Word of the day: blowzy

The word of the day is blowzy:

1. having a coarse, ruddy complexion.
2. disheveled in appearance; unkempt.

c.1770, from obsolete blouze (1570s), "wench, beggar's trull," perhaps originally a cant term. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blowzy)

"One of the funny, but doom-laden, elements in 'A Christmas Garland' is the mockery of Glasworthy's and Bennett's loquaciousness, which carried within it the seeds of the idea that anything big and long is blowsy."

 - Adam Gopnik, "The Comparable Max: Max Beerbohm's cult of the diminutive", 3 August 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-comparable-max)

No, I'm not convinced that's what he meant.

Word of the day: po-faced

The word of the day is po-faced:

—adjective Chiefly British.

1. having an overly serious demeanor or attitude; humorless. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/po-faced)

"The tones tend to reappear as needed: 'Zuleika Dobson' (1911) is, with its po-faced climax of mass suicide among the Oxford undergraduates in despair at Zuleika's beauty, very much in the first, aesthetic manner."

- Adam Gopnik, "The Comparable Max: Max Beerbohm's cult of the diminutive", 3 August 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-comparable-max)

Unrelated, but I'd like to note here that I think the sole reason he wrote this article was so that he could say, "Reading Max, you can sense why Paris, in that last great exhalation of writing before the Great War, remade human consciousness, while London, during the same time, remade only its manners.  Dandies, it seems, are dandy; but belles-lettres is better."

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: querulous

The word of the day is querulous:

adjective

1. full of complaints; complaining.

2. characterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish: a querulous tone; constant querulous reminders of things to be done.

< Latin querulus, equivalent to quer(ī) to complain (dictionary.com)


"People are made for walking, but we are not very good at it; our backs and arches, like querulous cabinet ministers, at first complain and then resign."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Heaven's gaits: what we do when we walk", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker

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: crotchet

The word of the day is crotchet:

 

Etymology:  Middle English < French crochet hook, diminutive of croche crook, hook: see crochet n.

I. = crocket n.¹ 

1. Archit. = crocket n.¹ 2; also transf. to buds or branches. 

2. = crocket n.¹ 1. Obs. (Cf. French crochet.) In mod. dial. cratchet = the crown of the head.

II. A hook or hooked instrument. 

3. A small hook, esp. for fastening things; an ornamental hook serving as a brooch or fastening.

4. Surg.a. A hook-like instrument.

b. spec. an instrument employed in obstetrical surgery. 

5.a. A hook used in reaping: see quot. 1833. 

b. A hook fastened with straps on the back of a porter for carrying parcels.  [= French crochet.]

6. A natural hook-like organ or process: spec.a. ‘The tushe, tuske, or fang of a beast’ (Cotgrave)  [French crochet] . 

b. One of the minute hooks or claws on the prolegs of many lepidopterous larvæ.

c. Anat. The hook-like extremity of the superior occipito-temporal convolution of the brain.

III. Derived and figurative senses. 

7.a. Music. A symbol for a note of half the value of a minim, made in the form of a stem with a round (formerly lozenge-shaped) black head; a note of this value. Also attrib. 

b. Often used with playful allusion to sense 9. 

8. A square bracket in typography; = crook n. 7: formerly also called hook. Obs.

9.a. A whimsical fancy; a perverse conceit; a peculiar notion on some point (usually considered unimportant) held by an individual in opposition to common opinion. 

b. A fanciful device, mechanical, artistic, or literary. 

10. Fortification. A passage formed by an indentation in the glacis opposite a traverse, connecting the portions of the covered way on both sides of the traverse. 

11. Mil. ‘The arrangement of a body of troops, either forward or rearward, so as to form a line nearly perpendicular to the general line of battle’ (Webster 1864). Obs. 

12. quasi-adv. Oddly. nonce-use. (OED)

"He became an ever more convinced Copernican, but he had his crotchets.  He never accepted Kepler's proof that the orbits of the planets in the Copernican system had to be ellipses, because he loved the perfection of circles; and he was sure that the movement of the tides was the best proof that the earth was turning, since the ocean water on the earth's surface was so obviously sloshing around as it turned."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Moon man: What Galileo saw", 11 & 18 February 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: gesso

The word of the day is gesso:

Etymology:  < Italian gesso < Latin gypsum : see gypsum n. 

1. Plaster of Paris; gypsum. 

a. in the native state (obs.). 

b. as prepared for use in painting and sculpture. 

c. A prepared surface of plaster as a ground for painting. 

2. A work of art executed in plaster. Obs. (OED)

"Part of Galileo’s genius was to transfer the spirit of the Italian Renaissance in the plastic arts to the mathematical and observational ones. He took the competitive, empirical drive with which Florentine painters had been looking at the world and used it to look at the night sky. The intellectual practices of doubting authority and trying out experiments happened on lutes and with tempera on gesso before they turned toward the stars. You had only to study the previous two centuries of Florentine drawing, from the rocky pillars of Masaccio to the twisting perfection of Michelangelo, to see how knowledge grew through a contest in observation."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Moon man: What Galileo saw", 11 & 18 February 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: tempera

The word of the day is tempera:

Etymology:  < Italian tempera, in phr. pingere a tempera to paint in distemper.

The method of painting in distemper: see distemper n.² 1.

Also the paint used in this method, usu. an emulsion in which pigment dissolved in water is mixed with egg yolk, or any of various gums, glues, or oils.  (OED)

"Part of Galileo’s genius was to transfer the spirit of the Italian Renaissance in the plastic arts to the mathematical and observational ones. He took the competitive, empirical drive with which Florentine painters had been looking at the world and used it to look at the night sky. The intellectual practices of doubting authority and trying out experiments happened on lutes and with tempera on gesso before they turned toward the stars. You had only to study the previous two centuries of Florentine drawing, from the rocky pillars of Masaccio to the twisting perfection of Michelangelo, to see how knowledge grew through a contest in observation."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Moon man: What Galileo saw", 11 & 18 February 2013 The New Yorker

some of the best advice Adam Gopnik has ever received

"Trying to decide whether to major in psychology or art history, I had gone to his office to see what he thought.  He squinted and lowered his head.  'Is this a hard choice for you?' he demanded.  Yes! I cried.  'Oh,' he said, springing back up cheerfully.  'In that case, it doesn't matter.  If it's a hard decision, then there's always lots to be said on both sides, so either choice is likely to be good in its way.  Hard choices are always unimportant.'"

 - Adam Gopnik, "Music to your ears: The quest for 3-D recording and other mysteries of sound", 28 January 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: zek

The word of the day is zek:

Etymology:  < Russian, probably representing the pronunciation of z/k, abbrev. of zaklyuchënnyĭ prisoner. 

In Russian-speaking contexts: (originally) a person confined in a forced labour camp in the U.S.S.R. (hist.); (now) a person held in a Russian prison. (OED)

"At the same time, Snyder also asks us to extend our circles of compassion, making us see that the child dying in the gas chamber was no different from the one being starved to death in the siege of Leningrad, or that the fate of the zek in the Gulag was not very different from that of the Russian prisoner in a German lager."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: loess

The word of the day is loess:

Etymology:  < German dialect lösz.

Geol.

 A deposit of fine yellowish-grey loam which occurs extensively from north-central Europe to eastern China, in the American mid-west, and elsewhere, esp. in the basins of large rivers, and which is usually considered to be composed of material transported by the wind during and after the Glacial Period. Also attrib. (OED)

"Kaplan's big picture includes the idea that a natural geographic force has driven European power over the centuries from the arid Mediterranean toward the more fertile north, and we hear about the north's rich, mineral 'loess earth.'"

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: pilothouse

The word of the day is pilothouse:

Etymology:  < pilot n. + house n.¹ and int.

Naut.

1. A house in which a pilot lives or stays. Now chiefly hist. 

2. The wheelhouse of a ship or boat. (OED)

"The West made history, but the East drove it.  Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Faces, places, spaces: the renaissance of geographic history", 29 October & 5 November The New Yorker

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnsclThe

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6HDnscl

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

The West made history, but the East drove it. Though Europe saw itself as the pilothouse of fate, in truth it was more like a fort, which had been shaped by the constant assault of those horsemen.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/10/29/121029crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz2D6H9DRj1

word of the day: oleaginous

The word of the day is oleaginous:

Etymology:  < Middle French, French oléagineux of the nature of oil (1314 in Old French in an isolated attestation, compare also Middle French oligineux , oleogineux ), producing or yielding oil (1690) < classical Latin oleāginus of or relating to the olive tree, in post-classical Latin also relating to oil (5th or 6th cent.; alteration of earlier oleāgineus of or relating to the olive tree, in post-classical Latin also oily (4th cent.) < olea olive tree (related to olīva olive n.¹) + -āgineus (in farrāgineus , corresponding to farr- , far corn: see farrago n.)) + French -eux -ous suffix. 

1.a. Having the nature or properties of oil; containing oil or an oily substance; oily, fatty, greasy. 

b. Producing or yielding oil. 

2. fig. Exaggeratedly and distastefully complimentary; obsequious, unctuous. (OED)

"Joe Biden watching Ryan, meanwhile, put me in mind of nothing so much as the great, grouchy, aged Eddie Albert in Elaine May’s matchless original, “The Heartbreak Kid,” narrowing his eyes in disbelief as he listens to the slick, oleaginous (and already married!) Charles Grodin courting his beautiful blond daughter: “ I heard everything you said… and I will tell you, quite honestly, I was very impressed. Very impressed. And I think I can also say, quite honestly… I have never heard such a crock of horseshit in my life.”"

 - Adam Gopnik, "Of babies and beans: Paul Ryan on abortion", 12 October 2012 News Desk

Word of the day: shpritz

The word of the day is shpritz:

spurt, to squirt, to sprinkle (Yiddish Dictionary Online)



"This became clear the other day, when the two creators of “The Phantom Tollbooth” were briefly sequestered in a Manhattan living room to talk about their work, and why it has lasted. Feiffer and Juster, both born in 1929, are like a pair of wryly benevolent uncles, with Norton the dreamy, crinkle-eyed, soft-spoken uncle who gives you the one piece of good advice you never forget, and Jules the wisecracking uncle who never lets up on your foibles but was happy to have you crash on his couch that night you just couldn’t bear going home. They interrupted, teased, and shpritzed each other as they recalled having blundered into a classic."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Broken Kingdom: Fifty years of 'The Phantom Tollbooth'", 17 October 2011 The New Yorker

There's a figurative sense that the Yiddish Dictionary Online doesn't convey.  OED, you fail me again.

Word of the day: pentimento

The word of the day is pentimento:

< Italian pentimento repentance, remorse (a1257), change of opinion (1630), correction (a1827) < pentirsi to repent (a1250; < classical Latin paenitēre: see penitent adj. and n.) + Italian -mento-ment suffix.

A sign or trace of an alteration in a literary or artistic work; (spec. in Painting) a visible trace of a mistake or an earlier composition seen through later layers of paint on a canvas. (OED)


"Nothing had prepared me for how one could fix a line merely by rubbing it out and implanting another line a bare thirty-second of an inch above or below.  The choice of the first line could be freely made, unbounded, improvisational.  For you could always erase and remake; the eraser was the best friend a would-be artist had.  And the erased line, still barely visible beneath, had an eloquence of its own, since it smudged the space in a way that suggested pentimenti, second thoughts, a hazy penumbra of light and shadow.  Light leaks into the world, and an erased line with a line above suggests that leakage.  Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Life studies: what I learned when I learned to draw", 27 June 2011 The New Yorker