Author Topic: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com  (Read 137583 times)

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2012, 03:35:10 am »
brisance \bri-ZAHNS\, noun:

The shattering effect of a high explosive.

    The 'There' turned out to be crucial for the sense of brisance and closure and resolving issues of impotent rage and powerless fear that like accrued in Lenz all day being trapped in the northeastern portions of a squalid halfway house all day fearing for his life, Lenz felt.
    -- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

    But this was sustained explosion, reaching now and then a quite unendurable brisance. Yet he endured it, not so much because it was her will as, unbelievably, what had become her need.
    -- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

Brisance is a relatively new English word. It started being used commonly in the 1910s, but it can be traced to the Celtic word brissim meaning "to break."




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Offline Mandy21

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2012, 11:59:53 am »
Janice, hope it's okay if we post other interesting news about words here?  I found this in a book about organizing all the stuff in our lives (What's a Disorganized Person To Do? by Stacey Platt, c 2010, p. 162), and I found it interesting/enlightening.

Overcoming Indecision:

Decide comes from the Latin occido, meaning "to kill."  It is the same root found in homicide, suicide, and pesticideDe means "two."  When we make a decision, we are cutting something in two and killing whatever we decide against.  It's this idea (whether we are aware of it or not) of killing off other options that makes decision making difficult for some people.  Sometimes simply recognizing this makes indecision easier to overcome.
Dawn is coming,
Open your eyes...

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2012, 12:01:03 am »
   
moschate \MOS-keyt\, adjective:

Having a musky smell.

Her familiar perfume and moschate odor was overwhelming within the confines of the car, especially with the windows rolled up.
-- Charles Ray Willeford, New Hope for the Dead
The plant of the Rio Grande is said by Mr. Schott to exhale a moschate odor.
-- William Hemsley Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, Volume 2, Part 1
Though moschate has Latin roots, it was not used widely in English until the early 1800s. The word mosch meant "musky" in Latin and was used to describe the wine commonly known today at "muscat."



   Of course it is fine, for you  to place other information about words here.  This is for everyone.  i think words are who we are.  How they are formed, and how they are used, is part of our soul...



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2012, 04:34:34 pm »

   
ruck \ruhk\, noun:

1. A large number or quantity; mass.
2. The great mass of undistinguished or inferior persons or things.

Innis steered Jessica through a ruck of large, bearded men in dungarees and greasy sweaters who looked at her like she might be the floor show.
-- Paul Bryers, The Prayer of the Bone
A ruck of charts, clipboards, cuttlefish-flavored peanut snacks, containers of the barley water and orange pop the enlisted brought on watch, binoculars, and struggling men stirred at the base of the cliff.
-- David Poyer, Korea Strait
The ruck of the men were lower down than our two heroes, and there were others far away to the left, and others, again, who had been at the end of the gorse, and were now behind.
-- Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn
Ruck comes from an early Icelandic word ruka or ruke which meant "a heap or a stack."



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #14 on: March 24, 2012, 09:37:50 am »
   

   
   
adroit \uh-DROIT\, adjective:

1. Cleverly skillful, resourceful, or ingenious.
2. Expert or nimble in the use of the hands or body.

He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending.
-- V.C. Andrews, If There Be Thorns
It requires finesse. She was very adroit — oh, very adroit — but Hercule Poirot, my good George, is of a cleverness quite exceptional.
-- Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
Adroit is from the Old French meaning "elegant, skillful" from the roots a- meaning "increase" and droit meaning "correct."

editorial position...
I understand that on first appearance, some of these words are ones that most of us know.  However I post them anyway, if they have what is unusual additional meanings that are not so readily apparent.  Such as this one.  A meaning such as elegant.  I was not aware of that one, I don't think it is a common use for the word.



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #15 on: March 24, 2012, 09:43:09 am »

  Mapril...(may prill)

  May 15,  The release date for the album "Trespassing"  Adam Lambert.

  New word, from the root, May be April, or May.   ;)

Not yet in the Urban dictionary,  but I am sure it will be...



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #16 on: March 26, 2012, 01:33:26 am »


Tellurian \te-LOOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Of or characteristic of the earth or its inhabitants.

noun:
1. An inhabitant of the earth.

We must keep in mind that we are, or should I say have become, hybrid personae, part tellurian, and part extraterrestrial.
-- Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, Universe 3
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations…
-- James Joyce, Ulysses
Tellurian was first used by Thomas DeQuincy in 1846, even though it has classical Latin roots literally meaning "one of the earth."



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #17 on: March 27, 2012, 03:49:31 pm »
   
chelonian \ki-LOH-nee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Belonging or pertaining to the order Chelonia, comprising the turtles.

noun:
1. A turtle.

At the truly chelonian pace of somewhat under two miles per hour, the passengers and crew onboard would cover the twenty-seven hundred miles in just over two months.
-- Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers

The study door crashed back and a seventy-year-old politician stood there, top hat firmly on his head, collar awry around his scrawny, chelonian neck.
-- M. J. Trow, Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring
What pair of messiahs could differ more harshly than Hiram and Magnus, the one a pedantic little fellow with a chelonian paunch and gold eye-glasses and the other a rough, shaggy, carnivorous revivalist from the dreadful steppes?
-- H. L. Mencken, "Editorial," American Mercury Magazine, Jan. to Apr. 1924
Chelonian comes from the Greek word for turtle, chelṓn.



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #18 on: March 29, 2012, 02:04:20 am »
   

luxate \LUHK-seyt\, verb:

To put out of joint; dislocate.

When I began to luxate the tooth I heard a crack.

-- Nathan Jorgenson, A Crooked Number
But at the same time he thinks, that the reduced bone will not remain in it's [sic] place, but luxate itself again, and fall back into the new-formed articulation, which it has formed to itself.


-- Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections
Luxate is not related to any word for "light." Rather, it is from the Greek word for "oblique," which was loxós.


  I know the meaning of this first hand.  I have had chiropractic treatment for the last 30 years.  Because of a back problem, resulting from an auto accident.



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #19 on: March 29, 2012, 07:16:17 pm »
   
eudemonia \yoo-di-MOH-nee-uh\, noun:

1. Happiness; well-being.
2. Aristotelianism. Happiness as the result of an active life governed by reason.

We all seek eudemonia, but he thinks that it takes a great deal of reflection and education to get a clear enough conception of it really to aim at it in our practice.
-- Robert Campbell Roberts, Intellectual Virtues
They may have believed that we already do value duty, utility, and eudemonia, but it is debatable whether they need to make such descriptive claims.
-- Jesse J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals
From Aristotle, eudemonia comes from the Greek word eudaímōn which meant "a good or benevolent spirit."

Love this word.  I attempt to be like this, in all things............



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