Word of the day: expatiate

The word of the day is expatiate:

1. to enlarge in discourse or writing; be copious in description or discussion:to expatiate upon a theme.
2. Archaic. to move or wander about intellectually, imaginatively, etc., without restraint.

1530s, "walk about, roam freely," from L. expatiatus, exspatiatus, pp. of expatiari, exspatiari "wander, digress," from ex- "out" + spatiari "to walk, spread out," from spatium (see space). Meaning "talk or write at length" is 1610s.

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

"When the baron expatiated upon the superior practices of Europe, the Indians were baffled."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: fissiparous

The word of the day is fissiparous:

1. reproducing by fission.

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

"According to Haudenosaunee tradition, the alliance was founded centuries before Europeans arrived.  Non-Indian researchers long treated this claim to antiquity with skepticism.  The league, in their view, was inherently fragile and fissiparous; if it had been founded a thousand years ago, it would have broken up well before the Pilgrims."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: runnel

The word of the day is runnel:

1. a small stream; brook; rivulet.
2. a small channel, as for water.

"rivulet," 1577, in Hakluyt, from O.E. rinelle, a dim. form related to rinnan "to run" (see run (v.)).

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

"Dribbling down some of the tree trunks were little runnels that looked like dried sap.  On a previous visit to the Amazon I had seen runnels just like these on a rubber tree in an abandoned plantation.  Thinking it was a drip of latex sap, I plucked at one."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: refulgent

The word of the day is refulgent:

shining brightly; radiant; gleaming

c.1500, from L. refulgentem (nom. refulgens), prp. of refulgere "flash back, shine brilliantly," from re- "back" + fulgere "to shine" (see bleach).

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

"There was the same cool green light from the canopy, the same refulgent smell, the same awe-inspiring sense of variety."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

A smell that shines brightly?

Word of the day: rebec

The word of the day is rebec:

1. a Renaissance fiddle with a pear-shaped body tapering into a neck that ends in a sickle-shaped or scroll-shaped pegbox.

"medieval stringed musical instrument," 1509, from Fr. rebec, an unexplained alteration of O.Fr. ribabe (perhaps somehow infl. by bec "beak"), ultimately from Arabic rebab (cf. O.Prov. rebec, It. ribeca). It has three strings and is played with a bow.

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

"Behind the canoe armada was a floating orchestra of horns, pipes, and rebecs like three-stringed lutes."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: pullulate

The word of the day is pullulate:

1. to send forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
2. to breed, produce, or create rapidly.
3. to increase rapidly; multiply.
4. to exist abundantly; swarm; teem.
5. to be produced as offspring.

1619, from L. pullulatus, pp. of pullulare "grow, sprout," from pullulus, dim. of pullus "young animal."

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

"Because the mountains catch all the moisture from the Amazon winds, the terrain is as wet as it is steep.  It is also pullulatingly alive: howling with insects, hot and humid as demon's breath, perpetually shades by mats of lianas and branches."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: apostrophe

The word of the day is apostrophe:

1. a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea, as “O Death, where is thy sting?”

1580s, from M.Fr. apostrophe, from L.L. apostrophus, from Gk. apostrophos (prosoidia) "(the accent of) turning away," thus, a mark showing where a letter has been omitted, from apostrephein "avert, turn away," from apo- "from" (see apo-) + strephein "to turn" (see strophe). In English, the mark usually represents loss of -e- in -es, possessive ending. Greek also used this word for a "turning aside" of an orator in speech to address some individual, a sense first recorded in Eng. 1530s.

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

"In an unusual excursion into the high-flown, the inscriptions on the stairway apostrophized the gore: 'the blood was pooled and the skulls of the Mutal people were piled into mountains.'"

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: hugger-mugger

The word of the day is hugger-mugger:

1. disorder or confusion; muddle.
2. secrecy; reticence: Why is there such hugger-mugger about the scheme?

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hugger-mugger)

"For much of the last century most Mayanists believed that at its height—200 to 900 A.D., roughly speaking—the Maya realm was divided into a hugger-mugger of more or less equivalent city-states."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: decoct

The word of the day is decoct:

1. to extract the flavor or essence of by boiling.

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

"Combining literal interpretation with an understanding of context, epigraphers (decipherers of ancient writing) have spent the last thirty years hauling submerged chunks of Maya history to the surface.  David Stuart, a Mayanist at Harvard, decocted the encounter between Chak Tok Ich'aak and the Teotihuacán expedition in 2000."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: Potemkin

The word of the day is Potemkin village:

1. a pretentiously showy or imposing façade intended to mask or divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/potemkin+village)

"Some archaeologists believe that the canal was never meant to function.  It was a PR exercise, they say, a Potemkin demonstration by the Chimor government that it was actively fighting El Niño."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: plonk

The word of the day is plonk:

—noun Chiefly British.

1. inferior or cheap wine.

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

"Unlike Western cities, Tiwanaku had no markets—no bazaars full of shouting, bargaining, conniving entrepreneurs; no street displays of produce, pottery, and plonk; no jugglers and mines trying to attract crowds; no pickpockets."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: longueur

The word of the day is longueur:

1. a long and boring passage in a literary work, drama, musical composition, or the like: The longueurs in this book make it almost unreadable.

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

"During the winter solstice, (June, in South America) hundreds of camera-toting European and American tourists wait on Kalasasaya through the entire freezing night for the sunrise, which is supposed to shine through the Gateway on that day alone...  To keep themselves warm during the inevitable longueurs, visitors sing songs of peace and harmony in several languages."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: welt

The word of the day is welt:

1. a ridge or wale on the surface of the body, as from a blow of a stick or whip.
2. a blow producing such a ridge or wale.
3. Shoemaking.
   1. a strip, as of leather, set in between the outsole of a shoe and the edges of its insole and upper, through which these parts are joined by stitching or stapling.
   2. a strip, usually of leather, that ornaments a shoe.
4. a strengthening or ornamental finish along a seam, the edge of a garment, etc.
5. a seam in which one edge is cut close to the stitching line and covered by the other edge, which is stitched over it.

early 15c., a shoemaker's term, perhaps related to M.E. welten "to overturn, roll over" (c.1300), from O.N. velta "to roll" (related to welter (v.)). Meaning "ridge on the skin from a wound" is first recorded 1800.

"The wide expanse of water seems to merge into the sky without a welt."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: jerkwater

The word of the day is jerkwater:

1. Informal. insignificant and out-of-the-way: a jerkwater town.
2. (formerly) off the main line: a jerkwater train.
3. (formerly) a train not running on the main line.

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

"After an unprovoked attack on Red and White Bundle by Tilantongo raised hostilities to a fever, the warring parties agreed to meet in a secret mountain cave with the Priestess of the Dead, a powerful oracle who had stripped away the flesh from her jaw, giving her a terrifying, skull-like appearance...  To his dismay, the priestess sided with Tilantongo's enemies and ordered 8-Deer, Tilantongo's champion, to exile himself a hundred miles away, in a jerkwater town on the Pacific called Tututepec."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Phrase of the day: shirttail cousin

The phrase of the day is shirttail cousin:

4. Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S. of distant relation, especially by marriage: some shirttail cousins I'd never met.

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

"Born in 1063 A.D., 8-Deer was a shirttail cousin to the ruling family of Tilantongo, which had been engaged for decades in a dynastic struggle with the kingdom of Red and White Bundle."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: rebus

The word of the day is rebus:

1. a representation of a word or phrase by pictures, symbols, etc., that suggest that word or phrase or its syllables.
2. a piece of writing containing many such representations.

1605, from L. rebus "by means of objects," ablative plural of res "thing, object," perhaps principally from the phrase de rebus quæ geruntur "of things which are going on," in reference to the satirical pieces composed by Picardy clerks at carnivals, subtle satires of current events using pictures to suggest words, phrases or things. Or it may be from the representations being non verbis sed rebus "not by words, but by things."

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

"The symbols included drawings of events, portraits labeled by name (the king 4-Wind, for example, being shown by symbolic wind and four little bubbles in a line), and even punning rebuses."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: breechclout

The word of the day is breechclout:

1. a cloth worn about the breech and loins; loincloth.

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

"Swanning about the elite precincts, the rich and powerful wore finely woven clothing, but only below the waist—breechclouts for men, skirts and belts for women."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: littoral

The word of the day is littoral:

1. of or pertaining to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.
2. (on ocean shores) of or pertaining to the biogeographic region between the sublittoral zone and the high-water line and sometimes including the supralittoral zone above the high-water line.
3. of or pertaining to the region of freshwater lake beds from the sublittoral zone up to and including damp areas on shore. Compare intertidal.

—noun

4. a littoral region.

1656, from L. littoralis "of or belonging to the seashore," from litus (gen. litoris) "seashore" (cf. Lido), of unknown origin. The noun is first recorded 1828, from It. littorale, originally an adj., from L. littoralis.

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

"If McNeill were writing A World History today, discoveries like those at Huaricanga would force him to add two more areas to his book.  The first and better known is Mesoamerica, where half a dozen societies, the Olmec first among them, rose in the centuries before Christ.  The second is the Peruvian littoral, home of a much older civilization that had come to light only in the twenty-first century."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: caliche

The word of the day is caliche:

1. a surface deposit consisting of sand or clay impregnated with crystalline salts such as sodium nitrate or sodium chloride.
2. a zone of calcium carbonate or other carbonates in soils of semiarid regions.

sodium nitrate deposits in Chile and Peru, 1858, from Amer.Sp., from Sp. caliche "pebble in a brick," from L. calx "pebble."

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

"By the time of Gilmore's visit, Blackwater Draw was an arid, almost vegetation-free jumble of sandy drifts and faces of fractured caliche."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: purlieu

The word of the day is purlieu:

1. purlieus, environs or neighborhood.
2. a place where one may range at large; confines or bounds.
3. a person's haunt or resort.
4. an outlying district or region, as of a town or city.
5. a piece of land on the edge of a forest, originally land that, after having been included in a royal forest, was restored to private ownership, though still subject, in some respects, to the operation of the forest laws.

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

"Anthroplogy, he lamented, 'is particularly attractive to humankind, and for this reason the untrained are constantly venturing upon its purlieus; and since each heedless adventurer leads a rabble of followers, it behooves those who have at heart the good of science...to bell the blind leaders of the blind.'"

 - W. J. McGee, as quoted by Charles Mann in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: pederasty

The word of the day is pederasty:

1. sexual relations between two males, especially when one of them is a minor.

"sodomy with a boy," 1609, from Mod.L. pæderastia, from Gk. paiderastia "love of boys," from paiderastes "pederast," from pais (gen. paidos) "child, boy" (see pedo-) + erastes "lover," from erasthai "to love." Pederast is 1730s, from Fr. pédéraste, from Gk. paiderastes.

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

"Who today would want to live in the Greece of Plato and Socrates, with its slavery, constant warfare, institutionalized pederasty, and relentless culling of surplus population?"

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: tutelary

The word of the day is tutelary:

1. having the position of guardian or protector of a person, place, or thing: tutelary saint.
2. of or pertaining to a guardian or guardianship.

1611, from L. tutelarius "a guardian," from tutela "protection, watching" (see tutor).

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

"After the formation of the Triple Alliance, Tlacaélel 'went about persuading the people,' as one Mexica historian wrote, that Huitzilopochtli was not a mere tutelary deity, but a divinity essential to the fate of humankind."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus 

Word of the day: opera seria

The word of the day is opera seria:

1. Italian dramatic opera of the 18th century based typically on a classical subject and characterized by extensive use of the aria da capo and recitative.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/opera+seria)

"Written in dialogue verse, an opera seria exchange of long recitatives, his reconstruction does not individually identify  the speakers—perhaps, some historians believe, because the great meeting did not actually take place, Sahagún's account being a distillation of many smaller encounters."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Colunbus

Word of the day: prelate

The word of the day is prelate:

1. an ecclesiastic of a high order, as an archbishop, bishop, etc.; a church dignitary.

c.1200, from M.L. prelatus "clergyman of high rank," from L. prelatus "one preferred," from prælatus, serving as pp. of præferre (see prefer), from præ "before" + latus "borne, carried" (see oblate (n.)).

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

"Cortés believed that the military conquest of the Alliance had to be accompanied and justified by an equivalent spiritual conquest.  The Indians, he said, must be led to salvation.  And he asked King Charles V of Spain for some priests to do the job...  Cortés did not want 'bishops and pampered prelates,' wrote historian William H. Prescott, 'who too often squandered the substance of the Church in riotous living, but...men of unblemished purity of life, nourished with the learning of the cloister, [who] counted all personal sacrifices as little in the cause to which they were devoted.'"

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: ramose

The word of the day is ramose:

1. having many branches.
2. branching.

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

"With almost a dozen immortal emperors jostling for position, high-level Inka society was characterized by ramose political intrigue of a scale that would have delighted the Medici."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: flywhisk

The word of the day is flywhisk:

1. a device for brushing away flies, often made of horsehair.
2. a fan used to keep cool and to keep insects away.

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

"Because the Inka was believed to be an immortal deity, his mummy was treated, logically enough, as if it were still living.  Soon after arriving in Qosqo, Pizarro's companion Miguel de Estete saw a parade of defunct emperors.  They were brought out on litters, 'seated on their thrones and surrounded by pages and women with flywhisks in their hands, who ministered to them with as much respect as if they had been alive.'"

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: drub

The word of the day is drub:

1. to beat with a stick or the like; cudgel; flog; thrash.
2. to defeat decisively, as in a game or contest.
3. to drive as if by flogging: Latin grammar was drubbed into their heads.
4. to stamp (the feet).

1630s (in an Oriental travel narrative), probably from Arabic darb "a beating," from daraba "he beat up." Related: Drubbing.

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

"Foot soldiers have often drubbed mounted troops.  At the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., the outnumbered, outarmored Athenian infantry destroyed the cavalry of the Persoan emperor Darius I."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: caravel

The word of the day is caravel:

1. a small Spanish or Portuguese sailing vessel of the Middle Ages and later, usually lateen-rigged on two or three masts.

1527, from M.Fr. caravelle, from Port. caravela dim. of caravo "small vessel," from L.L. carabus "small wicker boat covered with leather," from Gk. karabos, lit. "beetle, lobster."

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

"To make boats, Andean cultures wove together reeds rather than cutting up trees into planks and nailing them together.  Although smaller than big European ships, these vessels were not puddle-muddlers; Europeans first encountered Tawantinsuyu in the form of an Inka ship sailing near the equator, three hundred miles from its home port, under a load of fine cotton sails.  It had a crew of twenty and was easily the size of a Spanish caravelle."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: dyadic

The word of the day is dyadic:

1. of or consisting of a dyad; being a group of two.
2. pertaining to the number 2.

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

"Similarly, Urton told me, binary oppositions were a hallmark of the region's peoples, who lived in societies 'typified to an extraordinary degree by dual organization,' from the division of town populations into complementary 'upper' and 'lower' halves (moieties, in the jargon) to the arrangement of poetry into dyadic units."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: marshal

The word of the day is marshal:

9. to arrange in proper order; set out in an orderly manner; arrange clearly: to marshal facts; to marshal one's arguments.
10. to array, as for battle.
11. to usher or lead ceremoniously: Their host marshaled them into the room.
12. Heraldry. to combine (two or more coats of arms) on a single escutcheon.

early 13c., from O.Fr. mareschal, originally "stable officer, horse tender, groom" (Frankish L. mariscaluis) from Frank. *marhskalk, lit. "horse-servant" (cf. O.H.G. marahscalc "groom"), from P.Gmc. *markhaz "horse" (see mare (1)) + *skalkaz "servant" (cf. Du. schalk "rogue, wag," Goth. skalks "servant"). Cognate with O.E. horsþegn. For development history, cf. constable. The verb "to arrange for fighting" is from 1580s. 

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

"In this book I tend to marshal terms like 'king' and 'nation' rather than 'chief' and 'tribe.'"

 - Charles Mann, 1493: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: roach

The word of the day is roach:

—noun

1. Nautical.
   1. the upward curve at the foot of a square sail.
   2. (loosely) a convexity given to any of the edges of a sail; round.
2. hair combed up from the forehead or temples in a roll or high curve.

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

"But sometimes they cut their hair into such wild patterns that attempting to imitate them, Wood sniffed, 'would torture the word of a curious barber.'  Tonsures, pigtails, head completely shaved but for a single forelock, long sides drawn into a queue with a raffish short-cut roach in the middle—all of it was prideful and abhorrent to the Pilgrims."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: skirl

The word of the day is skirl:

1. to play the bagpipe.
2. Scot. and North England . to shriek.

c.1400, "to make a shrill sound," from a Scand. source (cf. Norw. skyrla, skrella "to shriek"), of imitative origin. In reference to bagpipes, it is attested by 1665 and now rarely used otherwise.

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

"Voices would skirl up in the darkness: one person singing a lullaby, then another person, until everyone was asleep."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: didder

The word of the day is didder:

dial Brit

:quiver, shake, tremble

Origin

ME didderen

(http://i.word.com/idictionary/didder)

"Going to sleep in the firelight, young Tisquantum would have stared up at the diddering shadows of the hemp bags and bark boxes hanging from the rafters."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: flinders

The word of the day is flinders:

1. splinters; small pieces or fragments.

mid-15c., Scottish flendris, probably related to Norw. flindra "chip, splinter," or Du. flenter "fragment," ult. from the same PIE root that produced flint (q.v.).

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

"Soon after 1000 A.D. Tiwanaku split into flinders that would not be united for another four centuries, when the Inka swept them up."

 - Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Word of the day: ostinato

The word of the day is ostinato:

1. a constantly recurring melodic fragment.

1876, from It. ostinato, lit. "obstinate, persistent."

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

"As so often in Welles’s work, the imagery is accented by the sound: amid the noise of writhing bodies, we hear an ostinato of crickets."

 - Alex Ross, "The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/the-shadow)

Word of the day: hackwork

The word of the day is hackwork:

1. writing, painting, or any professional work done for hire and usually following a formula rather than being motivated by any creative impulse.

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

"This is largely how today’s culture has chosen to remember Welles: as a pompous wreck, a man who peaked early and then devolved into hackwork and bloated fiascos."

 - Alex Ross, "The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/the-shadow)

Word of the day: muggins

The word of the day is muggins:

1. a convention in the card game of cribbage in which a player scores points overlooked by an opponent.
2. a game of dominoes, in which any player who can make the sum of two ends of the line equal five or a multiple of five adds the number so made to his or her score.
3. British Slang. a fool.

"fool, simpleton," 1855, apparently from the surname, perhaps influenced by slang mug "dupe, fool" (see mug (n.2)).

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

"Her? No, snug as a bug in Sheffield, thanks very much. It’s muggins here that has to go to fucking Lanzarote."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: abaya

The word of the day is abaya:

1. a coarse, felted fabric woven of camel's or goat's hair.
2. a loose, sleeveless outer garment made of this fabric or of silk, worn by Arabs.

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

"First, a mother of a certain age, a grandmother, probably, tall, dressed in the rigid black of the full abaya, with her half-veiled face pointed straight ahead."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

 

Word of the day: bonce

The word of the day is bonce:

 British Slang.

1. head; skull.

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

"I mean, when your bonce goes, I ask you, what is the sense of carrying on?"

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Phrase of the day: all over the gaff

The phrase of the day is all over the gaff:

general term to describe someone or something that has no direction or that is in a mess. 

(http://www.slang-dictionary.org/all_over_the_gaff)

"And what’s the state of her, then, eh? Can she hold a thought in her head for two minutes? Or is she all over the gaff like mine?"

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: windcheater

The word of the day is windcheater:

Chiefly British .

1. a lightweight jacket for sports or otheroutdoor wear.

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

"But in Salzburg two days earlier I saw seventy or eighty of them lined up on a street corner, very predominantly very young men, in international teen-age gear: baseball caps, luminous windcheaters, dark glasses."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: galère

The word of the day is galère:

a group of people having an attribute in common

French, galley, from Middle French, from Catalan galera, from Middle Greek galea

First Use: 1756

(http://i.word.com/idictionary/galère)

"And it was as if Bernhardt’s camera had set itself the task of individualization, because here was a black-and-white galère of immediately and endearingly recognizable shapes and faces, bantering, yawning, frowning, grinning, scowling, weeping, in postures of exhaustion, stoic dynamism, and, of course, extreme uncertainty and dismay. . . ."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: insensate

The word of the day is insensate:

1. not endowed with sensation; inanimate
2. without human feeling or sensitivity; cold; cruel; brutal.
3. without sense, understanding, or judgment; foolish.

1519, from L.L. insensatus "irrational, foolish," from L. in- "not" + sensatus "gifted with sense." Insensate means "not capable of feeling sensation," often "inanimate;" insensible means "lacking the power to feel with the senses," hence, often, "unconscious;" insensitive (1610), from M.L. sensitivus, means "having little or no reaction to what is perceived by one's senses," often "tactless."

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

"The entity accumulating at the borders, the entity for which they were bracing and were even rousing themselves to greet with good will and good grace, seemed amorphous, undifferentiated, almost insensate—like a force of nature."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: boyar

The word of the day is boyar:

1. Russian History. a member of the old nobility of Russia, before Peter the Great made rank dependent on state service.
2. a member of a former privileged class in Romania.

(1590s, "member of a Russian aristocratic class (abolished by Peter the Great)," from Rus. boyarin, perhaps from boji "struggle," or from O.Slav. root bol- "great.")

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

"When January dawned in 1924, Vladimir (a year older than the century) was in Prague, helping his mother and his two younger sisters settle into their cheap and freezing new apartment... These former boyars were now displaced and deracinated—and had 'no money at all.'"

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: cockade

The word of the day is cockade:

1. a rosette, knot of ribbon, etc., usually worn on the hat as part of a uniform, as a badge of office, or the like.

1709, from Fr. cocarde, fem. of cocard "foolishly proud, cocky," an allusive extension from coq (see cock (n1.)).

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

"In great numbers, the Oktoberfesters were streaming past, the women in cinched dirndls and wenchy blouses, the men in suède or leather breeches laced just below the knee, tight jackets studded with medals or badges, and jaunty little hats with feathers, rosettes, cockades."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: rosette

The word of the day is rosette:

1. any arrangement, part, object, or formation more or less resembling a rose.
2. a rose-shaped arrangement of ribbon or other material, used as an ornament or badge.
3. Also, rosace. an architectural ornament resembling a rose or having a generally circular combination of parts.
4. Botany. a circular cluster of leaves or other organs.
5. a broad ornamental head for a screw or nail.
6. Metallurgy.
   1. any of a number of disks of refined copper formed when cold water is thrown onto the molten metal.
   2. a rounded microconstituent of certain alloys.
7. Plant Pathology. any of several diseases of plants, characterized by the crowding of the foliage into circular clusters owing to a shortening of the internodes of stems or branches, caused by fungi, viruses, or nutritional deficiencies.
8. one of the compound spots on a leopard.

"a rose-shaped ornament," especially a bunch or knot of ribbons worn as a decoration, 1790, from Fr. rosette, from O.Fr. rosette, dim. of rose "rose."

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

"In great numbers, the Oktoberfesters were streaming past, the women in cinched dirndls and wenchy blouses, the men in suède or leather breeches laced just below the knee, tight jackets studded with medals or badges, and jaunty little hats with feathers, rosettes, cockades."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: inanition

The word of the day is inanition:

1. exhaustion from lack of nourishment; starvation.
2. lack of vigor; lethargy.

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

"On the pavement, Bernhardt erected his tripod and his tilted umbrella, and I prepared myself to enter the usual trance of inanition—forgetting that in this part of Eurasia, at least for now, there was no longer any small talk."

 - Martin Amis, "Oktober", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober)

Word of the day: weft

The word of the day is weft:

1. Textiles. filling (def 5).
2. a woven fabric or garment.

O.E. weft, wefta, from wefan "to weave" (see weave).

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

"The experiments in The Food Lab might not make it past the scrutiny of academic peer review, but the scientific method is proudly on display, flaunting its ability to tease out the weft within the tapestry of cuisine."

 - Eric Schulze, "Parsley, Sage, Thermocouple, and Thyme", November-December 2015 American Scientist (http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/parsley-sage)

Word of the day: cloistral

The word of the day is cloistral:

1. of, pertaining to, or living in a cloister.
2. cloisterlike.

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

"From such cloistral clowning the world sickens."

 - Frederick Soddy, as quoted by Daniel S. Silver in "In Defense of Pure Mathematics: After 75 years, Godfrey Harold Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology still fuels debate over pure versus applied mathematics", November-December 2015 American Scientist (http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2015/6/in-defense-of-pure-mathematics)