Author Topic: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com  (Read 137564 times)

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #80 on: May 15, 2012, 11:37:52 am »


 
altiloquent \awl-TIL-uh-kwuhnt\, noun:

High-flown or pretentious language.

He remembered that the politeness seemed too elaborate, too florid, altiloquent to the extent of insincerity.
-- Holman Day, All-Wool Morrison

The meaning of the music was made further explicit by explanations in his own, altiloquent (but purposefully avoiding the technical) Wagnerian prose, wrapped solicitously around the Goethe passages.
-- Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven

Altiloquent stems from the Latin roots atli meaning "high" and loquentem meaning "speaking."

 



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Offline Mandy21

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #81 on: May 15, 2012, 12:05:14 pm »
Janice, thought you might get a kick out of this.  It's from the newspaper in the teeny-tiny town in rural Kansas where my mom grew up in the 30's and 40's.  I take a road trip there every spring and spend a week wandering around her old stomping ground.  The whole town knows me and makes a point to say hello to "Jackie's girl" cause she was quite something back in the day, and they tell me I'm the spittin' image of her.  I have to carry around her old photo albums in my trunk cause some of her old beaus always insist on looking at the pics of the good old days, and I'm happy to oblige.  Anyhoo...

Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2012 1:07 pm
Bridge, viaduct, or what?
By Ned Valentine, Clay Center Dispatch
So what do we call the new $4.4 million structure on west Crawford bridging Huntress Creek?
Some say the new structure isn’t a viaduct because no train track or road will pass under it. The proper term, we have been assured, is “bridge.”
That was distressing, since back as far as the memory of man runneth not to the contrary it has been known as “the viaduct.” Remembering to refer to it instead as the “Crawford Street bridge” would take some effort. So, we consulted an engineer who said he just couldn’t be sure without looking it up.
Merriam Webster to the rescue: What is being replaced on west US24 was a viaduct. And it’s replacement will be a viaduct also.
Technically, a viaduct is an elevated roadway, usually consisting of a series of short spans supported by arches, piers or columns, according to Merriam. A bridge simply is any structure carrying a pathway or roadway over a depression or obstacle.
The two definitions sound almost indistinguishable, but they’re not. While all viaducts are bridges, not all bridges are viaducts.
The piers of the new Crawford Street bridge are columns, and the roadway is being elevated to accommodate flooding of Huntress Creek. (Despite being 12 feet lower, you still won’t be able to see the far end of the bridge when you start across from the opposite end).
While few ever called the old viaduct “the bridge,” many, who apparently couldn’t remember the word “viaduct,” called it “the overpass.”
An overpass, it isn’t, Merriam says. Overpass isn’t even a noun. It’s a verb meaning to pass across, over or beyond; or to transgress; or to disregard or ignore.
One can overpass something, but not on an overpass. So, it is best to disregard or ignore “overpass.”
Whatever it is, the contractor is still on schedule. With any luck, it may be completed before the Nov. 14 deadline. If the Court Street bridge is any guide, the viaduct will be a handsome addition to our community when finished.
Dawn is coming,
Open your eyes...

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #82 on: May 15, 2012, 01:00:02 pm »

   I did love that.  That is why I love words, and language in general.  It has a way of informing us of things,
we were not even aware we needed to know.  In the way that there were specifics to those two differing
terms.  There should have been a distinction to those other two as well.  However I looked and tried to find
that finite difference, and could not find one.  I suppose there are probably more of these conundrums, that
are two differing words that seem to be so similar, in both look and usage, that they are virtually the same.
The English language is quite complex, in this case I think it has to do with the common acceptance of bringing
onboard words of other languages and incorporating them into it.  That happened I think in this case.  Leaving us
with two words that mean the exact same thing..

   "Don't you just love it."  One of my favorite quotes, from an old song of the 60s, that my only nephew used
to sing when he was a mere tot.

           [youtube=425,350] [youtube=425,350] 
[/youtube]
  [/youtube]

  Now you have had a sample of my other obsession..music..
   :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #83 on: May 16, 2012, 01:31:51 pm »


spruik \sprook\, verb:

To make or give a speech, especially extensively; spiel.

He started to spruik again, but I managed to get in first.
-- C.E. Murphy, Raven Calls

Cain and Leek spruik their foul and immoral stories by the fire at night and the rest of the men grow excited and the mood of the camp becomes restless.
-- Tim Winton, Shallows

Don't go into your spruik for me. I don't care what words you call it.
-- A. E. Martin, The Outsiders

Spruik is Australian slang that arose in the early 1900s. It is of unknown origin.




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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #84 on: May 17, 2012, 01:24:56 pm »

omphalos \OM-fuh-luhs\, noun:

1. The central point.
2. The navel; umbilicus.
3. Greek Antiquity. A stone in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, thought to mark the center of the earth.

To that incurable romantic the Trenton hovel was omphalos, the hub of existence, the center of mass.
-- Ellen Queen, Halfway House

Yes; but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the omphalos of mortality.
-- Thomas De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundies

From Greek, omphalos did not enter English until the 1850s when Thomas De Quincey used it in his work Suspiria de Profundis. It literally meant "navel."




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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #85 on: May 18, 2012, 01:01:27 pm »
 
 
 
 
 
pip \pip\, verb:

1. To peep or chirp.
2. (Of a young bird) to break out from the shell.
3. To crack or chip a hole through (the shell), as a young bird.

Stone's watch pipped eight o'clock. He had curly hair the color of motor oil, and pale green eyes.
-- Jonathan Franzen, The Twenty-Seventh City

As Fiona's horn pipped, just beyond the cab's black fender.
-- William Gibson, Zero History

Pip is a variation on the word peep which arose in the 1600s. It comes from the Lithuanian word pỹpti which was originally imitative of a baby bird
 
   I have never really understood the meaning of the name PiP, as in Dicken's "Great Expectation."  I always thought that it must
have some other meaning.  But I guess, the name was meant to imply his being as vulnerable as,  a newly pipped bird..  I just never really made that connection.  duuh.  After being raised on a farm, my grandparents also had an egg farm.  I knew the word.  But I had always thought that it was probably a name used in UK around the time of the books representation.



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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #86 on: May 19, 2012, 01:39:45 pm »


phatic \FAT-ik\, adjective:

Denoting speech used to create an atmosphere of goodwill.

We conduct phatic discourse indispensable to maintaining a constant connection among speakers; but phatic speech is indispensable precisely because it keeps the possibility of communication in working order, for the purpose of other and more substantial communications.
-- Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

They're just filling the air with noise. This is what's called phatic speech. "How are you?" they might ask.
-- Adriana Lopez, Fifteen Candles

Coined by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, phatic was first used in 1923. It probably comes from the Greek word phatos meaning "spoken."




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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #87 on: May 20, 2012, 01:08:48 pm »
 
 
 
 
gambit \GAM-bit\, noun:

1. A remark made to open or redirect a conversation.
2. Chess. An opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
3. Any maneuver by which one seeks to gain an advantage.

The leader was eyeing him up and down, shrewdly calculating. "Thirsty as all that, are you, my friend?" he asked. Gratefully Bomilcar seized upon the gambit. “Thirsty enough to buy everyone here a drink,” he said.
-- Colleen McCullough, The First Man in Rome

But in other cases the gambit may be a dependent clause introducing or rounding off some larger unit whose illocutionary force it helps to establish.
-- Thierry Fontenelle, Practical Lexicography: A Reader

Gambit is primarily a term used in chess. It came from the Italian idiom gambetto meaning "to trip up."

 



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Offline Mandy21

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #88 on: May 21, 2012, 10:56:57 am »
Hey Janice, since you got a kick out of that article from the Clay Center Dispatch, I thought I'd share today's top story (yes, I said TOP story):

Duck Race takes thrice as long
 
This year's Great Republican River Duck Race took longer than usual, with the plastic ducks getting caught along the bank and in brush piles along the way.

A steady cross-wind and a lower than normal river might have been the reasons the race took nearly an hour and a half rather than around 30 minutes -- the length of last year's race.


I'm surprised they didn't have live streaming video...

Small-town life, ya gotta love it!

 ;D
Dawn is coming,
Open your eyes...

Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
« Reply #89 on: May 21, 2012, 04:15:02 pm »

 
 
 
 
 
Word of the Day for Monday, May 21, 2012
belabor \bih-LEY-ber\, verb:

1. To explain, worry about, or work more than is necessary.
2. To assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule.
3. To beat vigorously; ply with heavy blows.
4. Obsolete. To labor at.

Yours and everybody else's, thought Swiffers, but he didn't wish to belabor the obvious.
-- Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

It is distasteful to the present writer to belabor any of his fellow writers, living or dead, and, except Boccaccio, who also stood for a detestable human trait, he has here avoided doing so.
-- Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature

Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabor me soundly; but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Like besot, belabor comes from the prefix be- which makes a verb out of a noun and the root labor meaning "to work."

 



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