Author Topic: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com  (Read 137572 times)

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #190 on: September 10, 2012, 08:04:46 pm »



primrose \PRIM-rohz\, noun:
 
1. Pale yellow.
 2. Any plant of the genus Primula, as P. vulgaris (English primrose), of Europe, having yellow flowers, or P. sinensis (Chinese primrose), of China, having flowers in a variety of colors. Compare primrose family.
 3. Evening primrose.
 
The thoughts circling Sarah's head kept time with the rhythm of her spoon as she stirred the pale-primrose mixture of egg yolks and cream in the pan.
 -- India Grey, Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper
 
The room was high and white and primrose gold, flanked by Greek columns that caught the lickety amber light of a thousand candles.
 -- Don DeLillo, Underworld
 
Primrose literally meant "first rose" in Old French. It was so called because the yellow rose is one of the earliest blooming roses in the Spring



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #191 on: September 12, 2012, 11:39:34 am »


celadon \SEL-uh-don\, noun:
 
1. A pale gray-green.
 2. Any of several Chinese porcelains having a translucent, pale green glaze.
 3. Any porcelain imitating these.

adjective:
 1. Having the color celadon.
 
The detail was striking and the cream, salmon, and celadon of the offset colors realistic, if slightly dated.
 -- David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Far out, the bay had a glaze like celadon.
 -- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
 
The word celadon stems from the name of a character in the 1610 book L'Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé. The character Céladon was a sentimental lover who wore bright green clothes.
 




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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #192 on: September 12, 2012, 11:42:46 am »


cerise \suh-REES\, noun:
 
moderate to deep red.
 
That it did not strike her, Molly Notkin, as improbable that the special limited-edition turkey-shaped gift bottle of Wild Turkey Blended Whiskey-brand distilled sprits with the cerise velveteen gift-ribbon around its neck with the bow tucked under its wattles on the kitchen counter...
 -- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
 
It was made of a purple satin sheath with layers of cerise tarleton underskirts.
 -- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
 
Cerise comes from the French word of the same spelling meaning "cherry." It entered English in the 1850s describing a shade of cherry red.
 




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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #193 on: September 13, 2012, 03:43:24 pm »



heliotrope \HEE-lee-uh-trohp\, noun:
 
1. A light tint of purple; reddish lavender.
 2. Any hairy plant belonging to the genus Heliotropium, of the borage family, as H. arborescens, cultivated for its small, fragrant purple flowers.
 3. Any of various other plants, as the valerian or the winter heliotrope.
 4. Any plant that turns toward the sun.
 5. Surveying. An arrangement of mirrors for reflecting sunlight from a distant point to an observation station.
 6. Bloodstone.
 
But the heliotrope envelope with the feminine handwriting and the strange odor immediately suggested queries along lines of investigation which had never before entered her thoughts.
 -- George Gibbs, The Vagrant Duke
 
Blown by steady volumes of roaring wind, everyone's hair is riffled and tangled and leaping in antic wisps, and the heliotrope robes bulk like tumors but flip up in sudden swoops.
 -- Edmund White, Forgetting Elena
 
Heliotrope literally meant "turn towards the sun" in Greek. Flowers that turned towards the sun became associated with this word.



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #194 on: September 14, 2012, 06:25:44 pm »



ecru \EK-roo\, adjective:
 
1. Very light brown in color, as raw silk, unbleached linen, etc.

noun:
 1. An ecru color.
 
To complete the outfit, she selected an ecru cashmere sweater to drape over her shoulders and tie loosely around her neck.
 -- Pamela Hackett Hobson, The Bronxville Book Club
 
She was wearing an ecru gown, giving the illusion of her fading into the grayness of the wall.
 -- JoAnn Smith Ainsworth, Out of the Dark
 
Ecru stems from the French word of the same spelling which meant "raw, unbleached." It came from the Latin root crudus meaning "raw" and the prefix es- meaning "thoroughly."



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #195 on: September 15, 2012, 04:58:11 pm »


quail \kweyl\, verb:
 
To lose heart or courage in difficulty or danger; shrink with fear.
 
She would have quailed in the same way if the armored bear had looked at her like that, because there was something not unlike Lorek in Will's eyes, young as they were.
 -- Phillip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
 
I should have quailed in the absence of moonlight, for it was by the leading of stars only I traced the dim path; I should have quailed still more in the unwonted presence of that which tonight shone in the north, a moving mystery—the Aurora Borealis.
 -- Charlotte Brontë, Villette
 
The verb quail is not related to the more common noun. It comes from the Middle Dutch word quelen meaning "to suffer, be ill." This sense of "to cower" was rare until the late 1800s



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #196 on: September 16, 2012, 05:40:07 pm »



coetaneous \koh-i-TEY-nee-uhs\, adjective:
 
Of the same age or duration.
 
Bear with these distractions, with this coetaneous growth of the parts: they will one day be members, and obey one will.
 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
 
We could say that all living people are contemporaneous but not necessarily coetaneous; they live at different age levels.
 -- Harold C. Raley, A Watch Over Mortality
 
Coetaneous stems from the Latin roots co- meaning "with, together with," ætat- meaning "age," and the suffix -aneus (which is an adjectival suffix meaning "resembling



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #197 on: September 17, 2012, 05:07:27 pm »



diapason \dahy-uh-PEY-zuhn\, noun:
 
1. A full, rich outpouring of melodious sound.
 2. The compass of a voice or instrument.
 3. A fixed standard of pitch.
 4. Either of two principal timbres or stops of a pipe organ, one of full, majestic tone (open diapason) and the other of strong, flutelike tone (stopped diapason).
 5. Any of several other organ stops.
 6. A tuning fork.
 
During the whole interval in which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta's company.
 -- Thomas Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta
 
And so those two, angry accuser and indifferent accused, faced each other for a moment; while, incessant, dull, might, the thunders of the great cataract mingled with the trembling diapason of the stupendous turbines in the rock-hewn caverns where old Niagara now toiled in fetters, to swell their power and fling gold into their bottomless coffers.
 -- George Allan England, The Air Trust
 
Diapason was originally an abbreviation of the Greek phrase "hē dià pāsôn chordôn symphōnía" which meant "the concord through all the notes of the scale."



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #198 on: September 18, 2012, 03:53:43 pm »

Tartuffery \tahr-TOOF-uh-ree\, noun:
 
Behavior or character of a Tartuffe, especially hypocritical piety.
 
When Terry had finished showing his contempt and had left the office in disgust at the head's Tartuffery, Jan had calmly got up from her seat and looked hard at the shell-shocked, speechless woman before addressing her.
 -- Derryl Flynn, The Albion
 
Not the sophistry, the malevolence, the restless apathy of the masses, the arrogance and insensitivity of the ruling class, the vulgarity, the bigotry, the intemperance, the maniacal piety and the ungodly Tartuffery.
 -- W.E. Gutman, Nocturnes
 
Tartuffery comes from the comedy by French playwright Molière. The central character of the eponymous play Tartuffe was a hypocritical pretender.



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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #199 on: September 19, 2012, 03:21:54 pm »



bollix \BOL-iks\, verb:
 
1. To do (something) badly; bungle (often followed by up): His interference bollixed up the whole deal.
 
noun:
 1. A confused bungle.
 
People always bollix up the things that are most important to them.
 -- Eric Gabriel Lehman, Summer's House
 
It was a sort of cruel fun watching this guy bollix up his life, like watching a cat fight duct tape.
 -- Sarah Smith, Chasing Shakespeares
 
Bollix arose in the 1930s. It's a variation on the slang word bollocks.



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