shape-shifter

November 24, 2010Word of the Day
TU QUOQUE \TOO-KWOH-kwee\DEFINITION
noun

: a retort charging an adversary with being or doing what he or she criticizes in others
EXAMPLES A good debater recognizes that resorting to a tu quoque only weakens one's position in the argument.

"Thomas describes Williams's defense tactic as 'tu quoque' (you're another), basically the aggressive defense for which Williams was known, accusing the accusers." -- From Kim Eisler's 2010 book Masters of the Game: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Firm
DID YOU KNOW? A typical tu quoque involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation -- an evasive strategy that may or may not meet with success. The term has been active in the English language for about 400 years and has been put to use by a number of English writers, including C.S. Lewis, who penned, "your condemnation of my taste is insolent; only manners deter me from a tu quoque." The term is Latin in origin and translates as "you too," although the translation "you're another" is sometimes used as well (as in our second example sentence). "Tu quoque" functions in English as a noun, but it's often used attributively to modify other nouns, as in "a tu quoque argument."

In other words, politician speak! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/doh.gif" alt="" />

YOU THE MAN!

November 25, 2010Word of the Day
RISIBLE \RIZZ-uh-bul\DEFINITION
adjective

1a : capable of laughing b : disposed to laugh
2: arousing or provoking laughter; especially : laughable
3: associated with, relating to, or used in laughter
EXAMPLES The teacher asked the class clown to keep his risible remarks to himself during the lesson.

"Skeptics of the plan could make any number of reasonable criticisms. But they're not. Instead, they're raising a host of risible objections that frequently cancel one another out." -- From an article by A. Barton Hinkle in the Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia), September 14, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? If someone makes a ridiculous remark about your "risible muscles," he or she is not necessarily deriding your physique. "Risible" can also mean "associated with laughter," so "risible muscles" can simply be the ones used for laughing. (You've also got a set of risorius muscles around your mouth that help you smile.) Next time you find something laughable, tip your hat to "rid&#275;re," the Latin verb meaning "to laugh" that gave us "risible" (and "ridiculous" and "deride," by the way).

Quick Quiz: The Middle English word "smerian," meaning "to laugh," gave English "smile" and what 5-letter word meaning "to smile in a smug manner"? The answer is ...


The present occupant of 1600 Penn avenue is a risible individual!

November 26, 2010Word of the Day
FRENETIC \frih-NET-ik\DEFINITION
adjective

: frenzied, frantic
EXAMPLES Frenetic holiday shoppers swarmed the aisles in search of bargains.

"A mannered 80s-style TV debate, with no booing or clapping allowed, was accompanied by frenetic social media activity on Twitter and Facebook." -- From an article by Nicola Brittain in Computing, April 22, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane -- at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. "Frenetik," in Middle English, meant "insane." When the word no longer denoted stark raving madness, it conjured up fanatical zealots. Today its seriousness has been downgraded to something more akin to "hectic." But if you trace "frenetic" back through Anglo-French and Latin, you'll find that it comes from Greek "phrenitis," a term describing an inflammation of the brain. "Phr&#275;n," the Greek word for "mind," is a root you will recognize in "schizophrenic." As for "frenzied" and "frantic," they're not only synonyms of "frenetic" but relatives as well. "Frantic" comes from "frenetik," and "frenzied" traces back to "phrenitis."


It would appear that the present occupant of 1600 Penn avenue in Washington D.C. is Freneticly trying to regain his image as the left's Golden child.
I don't think it gonna work!

November 27, 2010Word of the Day
CALUMET \KAL-yuh-met\DEFINITION
noun

: a highly ornamented ceremonial pipe of the American Indians
EXAMPLES The museum's Native American collection includes several calumets.

"Trade encounters were marked by formal welcomes, oratory, gift exchange and feasting, ritually renewing the bonds between peoples. Participants sacralized relationships through smoking a calumet and thus invoking the Great Spirit to spiritually bind them together." -- From an article by Tyler McCreary in Briarpatch, March 1, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? The calumet has long been an important component of the ceremonies of Native American groups, but the first inhabitants of the Americas did not give the venerated pipe (also known as the "peace pipe") that name. English speakers borrowed "calumet" from American French, which had carried it from the dialects of France to North America. "Chalumet," the French ancestor of "calumet," traces to the Latin "calamus" and the Greek "kalamos," both of which mean "reed" or "pen." French baron Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce La Hontan, who explored North America in the 17th century, noted that French speakers had applied "calumet" to the highly ornamented clay pipes of Native Americans by the 1670s; English speakers followed suit before the turn of that century.

November 28, 2010Word of the Day
DISHEVELED \dih-SHEV-uld\DEFINITION
adjective

: marked by disorder or disarray
EXAMPLES The young man's wrinkled suit gave him a disheveled appearance.

"He looks vaguely familiar, almost like the team's starting quarterback, that Joe Flacco guy. But instead of Flacco's usual disheveled haircut, which generally looks like it was combed with salad tongs, this guy at the mic has a spiky, gelled 'do with lines etched on the side and some other crazy pattern cut into the back of his head." -- From a post by Kevin Cowherd on the Baltimore Sun's Toy Department blog, October 26, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? It’s common to wake up after a long night’s sleep with your hair disheveled -- which is appropriate, considering the origins of the word "disheveled." First appearing in English in the late 16th century, "disheveled" derived from Middle English "discheveled," meaning "bareheaded" or "with disordered hair." It is a partial translation of the Anglo-French word "deschevelé," formed by combining the prefix "des-" ("dis-") with "chevoil," the word for hair. Since the early 17th century, however, "disheveled" has been used for things other than hair, including such disparate items as grammar and reputations, that are far from tidy.

December 01, 2010Word of the Day
PLANGENT \PLAN-junt\DEFINITION
adjective

1: having a loud reverberating sound
2: having an expressive and especially plaintive quality
EXAMPLES The campers were awoken by the plangent howl of a coyote off in the distance.

"Mr. Packard is the finest Candide I’ve seen, singing with rich, plangent tone and acting with an un-self-conscious sincerity that never falters." -- From a theater review by Charles Isherwood in the New York Times, October 27, 2010
DID YOU KNOW? "Plangent" adds power to our poetry and prose: the pounding of waves, the beat of wings, the tolling of a bell, the throbbing of the human heart, a lover's knocking at the door -- all have been described as plangent. The word "plangent" traces back to the Latin verb "plangere," which has two meanings. The first of those meanings, "to strike or beat," was sometimes used by Latin speakers in reference to striking one's breast in grief. This, in turn, led to the verb's second meaning: "to lament." The sense division carried over to the Latin adjective "plangens" and then into English, giving us the two distinct meanings of "plangent": "pounding" and "expressive of melancholy."

Isn't that something that comes off the swampy boggy bottom?

HAHA, only if you had BEANS! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

December 02, 2010Word of the Day
ECOTONE \EE-kuh-tohn\DEFINITION
noun

: a transition area between two adjacent ecological communities
EXAMPLES Cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds -- in particular, those located in the ecotones along the edges of a mature forest.

"Thus for dung beetles examined in a Bolivian forest-savannah ecotone, almost complete turnover occurred between forest and savannah, with only two of the 50 most common species occurring in both…." -- From T.R. New's 2010 book Beetles in Conservation
DID YOU KNOW? "Every modification of climate, every disturbance of the soil, every interference with the existing vegetation of an area, favours some species at the expense of others." As Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker observed in Flora Indica (1855), all ecological communities are subject to some kind of disturbance, ranging from the simple, yet significant, loss of a tree to a catastrophic wildfire. Each disturbance creates an opportunity for a new species to colonize or flourish within the ecosystem in a process known as "ecological succession." Scientists refer to the area of overlapping landscapes where the "foreign" species encounter each other and blend together as "ecotones," an apparent allusion to the tension created when competing species come together (in Greek "tonos" means "tension").