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WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com
ifyoucantfixit:
fantast \FAN-tast\, noun:
A visionary or dreamer.
I wouldn't allow the unwashed fantast in my house, but, I have to remind myself, it isn't my house he is being admitted to.
-- Wallace Earle Stegner, All the Little Live Things
The floor of the shop had been sprinkled with water; it had probably been sprinkled by a great fantast and freethinker, because it was all covered with patterns and cabbalistic signs.
-- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, The Steppe
Fantast entered English from German, though it is based on the Greek word phantastḗs which meant "boaster". It is related to the other English word fantastic.
ifyoucantfixit:
imponderable \im-PON-der-uh-buhl\, noun:
1. A thing that cannot be precisely determined or measured.
adjective:
1. Not ponderable; that cannot be precisely determined, measured, or evaluated.
Of course he had always been a huge imponderable, if not to say the biggest challenge of her admittedly young life.
-- Lindsay Armstrong, The Constantin Marriage
Of course there's always the imponderable, the unpredictable which can't be foreseen...
-- Leonardo Sciascia, Peter Robb and Sacha Rabinovitch, The Moro Affair
Imponderable comes directly from the Medieval Latin word imponderābilis which had the same meaning.
ifyoucantfixit:
cunctation \kuhngk-TEY-shuhn\, noun:
Delay; tardiness.
Lord Eldon however was personally answerable for unnecessary and culpable cunctation, as he called it in protracting the arguments of counsel, and in deferring judgment from day to day, from term to term, and from year to year after the arguments had closed and he had irrevocably decided in his own mind what the judgment should be.
-- Baron John Campbell, Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham
"What it's about," Goldman said, with tantalizing cunctation, "is a whole lot of things, as a matter of fact."
-- Philip Kerr, The Shot
Cunctation stems from the Latin word cunctātiōn- meaning "delay" or "hesitation".
I am not sure exactly the prounciation of this word. I don't think their diagram is easy to say in English. I am giving an alternate one to see if it is easier to wrap your mouth around. I am not sure that the phonetics they give are helpful. I think the way they want you to pronounce it is more like Welsh or northern European, not English.
here is my alternative... with the silent "g
kunk/tation ?
ifyoucantfixit:
Sardanapalian \sahr-dn-uh-PEYL-yuhn\, adjective:
Excessively luxurious.
Rich papers with gold borders, bronze chandeliers, mahogany engravings in the dining-room, and blue cashmere furniture in the salon, … all details of a chilling and perfectly unmeaning character, but which to the eyes of Ville-aux- Fayes seemed the last efforts of Sardanapalian luxury.
-- Honoré de Balzac, Sons of Soil
Here, in this half-destroyed Tartar town, surrounded by steppes, he indulged himself in a Sardanapalian effulgence that beggared even his jassy Court.
-- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Potemkin
First used in English in the 1860s, Sardanapalian is an eponym that comes from the legendary Assyrian king Sardanapal who was famous for his decadence.
ifyoucantfixit:
agnate \ag-neyt\, noun:
1. A relative whose connection is traceable exclusively through males.
2. Any male relation on the father's side.
adjective:
1. Related or akin through males or on the father's side.
2. Allied or akin.
It was considered abomination; no agnate gives up its infant kin in Igboland, no matter the crime.
-- M. O. Ené, Blighted Blues
His uncle in the third segment was the only other agnate who shared patriotic sentiments with Yat-Kuan.
-- Saikaku Ihara, Tales of Japanese Justice
Agnate is derived from the Latin word agnātus which referred to paternal kinsmen
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