Word of The Day!

[Djana Nana]

gallant
GAL-uhnt , adjective;
1. Brave, spirited, noble-minded, or chivalrous: a gallant knight; a gallant rescue attempt.
2. Exceptionally polite and attentive to women; courtly.
3. Stately; grand: a gallant pageant.
noun:
1. A brave, noble-minded, or chivalrous man.
2. A man exceptionally attentive to women.
3. A stylish and dashing man.

Quotes:
He praised the owl's wisdom and his courage, his gallantry and his generosity; though every one knew that however wise old Master Owl might be, he was neither brave nor gallant.
-- Frances Jenkins Olcott, Good Stories For Holidays
Oh, those were days of power, gallant days, bustling days, worth the bravest days of chivalry at least.
-- George Borrow, Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest
Origin:
Related to the word gala , gallant stems from the Old French word galer meaning "to amuse oneself, to make merry."  

[Djana Nana]

stymie
STAHY-mee , verb;
1. To hinder, block, or thwart.
noun:
1. Golf. (On a putting green) an instance of a ball's lying on a direct line between the cup and the ball of an opponent about to putt.
2. A situation or problem presenting such difficulties as to discourage or defeat any attempt to deal with or resolve it.

Quotes:
This rule, and its corollary—admit nothing into the ambit of the characters' consciousness which would not reasonably have been there—accounts for both the authenticity of Ulysses and much of its ability to stymie its readers.
-- James Joyce, Jeri Johnson, "Introduction," Ulysses
No, I won't stymie you, but I could, real fast, you know that.
-- Catherine Coulter, KnockOut
Origin:
Stymie is of unknown origin. It came into common usage in the 1830s, before the rise of golf as a popular game.  

[Djana Nana]

tractate
TRAK-teyt , noun;
1. A treatise; essay.

Quotes:
Divide up all the tractates and commit yourselves to learn them during the coming year.
-- Yair Weinstock, Holiday Tales for the Soul
Jean-Pierre Mahé has rightly insisted that we should explore possible explanations other than mere haphazard collection, not only for the presence of the Hermetic tractates within Codex VI…
-- Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism"
Origin:
Tractate comes from the Medieval Latin word tractātus meaning "a handling, treatment."  

[Djana Nana]

aliquant
AL-i-kwuhnt , adjective;
1. Contained in a number or quantity, but not dividing it evenly: An aliquant part of 16 is 5.

Quotes:
Cunning is the aliquant of talent; as hypocrisy is of religion; all the threes in the universe cannot make ten.
-- Thomas Hall, The Fortunes and Adventures of Raby Rattler and His Man Floss
...even though that number was an odd number and by a quarter the number of his confiteors, even though four was an aliquant part of two thousand to hundred and nineteen, nothing being changed with regard to the masses...
-- Raymond Queneau, The Blue Flowers
Origin:
Aliquant stems from the Latin roots ali- meaning "differently" and quantus meaning "great."  

[Djana Nana]

scherzando
skert-SAHN-doh , adjective;
1. Playful; sportive.

Quotes:
A short coda recalls the scherzando music, and the piece concludes with the jazzy harmony.
-- Howard Pollack, John Alden Carpenter
A recapitulation satisfies the sonata principle by partially transposing both of the episodes to the tonic, and to cap off the movement with a tour de force Weber combines the last statement of the refrain with the scherzando theme.
-- R. Larry Todd, Nineteenth-Century Piano Music
Origin:
Scherzando comes from the Italian word scherzare meaning "to joke." It entered English in the early 1800s.  

[Djana Nana]

ectopic
ek-TOP-ik , adjective;
1. Occurring in an abnormal position or place; displaced.

Quotes:
It does not appear that any modern author, or any of our large numbers of "systems" of surgery, has taken up this important aspect of " ectopic tumors."
-- Dr. Thomas H. Manley, The Medical Times and Register , Vol. 33 - 34
Diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy was made and immediate operation decided upon.
-- Dr. J. Henry Barbat, Journal of the American Medical Association , Vol. 32
Origin:
Ectopic is from the invented Greek word ectopia meaning "out of place." It was coined in 1873.  

[Djana Nana]

hypethral
hi-PEE-thruhl , adjective;
1. (Of a classical building) wholly or partly open to the sky.

Quotes:
Follow the gallery around for about a thousand paces until you come to the hypethral . With it dark out you might miss it, so keep an eye open for the plants.
-- Gene Wolfe, Shadow and Claw
The choice of top light for the main galleries is said to have been dictated by the belief that Greek temples were hypethral , that is, open to the sky; from which it was inferred that Greek taste demanded to see works of art under light from above.
-- Benjamin Ives Gilman, Museum Ideals of Purpose and Method
Origin:
Hypethral stems from the Greek roots hyp- which means "under" and aîthros meaning "clear sky."  

[Djana Nana]

paronymous
puh-RON-uh-muhs , adjective;
1. Containing the same root or stem, as the words wise and wisdom.

Quotes:
The sentence seems to reverberate with echoes of assonance—another distinctive trait of Haweke's writing often enriched with alliterative patterns or even rhymes—on both sides of the two central words: "pale petal," whose juxtaposition involves an anagramatical and paronymous variation.
-- Heide Ziegler, Facing Texts
This in itself is a significant achievement in a language so flowery and paronymous to the extent that exaggeration, especially at that time of its literary history, is widely considered to be one of its inherent characteristics.
-- Sabry Hafez, The Quest for Identities
Origin:
Paronymous stems from the Greek roots para- meaning "beside" and onoma meaning "a name."  

[Djana Nana]

tawpie
TAW-pee , noun;
1. A foolish or thoughtless young person.

Quotes:
Do ye no hear me, tawpie ? Do ye no hear what I'm tellin' ye?
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Weir of Hermiston
You are just idle tawpies.
-- Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Profit and Loss
Origin:
Tawpie comes from the Swedish word tåbe meaning "a simpleton."  

[Djana Nana]

baccate
BAK-eyt , adjective;
1. Berrylike.
2. Bearing berries.

Quotes:
Such fruits are collectively called baccate or berried.
-- John Hutton Balfour, Class Book of Botany
Its appearance suggests that it is a capsule becoming baccate .
-- H. N. Ridley, Natural Science
Origin:
Entering English in the 1820s, baccate is derived from the Latin word bacca meaning "berry."  

[Djana Nana]

beguile
bih-GAHYL , verb;
1. To influence by trickery, flattery, etc.; mislead; delude.
2. To take away from by cheating or deceiving (usually followed by of): to be beguiled of money.
3. To charm or divert: a multitude of attractions to beguile the tourist.
4. To pass (time) pleasantly: beguiling the long afternoon with a good book.

Quotes:
Donovan was going to have to beguile Peter, but he hoped he wouldn't have to beguile Alex as well. It was a bad precedent to set, and he liked the honesty between the two of them.
-- Deborah Cooke, Kiss of Fury
Sentences and sententiae alike charm and beguile even jaded undergraduates. Who but can marvel at such craftsmanship as these words incarnate…
-- George Douglas Atkins, Reading Essays
Origin:
Beguile is derived from the Middle English word bigilen , from the root guile meaning "insidious cunning."  

[Djana Nana]

qualia
KWAH-lee-uh , noun;
1. A quality, as bitterness, regarded as an independent object.
2. A sense-datum or feeling having a distinctive quality.

Quotes:
He points out that our subjective experiences — our qualia — are the only thing each of us is really sure of, that all else is speculation.
-- Jenny McPhee, The Center of Things
Which in itself is quite strange, the idea that one could have an identical experience, down to the last detail, down to the internal qualia , the exact interior frame of mind, emotions, a frame of consciousness duplicated with startling exactitude, that would be unsettling enough.
-- Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Origin:
Qualia comes from the Latin word quālis meaning "of what sort."  

[Djana Nana]

nubilous
NOO-buh-luhs , adjective;
1. Cloudy or foggy.
2. Obscure or vague; indefinite.

Quotes:
...trunks as thick as whisky casks and bark like rough-out leather, tower overhead so that the path between them is sheltered from the sun, creating a nubilous atmosphere, soft and pungent with resins, while soft brown needles cushion one's tread.
-- Michael Petracca, Captain Zzyzx
The sky above, dark and nubilous , parted like torn, plump bread and under a sun absorbent and intense, the water began to recede over low bridges. The storm was ending.
-- Elizabeth Léonie Simpson, Stranger From Home
Origin:
Nubilous comes from the Latin root nūb meaning "cloud."  

[Djana Nana]

Bildungsroman
BIL-doongz-roh-mahn , noun;
1. A type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.

Quotes:
Unlike David Copperfield , The Catcher in the Rye is no Bildungsroman , because the narrator/protagonist doesn't want to grow up.
-- John Sutherland and Stephen Fender, Love, Sex, Death & Words
With its emphasis squarely on the diversity and latitude of lived experiences, Night Travellers unambiguously demonstrates its unease with the rigid providential scenario that pervades this kind of political Bildungsroman.
-- Yunzhong Shu, Buglers on the Home Front
Origin:
Bildungsroman stems from the German word of the same spelling. The word bildung means "formation," and the word roman means "book."  

[Djana Nana]

precipitancy
pri-SIP-i-tuhn-see , noun;
1. Headlong or rash haste.
2. The quality or state of being precipitant.
3. Precipitancies, hasty or rash acts.

Quotes:
There is one thing I think it my duty to caution you against: the precipitancy with which young men frequently rush into matrimonial engagements, and by their thoughtlessness draw many a deserving woman into scenes of poverty and distress.
-- Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple
The police authorities have acted in this matter with undue precipitancy.
-- Joseph Smith Fletcher, Green Ink and Other Stories
Origin:
Precipitancy comes from the Latin word praecipitāre meaning "to cast down headlong."