word of the day: taiga

The word of the day is taiga:

the coniferous evergreen forests of subarctic lands, covering vast areas of northern North America and Eurasia.

< Russian taĭgá (dictionary.com)

 

 

"You may come upon a question mark in the most intimate places - midsentence, for instance, and with others of its kind, ganging up on some innocent situation and interrogating it to death.  Sprinkling question marks so liberally within a sentence, with no capital letters to make you think you've left it, emphasizes or mimics the thought process where such a series is appropriate....

 

Is the taiga everything you were hoping for?  Is it pure? distant? sublime?  Are the musk oxen still in their winter coats?  Are they talking to themselves? to the BBC audiences? to us?"

 

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The New Well-Tempered Sentence 

word of the day: ressentiment

The word of the day is ressentiment:

noun

1. any cautious, defeatist, or cynical attitude based on the belief that the individual and human institutions exist in a hostile or indifferent universe or society.

2. an oppressive awareness of the futility of trying to improve one's status in life or in society.

 

1943, a word from Nietzsche, from German ressentiment, from French ressentiment. The French word also was borrowed as obsolete English resentiment (16c.) "feeling or sense (of something); state of being deeply affected by (something); resentment." (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Nearly a quarter century after the fall of the empire, Putin has unleashed an ideology of ressentiment.  It has been chorussed by those who, in 1991, despaired of the loss not of Communist ideology but of imperial greatness, and who, ever since, have lived with what Russians so often refer to as 'phantom-limb syndrome': the pain of missing Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Baltic states; the pain of diminishment.  They want revenge for their humiliation."

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: knout

The word of the day is knout:

noun

a stout whip used formerly in Russia as an instrument of punishment

from Russian knut, of Scandinavian origin; compare Old Norse knūtr knot (dictionary.com)

 

 

"He was determined to help establish liberal values and institutions - civil society, free speech, democratic norms - in a land that, for a thousand years, had known only absolutism, empire, and the knout.  'That's me,' he says even now.  'Mr. Anti-Cynicism.  Mr. It Will All Work Out.'"

 

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker