WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com

[ifyoucantfixit]

cathect \kuh-THEKT\, verb:

To invest emotion or feeling in an idea, object, or another person.

    Yet such sympathy becomes forceful through mass-cultural stereotypes, visceral and imaginative figures of woman as demon with which readers can easily cathect.
    -- David Bruce Suchoff, Critical Theory and the Novel

    We cathect something whenever we invest emotional energy in it, whether that something be another person, a rose garden, playing golf, or hating lessons.
    -- Morgan Scott Peck, Golf and the Spirit

Cathect is a backformation that emerged in the 1930s. It comes from the idea of cathexis from Sigmund Freud's term for emotional investment.

[ifyoucantfixit]

foible \FOI-buhl\, noun:
 
1. A minor weakness or failing of character; slight flaw or defect: an all-too-human foible.
 2. The weaker part of a sword blade, between the middle and the point (opposed to forte).
 
Irascibility was his sole foible; for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte.
 -- Edgar Allan Poe, "X-ing a Paragrab", Poetry and Tales
 
I fear, on the contrary, if they came under your examination, there is not one in whom you would not discern some foible!
 -- Fanny Burney, Camilla
 
Related to the word feeble, foible is derived from the Latin word flēbilis which meant "lamentable."


This is a word that I am pretty sure everyone is quite familiar with.  However in order to not be trying to insult peoples intellect.  I try to not
post the words that are so obviously familiar to all.  This one has a section and definition, that I did not know.  So I wanted to allow those that
were not so knowledgeable in that regard too...  The part about the sword parts being considered as directlly defined by  the word.

[ifyoucantfixit]

billet-doux \BIL-ey-DOO\, noun;
plural billets-doux \bil-ay-DOO(Z)\:

A love letter.

    The bouquet struck her full in the chest, and a little billet-doux fell out of it into her lap.
    -- E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

    Or you receive a billet doux in a careless scrawl you can't read. What sort of billet doux is that, I ask you?
    -- William H. Gass, Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife

    “A billet-doux means love letter, in French like.” “Then why didn't you just say love letter?” “Because French is the language of love, my boy. Something you should keep in mind, but will soon forget.”
    -- William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone, The Brother's O'Brien

Billet-doux literally means "sweet note" in French. It entered English in the 1660s.

[ifyoucantfixit]

compeer \kuhm-PEER\, noun:
 
1. Close friend; comrade.
 2. An equal in rank, ability, accomplishment, etc.; peer; colleague.

verb:
 1. Archaic. To be the equal of; match.
 
Whoever eats them outlasts heaven and earth, and is the compeer of sun and moon.
 -- Cheng'en Wu, Monkey
 
Aren't you pleased with him, and didn't he arrange things well, eh, my good compeer Lenet?
 -- Alexandre Dumas, The Women's War
 
Compeer

[ifyoucantfixit]

orectic \aw-REK-tik\, adjective:
 
Of or pertaining to desire; appetitive.
 
This, at any rate, would follow from the assumption that he believed us to be persons by reason of physical existence, of the soul's faculties, and of that blending of the reason with the orectic soul which we call will.
 -- John Addington Symonds, The Aristotelian System
 
As well as alethic values, such as truth, there are orectic values, which are possessed by desires, hopes, fears, etc.
 -- N. M. L. Nathan, Review of "The Good and the True," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 55, No. 2
 
They bandied confidences, were reckless with intimacies. They were erudite and sensual about the orectic, the synchronous.
 -- Guy Davenport, Tatlin!
 
Orectic is derived from the Greek word orektikós meaning "appetitive."

Love this word.  Now we have a word for that so very personal tendency...

[ifyoucantfixit]

vicinage \VIS-uh-nij\, noun:
 
1. The region near or about a place; vicinity.
 2. A particular neighborhood or district, or the people belonging to it.
 3. Proximity.
 
From the mansion itself, as well as from almost every cottage in the adjacent hamlet, arose such a rich cloud of vapoury smoke, as showed, that the preparations for the festival were not confined to the principal residence of Magnus himself, but extended through the whole vicinage.
 -- Sir Walter Scott, The Waverly Novels
 
Herein resides, as I have hinted, the anxious and easy interest of almost any sincere man of letters in the mere vicinage, even if that be all, of such strained situations as Ray Limbert's.
 -- Henry James, The Lesson of the Master
 
Vicinage stems from the Latin word vīcīn meaning "near."

[ifyoucantfixit]

        pelagic \puh-LAJ-ik\, adjective:
 
1. Of or pertaining to the open seas or oceans.
 2. Living or growing at or near the surface of the ocean, far from land, as certain organisms.
 
I was reminded of certain kinds of pelagic birds that move at ease in the air or on the ocean, but have a hard time walking.
 -- Ross MacDonald, The Blue Hammer
 
However, the real slaughter, the one that all the maritime nations of the world opposed and strove to abolish, was pelagic sealing, the kind that Schransky particularly enjoyed and from which he profited enormously.
 -- James Michener, Alaska
 
Pelagic is derived from the Greek word pélag which meant "the sea."

[ifyoucantfixit]

aseptic \uh-SEP-tik\, adjective:
 
1. Free from the living germs of disease, fermentation, or putrefaction.

noun:
 1. A product, as milk or fruit juice, that is marketed in an aseptic package or container.
 2. Aseptics, (used with a singular verb) a system of packaging sterilized products in airtight containers so that freshness is preserved for several months.
 
The development of aseptic packaging is so highly regarded in food industry circles that in 1983 members of the Institute of Food Technologists… voted it the number-one food innovation in the last fifty years.
 -- Vince Staten, Can You Trust a Tomato in January?
 
He was taken to an aseptic, white barracks on the opposite bank of the Moldau.
 -- Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
 
Aseptic was invented in the 1850s by chemists. It is based on the root septic meaning "infected."

[ifyoucantfixit]

concatenate \kon-KAT-n-eyt\, verb:
 
1. To link together; unite in a series or chain.

adjective:
 1. Linked together, as in a chain.
 
While I began to immerse myself in this difficult new venture, the summer would bring in fresh distraction from my loneliness, and it is indeed curious how events concatenate.
 -- John O'Meara, Defending Her Son
 
But when, as in this vintage, the conditions concatenate ideally, the result is - I'm sure you'll agree - vivid and appealing.
 -- Stephen Fry, The Liar
 
Concatenate stems from the Latin word concatēnātus meaning "to link together."

[ifyoucantfixit]

belletristic \bel-li-TRIS-tik\, adjective:
 
Related to literature regarded as a fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function.
 
Soon we were eagerly talking about our belletristic efforts. Butler was a short story writer who favored the “avant-garde” and who had translated several of Raymond Roussel's obscure “texts” into a stiff-jointed English. Lynne was writing a thesis on Max Jacob and his influence on Picasso.
 -- Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony
 
Usually what I do is spread out my notebooks and Fielding's Guide to Worldwide Cruising 1995 and pens and various materials all over the bed, so when the Cabin Service guy appears at the door he'll see all this belletristic material and figure I'm working really hard on something belletristic right here in the cabin and have doubtless been too busy to have hit all the public meals and am thus legitimately entitled to the indulgence of Cabin Service.
 -- David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
 
Belletristic is derived from the imported French phrase belles-lettres, which literally means "fine letters." It entered English in the early 1700s.


  For fans of the Harry Potter series.  This will no doubt make them think instantly of Bellatrix La Strange the crazy witch sister.