Word of the day: farrago

The word of the day is farrago:

1. a confused mixture; hodgepodge; medley

1632, from L. farrago "medley, mix of grains for animal feed," from far "corn."

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

"The nub is an investigation, presented by Dan Rather (Robert Redford), into the circumstances surrounding George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.  By the end of the ensuing farrago, as the producer of the show, Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett), points out, the central question—did Bush get an easy ride, insuring that he would never be sent to Vietnam?—has been all but obscured in a blizzard of extraneous details."

 - Anthony Lane, "Making the case: 'Bridge of Spies' and 'Truth'", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/making-the-case)

Word of the day: chaw

The word of today is chaw:

— verb (used with object), verb (usedwithout object), noun Dialect .

1. chew.

1530, unexplained phonetic variant of chew; the noun meaning "that which is chewed" (esp. a quid of tobacco) first recorded 1709.

"All the hair she had gathered at work would be gone by the next morning, and Ogechi had no choice but to strap the child to her back and allow it to chaw on her dwindling nape."

 - Lesley Nneka Arimah, "Who Will Greet You At Home", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chaw)

Word of the day: raffia

The word of the day is raffia:

1. a fiber obtained from the leaves of the raffia palm, used for tying plants and other objects and for making mats, baskets, hats, and the like.

(1729, rofia, from Malagasy rafia. Modern form is attested from 1882; also raphia (1866).)

"Two basket weavers sat in the back row with woven raffia babies in their laps.  One had plain raffia streaked with blues and greens, while the other's baby was entirely red, and every passenger admired them."

 - Lesley Nneka Arimah, "Who Will Greet You At Home", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/who-will-greet-you-at-home)

Word of the day: moin moin

The word of the day is moin moin:

Moimoi or Moyi-Moyi is a Nigerian steamed bean pudding made from a mixture of washed and peeled black-eyed peas, onions and fresh ground peppers (usually a combination of bell peppers and chili or scotch bonnet). It is a protein-rich food that is a staple in Nigeria. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moin_moin)

"Women like her had to form their children out of sturdier, more practical material to withstand the dents and scrapes they came with a life like hers.  Her mother had formed her from mud and twigs and wrapped her limbs tightly with leaves, like moin moin: pedestrian items that had produced a pedestrian girl."

 - Lesley Nneka Arimah, "Who Will Greet You At Home", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/who-will-greet-you-at-home)

Word of the day: danfo

The word of the day is danfo:

Iconic yellow buses in Lagos (http://www.nairaland.com/2508658/10-type-nigerians-meet-danfo)

"Yarn had been a foolish choice, she knew, the stuff for women of leisure, who could cradle wool in the comfort of their own cars and in secure houses devoid of loose nails.  Not for an assistant hairdresser who took danfo to work if she had money, walked if she didn't, and lived in an 'apartment' that amounted to a room she could clear in three large steps."

 - Lesley Nneka Arimah, "Who Will Greet You At Home", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/who-will-greet-you-at-home)

Word and molecule of the day: amitriptyline

The word and molecule of the day is amitriptyline:

Tricyclic antidepressant with anticholinergic and sedative properties. Amitriptyline hydrochloride appears to prevent the re-uptake of norepinephrine and serotonin at nerve terminals, thus potentiating the action of these neurotransmitters. Amitriptyline also appears to antagonize cholinergic and alpha-1 adrenergic responses to bioactive amines. (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/11065#section=Top)

"See those hummingbirds?

"I painted those with a silver-tipped paintbrush and an unopened bottle of mint-cream amitriptyline"

 - Michael Dickman, "Green migraine", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/green-migraine)

Word of the day: cupidinous

The word of the day is cupidinous:

1. eager or excessive desire, especially to possess something; greed; avarice.

mid-15c., from Anglo-Fr. cupidite, from M.Fr. cupidité, from L. cupiditas "passionate desire," from cupidus "eager, passionate," from cupere "to desire" (perhaps cognate with Skt. kupyati "bubbles up, becomes agitated," O.Slav. kypeti "to boil," Lith. kupeti "to boil over"). Despite the erotic sense of the Latin word, in English cupidity originally, and still especially, means "desire for wealth." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cupidinous)

"Van Hove's 'Roman Tragedies' eliminates the first scene of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' which includes a voluptuous embrace and depicts 'the triple pillar of the world / transform'd into a strumpet's fool.'  But this eluded verse is later enacted, during Antony's passionate leave-taking of Cleopatra before battle.  As Antony dresses, the couple laugh and fumble cupidinously; they kiss passionately for a full minute as the music—Bob Dylan singing 'Not Dark Yet'—surrounds them, and Antony's advisers look sternly on."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Theatre laid bare: Ivo van Hove's raw productions bring out the elemental drama of classic works", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/theatre-laid-bare)

Word of the day: lath

The word of the day is lath:

1. a thin, narrow strip of wood, used with other strips to form latticework, a backing for plaster or stucco, a support for slates and other roofing materials, etc.
2. a group or quantity of such strips.
3. work consisting of such strips.
4. wire mesh or the like used in place of wooden laths as a backing for plasterwork.
5. a thin, narrow, flat piece of wood used for any purpose.

O.E. *laððe, variant of lætt "lath," apparently from P.Gmc. *laþþo (cf. O.N. latta, M.Du., Ger. latte "lath," M.H.G. lade "plank," which is source of Ger. Laden "counter," hence, "shop").

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

"When Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America: Millennium Approaches' opened on Broadway, in 1993, in a production directed by George C. Wolfe, the play ended with a winged angel crashing into a dying man's bedroom from above, shattering lath and plaster."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Theatre laid bare: Ivo van Hove's raw productions bring out the elemental drama of classic works", 26 October 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/theatre-laid-bare)

Word of the day: veridical

The word of the day is veridical:

1. truthful; veracious.
2. corresponding to facts; not illusory; real; actual; genuine.

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

"Invoking the relevant science, he shows that torture undermines the very neurocognitive mechanisms requisite for recalling veridical information from memory."

 - Richard J. McNally, "Cruel and unuseful punishment: Psycological studies call into question the efficacy of enhanced interrogation techniques", Science 350:284 (16 October 2015) (http://m.sciencemag.org/content/350/6258/284)

Word of the day: abattoir

The word of the day is abattoir:

1. a slaughterhouse.

"slaughterhouse for cows," 1820, from Fr. abattre "to beat down" (see abate).

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

"European farmers have little experience raising insects, but Grant didn't have to start from scratch.  Elm farm has produced bluebottle larvae for decades, as bait for recreational fishers.  They grow on abattoir waste—kidneys, livers, and hearts, glistening in nauseating reds, greens, and browns.  Within a few days they're covered by thousands of maggots, as if they had come back to writhing, pulsing life."

 - Kai Kupferdchmidt, "Buzz Food: Feeding insect meal to livestock could help the planet, but will it be good for people?", Science 350:267 (16 October 2015)

Phrase of the day: folie a deux

The phrase of the day is folie à deux:

1. the sharing of delusional ideas by two people who are closely associated.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/folie+a+deux)

"It was a perfect folie à deux—endless funds fueling limitless enthusiasm and vice versa.  The more Spiegelman looked for retroviruses in cancer cells, the more he found, and the more funds were sent his way."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: fungate

The word of the day is fungate:

To grow rapidly like a fungus.

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

"Many of the patients counted as 'alive' had long been discharged to terminal-care facilities with advanced, fungating lesions of breast cancer, presumably to die, with no designated follow-up."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: prodrome

The word of the day is prodrome:

1. a premonitory symptom.

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

"The eradication of H. pylori infection in young men and women reduced the incidence of gastric cancer.  In older patients, in whom chronic gastritis had smoldered for several decades, eradication of the infection had little effect.  In these elderly patients, presumably the chronic inflammation had already progressed to a point that its eradication made no difference.  For cancer prevention to work, Auerbach's march—the prodrome of cancer—had to be halted early."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: semiotics

The word of the day is semiotics:

1. the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.
2. a general theory of signs and symbolism, usually divided into the branches of pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics.

study of signs and symbols with special regard to function and origin, 1880, from Gk. semeiotikos "observant of signs," adj. form of semeiosis "indication," from semeioun "to signal," from sema "sign."

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

"But since the FTC's role was to regulate tobacco advertisements, it could certainly investigate whether 'filtered' cigarettes were truly as safe as advertised.  It was a brave, innovative attempt to bell the cat, but as with so much of tobacco regulation, the actual hearings that ensued were like a semiotic circus.  Clarence Little was asked to testify, and with typically luminous audacity, he argued that the question of testing the efficacy of filters was immaterial because, after all, there was nothing harmful to be filtered anyway."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: anergy

The word of the day is anergy:

1. Pathology. deficiency of energy.
2. Immunology. lack of immunity to an antigen.

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

"In a nation obsessed with cancer, the attribution of a vast preponderance of a major cancer to a single, preventable cause might have been expected to provoke a powerful and immediate response.  But front-page coverage notwithstanding, the reaction in Washington was extraordinarily anergic."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: gray eminence

The word of the day is gray eminence:

1. a person who wields unofficial power, especially through another person and often surreptitiously or privately.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gray+eminence)

"Once again, Bradford Hill, the éminence grise of epidemiology, proposed a solution to this impasse."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Phrase of the day: bell the cat

The phrase of the day is bell the cat:

19. bell the cat, to attempt something formidable or dangerous.

"By the early 1950s, though, cigarette ads, and cigarette brands, were being 'designed' for segmented groups: urban workers, housewives, women, immigrants, African-Americans—and, to preemptively bell the medical cat—doctors themselves."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: fulminant

The word of the day is fulminant: 

1. occurring suddenly and with great intensity or severity
2. Pathology. developing or progressing suddenly

c.1600, from Fr. fulminant or directly from L. fulminantem, prp. of fulminare (see fulminate). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fulminant)

"Jenny, Goldstein realized, 'has leukemia and is currently in the hospital because she developed jaundice.  Her eyeballs are still yellow'—presaging fulminant liver failure."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: obversion

The word of the day is obversion:

3. Logic. a form of inference in which a negative proposition is obtained from an affirmative, or vice versa, as “None of us is immortal” is obtained by obversion from “All of us are mortal.”

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

"Baillie's book, written for surgeons and anatomists, was the obverse of Vesalius's project: if Vesalius had mapped out 'normal' anatomy, Baillie mapped the body in its diseased, abnormal state."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

Word of the day: venesection

The word of the day is venesection:

—noun Surgery.

1. phlebotomy.

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

 

"In the course of explaining the opinion of the divine Hippocrates and Galen, I happened to delineate the veins on a chart, think that thus I might be able easily to demonstrate what Hippocrates understood by the expression kat' 'i'xiu, for you know how much dissension and controversy on venesection was stirred up, even among the learned."

 - Andreas Vesalius, as quoted by Siddhartha Mukherjee in The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: ipecac

The word of the day is ipecac:

1. the dried root of a shrubby South American plant, Cephaelis ipecacuanha, of the madder family.
2. the plant itself.
3. a drug consisting of the dried roots of this plant, used as an emetic, purgative, etc., and as the source of emetine.

1788, borrowing via Port. of a shortened form of Tupi ipecacuana (1682), a medicinal plant of Brazil, the Indian word said to mean "small plant causing vomit."

"The apothecary thus soon filled up with an enormous list of remedies for cancer: tincture of lead, extracts of arsenic, boar's tooth, fox lungs, rasped ivory, hulled castor, ground white-coral, ipecac, senna, and a smattering of purgatives and laxatives."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: abstruse

The word of the day is abstruse:

1. hard to understand; recondite; esoteri
2. Obsolete. secret; hidden.

c.1600, from L. abstrusus, pp. of abstrudere "conceal," lit. "to thrust away," from ab- "away" + trudere "to thrust, push" (see extrusion). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/abstruse) 

"Hippocrates had once abstrusely opined that cancer was 'best left untreated, since patients live longer that way.'"

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: mandala

The word of the day is mandala:

 

1. Oriental Art. a schematized representation of the cosmos, chiefly characterized by a concentric configuration of geometric shapes, each of which contains an image of a deity or an attribute of a deity.
2. (in Jungian psychology) a symbol representing the effort to reunify the self.

1859, from Skt. mandala "disc, circle."

"In the biology classroom of college instructor Caryn Babaian, students learn about the interconnectedness of diverse life forms by seeing ecosystems in the form of mandalas."

 - September–October 2015 American Scientist (http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2015/5/visualizing-biological-networks-as-mandalas)

Word of the day: truculent

The word of the day is truculent:

1. fierce; cruel; savagely brutal.
2. brutally harsh; vitriolic; scathing.
3. aggressively hostile; belligerent.

c.1540, from L. truculentus "fierce, savage," from trux (gen. trucis) "fierce, wild." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/truculent)

 

"Few acts these days make a show of shunning commercial success, perhaps because, after a decade of turmoil, the corporate-pop monolith no longer seems so monolithic.  Lady Gaga blazed a trail for truculent pop stars by treating her own celebrity as an evolving art project."

 - Kelefa Sanneh, "Pop for misfits: Can a former noise musician become a star?", 28 September 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/pop-for-misfits)

Word of the day: obsolescent

The word of the day is obsolescent:

1. becoming obsolete; passing out of use, as a word: an obsolescent term.
2. becoming outdated or outmoded, as machinery or weapons.
3. Biology. gradually disappearing or imperfectly developed, as vestigial organs.

1755, from L. obsolescentum (nom. obsolescens), prp. of obsolescere "fall into disuse" (see obsolete). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obsolescent)

"I often write in my diary the obsolete poem of self

with my obsolescent pen and ink."

 - Stanley Moss, "The poem of self", 28 September 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-poem-of-self-poetry-stanley-moss)