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WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
Mandy21:
Didn't make myself clear. I already knew what apoplexy meant. I was saying that I don't understand why the folks who pick the words would pick adjectives, rather than nouns, especially when the majority of people wouldn't know what the noun meant in the first place.
Okay, I'll shut up now...
ifyoucantfixit:
divulse \dahy-VUHLS\, verb:
To tear away or apart.
A perforation having been so made, it is safer to divulse the opening rather than to enlarge it by cutting in order to avoid the possibility of opening a blood vessel in an inaccessible region.
-- Eugene Fuller, M.D., The Journal of the American Medical Association
Even if you are the kooper of the winkel over measure never lost a license. Nor a duckindonche divulse from bath and breakfast.
-- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Divulse comes from the Latin root vellere meaning "plucked". The prefix di- is a variation of dis- before the letter v meaning "apart" or "away", as in disown.
ifyoucantfixit:
pochismo \poh-CHEEZ-moh\, noun:
1. An English word or expression borrowed into Spanish.
2. A form of speech employing many such words.
3. An adopted U.S. custom, attitude, etc.
Along the Texas border, in the towns on both sides of the Rio Grande, they call a similar blending of languages pochismo.
-- Robert Wilder, Plough the Sea
The assimilation of English with Spanish speech and of Hispanic with Anglo traits in the mixed culture termed pochismo has brought contrasting values and characteristics into play within families and even within individuals.
-- Milo Kearney and Manuel Medrano, Medieval Culture and the Mexican American Borderlands
Pochismo entered English in the 1940s. It is a variation of the word pocho which refers to a person of Mexican heritage who has adopted American customs. The suffix -ismo is usually the Spanish equivalent of the English suffix -ism.
ifyoucantfixit:
mignon \min-YON\, adjective
Small and pretty; delicately pretty.
And here Jasmin caressed his own arm, and made as if it were a baby's, smiling and speaking in a mignon voice, wagging his head roguishly.
-- William Chambers and Robert Chambers, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal
As the village princeling and household cosset, the toast of the family, the mignon of the minions, the darling of the staff, my feelings about the proposed adoption would not be hard to divine.
-- Martin Amis, Success
Mignon stems from the French word of the same spelling which means "delicate" or "charming". It is also related to the word "minion" through the sense of "small".
Being the Adam geek that I am. Sauli is his little mignon of beauty and grace. lol
ifyoucantfixit:
ravelment \RAV-uhl-muhnt\, noun:
Entanglement; confusion.
Hampered as I was by my well-known connection with the Gillespie poisoning case, I could not personally make a move towards the ravelment of its mystery without subjecting myself to the curiosity of the people among whom my attention of the District Attorney's office and the suspicion of the men whose business I was in a measure attempting to usurp.
-- Anna Katharine Green, One of My Sons
What I could see clearly, though, was the lower course of the burn: this bisected the small valley and appeared to loop around the far side of the dwelling, partly enfolding it before it broadened out and spread thence through arable to a ravelment of stone and incoming sea.
-- Clifford Geddes, Edge of the Glen
Ravelment derives from the word ravel which means "to become tangled". It entered English in the early 1800s.
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