word of the day: whing

The word of the day is whing:

Etymology:  Imitative.

 

A word expressing a high-pitched ringing sound. (OED)

"After the final letter was published on Nov. 22, 1997, Rushdie told journalist (and mutual friend of le Carré’s) William Shawcross, 'If le Carré wants to get his friends to do a little proxy whinging, that’s his business. I’ve said what I have to say.'"

 - Prachi Gupta, "Salman Rushdie and John le Carré reconcile after 15-year feud", 12 November 2012 Salon

HT: Wormbook

word of the day: whimbrel

The word of the day is whimbrel:

Etymology:  ? < whimp v. or whimper v., from the bird's cry. Compare for the ending dotterel, titterel.
Applied to various small species of curlew, esp. the European Numenius phæopus. (OED)


"Birds are sometimes blown astray, but many apparently have a coping strategy. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the habitat of breeding colonies in Louisiana's Pearl River Basin, for instance, but bird numbers held steady, researchers noted in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. Some birds are especially adept: Scientists at the College of William & Mary Center for Conservation Biology tracked a migratory shorebird, a whimbrel, as it flew through Hurricane Irene in 2011."

 - Marissa Fessenden, "Myth-Conceptions: 5 Falsehoods about Superstorm Sandy", 7 November 2012 Scientific American

word of the day: philodendron

The word of the day is philodendron:

Etymology:  < scientific Latin Philodendron, genus name (H. W. Schott 1829, in Wien. Zeitschr. 3 780) < Hellenistic Greek ϕιλόδενδρον , neuter of ϕιλόδενδρος fond of trees ( < ancient Greek ϕιλο- philo- comb. form + δένδρον tree: see dendro- comb. form), in reference to the epiphytic habit of most members of the genus.(Show Less)

 

A genus of tropical American evergreen plants (family Araceae), chiefly lianas, some species and hybrids of which are cultivated as house plants; (also philodendron) a plant of this genus.  (OED)

"Chlorophyll C₅₅H₇₂N₄O₅Mg

differs from human blood

only by substitution of one

atom of magnesium

in philodendron

for the single atom of iron

in Keats."

 - Stephen Sandy, "Alchemy", 29 October & 5 November 2012 The New Yorker

For comparison, here's chlorophyll:

And here's heme:

You see how similar they are to one another: not quite identical, but I'm willing to give that to poetic license.

word of the day: appurtenance

The word of the day is appurtenance:

Etymology:  < Anglo-Norman apurtenance (12th cent. in Littré), Old French aper- and, regularly, apartenance (compare Provençal apartenensa , Italian appartenenza ) < late Latin appertinēntia , < appertinēre : see appertain v. and -ance suffix. The second vowel has varied, as a , e , o , u , but the last is now the accepted spelling. For instances assimilated to appertain , see appertainance n. Formerly often used unchanged in the plural. 

 

1. Law and gen. A thing that belongs to another, a ‘belonging’; a minor property, right, or privilege, belonging to another more important, and passing in possession with it; an appendage.

2. A thing which naturally and fitly forms a subordinate part of, or belongs to, a whole system; a contributory adjunct, an accessory. 

3. esp. in pl. The mechanical accessories employed in any function or complex scheme; apparatus, gear. Also fig. 

4. The fact or state of appertaining.  (OED)

"Sibyl Hathaway, the indomitable Dame of Sark, had ruled the island for forty-seven years, after inheriting the title from her father, whose grandmother bought it off the Le Pelley family, which had acquired it in 1730 from creditors of the descendants of the nobleman Hélier de Carteret, to whom Elizabeth I, in 1565, first granted the fief 'with all its rights, members, liberties, and appurtenances, and all and each of its castles, fortresses, houses, buildings, structures, ruined or collapsed with age, lands, meadows, pastures, commons, wastes, woods, waters... vicarages, chapels and churches of every kind,' on the condition that he insure its continuous habitation by forty armed men."

 - Lauren Collins, "Sark Spring: a feudal feud in the Channel Islands", 29 October & 5 November 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: trammel

The word of the day is trammel:

Etymology:  In sense 1, < Old French tramail (c1220 in Godefroy Compl.), modern French trémail a fishing- or fowling-net, with three layers of meshes, = Italian tramaglio, Spanish trasmallo, Portuguese trasmalho < late popular Latin tramaculum for tri-, tremaculum (in Salic Law, Hessels, Cod. 1, xxvii. 20, tremaclem, v.rr. tremalem, tremagilo, tramaculam, trimaclem, tremagolum, tremachlum, etc.) a kind of fishing-net, generally explained as < Latin tri- three + macula mesh. In the Romanic languages the prefix appears to have been taken as = tra-, Latin trans.

 

I.  1.a. A long narrow fishing-net, set vertically with floats and sinkers; consisting of two ‘walls’ of large-meshed netting, between which is a net of fine mesh, loosely hung. More fully trammel-net n.The fish enters through the large mesh on one side, drives the fine netting through the large mesh on the other, and is thus trapped in a pocket or bag of the fine netting. Also sometimes applied to other kinds of fishing nets.

 b. A fowling-net; = trammel-net n. b. 

II.  2. A hobble to prevent a horse from straying or kicking; also, a contrivance for teaching a horse to amble, consisting of lines and straps connecting the fore and hind feet on each side, with a strap over the back to which both lines were fastened for support. Obs. 

3. transf. and fig. Anything that hinders or impedes free action; anything that confines, restrains, fetters, or shackles. Chiefly pl. 

4. Mech. An instrument for describing ellipses (French compas à ellipse), consisting of a cross with two grooves at right angles, in which slide pins carrying a beam or ruler with a pencil; also applied to the beam-compass (beam-compass n. at beam n.¹ Compounds 2). Also pl. 

So called because the motion of the beam carrying the pencil is trammelled or confined by the restriction of the pins to the grooves.

 III.  5. A series of rings or links, or other device, to bear a crook at different heights over the fire; the whole being suspended from a transverse bar (the crook-tree), built in the chimney, or from a small crane or gallows, the vertical member of which turns in sockets in the jamb and lintel. Now local Eng. and U.S. 

IV.  6. pl. The plaits, braids, or tresses of a woman's hair; in quot. 1594   with play on sense 1.  (OED)

"The mighty difference engine and its cogitating cogs has unleashed the hitherto dormant power of the mathematical algorithm, and the glorious kingdom of Great Britain thus becomes every day more rational and freer of error!

"The inventive faculties of the scientific classes fling off their trammels, filling the skies with airships!"

 - Sydney Padua, "User Experience"

word of the day: pith

The word of the day is pith:

Etymology:  < pith n. 

1. intr. To supply a person with strength or courage. Obs. rare^—1. 

2. trans. To pierce, sever, or destroy the upper spinal cord or brainstem of (an animal), so as to cause death or insensibility. 

3. trans. To remove or extract the pith from. Also fig.  (OED)

"It's like something's been scooped right out of me, right at the centre...that's what they do with frogs, isn't it?  They scoop out the centre, the spinal cord, they pith them...  That's what I am, pithed, like a frog...  Step up, come and see Chris, the first pithed human being.  She's no proprioception, no sense of herself - disembodied Chris, the pithed girl!"

 - Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

word of the day: kulak

The word of the day is kulak:

Etymology:  < Russian kulák fist, tight-fisted person, plural kulaki, < Turki ḳul hand.

 

In pre-Revolution Russia, a well-to-do farmer or trader; in the Soviet Union, a peasant-proprietor working for his own profit. Also transf. (OED)

"But my grandfather's big nose and wary drinker's eyes keep breaking through
the mask and posing an alternative enigma: what if his surplus value
led him not to solidarity with the worker but instead made him into a kulak
who must be killed?"

 - Thomas Sleigh, "A short history of communism and the enigma of surplus value",  8 October 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: immiserate

The word of the day is immiserate:

1.  to make miserable.

2.  to cause to become impoverished. (dictionary.com)  (not sure why the OED doesn't have an entry on this, if it really is a real word)

"The final appearance at the United Nations General Assembly by the Iranian President, who will leave office after the elections next summer, reprised all the familiar numbers: anti-Israeli statements to the press; insinuations that the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job; a long sitdown with a TV interviewer (this time, Piers Morgan), in which he gleefully parried questions about Iran’s nuclear program and the threat of an attack from Israel; and a sanctimonious speech to the General Assembly, minus those delegates who walk out or absent themselves, about the perfidy of certain powerful Western nations that arrogate to themselves the authority to police a world they have aggressed, oppressed, and immiserated."

 - Laura Secor, "Road Show", 8 October 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: pobla

The word of the day is pobla

Not entirely sure, but I'm guessing it's short for either

población: feminine noun 1. town, city (ciudad); village (pueblo) 2. population (personas, animales)  3. settlement, populating (acción de poblar) (spanishdict.com) or poblado: noun 1. Town, village, or place inhabited (habitado). (m) (spanishdict.com)

"Within a month, a couple of thousand more infections were reported.  It didn't rip through the pobla like the dengues or the poxes.  More of a slow leprous spread."

 - Junot Díaz, "Monstro", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: culo

The word of the day is culo:

(informal o) (vulgar)2. bum (nalgas) (AmBr), butt (United States) (spanishdict.com)

"These days everybody wants to know what you were doing when the world came to an end.  Fools make up all sorts of vainglorious self-serving plep - but me, I tell the truth.

"I was chasing a girl...

Motherfuckers used to say culo would be the end of us.  Well, for me it really was."

 - Junot Díaz, "Monstro", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: plep

The word of the day is plep:

A word when at first had no definition, merely created to avoid numerals. But as PLEP evolved, and extensive research was done it's been assosiated with pwning noobs as far back as 2000. (Urban Dictionary: I'm not proud of it, but it was the best I could find)

"These days everybody wants to know what you were doing when the world came to an end.  Fools make up all sorts of vainglorious self-serving plep - but me, I tell the truth."

 - Junot Díaz, "Monstro", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: suppurate

The word of the day is suppurate:

Etymology:  < classical Latin suppūrāt-, past participial stem (see -ate suffix³) of suppūrāre to fester under the surface, in post-classical Latin also to bring forth, conceive, generate (late 2nd or early 3rd cent. in Tertullian) < sup- sub- prefix + pūr- , pūs pus n. 

1.a. trans. To cause the formation of pus in or the discharge of pus from (an area of the body); to ripen (an abscess). In early use also: †to cause (material) to become pus (obs.). Now hist. and rare.b. intr. To promote or cause the formation or discharge of pus. Obs.

 2. intr. To form or discharge pus; (of an abscess) to come to a head, to ripen. In early use also: †to become pus (obs.). Also fig. 

3. intr. To exude like pus. Obs. rare.  (OED)

"This new breed of horror magazine had buckets of blood, and viscera to boot, in full-color production stills of mortified bodies stuffed into refrigerators, surveys of charred flesh, foldout posters of suppurating corpses."

 - Colson Whitehead, "A psychotronic childhood: learning from B-movies", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

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: judder

The word of the day is judder:

Etymology:  Imitative; compare shudder v. 

intr. To shake violently, esp. of the mechanism in cars, cameras, etc.; also of the voice in singing, to oscillate between greater and less intensity. (OED)

"After a juddering ride of several hours, you may not notice at first that the boat is approaching a shore."

 - Jennifer Egan, "Black Box", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: poltroon

The word of the day is poltroon:

Etymology:  < Middle French, French poultron, poltron coward (1509; 1495 as poiltron in sense ‘good-for-nothing’), lazy person (1552), bird with clipped talons (1680) < Italian poltrone worthless or cowardly person (13th cent.), lazy person (a1348), ultimately < a post-classical Latin derivative (compare post-classical Latin poledrus , poletrus , pulletrus foal (7th cent. or earlier)) of classical Latin pullus young animal (see pull n.²; compare classical Latin pullitra young chicken, pullet (Varro); the exact suffixation is uncertain); with the suffixation of the Italian word compare -one -oon suffix.

The derivation (by popular etymology) of poltron from an unattested post-classical Latin phrase pollice truncus ‘maimed or mutilated in the thumb’ (i.e. in order to shirk military service, a practice mentioned by Latin authors from the 4th cent.), was suggested by Salmasius (1640), and was long accepted as the etymology; it probably gave rise to the use in falconry in French and English.

A. n.1. An utter coward; a mean-spirited person; a worthless wretch. Also used as a general term of abuse. Now chiefly arch. or humorous. 

2. Falconry. A falcon whose hind talons have been removed. Obs. rare. 

B. adj. Characteristic of or resembling a poltroon; cowardly; wretched. Now rare. (OED)

"For adult readers, both then and in the future, there were several ways of decoding this story, from misogynist ("That's what women are like, the bloodsuckers") to feminist ("That's what men really think of women, the poltroons") to sadomasochist ("That's what I'd call a fun day out") to arachnologist ("That's an interesting commentary on the progeny-feeding strategems of spiders")."

 - Margaret Atwood, "The spider women", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: weltgeist

The word of the day is weltgeist:

German: world spirit (http://translation.babylon.com/german/to-english/)

"You’ll read “Orlando,” because you heard it has a sex-changing time-traveller in it. Your English teacher will tell you witheringly that, for that reason, it’s very minor Woolf. Give it a few years. The movie will come out, and his opinion will look foolish and rote. You know and I know that your minor vanguardism wasn’t planned, but there’s no harm in being pleased by this unlikely Weltgeist, this Cunning of Geekdom."

 - China Miéville, "Forward thinking", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: infra dig

The word of the day is infra dig:

Etymology:  Colloquial abbreviation of Latin infrā dignitātem beneath (one's) dignity: the source of the expression is obscure.

Beneath one's dignity; unbecoming one's position; not consistent with dignity; undignified. (OED)

"You can be insular, too, in truth—it wouldn’t kill you to start reading and appreciating some non-S.F. There can be a philistinism within this field that is philistinely denounced as infra dig."

 - China Miéville, "Forward thinking", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

word of the day: quiddity

The word of the day is quiddity:

Etymology:  < Middle French quiddité (14th cent.; French quiddité ) and its etymon post-classical Latin quidditas (12th cent.; frequently from 13th cent. in British sources) < classical Latin quid (see quid n.¹) + -itās -ity suffix.

 1.a. Chiefly Philos. The inherent nature or essence of a person or thing; what makes a thing what it is. (OED)

"No matter how rumpty-tum her diction, nothing can domesticate the freakish Land of Topsy-Turvy, dilute the glacial awe of the Land of Ice and Snow, or still the fear invoked by the fucking Land of Smack—an entire world whose quiddity is pain."


 - China Miéville, "Forward thinking", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker

letter to Prof. Mastripieri

http://jezebel.com/5952624/university-of-chicago-professor-very-disappointed-that-female-neuroscientists-arent-sexier

"Are unattractive women particularly attracted to neuroscience? Are beautiful women particularly uninterested in the brain?"

Not sure how to answer that, but perhaps we can address why more women, in total, aren't attracted to neuroscience: one reason could be that they're concerned they're not going to be judged solely on the quality of their ideas, presentations, posters, or publications, that some asshole will say to them, "Excellent controls, brilliant experiments: but you really should wear more makeup, smile, and wear a tighter shirt.  That is what is really important: for women to look pretty for men's enjoyment."

Now, you might say that I am now attacking a straw man: that even you would never actually go up to a woman as an individual and tell her that she wasn’t pretty enough, recognizing that such comments are neither kind nor productive.  But the fact of the matter is that when you post such comments to facebook, you are, in effect, broadcasting them not just to the individuals you had in mind when you wrote the comments, but also to any young woman in science who happens across your facebook page, or the story on Jezebel, or the link from the Association for Women in Science.  You were, in fact, addressing the entire world, including all of the graduate students and post-docs attending that conference who, in addition to thinking about questions to ask after the seminars they’ve attended, and the next experiments they want to do based on what they just learned from someone’s poster, now also stop and think: wait, am I not pretty enough?

If it were just you, it really wouldn’t be a problem.  But the fact is, it’s not just you.  Nor is it just the professor at a proteolysis seminar I recently attended who made a joke about cleavage.  These are but tiny components that, in aggregate, contribute to a much larger culture that judges women not just on their science, but also their sexual appeal, and that is one of the factors contributing to one of the greatest challenges to our field, the mass exodus of women from academic science between the postdoctoral level and the assistant professor level, as they leave one line of work that is hostile to them and seek out others that appreciate them more.  (Just yesterday I met (yet another) former biochemist who is now a stay-at-home mom.)

You can argue that women shouldn’t care what assholes think of them, precisely because they’re assholes, and that if something as small as a mildly offensive facebook post is enough to make you quit science, then your passion for your work must not be very great.  That sentiment is not without merit, but rightly or wrongly, the sexually hostile environment is going to exert a pressure that causes people to leave.  In fact, it might provide exactly the kind of selective pressure that then leads to the phenomenon you observe: the sexually hostile environment will enrich for people who don’t care whether other people think they’re pretty or not, and might also cause attractive young women to play down their attractiveness because giving a poster is difficult enough without also having to deal with creepy older guys coming up and hitting on you.

word of the day: rumptytum

The word of the day is rumptytum:

 

Etymology:  Imitative of the sound of a drum roll.

A. int.  Used as a meaningless refrain or to represent a regular rhythmic sound.  

B. n.  Rhythmic repetitiveness, esp. in music or verse; an instance of this.  

C. adj.  Esp. of music or verse: repetitive, trivial, commonplace.

"No matter how rumpty-tum her diction, nothing can domesticate the freakish Land of Topsy-Turvy, dilute the glacial awe of the Land of Ice and Snow, or still the fear invoked by the fucking Land of Smack—an entire world whose quiddity is pain."


 - China Miéville, "Forward thinking", 4 & 11 June 2012 The New Yorker