word of the day: confrere

The word of the day is confrere:

Etymology:  Middle English confrere (compare frere, Friar), < French confrere (13th cent. in Littré) = Provençal confraire, Catalan confrare, Spanish co(n)frade, Italian confrate, medieval Latin confrāter, < con- together with + frāter brother. As a naturalized English word (of which the pronunciation would now be /kɒnˈfrɪə(r)/ or /-ˈfraɪə(r)/ ) it appears to have become obsolete in 17th cent.; but it has been taken back into frequent use as a borrowing from modern French, and is usually written confrère. 

1. A fellow-member of a fraternity, religious order, college, guild, etc., a colleague in office. 

2. A fellow-member of a learned profession, scientific body, or the like.  [ < modern French.] (OED)

"The paradox is that, just as Thomas Pynchon or Don DeLillo dramatizes paranoia with a texture of specificity, the paranoid types are, in their own way, often much more empirically minded - willing to follow the evidence where it leads, even if that is right through the looking glass - than their more cautious confreres.  it is, in other words, possible to construct an intricate scenario that is both cautiously inferential, richly detailed, on its own terms complete, and yet utterly delusional."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Closer than that: the assassination of J.F.K., fifty years later", 4 November 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: fantod

The word of the day is fantod:

Etymology:  ? An unmeaning formation suggested by fantastic adj. and n., fantasy n., etc.: compare fantigue. 

A crotchety way of acting; a fad. (OED)

"I do care about them, but what they don't know, and I would never have the heart to tell them, is that the idea of their no longer being a married couple bothers me not at all.  My only fear is that, separate, no one else would have them, that I'd get stuck with them one at a time or have to watch them wither away in solitude.  These scenarios give me the fantods.  Am I selfish?  Yes and no.  I'm a bachelor and hope someday to be an old bachelor."

 - Thomas McGuane, "Weight Watchers", 4 November 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: bentonite

The phrase of the day is bentonite:

Min.

A clay found in the Fort Benton strata of the Cretaceous of Wyoming. Also, any of several clayey deposits containing montmorillonite which have various practical applications. (OED)

"The doctor who'd hired me wanted a marshy spot behind the house excavated for a pond, and I had my Nicaraguan, Angel, out there with a backhoe, trying to find the spring down in the mud so that we could plumb it and spread some bentonite to keep the water from running out."

 - Thomas McGuane, "Weight Watchers", 4 November 2013 The New Yorker

phrase of the day: hang the moon

The phrase of the day is hang the moon:

(idiomatic, US) To place the moon in the sky: used as an example of a superlative act attributed to someone viewed with uncritical or excessive awe, reverence or infatuation. (Wiktionary)


"He and my mother had been a glamorous couple early in their marriage; good looks, combined with assertive tastemaking, had put them on top in our shabby little city.  Then I came along, and Mother thought I'd hung the moon.  In Dad's view, I put an end to the big romance."

 - Thomas McGuane, "Weight Watchers", 4 November 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: wrong-foot

The word of the day is wrong-foot:

1. trans. In tennis, football, etc.: (by deceptive play) to cause (an opponent) to have his balance on the wrong foot.
2. trans. fig. To disconcert by an unexpected move; to catch unprepared. (OED)


"The writer-director of 'Friends with Money' (2006) and 'Please Give' (2010) has a wonderful ear for blunders, for jokes that wrong-foot the listener, for kindnesses that don't quite reach the person they are intended to reach."

 - David Denby, "Drifting: 'Gravity' and 'Enough Said'", 7 October 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: pudendum

The word of the day is pudendum:

Etymology:  < classical Latin pudendum, lit. ‘that of which one ought to be ashamed’, use as noun (usually in plural, pudenda , to denote the external genitals) of neuter gerundive of pudēre to cause shame, ashame (see pudent adj.); compare also classical Latin pars pudenda shameful part. Compare Middle French pudendes , plural noun (1532; compare parties pudendes , plural (1509), lit. ‘shameful parts’), pudende , singular noun (1555), French pudendum (1765), pudenda , plural noun (1845; now arch. or literary). Compare earlier pudend n.In post-classical Latin pudenda is also used with spec. reference to the male genitals (4th cent.; 5th cent. in Augustine in pudenda virilia).1. In pl. and sing. The external genitals; esp. the vulva. 

2. fig. The shameful parts of something. rare. (OED)

"Sex figures frequently in the MOMA show, as with 'The Rape' (1934), a painting of a face in which breasts, a navel, and a pudendum stand in for the eyes, the nose, and the mouth."

 - Peter Schjeldahl, "In the head: Balthus and Magritte reconsidered", 7 October 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: exegete

The word of the day is exegete:

Etymology:  < Greek ἐξηγητής an expounder, interpreter, < ἐξηγεῖσθαι (see exegesis n.): compare French exégète.(Show Less)

An expounder, interpreter.

1. Ancient Greek Hist. At Athens, one of those three members of the Eumolpidæ, whose province it was to interpret the religious and ceremonial law, the signs in the heavens, and oracles. 

2. One who explains or interprets difficult passages; one skilled in exegesis; an expounder. (OED)

"Pierre went on to be a cult hero of French intellectuals as a devoutly obscene philosopher, novelist, graphic artist, and exegete of the Marquis de Sade."

 - Peter Schjeldahl, "In the head: Balthus and Magritte reconsidered", 7 October 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: patsy

The word of the day is patsy:

colloq. (orig. U.S.).

A person who is easily taken advantage of, esp. by being deceived, cheated, or blamed for something; a dupe, a scapegoat. (OED)

 

 

"But whatever possibilities Seyfried may have as an actress are eradicated by the filmmakers' strategy of making their heroine-victim a woman without will, direction, ideas, temperament, unintentionally following the scheme of classic pornography.  They also ignore the real Lovelace's many attempts to reinvent herself throughout a long media career.  (She wrote not one book about herself but four.)  Traynor certainly treated her savagely, but Lovelace - a complicated, determined, often desperate woman - was something more than his patsy."

 - David Denby, "Social history: 'The Butler' and 'Lovelace'", 26 August 2013 The New Yorker

 

word of the day: aedile

The word of the day is aedile:

Etymology:  < classical Latin aedīlis Roman magistrate charged with the supervision of public buildings, games, markets, and other municipal matters < aedēs , aedis building, house (see edifice n.) + -īlis -il suffix. In extended sense ‘municipal officer’ after French édile (1754 in this sense; 1213 in Old French denoting a magistrate in ancient Rome).

 A. n.  Roman Hist. Any of several magistrates who superintended public buildings, policing, and other municipal matters. Hence in extended use: a person in charge of urban housing and building; a municipal officer. (OED)

"No such titan ever visited
during my days as aedile."

 - John Ashbery, "Gravy for the prisoners", 26 August 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: holler

The word of the day is holler:

U.S. colloq.

Variant of hollow n. 2. (OED)

"Some varieties survived only on isolated family farms or in the hidden hollers that Roberts found in his wanderings."

 - Burkhard Bilger, "True Grits: In Charleston, a quest to revive authentic Southern cooking", 31 October 2011 The New Yorker

word of the day: samizdat

The word of the day is samizdat:

Etymology:  Russian, abbrev. of samoizdátel′stvo self-publishing house, < samo- self + izdátel′stvo publishing house. 

 

The clandestine or illegal copying and distribution of literature (orig. and chiefly in the U.S.S.R.); an ‘underground press’; a text or texts produced by this. (OED)

"Three years earlier, Roberts, David Shields, and a handful of others had founded the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, to promote the study and production of heirloom grains.  But most of their research was still done in the margins of their academic work.  They circulated their findings samizdat fashion and passed around envelopes full of endangered seeds."

 - Burkhard Bilger, "True Grits: In Charleston, a quest to revive authentic Southern cooking", 31 October 2011 The New Yorker