May 10, 2012
Word of the Day

tranche
audio pronunciation
\TRAHNSH\

DEFINITION

noun
: a division or portion of a pool or whole

EXAMPLES

"The funds are doled out in tranches over time…." — From an article in The Economist, March 10, 2012

"The 1917 law … allowed $8 billion in national debt, the first tranche of an ultimate $30 billion debt to fund World War I, repayable in gold." — From an article by David Malpass in Forbes, February 27, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

In French, "tranche" means "slice." Cutting deeper into the word's etymology, we find the Old French word "trancer," meaning "to cut." The word emerged in the English language in the late 19th century to describe financial appropriations. Today, it is often used specifically of an issue of bonds that is differentiated from other issues by such factors as maturity or rate of return. Another use of the French word "tranche" is in the French phrase "une tranche de vie," meaning "a cross section of life." That phrase was coined by the dramatist Jean Jullien (1854-1919), who advocated naturalism in the theater.

May 11, 2012
Word of the Day

PACIFY
audio pronunciation
\PASS-uh-fye\

DEFINITION

verb
1
: to allay the anger or agitation of : soothe
2
a : to restore to a tranquil state : settle b : to reduce to a submissive state : subdue

EXAMPLES

Aunt Mabel claimed she had the magic touch to pacify a cranky baby, and indeed, as soon as she picked up her infant nephew he settled right down.

"Before Leon LaRue could pacify a rally outside the Augusta courthouse, a rock was thrown through a bus window, and the 1970 race riots exploded." — From an article by Meg Mirshak in the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, March 29, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

A parent who wants to win a little peace and quiet might give a fussy baby a pacifier. An employer seeking to avoid worker discontent might pay employees well. These actions may seem unrelated, but, etymologically speaking, they have a lot in common. Both "pacifier" and "pay" are ultimately derived from "pax," the Latin word for "peace." As you may have guessed, "pax" is also the source of our word "peace." "Pacify" comes to us through Middle English "pacifien," from the Latin verb "pacificare," which derives from "pax."

May 12, 2012
Word of the Day

RECALCITRATE
audio pronunciation
\rih-KAL-suh-trunt\

DEFINITION

adjective
1
: obstinately defiant of authority or restraint
2
a : difficult to manage or operate b : not responsive to treatment c : resistant

EXAMPLES

Anna's doctor ordered a week of complete bed rest, but, ever recalcitrant when it comes to doctors' orders, she was up and baking a cake after two days.

"Finally, he laid down the parental law: You will go on a hike and, gosh darn it, you will enjoy yourself. So the recalcitrant 14-year-old shrugged into her sweat shirt, slipped into her flimsy … canvas sneakers (totally hiking-inappropriate) and slumped in the back seat for the drive southwest to Vacaville, Calif., and Lagoon Valley Regional Park." — From an article by Sam McManis in Tri-City Herald (Washington), June 30, 2011

DID YOU KNOW?

Long before any human was dubbed "recalcitrant" in English (that first occurred, as best we know, in one of William Thackeray's works in 1843), there were stubborn mules (and horses) kicking back their heels. The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it — "recalcitrare," which literally means "to kick back." (Its root "calc-," meaning "heel," is also the root of "calcaneus," the large bone of the heel in humans.) Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded — as attested by various Latin words meaning "stubborn" — but it wasn’t until later that writers of Late Latin applied "recalcitrare" and its derivative adjective to humans who were stubborn as mules.

May 16, 2012
Word of the Day

ARGOT
audio pronunciation
\AHR-goh\

DEFINITION

noun
: an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group

EXAMPLES

The town's selectmen decided to hire a consultant to sort through the bureaucratic argot of the community development grant application.

"What makes the play work, though, is that the rich insider's argot spoken by Mr. Leight's characters is used not to show how much he knows, but to set the scene for a stinging tale of youthful hope and bitter disappointment, one whose implications are universal." — From a theater review by Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

We borrowed "argot" from French in the mid-1800s, although our language already had several words covering its meaning. There was "jargon," which harks back to Anglo-French by way of Middle English (where it meant "twittering of birds"); it had been used for specialized (and often obscure or pretentious) vocabulary since the 1600s. There was also "lingo," which had been around for almost a hundred years, and which is connected to the Latin word “lingua" ("language"). English novelist and lawyer Henry Fielding used it of "court gibberish" -- what we tend to call "legalese." In fact, the suffixal ending "-ese" is a newer means of indicating arcane vocabulary. One of its very first applications at the turn of the 20th century was for "American 'golfese.'"

May 17, 2012
Word of the Day

MAFFICK
audio pronunciation
\MAF-ik\

DEFINITION

verb
: to celebrate with boisterous rejoicing and hilarious behavior

EXAMPLES

Fans mafficked for hours outside the stadium, celebrating the team's dramatic victory in the division championship.

"In half an hour, after the mildest of mafficking, the last visitors of the exhibition's last day had gone out of the gates and the staff began their final acts of closing up shop." — From an article in The Guardian (London), October 1, 2011

DID YOU KNOW?

"Maffick" is an alteration of Mafeking Night, the British celebration of the lifting of the siege of a British military outpost during the South African War at the town of Mafikeng (also spelled Mafeking) on May 17, 1900. The South African War was fought between the British and the Afrikaners, who were Dutch and Huguenot settlers originally called Boers, over the right to govern frontier territories. Though the war did not end until 1902, the lifting of the siege of Mafikeng was a significant victory for the British because they held out against a larger Afrikaner force for 217 days until reinforcements could arrive. The rejoicing in British cities on news of the rescue produced "maffick," a word that was popular for a while, especially in journalistic writing, but is now relatively uncommon.

May 18, 2012
Word of the Day

GAZETTE
audio pronunciation
\guh-ZET\

DEFINITION

noun
1
: newspaper
2
: an official journal
3
: an announcement in an official gazette

EXAMPLES

I asked my brother to pick up the monthly car-buyer's gazette when he went into town.

"On May 2, 2012, Wynn Macau's land concession contract was published in the official gazette of Macau." — From an article in Business Wire, May 7, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

You are probably familiar the word "gazette" from its use in the names of a number of newspapers, but the original Gazettes were a series of bulletins published in England in the 17th and early 18th centuries. These official journals contained notices of government appointments and promotions, as well as items like bankruptcies, property transfers, and engagements. In British English, "gazette" can also refer to the kind of announcement that one might find in such a publication. It can also be used as a verb meaning "to announce or publish in a gazette." The word derives via French from Italian "gazetta." A related word is "gazetteer," which we now use for a dictionary of place names, but which once meant "journalist" or "publicist."

May 19, 2012
Word of the Day

SHANGHAI
audio pronunciation
\shang-HYE\

DEFINITION

verb
1
a : to put aboard a ship by force often with the help of liquor or a drug b : to put by force or threat of force into or as if into a place of detention
2
: to put by trickery into an undesirable position

EXAMPLES

Nick was shanghaied by Erika into helping out at the charity fundraiser after her first volunteer bailed out.

"In time, the new novel, lurching around his psyche, dragged itself away and became real. How I loved to see him shanghaied like that, careening down the rum-soaked wharves of imagination, where any roustabout idea might turn to honest labor." — From Diane Ackerman's 2011 book One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir

DID YOU KNOW?

In the 1800s, long sea voyages were very difficult and dangerous, so people were understandably hesitant to become sailors. But sea captains and shipping companies needed crews to sail their ships, so they gathered sailors any way they could — even if that meant resorting to kidnapping by physical force or with the help of liquor or drugs. The word "shanghai" comes from the name of the Chinese city of Shanghai. People started to use the city's name for that unscrupulous way of obtaining sailors because the East was often a destination of ships that had kidnapped men onboard as crew.

May 20, 2012
Word of the Day

HYPNAGOGIC
audio pronunciation
\hip-nuh-GAH-jik\

DEFINITION

adjective
: of, relating to, or occurring in the period of drowsiness immediately preceding sleep

EXAMPLES

"People who play lots of computer games sometimes experience 'screen dreams' as they fall asleep, in which they see vivid images of the game they have been playing. These screen dreams are also products of the hypnagogic state." — From Paul Martin's Counting Sheep, 2002

"These hallucinations, called hypnagogic hallucinations, may occur when falling quickly into REM sleep, as you do when you first fall asleep, or upon waking." — From an article by Jeff Barnet in the Las Cruces Sun-News, January 11, 2011

DID YOU KNOW?

"The hypnagogic state is that heady lull between wakefulness and sleep when thoughts and images flutter, melt, and transform into wild things," wrote Boston Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid (October 1, 1998). Some scientists have attributed alien-abduction stories to this state, but for most people these "half-dreams" are entirely innocuous. Perhaps the most famous hypnagogic dream is that of the German chemist Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz, who was inspired with the concept of the benzene ring by a vision of a snake biting its own tail. You're not dreaming if the Greek root "hypn-," meaning "sleep," seems familiar — you've seen it in "hypnotize." The root "-agogic" is from the Greek "-agōgos," meaning "inducing," from "agein" meaning "to lead." We borrowed "hypnagogic" (also spelled "hypnogogic") from French "hypnagogique" in the late 19th century.

May 23, 2012
Word of the Day

MENAGERIE
audio pronunciation
\muh-NAJ-uh-ree\

DEFINITION

noun
a : a place where animals are kept and trained especially for exhibition b : a collection of wild or foreign animals kept especially for exhibition 2: a varied mixture

EXAMPLES

The Alpine-themed restaurant had a curious menagerie of cuckoo clocks on the wall of its dining room.

"Since 2001, thousands of schoolchildren have made the trip to get up close with the preserve menagerie of between 100 and 150 animals, from pigs and geese to tigers and lions." — Eric Staats, Naples Daily News (Florida), May 12, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

Back in the days of Middle French, "ménagerie" meant "the management of a household or farm" or "a place where animals are tended." By the 1670s, English speakers had adopted the word but dropped its housekeeping aspects, applying it specifically to the places where circuses and other exhibitions kept show animals. Later, the word was generalized to refer to any varied mixture, especially one that includes things that are strange or foreign to one's experience.

YUP, SOUNDS LIKE WASHINGTON!

Amen! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbdn.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbdn.gif" alt="" />

And todays word DOES pertain to Knives!

May 24, 2012
Word of the Day

DAMASK
audio pronunciation
\DAM-usk\

DEFINITION

noun
1
: a firm lustrous fabric (as of linen, cotton, silk, or rayon) made with flat patterns in a satin weave on a plain-woven ground on jacquard looms
2
: hard elastic steel ornamented with wavy patterns and used especially for sword blades; also : the characteristic markings of this steel
3
: a grayish red

EXAMPLES

The old chair was upholstered in a blue silk damask which was now faded and threadbare.

"The interior of the newly restored Bolshoi Theater was resplendent with sable and decolletage and claret-colored damask on Friday…." — From an article by Ellen Barry and Sophia Kishkovsky in The New York Times, October 29, 2011

DID YOU KNOW?

The English noun "damask" entered Middle English (as "damaske") from Medieval Latin "damascus," taken from the name of the city of Damascus, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. In contemporary English "damask" is applied to a lustrous fabric with a satin weave design, as well as to a type of steel (also called "Damascus steel") ornamented with a variegated surface and to a grayish red color associated with the damask rose. While the fabric, the steel, and the damask rose probably did not originate in Damascus, their long association with the ancient city has nevertheless impressed itself upon the English language.

May 25, 2012
Word of the Day

TROUBADOUR
audio pronunciation
\TROO-buh-dor\

DEFINITION

noun
1
: a lyric poet or musician who performed chiefly in southern France and northern Italy in the 11th through 13th centuries
2
: a singer especially of folk songs

EXAMPLES

The small coffeehouse includes a performance space where troubadours from all over can come to play music for the other patrons.

"A tango diva and modern troubadour, [Maria] Volonté is an ardent singer-songwriter who lives true to her spirit, a spirit that has sent her on a lifelong expedition across countries and cultures through myriad musical styles." — From a review by Milton D. Carrero in The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), April 20, 2012

DID YOU KNOW?

In the Middle Ages, troubadours were the shining knights of poetry (in fact, some were ranked as high as knights in the feudal class structure). Troubadours made chivalry a high art, writing poems and singing about chivalrous love, creating the mystique of refined damsels, and glorifying the gallant knight on his charger. "Troubadour" was a fitting name for such creative artists; it derives from an Old Occitan word meaning "to compose." In modern contexts, "troubadour" still refers to the song-meisters of the Middle Ages, but it has been extended to cover contemporary poet-musicians as well.