October 07, 2010Word of the Day
UNTOWARD \un-TOH-erd\DEFINITIONadjective

1: difficult to guide, manage, or work with : unruly, intractable
2: not favorable : adverse, unpropitious
3: improper, indecorous
EXAMPLES The coach forewarned the players that any untoward behavior, on or off the field, would not be tolerated.

"According to preliminary reports, the voting on Wednesday proceeded smoothly. Other than the usual minor glitches, there were no untoward incidents." -- From an article in The Kansas City Star, August 5, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? More than 700 years ago, English speakers began using the word "toward" for "forward-moving" youngsters, the kind who showed promise and were open to listening to their elders. After about 150 years, the use was broadened somewhat to mean simply "docile" or "obliging." The opposite of this "toward" is "froward," meaning "perverse" or "ungovernable." Today, "froward" has fallen out of common use, and the cooperative sense of "toward" is downright obsolete, but the "newcomer" to this series -- "untoward" -- has kept its toehold. "Untoward" first showed up in the 1400s, and it is still used, just as it was then, as a synonym of "unruly," though it has since acquired other meanings as well.


HA HA this one got me to giggling:

BAHS - Noun, A supervisor.
"If you don't stop reading these southern words and get back to work, your bahs is gonna far you"

It's probably a GOOD thing that I work the Midnight shift!

October 08, 2010Word of the Day
FOLIAGE \FOH-lee-ij\DEFINITIONnoun

1: a representation of leaves, flowers, and branches for architectural ornamentation
2: the aggregate of leaves of one or more plants
3: a cluster of leaves, flowers, and branches
EXAMPLES The autumn foliage is often a resplendent display of reds, oranges, and yellows.

"The Virginia Tech football team's success has become a rite of autumn in Blacksburg, with victories accumulating as consistently as the foliage that falls over the Blue Ridge Mountains." -- From an article by Adam Himmelsbach in the New York Times, September 6, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? The English language has its share of common but disputed usages. One such example is the pronunciation of "foliage" as FOH-lij or, even more irksome to some, FOY-lij. The first of these two pronunciations, though frequently disparaged, is consistent with the pronunciation of the "-iage" ending in "marriage" and "carriage," as well the less common but widely accepted pronunciation of "verbiage" as VER-bij. The second of these is often more fiercely denounced, in part because of its association with the nonstandard spelling "foilage." Oddly enough, "foliage" traces back to Middle French "foille" ("leaf"), which is also the source of the English word "foil." (When adopted by Middle English speakers, "foil" originally meant "leaf.")

Since we are on the subject of the outdoors, I give you this for your reading pleasure.

Heavy Dew - Phrase. "Kin I heavy dew me a favor?"

You are DEFINITELY from Missouri!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/doh.gif" alt="" />...................................... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

October 09, 2010Word of the Day
TENDENTIOUS \ten-DEN-shus\DEFINITIONadjective

: marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view : biased
EXAMPLES The author’s tendentious history of the chemical company glosses over its role in one of the most catastrophic environmental accidents in history.

"YouTube-style montages and mash-ups have been an excellent tool for seeing and showing how rhetoric takes shape. Of course, these videos can themselves be polemical, and people use them to advance all kinds of tendentious theories." -- From an article by Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times, August 29, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? "Tendentious" is one of several words English speakers can choose when they want to suggest that someone has made up his or her mind in advance. You may be partial to "predisposed" or prone to favor "partisan," but whatever your leanings, we're inclined to think you'll benefit from adding "tendentious" to your repertoire. A derivative of the Medieval Latin word "tendentia," meaning "tendency," plus the English suffix "-ious," "tendentious" has been used in English as an adjective for biased attitudes since at least 1900.

THIS MAY NOT BE A REDNECK PHRASE, BUT IT SHOULD BE!

Our Tendentious attitude of NOT trusting politicans is based upon HISTORICAL FACT!

The redneck explaination: If His mouths moving you know he aint' tellin the truth!

Also translated as: "if his mouth is movin' you know he's lyin'"! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

I can understand the Red Neck translation............and that is the truth.

I feel at home <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> .

I'd add, about politicians in particular, if their mouths aren't moving its because they're busy destroying our Republic in some other way!

October 13, 2010Word of the Day
ERSTWHILE \ERST-wile\DEFINITIONadverb

: in the past : formerly
EXAMPLES We were delighted to discover a new community garden where erstwhile had been a trash-filled vacant lot.

"In Florida, the erstwhile popular Republican governor, Charlie Crist, dropped out of the party's Senate primary race to run as an independent after encountering Tea Party opposition." -- From the Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd.'s Country Report Select, October 1, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? The adverb "erstwhile" has been part of English since the 16th century, but it is formed from two words that are much older. It comes from the Old English words "ær," meaning "early," and "hw&#299;l," which has much the same meaning as the modern word "while." (The English word "ere," meaning "before," is also descendant of "ær.") The adjective "erstwhile," as in "erstwhile enemies," joined the language around 1900.

Erstwhile. In erstwile days Politicians were respectable members of the community and actually worked for the good of the people they represented!

GUMMIT- Noun: An often-closed bureaucratic institution.
Usage: "Great...Another Gimmit shutdown!"

Also used as the second part of the term - "dad-gummit"! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

October 14, 2010Word of the Day
boustrophedon\boo-struh-FEE-dahn\DEFINITIONnoun

: the writing of alternate lines in opposite directions (as from left to right and from right to left)
EXAMPLES The archaeologist was quick to see that the text was written in boustrophedon.

"Some writing systems, like the ancient Greeks' boustrophedon, in which alternate lines are read in opposite directions, appear to actually support these pre-literary inclinations." -- From an article in The Economist (U.S. Edition), July 10, 2010
DID YOU KNOW?Before the standardization of writing from left to right, ancient Greek inscribers once used a style called "boustrophedon," a word meaning literally "turning like oxen in plowing." When they came to the end of a line, the ancient Greeks simply started the next line immediately below the last letter, writing the letters and words in the opposite direction, and thus following the analogy of oxen plowing left to right, then right to left. "Reverse boustrophedon" writing has also been found in which the inscribers turned the document 180 degrees before starting a new line so that the words are always read left to right with every half turn. The word "boustrophedon" itself is formed from the Greek word for the ox or cow, "bous," and the verb "strephein," which means "to turn."

Politicians write like that all the time! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/doh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

October 15, 2010Word of the Day
ZEROTH \ZEE-rohth\DEFINITION adjective

: being numbered zero in a series; also : of, relating to, or being a zero
EXAMPLES Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Zeroth Law for robots --"A robot may not harm humanity" -- supersedes his First Law disallowing a robot to harm an individual human being.

"For us to consider 2009 the end of the decade, we would have to have had a year 0. But this means the first century, too, would have to have been the zeroth century. And the first millennium the zeroth millennium. It doesn't work that way. It can't work that way, unless you want to be at the end of the zeroth decade of the zeroth century of the second millennium." -- From an article by Dennis E. Powell in The Athens News (Ohio), December 28, 2009
DID YOU KNOW? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to use "zeroth," but the word, which was coined by physicists over a hundred years ago, does often show up in scientific contexts. (It comes from "zero," which is itself from Arabic "&#7779;ifr.") These days "zeroth" is frequently used, as in our first example sentence, to suggest a level of importance that is even higher than first. Renowned Soviet physicist Lev Landau used "zeroth" this way when he classified all the famous physicists according to the relative value of their contributions to science. He put Niels Bohr and Max Planck, for example, right up there in the first class, and lesser-rated physicists in the second through fifth classes. Where did he think Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton belonged? They were unmatched, he felt, so they went in his zeroth class.


For a little interntional flavor, we are going to explore the world of the FRENCH redneck today with this:
Ze roth of of a redneck can be quite unlike any wrath you have ever experienced before! Hey, I never said it was good, it just jumped into my thoughts.