word of the day: fleissig

The word of the day is fleissig:

diligent (Google translate)

"She was fleissig - the opposite of lazy."

 - Rainer Eppelmann, as quoted by George Packer, "The Quiet German: The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: bürgerlich

The word of the day is bürgerlich:

bourgeois (Google translate)

"In 1970, an incident exposed the fragile standing of the bürgerlich Kasner family.  At a local Party meeting, the Russian Club's latest triumph was announced, and Benn expected praise.  Instead, the schools supervisor observed acidly, 'When the children of farmers and workers win, that will be something.'"

 - George Packer, "The Quiet German: The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: jeremiad

The word of the day is jeremiad:

a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.

in reference to Jeremiah's Lamentations (dictionary.com)

"Sahra Wagenknecht, an orthodox Marxist in a brilliant-red suit, steps behind the lectern and berates Merkel for her economic and foreign policies, which, she says, are bringing Fascism back to Europe.  'We must stop abusing a highly dangerous, half-hegemonic position that Germany slid into, in the ruthless old German style,' Wagenknecht declares.  She then cites the French historian Emmanuel Todd: 'Unknowingly, the Germans are on their way to again take their role as bringers of calamity for the other European peoples, and later for themselves.'....

"The speaker ends her jeremiad, and the only people to clap are the members of Die Linke, isolated in the far-left section of the chamber."

 - George Packer, "The Quiet German: The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: roman-fleuve

The word of the day is roman-fleuve:

a novel or series of novels dealing with a family or other group over several generations (dictionary.com)

"I look upon the items in each issue of the Robesonian as a few more paragraphs or pages or even chapters in a novel that I have been reading for a long time now and that I expect to keep on reading as long as I live, a sort of never-ending to-be-continued serial about the ups and downs of a group of interrelated rural and small-town families in the South, a sort of ever-flowing roman-fleuve."

 - Joseph Mitchell, "Days in the Branch: Remembering the South in the city", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker

phrase of the day: over the transom

The phrase of the day is over the transom:

offered without prior arrangement especially for publication (merriam-webster.com)


"Hume, Cloherty, and Owens don't remember where Whitten got the tip-off about the Frankfurter theft.  'We called our chief source O.T. Transom,' Owens told me,.  'For "over the transom."'"

 - Jill Lepore, "The Great Paper Caper: Someone swiped Justice Frankfurter's papers.  What else has gone missing?", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: frangible

The word of the day is frangible:

easily broken; breakable:

Old French, derivative of Latin frangere to break (dictionary.com)

 

"'My bestial entourage and I shall go to the ball,' said Cinderella to the sorceress who was tricking her out in see-through frippery, frangible footwear, and transportation by a team of plastered rodents."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: clochard

The word of the day is clochard:

a beggar; vagrant; tramp.

French, derivative of clocher to limp (dictionary.com)

 

"What am I doing?!  I'm waiting for Godot, as are those garrulous clochards."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: tenebrous

The word of the day is tenebrous:

dark; gloomy; obscure.

Latin tenebrōsus (dictionary.com)

 

"Boris Marcelovsky wrestles with the diva's tempestuous tresses for two reasons: he adores the gossip, and her custom furthered his career when he was just an arriviste from the tenebrous wastes of Trajikistan."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: arriviste

The word of the day is arriviste:

a person who has recently acquired unaccustomed status, wealth, or success, especially by dubious means and without earning concomitant esteem.

< French (dictionary.com)

 

"Boris Marcelovsky wrestles with the diva's tempestuous tresses for two reasons: he adores the gossip, and her custom furthered his career when he was just an arriviste from the tenebrous wastes of Trajikistan."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: cumbrous

The word of the day is cumbrous:

cumbersome (dictionary.com)

 

"He exalts the solidity of cumbrous furniture over the virtues of pillows and ottomans...

 

"He could hardly clamber atop his charger with that clanking, cumbrous, rusted armor impeding his every jerk, stretch, and twitch."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: boggle

The word of the day is boggle:

verb (used with object), boggled, boggling.

1. to overwhelm or bewilder, as with the magnitude, complexity, or abnormality of

2. to bungle; botch. (dictionary.com)

 

"While but a little wraith of a sorceress, she learned from a hoary old alchemist many spells and curses she was to boggle later in life."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: Congrevous

The word of the day is Congrevous

William Congreve, 1670–1729, English dramatist (dictionary.com)

"Natty Ampersand wrote of having decapitated several lovers for miffing her upon her return to the female sex with the greeting: 'I've missed not seeing you.'  As Natty pointed out, with poised, scimitar, what they were really saying was they missed her absence or invisibility and could hardly wait for her to disappear again, and she'd only just arrived!  What should they have said, had they valued their lives - or their heads?  Either 'I've missed you' or 'I've missed seeing you,' the latter really a rather lame declaration of fact: you've been invisible to me, or I have not seen you.  Startling Glower encountered the same quasi-double negative from several critics and fans of his theatrical career upon his opening with a new play.  He'd greet these statements with Congrevous ripostes such as 'And I've not missed not avoiding your betises.'"

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: inhere

The word of the day is inhere:

to exist permanently and inseparably in, as a quality, attribute, or element; belong intrinsically; be inherent 

< Latin inhaerēre, equivalent to in- in-²+ haerēre to stick (dictionary.com)

"Consist in means to lie in or inhere in, to have as a defining attribute."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: mousseline

The word of the day is moussline:

muslin (dictionary.com)

"At the death of the royal consort, musical consorts throughout the land played dirges, and the city of Amplochacha was draped in mourning - even the horses drawing state coaches wore black bands on their forequarters - while twenty supplementary scribes were taken on to handle the letters of condolence addressed to King Alabastro, who could not be talked out of the mousseline pajamas he'd been wearing when his beloved queen, Dariushka, died of fright in her sleep."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

phrase of the day: on the qui vive

The word of the day is on the qui vive:

on the alert; watchful

< French literally, (long) live who? (i.e., on whose side are you?) (dictionary.com) 

"You must do the best that you can, and if you are terrorized into closing your eyes, try keeping your wits about you, your sixth sense on the qui vive."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: limpid

The word of the day is limpid:

 

1. clear, transparent, or pellucid, as water, crystal, or air

2. free from obscurity; lucid; clear

3. completely calm; without distress or worry

< Latin limpidus clear. See lymph, -id⁴ (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"He could barely resist her with that tattoo of the Cheshire Cat on her limpid mug."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: percipient

The word of the day is percipient:

 

1. perceiving or capable of perceiving.

2. having perception; discerning; discriminating

< Latin percipient- (stem of percipiēns) present participle of percipere to take in, equivalent to per- per- + -cipi- combining form of present stem of capere to take + -ent- -ent

(dictionary.com) 

 

 

"The baby dragon awoke from a tantalizing dream smacking his lips with pleasure and mischief, his eyes blinking with wily percipience: a sorceress had been teaching him a curiously delicious language that paralyzed his nanny and shattered his sapphires and awakened in the panther an obsession for protecting the dragon's treasure, allowing them to scuttle freely about the Schloss and spy on the human's capers."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: crenelation

The word of the day is crenelation:

 

1. any of the open spaces between the merlons of a battlement.

2. a crenature.

< Middle French, Old French, apparently diminutive of cren notch (attested since the 15th century), Old French cran, of uncertain origin (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Were you at any time aware of an unearthly presence zigzagging along the crenelations?"

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: Weltanschauung

The word of the day is Weltanschauung:

a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity's relation to it.

literally, world-view (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Anyone who thinks he has a superior Weltanschauung is summoned to the map room."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: mesomorph

The word of the day is mesomorph:

a person with a muscular body build: said to be correlated with somatotonia (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Among us are those who would scoff at the chance to make whoopee with that mesomorph...

 

Anjula doesn't keep house for monosyllabic mesopmorphs anymore."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: estival

The word of the day is estival:

pertaining or appropriate to summer.

< Late Latin aestīvālis, equivalent to Latin aestīv (us) of or relating to summer + -ālis -al¹ (dictionary.com) 

"His allusion to The Sedentary Tzatzkeleh was embedded in a tirade against hyperactive women in literature and praise of their more placid sisters lazing on estival riverbanks and Levantine divans."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: morganatic

The word of the day is morganatic:

of or pertaining to a form of marriage in which a person of high rank, as a member of the nobility, marries someone of lower station with the stipulation that neither the low-ranking spouse nor their children, if any, will have any claim to the titles or entailed property of the high-ranking partner.

< Neo-Latin morganāticus (adj.), for Medieval Latin phrase ( mātrimōnium) ad morganāticam (marriage) to the extent of morning-gift ( morganātica representing Germanic *morgangeba (feminine); compare Old English morgengiefu gift from husband to wife on day after wedding) (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Altogether there were seventeen impersonators of Incognito VIII during the so-called Cashmere Crisis that muffled the morganatic monarch and discredited his regime."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: incunabula

The word of the day is incunabula:

1. extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1501) of printing from movable type.

2. the earliest stages or first traces of anything.

< Latin: straps holding a baby in a cradle, earliest home, birthplace, probably equivalent to *incūnā (re) to place in a cradle ( in- in-²+ *-cūnāre, verbal derivative of cūnae cradle) + -bula, plural of -bulum suffix of instrumen (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"I also got the debutante to divert him long enough (the grotto was child's play after her tetes-a-tetes with the troll) for me to steal his Angels of Saxony, his vocabulary, his incunabula, and his wife."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: cembalo

The word of the day is cembalo:

harpsichord.

< Italian (clavi) cembalo < Latin cymbalum cymbal (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Drat Siltlow crawled out of the primordial ooze in the late forties, his parents both heroin addicts, great musicians (cembalo, sax), father a descendent of the Northumbrian clan responsible for a nineteenth-century archaeological hoax, mother a vaudevillain's out-of-wedlock child raised by three maiden aunts on candy and the occasional possum in the Appalachian hills - till she joined her mother in St. Louis - which is where this doomed and talented pair met and created their first and only child."

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Torn Wings and Faux Pas

word of the day: brome

The word of the day is brome:

any of numerous grasses of the genus Bromus, having flat blades and open clusters of flower spikelets.

< Neo-Latin Brom (us) genus name (< Greek brómos oats) (dictionary.com)

"Some two hundred cows, clustered densely as plush toys in an acrcade game, stood shoulder-deep in orchard grass, brome, purple flowering alfalfa, and lupine."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: bung

The word of the day is bung:

rectum and large intestine (clovegarden.com)

"In a garden strung with fairy lights, watching the sun set on Mt. Shasta, I ate a sausage, packed in a pig bung, which had cured for three months in a nineteen-forties root cellar."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: tonnato

The word of the day is tonnato:

a sauce made from tuna traditionally served with cold sliced veal (epicurious.com)

"Days with Fernald, a friend of hers told me, start with bacon and end in chicken liver.  Her idea of road food is a ziplock full of leftover tonnato made with raw farm eggs and Belcampo top round: a second-tier cut, because the financial model and the corporate ethos depend on using every last bit, and a cow is not made up of filet mignon."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: ombré

The word of the day is ombré:

shaded or graduated in tone: said of a color
French past participle of ombrer, to shade ; from Classical Latin umbrare ; from umbra, shade (dictionary.com)

"Thirty seconds after I met Anya Fernald, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Belcampo, a sustainable-meat company whose ambition is to seduce Americans away from industrial food, she offered me a plate of lamb tartare.  Fernald is thirty-nine and nearly six feet tall, with growing-out ombré hair and the exuberant energy of a team of wayward ponies; we were sitting at the counter of a butcher shop and restaurant she had recently opened in downtown Los Angeles."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: aphorism

The word of the day is aphorism:

a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton).

French aphorisme < Late Latin aphorismus < Greek aphorismós definition, equivalent to aphor (ízein) to define (see aphorize ) + -ismos -ism (dictionary.com)

"When, in 2004, Daniel Boulud went looking for a new pastry chef for his main New York restaurant, someone in Paris suggested Ansel, and though on his arrival here he spoke scarcely a word of English - he now speaks it with crisp, aphoristic clarity - he had a very successful run in the high-end restaurant."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Bakeoff: What is happening to our pastry?", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: pediment

The word of the day is pediment:

1. (in classical architecture) a low gable, typically triangular with a horizontal cornice and raking cornices, surmounting a colonnade, an end wall, or a major division of a façade.

2. any imitation of this, often fancifully treated, used to crown an opening, a monument, etc., or to form part of a decorative scheme.

3. Geology. a gently sloping rock surface at the foot of a steep slope, as of a mountain, usually thinly covered with alluvium.

earlier pedament, pedement, alteration, by association with Latin pēs (stem ped-) foot, of earlier peremint, perhaps an unlearned alteration of pyramid; (def 3) by construal as pedi- + -ment (dictionary.com)

"Careme created pastry temples in evocative ruin, resting on marzipan rocks; pastry pediments and pyramids and Chinese pavilions."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Bakeoff: What is happening to our pastry?", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: schnecken

The word of the day is schnecken:

sweet, spiral, snail-shaped rolls made from raised dough with chopped nuts, butter, and cinnamon.

< German: literally, snail, Old High German snecko.  (dictionary.com)

"But it would not be going to far to say that the coexistence of the pretzel croissant and the Cronut is worth thinking of as a form of competition, if only on purely Darwinian terms, in which all coexistence is a competition held briefly in equilibrium, particularly because their coexistence is representative of something new, pervasive, and quite possibly perverse: the hybridized and fetishized schnecken."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Bakeoff: What is happening to our pastry?", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: foolscap

The word of the day is foolscap:

a type of inexpensive writing paper, especially legal-size, lined, yellow sheets, bound in tablet form.

so called from the watermark of a fool's cap formerly used on such paper (dictionary.com)

 

 

"What stands out in my memory is not so much the dish itself - I've both cooked and eaten it so often that I know it by heart - as the recipe's length.  It covered two closely written sides of lined foolscap, and began with detailed instructions on how to turn on and light a gas burner."

 

 - John Lancaster, "Shut up and eat: a foodie repents", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: zeppole

The word of the day is zeppole:

"Delicious fried cookies made with ricotta cheese. These are also known as Italian doughnuts"  (allrecipes.com) 


"Either the President's in town or they're selling zeppoles on Seventh Avenue."

 - Paul Noth, cartoon, 6 October 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: knaidel

The word of the day is knaidel:

a dumpling, especially a small ball of matzo meal, eggs, and salt, often mixed with another foodstuff, as ground almonds or grated potato, usually served in soup.

< Yiddish kneydl dumpling; compare Middle High German knödel lump, ovary of a flower, German Knödel dumpling (dictionary.com)

"chopped liver first or herring or eggs and onions,
then matzo-ball soup or noodle or knaidel, followed by
roast veal or boiled beef and horseradish..."

 - Gerald Stern, "The world we should have stayed in", 6 October 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: imprimatur

The word of the day is imprimatur:

1. an official license to print or publish a book, pamphlet, etc., especially a license issued by a censor of the Roman Catholic Church.

2. sanction or approval; support.

Neo-Latin: let it be printed, Latin: let it be made by pressing upon (something) (dictionary.com)

"'We fled the country when we heard what was happening at Bluttenbad, taking only our leotards, tights, toe shoes, and tennis rackets (picking up alarm clocks for symbolic, not time-telling, purposes as we skulked through Amplochacha in the dead of night), and by the grace of God, on fake passports, we journeyed to a distant land with intentions to immigrate once a cousin there could secure through hidden connections our fast-forward imprimatur,' explained Kamila on behalf of Ladislas, Toosla, and Laslo to Rafael Todos los Muertos, who'd tracked them down and was conducting an elusive interview by phone....

"'It's either the apogee of design for this apoplectic decade or a blunder of vast dimensions,' equivocated Jacomino Vervazzo, withholding his weighty imprimatur from Eloria's new opera house - where dislocated divas and truculent tenors alike declared they would never air their arias."

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

word of the day: adumbrate

The word of the day is adumbrate:

1. to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.

2. to foreshadow; prefigure.

3. to darken or conceal partially; overshadow.

Latin adumbrātus shaded (past participle of adumbrāre) (dictionary.com)

"'The orgy in the grand salon tonight shall consist of five discrete movements, or courses, if you will,' adumbrated Amaranthia to an odd assortment of overnight guests - all cellists, composers, or chefs....

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

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

word of the day: soubrette

The word of the day is soubrette:

1. a maidservant or lady's maid in a play, opera, or the like, especially one displaying coquetry, pertness, and a tendency to engage in intrigue.

2. an actress playing such a role.

3. any lively or pert young woman.

< French: lady's maid < Provençal soubreto, derivative of soubret affected, ultimately derivative of Old Provençal sobrar < Latin superāre to be above (dictionary.com)

"Katya began slipping up in matters that required discretion, so Jacaranda persuaded the butler to administer a timid spanking without removing his gloves, and the wayward soubrette also received a mild reproof in her own handwriting as dictated by Mustafovic himself in his suite at Hotel Artaud....

"'Throw in your dishtowel, you retrograde roustabout, and take a disinterested shuffle through the Seven Deadly Virtues with my svelte soubrette and me,' said Yolanta to the tarted-up bartender on the outs with his boyfriend, Flip."

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

word of the day: savoir-vivre

The word of the day is savoir-vivre:

knowledge of the world and the ways or usages of polite society.

French: literally, knowing how to live (dictionary.com)

"Jonquil, accustomed to making her way with insolence, impertinence, intemperance, and impulsiveness, was not totally without insight and savoir-vivre.  After a few close calls, she realized that to come out of Trajikistan alive, she would have to be both circumspect and discreet."

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

word of the day: belletristic

The word of the day is belletristic:

Of, pertaining to, or having the characteristics of belles-lettres
Written or appreciated for aesthetic value rather than content (wordnik.com)

"Ever quick to deprecate what he couldn't understand, Bottie, feeling bellicose, called the choreography belletristic, the music narcissistic, the lighting fidgety and arcane, and yet he wooed the entire corps de ballet, having divided and conquered them with one bouquet....

"Shortly before his dishonorable demise, Vast Monthrock established a foundation for writers of belletristic bellicosity and insupportable hypotheses."

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

word of the day: credenza

The word of the day is credenza:

1. Also, credence. a sideboard or buffet, especially one without legs.

2. a closed cabinet for papers, office supplies, etc., often of desk height and matching the other furniture in an executive's office.

3. Ecclesiastical, credence (def 3).

< Italian < Medieval Latin crēdentia (in ecclesiastical usage) a sideboard for holding sacramental vessels (dictionary.com)

"Incognito: a succession of kings including INCOGNITO I, who didn't like his officially suppressed given name; INCOGNITO V, a devotee of Flan O'Brien and thus a bicycle fetishist; and INCOGNITO VIII, noted for such scandals as the Cashmere Crisis and the case of the lapsed credenza....

"'Take these handcuffs off my wrists - and that credenza off my chest!' yawped Flip, thrashing about on the barroom floor in a pool of viscous words....

"'That credenza coulda knocked me senseless!' bawled Flip, crawling anfractuously to the saloon door for a double shot of prairie air and a possible getaway car....

"History may regard the Cashmere Crisis as the nadir of the entire Incognito succession, but the lapsed credenza hardly redounded to the credit of the family, either, even if it did end up at the Pink Antlers Saloon in a different story and century altogether, long after the king and his minions were last seen on the shores of Lake Quisisana."

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

word of the day: sempiternal

The word of the day is sempiternal:

everlasting; eternal.

Late Latin sempiternālis, equivalent to Latin sempitern (us) everlasting semp (er) always + -i- -i- + -ternus suffix of temporal adjectives (dictionary.com)

"What phosphorescent big teeth you have!  What wild eyes!  What a battered yet luxuriant fur coat you are wearing!  What a congenial companion I shall make of you!  And you will shatter my sleep and foreshadow my sempiternal night."

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

word of the day: alpenstock

The word of the day is alpenstock:

a strong staff with an iron point, used by mountain climbers.

< German, equivalent to Alpen Alps + Stock staff (dictionary.com)

"The brigands with fans have been colluding against local officials with a band of slaphappy vandals the Passevitza Clarion has inaccurately dubbed their Doppelgang.  In fact, the true Doppelgang is elsewhere engaged, marauding the countryside of Lavukistan with Belle Epoque fans in their fluttering hands and garters over their alpenstocks."

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