this genus.  (OED)

"Chlorophyll C₅₅H₇₂N₄O₅Mg

differs from human blood

only by substitution of one

atom of magnesium

in philodendron

for the single atom of iron

in Keats."

 - Stephen Sandy, "Alchemy", 29 October & 5 November 2012 The New Yorker

For comparison, here's chlorophyll:

And here's heme:

You see how similar they are to one another: not quite identical, but I'm willing to give that to poetic license.

word of the day: appurtenance

The word of the day is appurtenance:

Etymology:  < Anglo-Norman apurtenance (12th cent. in Littré), Old French aper- and, regularly, apartenance (compare Provençal apartenensa , Italian appartenenza ) < late Latin appertinēntia , < appertinēre : see appertain v. and -ance suffix. The second vowel has varied, as a , e , o , u , but the last is now the accepted spelling. For instances assimilated to appertain , see appertainance n. Formerly often used unchanged in the plural. 

 

1. Law and gen. A thing that belongs to another, a ‘belonging’; a minor property, right, or privilege, belonging to another more important, and passing in possession with it; an appendage.

2. A thing which naturally and fitly forms a subordinate part of, or belongs to, a whole system; a contributory adjunct, an accessory. 

3. esp. in pl. The mechanical accessories employed in any function or complex scheme; apparatus, gear. Also fig. 

4. The fact or state of appertaining.  (OED)

"Sibyl Hathaway, the indomitable Dame of Sark, had ruled the island for forty-seven years, after inheriting the title from her father, whose grandmother bought it off the Le Pelley family, which had acquired it in 1730 from creditors of the descendants of the nobleman Hélier de Carteret, to whom Elizabeth I, in 1565, first granted the fief 'with all its rights, members, liberties, and appurtenances, and all and each of its castles, fortresses, houses, buildings, structures, ruined or collapsed with age, lands, meadows, pastures, commons, wastes, woods, waters... vicarages, chapels and churches of every kind,' on the condition that he insure its continuous habitation by forty armed men."

 - Lauren Collins, "Sark Spring: a feudal feud in the Channel Islands", 29 October & 5 November 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: trammel

The word of the day is trammel:

Etymology:  In sense 1, < Old French tramail (c1220 in Godefroy Compl.), modern French trémail a fishing- or fowling-net, with three layers of meshes, = Italian tramaglio, Spanish trasmallo, Portuguese trasmalho < late popular Latin tramaculum for tri-, tremaculum (in Salic Law, Hessels, Cod. 1, xxvii. 20, tremaclem, v.rr. tremalem, tremagilo, tramaculam, trimaclem, tremagolum, tremachlum, etc.) a kind of fishing-net, generally explained as < Latin tri- three + macula mesh. In the Romanic languages the prefix appears to have been taken as = tra-, Latin trans.

 

I.  1.a. A long narrow fishing-net, set vertically with floats and sinkers; consisting of two ‘walls’ of large-meshed netting, between which is a net of fine mesh, loosely hung. More fully trammel-net n.The fish enters through the large mesh on one side, drives the fine netting through the large mesh on the other, and is thus trapped in a pocket or bag of the fine netting. Also sometimes applied to other kinds of fishing nets.

 b. A fowling-net; = trammel-net n. b. 

II.  2. A hobble to prevent a horse from straying or kicking; also, a contrivance for teaching a horse to amble, consisting of lines and straps connecting the fore and hind feet on each side, with a strap over the back to which both lines were fastened for support. Obs. 

3. transf. and fig. Anything that hinders or impedes free action; anything that confines, restrains, fetters, or shackles. Chiefly pl. 

4. Mech. An instrument for describing ellipses (French compas à ellipse), consisting of a cross with two grooves at right angles, in which slide pins carrying a beam or ruler with a pencil; also applied to the beam-compass (beam-compass n. at beam n.¹ Compounds 2). Also pl. 

So called because the motion of the beam carrying the pencil is trammelled or confined by the restriction of the pins to the grooves.

 III.  5. A series of rings or links, or other device, to bear a crook at different heights over the fire; the whole being suspended from a transverse bar (the crook-tree), built in the chimney, or from a small crane or gallows, the vertical member of which turns in sockets in the jamb and lintel. Now local Eng. and U.S. 

IV.  6. pl. The plaits, braids, or tresses of a woman's hair; in quot. 1594   with play on sense 1.  (OED)

"The mighty difference engine and its cogitating cogs has unleashed the hitherto dormant power of the mathematical algorithm, and the glorious kingdom of Great Britain thus becomes every day more rational and freer of error!

"The inventive faculties of the scientific classes fling off their trammels, filling the skies with airships!"

 - Sydney Padua, "User Experience"

word of the day: pith

The word of the day is pith:

Etymology:  < pith n. 

1. intr. To supply a person with strength or courage. Obs. rare^—1. 

2. trans. To pierce, sever, or destroy the upper spinal cord or brainstem of (an animal), so as to cause death or insensibility. 

3. trans. To remove or extract the pith from. Also fig.  (OED)

"It's like something's been scooped right out of me, right at the centre...that's what they do with frogs, isn't it?  They scoop out the centre, the spinal cord, they pith them...  That's what I am, pithed, like a frog...  Step up, come and see Chris, the first pithed human being.  She's no proprioception, no sense of herself - disembodied Chris, the pithed girl!"

 - Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

word of the day: kulak

The word of the day is kulak:

Etymology:  < Russian kulák fist, tight-fisted person, plural kulaki, < Turki ḳul hand.

 

In pre-Revolution Russia, a well-to-do farmer or trader; in the Soviet Union, a peasant-proprietor working for his own profit. Also transf. (OED)

"But my grandfather's big nose and wary drinker's eyes keep breaking through
the mask and posing an alternative enigma: what if his surplus value
led him not to solidarity with the worker but instead made him into a kulak
who must be killed?"

 - Thomas Sleigh, "A short history of communism and the enigma of surplus value",  8 October 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: immiserate

The word of the day is immiserate:

1.  to make miserable.

2.  to cause to become impoverished. (dictionary.com)  (not sure why the OED doesn't have an entry on this, if it really is a real word)

"The final appearance at the United Nations General Assembly by the Iranian President, who will leave office after the elections next summer, reprised all the familiar numbers: anti-Israeli statements to the press; insinuations that the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job; a long sitdown with a TV interviewer (this time, Piers Morgan), in which he gleefully parried questions about Iran’s nuclear program and the threat of an attack from Israel; and a sanctimonious speech to the General Assembly, minus those delegates who walk out or absent themselves, about the perfidy of certain powerful Western nations that arrogate to themselves the authority to police a world they have aggressed, oppressed, and immiserated."

 - Laura Secor, "Road Show", 8 October 2012 The New Yorker