word of the day: brome

The word of the day is brome:

any of numerous grasses of the genus Bromus, having flat blades and open clusters of flower spikelets.

< Neo-Latin Brom (us) genus name (< Greek brómos oats) (dictionary.com)

"Some two hundred cows, clustered densely as plush toys in an acrcade game, stood shoulder-deep in orchard grass, brome, purple flowering alfalfa, and lupine."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: bung

The word of the day is bung:

rectum and large intestine (clovegarden.com)

"In a garden strung with fairy lights, watching the sun set on Mt. Shasta, I ate a sausage, packed in a pig bung, which had cured for three months in a nineteen-forties root cellar."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: tonnato

The word of the day is tonnato:

a sauce made from tuna traditionally served with cold sliced veal (epicurious.com)

"Days with Fernald, a friend of hers told me, start with bacon and end in chicken liver.  Her idea of road food is a ziplock full of leftover tonnato made with raw farm eggs and Belcampo top round: a second-tier cut, because the financial model and the corporate ethos depend on using every last bit, and a cow is not made up of filet mignon."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: ombré

The word of the day is ombré:

shaded or graduated in tone: said of a color
French past participle of ombrer, to shade ; from Classical Latin umbrare ; from umbra, shade (dictionary.com)

"Thirty seconds after I met Anya Fernald, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Belcampo, a sustainable-meat company whose ambition is to seduce Americans away from industrial food, she offered me a plate of lamb tartare.  Fernald is thirty-nine and nearly six feet tall, with growing-out ombré hair and the exuberant energy of a team of wayward ponies; we were sitting at the counter of a butcher shop and restaurant she had recently opened in downtown Los Angeles."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Elite meat: a food entrepreneur offers a delicious - but pricey - solution for guilty pleasures", 3 November 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: andesite

 The word of the day is andesite:

A gray, fine-grained volcanic rock. Andesite consists mainly of sodium-rich plagioclase and one or more mafic minerals such as biotite, hornblende, or pyroxene. It often contains small, visible crystals (phenocrysts) of plagioclase. It is the fine-grained equivalent of diorite. 
1840-50; named after Andes (dictionary.com)


"McInerney showed him pictures of andesite.
"'Local rock?' Ban wanted to know.
"McInerney and Maltz had a long conversation about wood, rocks, glass, sun, and snow, during which they excitedly presented Ban with images on cameras, phones, and an iPad, and in the project book for McInerney's site."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 The New Yorker

word of the day: tatami

The word of the day is tatami:

noun

1. (in Japanese houses) any of a number of thick, woven straw mats of uniform dimensions, about three feet by six feet (91 cm by 183 cm), the placing of which determines the dimensions of an interior.

1895-1900; < Japanese, noun use of v.: to fold up (dictionary.com)

"Maltz, who was also living in Japan that year, in the only tatami room in the Bans' Western-style house, started to view him as 'the Pied Piper of architecture.'"

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 The New Yorker 

word of the day: plexus

The word of the day is plexus:

noun

1. a network, as of nerves or blood vessels.

2. any complex structure containing an intricate network of parts

1675-85; < Neo-Latin: an interweaving, twining = Latin plect(ere) to plait, twine + -tus suffix of v. action (dictionary.com)

 

 

"On August 9th, Ban will mark the public opening of the Aspen Art Museum, his first permanent museum in the United States.  The building, a glass box nested in a lattice screen made from resin-infused paper and topped with a timber truss roof, is an astonishing plexus of materials pushed to their limits."

 

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: janky

The word of the day is janky:

Etymology:  Origin unknown.

U.S. slang (chiefly in African-American usage).

Of poor quality, bad; untrustworthy, suspicious. (OED)

"Eventually, he moved to Los Angeles, and in 2007, through an agency, got a job working for Nicolas Cage and his family as a private chef. While with the Cages, he began to assemble the pieces to build Wolvesmouth: the table, the chairs, china, glasses, and flatware. “I didn’t want to do it janky,” he told me."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Toques from underground: The rise of the secret supper club", 3 December 2012 The New Yorker

Word of the day: pool

The word of the day is pool:

< French poule collective stakes in a game (1665, with reference to the card game reversis; now especially in billards (1832), also in betting (1856, originally on horses)), of uncertain origin, perhaps a transferred use of poule hen (see pull n.²), perhaps with allusion to contemporary collocations or proverbs.


Journalism (orig. and chiefly U.S.). A group of selected reporters and photographers who have special access to news sources, esp. in government or the military. (OED)



"'I rang in as normal, filing, and my editor said, "Sit down. Something quite amazing has happened," ' he recalled. Jobson flew to Los Angeles in anticipation of the arrival of William and Kate, who were landing at LAX Friday afternoon. 'I refused to do that as my last pool,' he said. 'I’m not going to come all this way to stand on the bloody tarmac."'

 - Dana Goodyear, "Shoe Leather", 25 July 2011 The New Yorker

I'm not convinced that was the right definition, but it was the best I could find.

Word of the day: recherché

The word of the day is recherché:

< French recherché affected, unnatural (1580 in Middle French), desirable, prized (1601 or earlier), unusual, well-crafted (1690), use as adjective of past participle of rechercherresearch v.¹

   Rare, choice, exotic; far-fetched, obscure. (OED)

"The two share a facial-hair style, and a habit of closing their eyes when explaining something recherché."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Hollywood Shadows: A cure for blocked screenwriters", 21 March 2011 The New Yorker