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 Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:50 am
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Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:38 am
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astir
uh-STUR , adjective;
1. moving or stirring, especially with much activity or excitement: The field was astir with small animals, birds, and insects.
2. up and about; out of bed.
Quotes:
We were wakened by many hurrying feet, and many confused voices; all the world seemed awake and astir.
-- Elizabeth Gaskell, The Grey Woman, 1861
The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant emotion of my heart: always there, always awake, always astir: quite other feelings absorb his reflections, and govern his faculties.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849
Origin:
Astir entered English before 1000, and is a combination of the reduced form a- and the word stir.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:10 am
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Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 8:50 am
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railbird
REYL-burd , noun;
1. any kibitzer or self-styled critic or expert.
2. a horse-racing fan who watches races or workouts from the railing along the track.
Quotes:
Vaes had so many fourths that, when parading a mount assigned to the Number Four gate, some railbird was sure to shout across the rail, "You got your own number today, Hector!"
-- Nelson Algren, The Last Carousel, 1973
"What's she saying?" Tommy asked, leaning forward in his loafers like a railbird at the Aqueduct finish line
-- Stephen J. Cannell, King Con, 1997
Origin:
Railbird is an Americanism from the late 1800s based on the sense of bird as a "frequenter" as in the coinage jailbird. This sense of rail referred to the fences around a racetrack.
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Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 1:05 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2015 11:27 am
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nonesuch
NUHN-suhch , noun;
1. a person or thing without equal; paragon.
Quotes:
Charles thinks her a nonesuch, since she is never weary of hearing him read aloud.
-- Amanda M. Douglas, A Little Girl in Old Washington, 1900
This is a deeply strange book. In fact, it is, to the best of my knowledge, a nonesuch: a 400-plus-page first novel by a 49-year-old American male, dedicated to the highly dubious proposition that such a thing as perfect romantic love is possible in these doomy, gloomy, over-psychologized, terminally ironic, post-humanist, post-postmodern times.
-- James Kaplan, "Reader, He Married Her," New York Times, February 24, 2008
Origin:
Nonesuch entered English in the mid-1500s. It is a portmanteau of the words none and such.
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Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 11:56 am
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Brobdingnagian
brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn , adjective;
1. of huge size; gigantic; tremendous.
noun:
1. an inhabitant of Brobdingnag.
2. a being of tremendous size; giant.
Quotes:
I wish she'd call back now, because I'd like to share with her the last of my dreams, in which the new College of Technical Careers building has turned out to be yet another replica of my own house, like Julie's, this one on a Brobdingnagian scale.
-- Richard Russo, Straight Man, 1997
Back in 2007, when the New York–based web advertising giant DoubleClick sold itself to Google for a Brobdingnagian $3.1 billion, the sale was a big deal not only because it made millions for DoubleClick's backers and provided Google with the cornerstone of its ad-revenue juggernaut.
-- Kevin Roose, "Tumblr’s Sale Is a Billion-Dollar Trophy for the New York Tech Scene," New York, May 20, 2013
Origin:
Brobdingnagian entered English in the mid-1700s by way of Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, in which Brobdingnag is the name of a region where everything is of enormous size.
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Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 12:44 pm
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solipsistic
sol-ip-SIS-tik , adjective;
1. of or characterized by solipsism, or the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist: Her treatment philosophy dealt with madness as a complete, self-contained, solipsistic world that sane people are not able to enter.
Quotes:
I mean that in the solipsistic sense, the way a little boy sometimes assumes other people wind down like robots as soon as he leaves the room: People seem to stop existing as soon as Cheryl Glickman turns her eyes away from them.
-- Lauren Groff, "‘The First Bad Man,’ by Miranda July," New York Times, January 16, 2015
Your love must be very--what's the word--solipsistic if you don't even imagine or speculate about what I might feel.
-- Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince, 1973
Origin:
Solipsistic descends from the Latin terms sōlus meaning "alone" and ipse meaning "self." It entered English in the late 1800s.
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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:12 pm
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peacock
PEE-kok , verb;
1. to make a vainglorious display; strut like a peacock.
noun:
1. the male of the peafowl distinguished by its long, erectile, greenish, iridescent tail coverts that are brilliantly marked with ocellated spots and that can be spread in a fan.
2. any peafowl.
3. a vain, self-conscious person.
4. (initial capital letter) Astronomy. the constellation Pavo.
Quotes:
…he must have passed for a rich man when he peacocked about the town in his shaggy purple gown with gold buttons and hoop lace.
-- Katharine Burrill, "Letters of a Peer and a Pork-Packer," Chambers's Journal, Volume VI, 1903
He peacocks in all his Seventies finery--glitter in his hair, a rhinestone-studded silver suit and as much jewelry as human fingers can hold.
-- Rob Sheffield, "The Rhinestone Closet," Rolling Stone, May 26, 2013
Origin:
Peacock is formed from the now-obsolete word pea meaning "peafowl," and c**k meaning "a male of the gallinaceous kind" or "rooster." It entered English at the turn of the 13th century as a noun, and began to be used as a verb in the late 1500s.
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Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2015 12:20 pm
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sternutation
stur-nyuh-TEY-shuhn , noun;
1. the act of sneezing.
Quotes:
It was a high-pitched sneeze, a most delicate sternutation, the merest zephyr tangled in a pretty, powdered, finger-tip of a nose.
-- Eric Linklater, Magnus Merriman, 1934
Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?
-- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling, 1886
Origin:
Sternutation derives from the Latin verb sternuĕre meaning "to sneeze." It entered English in the mid-1500s.
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Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:30 am
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triskaidekaphobia
tris-kahy-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh, tris-kuh- , noun;
1. fear or a phobia concerning the number 13.
Quotes:
People who harbor a Friday the 13th superstition might have triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13, and often pass on their belief to their children, he noted.
-- John Roach, "Why Does Friday the 13th Scare Us So Much?" National Geographic, September 12, 2013
In medical school, while Sergei was busy composing a paper on anxiety disorders, Alexander beat him to publication with an exemplary dissertation on the combined effects of triskaidekaphobia and coulrophobia.
-- Christopher Meades, The Last Hiccup, 2012
Origin:
Triskaidekaphobia derives from the Greek word for thirteen, triskaídeka and the Greek word for fear, phobos. It entered English in the early 1900s.
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 5:16 am
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pigsney
PIGZ-nee , noun;
1. Obsolete. a darling.
2. Obsolete. an eye.
Quotes:
Why didst thou not take me away before her, seeing for me to live, without her, is but to languish? Ah! Badebec, Badebec, my minion, my dear heart, my pigsney, my duck, my honey, my little coney…
-- François Rabelais, The Works of Francis Rabelais, translated by Thomas Urquhart, 1653
As I believe, the pigsney of his heart, / Know he's in health, and what's more, full of glee...
-- Philip Massinger, The Picture, 1630
Origin:
Pigsney comes from the Middle English term piggesnye meaning literally "pig's eye." The term entered English in the mid-1300s.
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:55 am
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ballast
BAL-uhst , noun;
1. anything that gives mental, moral, or political stability or steadiness: the ballast of a steady income.
2. Nautical. any heavy material carried temporarily or permanently in a vessel to provide desired draft and stability.
3. Aeronautics. something heavy, as bags of sand, placed in the car of a balloon for control of altitude and, less often, of attitude, or placed in an aircraft to control the position of the center of gravity.
4. gravel, broken stone, slag, etc., placed between and under the ties of a railroad to give stability, provide drainage, and distribute loads.
5. Electricity. a. Also called ballast resistor. a device, often a resistor, that maintains the current in a circuit at a constant value by varying its resistance in order to counteract changes in voltage. b. a device that maintains the current through a fluorescent or mercury lamp at the desired constant value, sometimes also providing the necessary starting voltage and current.
verb:
1. to give steadiness to; keep steady: parental responsibilities that ballast a person.
2. to furnish with ballast: to ballast a ship.
Quotes:
The respectable concourse, I contend, men and women, should not have their sensations heightened in the hot-bed of luxurious indolence, at the expence of their understanding; for, unless there be a ballast of understanding, they will never become either virtuous or free...
-- Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
...Mr. Ejiofor’s restrained, open, translucent performance works as a ballast, something to cling onto, especially during the frenzies of violence.
-- Manohla Dargis, "The Blood and Tears, Not the Magnolias," New York Times, October 17, 2013
Origin:
Ballast emerged in English in the late 1400s with a nautical noun sense of "any heavy material used to steady a ship." It is perhaps of Scandinavian origin, descending from the Old Swedish and Old Danish term barlast, bar meaning "mere" or "bare," and last meaning "load" or "cargo."
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Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:39 am
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Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:50 pm
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Pickwickian
1. (of words or ideas) meant or understood in a sense different from the apparent or usual one.
2. (of the use or interpretation of an expression) intentionally or unintentionally odd or unusual.
Citations for Pickwickian
She also said, smiling subtly, that she used the word friends in a Pickwickian sense…I replied that I did not know what she meant; and she said to me…"My friends, there are no friends!" Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution, 1954
...In some curious Pickwickian way, of course. You know: it's true, but you consistently act as though it weren't... Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, 1939
Origin of Pickwickian
Pickwickian is derived from the name of the protagonist in Charles Dickens's novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, published serially from 1836–37. While Dickens was using the adjective Pickwickian in the 1830s, it took several more years before it caught on more widely.
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