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