A new word for the day

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--schadenfreude
Pronunciation RealAudio

schadenfreude (SHAAD-n-froi-duh) noun

Pleasure derived from others' misfortunes.

[From German Schadenfreude, from Schaden (damage, harm) + Freude (joy).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus.

"He (Bob Carr) would be only human to feel a touch of Schadenfreude if his state's problems were to cost Latham the election." Miranda Devine; The Pressure is on Latham; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Sep 2, 2004.

"Part of the attraction of the first seasons was Schadenfreude -- the joy in watching filmmakers suffer and struggle when they got their big chance. As the New York Sun newspaper put it in a headline 'Bad Film = Good TV'." Peter Henderson; Reality TV 'Project Greenlight' Has New Goal: Money; Reuters; Aug 6, 2004.

In an email I received recently, the writer described one of his daughter Hanna's relatives with these words: "Lynne is the wife of the brother of Hanna's husband, Randy." Hmmm... The English language boasts the largest vocabulary of any tongue, but relationships is one area where its impecuniosity shows.

Sure, my correspondent could have used the generic term sister-in-law, but that's so vague as to be almost useless. It could imply any of the three possible relationships encompassing may be a half-dozen people.

Many languages have a rich repertoire when it comes to describing relationships. For example, in Hindi one could precisely describe the above relationship with a single word. In fact, there are two separate terms available to further clarify the scene. One could say "Lynne is Hanna's devrani" (if Lynne is the wife of a younger brother of Hanna's husband) or "jethani" (wife of an older brother).

While these two words from Hindi aren't part of the English language (yet), there are many others we've borrowed from numerous languages to fill the gaps. This week we'll feature five of them.

-Anu Garg [email protected]

X-Bonus
Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

 

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Word of the Day for Tuesday September 21, 2004, Dictionary.com

tatterdemalion \tat-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn\, noun:
A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
adjective:
Tattered; ragged.

Last time peasant blouses surfaced, in the 1960s and '70s, they were part of an epidemic of Indian bedspread dresses, homemade blue-jean skirts, Army surplus jackets, Greek bookbag purses and love beads, the whole eclectic tatterdemalion mix meant to express egalitarian sentiments and countercultural solidarity with underdogs everywhere.
--Patricia McLaughlin, "The peasant look," Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, April 25, 1999

I was expecting a wild hair, clanking jewelry, a tatterdemalion velvet cape from whose folds wafted the scent of incense, a house full of candles, dream catchers, cats, and bad art.
--David Rakoff, Fraud

To my ear, though, the prose has the tatterdemalion feel of something hooked together by commas, tacked together by periods.
--Brad Leithauser,"Capturer of Hearts," New York Times, April 7, 1996


Tatterdemalion derives from tatter + -demalion, of unknown origin, though perhaps from Old French maillon, "long clothes, swadding clothes" or Italian maglia, "undershirt."

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 21 is:

stanch • \STAWNCH\ • verb
*1 : to check or stop the flow of; also : to stop the flow of blood from (a wound)
2 a : to stop or check in its course b : to make watertight : stop up

Example sentence:
The first-aid manual advised immediate application of pressure to the cut to stanch the bleeding.

Did you know?
The verb "stanch" has a lot in common with the adjective "staunch," meaning "steadfast." Not only do both words derive from the Anglo-French word "estancher" (which has the same meaning as "stanch"), but the spelling "s-t-a-n-c-h" is sometimes used for the adjective, and the spelling "s-t-a-u-n-c-h" is sometimes used for the verb. Although both spelling variants have been in reputable use for centuries and both are perfectly standard for either the verb or adjective, "stanch" is the form used most often for the verb and "staunch" is the most common variant for the adjective.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

 

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--agitprop
Pronunciation RealAudio

agitprop (AJ-it-prop) noun

Propaganda, especially one that's political in nature, disseminated through art, drama, literature, etc.

[From Russian Agitpróp, from agitatsiya (agitation) + propaganda.]

Agitpróp was originally the name of the propaganda arms of the Central Committee and local committees of the Russian Communist Party in the former USSR.

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus.

"And Stuff Happens will, reportedly, be even more of a hybrid. It is said to be not agitprop or documentary but a written play." Kate Kellaway; Arts: Theatre of War; The Observer (London, UK); Aug 29, 2004.

"(Rob) Stein didn't begrudge the manufacturers of corporatist agitprop the successful distribution of their product in the national markets for the portentous catch-phrase and the camera-ready slogan." Lewis H. Lapham; Tentacles of Rage; Harper's Magazine (New York); Sep 2004.

This week's theme: words borrowed from other languages.

X-Bonus
No one ever ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward. -Amar Gopal Bose, electrical engineer, inventor, founder Bose Corp. (1929- )

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 22 is:

equinox • \EE-kwuh-nahks\ • noun
1 : either of the two points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator intersects the ecliptic
*2 : either of the two times each year (as about March 21 and September 23) when the sun crosses the equator

Example sentence:
During the equinox, day and night are approximately of equal length around the world.

Did you know?
"Equinox" descends from "aequus," the Latin word for "equal," and "nox," the Latin word for "night"—a fitting history for a word that describes days of the year when the daytime and nighttime are equal in length. In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the first day of spring and occurs when the sun moves north across the equator. ("Vernal" comes from the Latin word "ver," meaning "spring.") The autumnal equinox marks the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere and occurs when the sun crosses the equator going south. In contrast, a solstice is either of the two moments in the year when the sun's apparent path is farthest north or south from the equator.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

 

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Word of the Day for Wednesday September 22, 2004 Dictionary.com
confabulation \kon-FAB-yuh-lay-shuhn\, noun:
1. Familiar talk; easy, unrestrained, unceremonious conversation.
2. (Psychology) A plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered.

Their sentiments were reflected neither in the elegant exchanges between the Viceroy and Secretary of State, nor in the unlovely confabulations between the Congress and the League managers.
--Mushirul Hasan, "Partition: The Human Cost," History Today, September 1997

Sigmund Freud, a stubborn, bullying interrogator of hysterical women, harangued his patients into building fantasies and traumas that fit into his grand narrative scheme, eliciting confabulations rather than actual memories.
--Jennifer Howard, "Neurosis 1990s-Style," Civilization, April/May 1997


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Confabulation comes from Late Latin confabulatio, from the past participle of Latin confabulari, "to talk together," from con-, "together, with" + fabulari, "to talk." It is related to fable, "a fiction, a tale," and to fabulous, "so incredible or astonishing as to resemble or suggest a fable."

 

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--ananda

ananda (AH-nan-duh) noun

Pure bliss.

[From Sanskrit ananda (joy).]

Anandamide is the name given to a compound found in mammalian brains. It's the same compound that's found in chocolate. Now you know why chocolate gives you that feeling of bliss.

"In the emerald blue silence there is space for awareful existence of the fullness of ananda." Song of Silence; The Times of India (New Delhi, India); Aug 9, 2004.

"Then and there he (William A. Devane) decided that if his quest proved successful, he would name the elusive chemical after ananda." Marijuana And the Brain; Science News (Washington, DC); Feb 6, 1993.

This week's theme: words borrowed from other languages.


X-Bonus
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and the government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

 

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--soupcon
Pronunciation RealAudio

soupcon or soupçon (soop-SON, SOOP-son) noun

A very small amount.

[From French soupçon (suspicion), via Middle French, Late Latin, from Latin suspicere (to look from below, or suspect). Ultimately from Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of such words as suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), espionage, despise, and telescope.]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus.

"Couldn't Bob Levey and Jim Talens have a soupcon of sympathy for the Costco Dad? Where was he supposed to go to change that diaper?" Bob Levey; Changing a Diaper on a Costco Conveyor Belt; The Washington Post; Feb 6, 2003.

"Remember that white ruffled blouse you bought last spring? Wear it under a pinstripe suit and you'll be right in step with the biggest womenswear trend of the season: the menswear look with a soupcon of femininity." Pam Thomas; The Feel of Fall; The Providence Journal (Rhode Island); Oct 6, 2002.

This week's theme: words borrowed from other languages.

X-Bonus
If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

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Word of the Day for Thursday September 23, 2004 Dictionary.com

inkhorn \INK-horn\, adjective:
Affectedly or ostentatiously learned; pedantic.

noun:
A small bottle of horn or other material formerly used for holding ink.

. . . the widespread use of what were called (dismissively, by truly learned folk) "inkhorn terms."
--Simon Winchester, "Word Imperfect," The Atlantic Monthly, May 2001

In prison he wrote the De Consolatione Philosophiae, his most celebrated work and one of the most translated works in history; it was translated . . . by Elizabeth I into florid, inkhorn language.
--The Oxford Companion to English Literature, s.v. "Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (c. 475 - 525)."


Inkhorn derives from the name for the container formerly used (beginning in the 14th century) for holding ink, originally made from a real horn. Hence it came to refer to words that were being used by learned writers and scholars but which were unknown or rare in ordinary speech.

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 23 is:

fustigate • \FUSS-tuh-gayt\ • verb
1 : to beat with or as if with a short heavy club
*2 : to criticize severely

Example sentence:
The incumbent senator has been fustigated by his opponent for twice voting to raise taxes.

Did you know?
Though it won't leave a bump on your head, severe criticism can be a blow to your self-esteem. It's no wonder that "fustigate," when it first appeared in the 17th century, originally meant "to cudgel or beat with a short heavy stick," a sense that reflects the word's derivation from the Latin noun "fustis," which means "club" or "staff." The "criticize" sense is more common these days, but the violent use of "fustigate" was a hit with earlier writers like George Huddesford, who in 1801 told of an angry Jove who "cudgell'd all the constellations, . . . / Swore he'd eject the man i' the moon . . . / And fustigate him round his orbit."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 24 is:

zwieback \SWEE-back\ noun
: a usually sweetened bread enriched with eggs that is
baked and then sliced and toasted until dry and crisp

Example sentence:
Our favorite cheesecake recipe calls for finely crushed
zwieback crumbs for the crust.

Did you know?
In ages past, keeping food fresh for any length of time
required a lot of ingenuity, especially when one needed to carry
comestibles on a long journey. One of the solutions people came
up with for keeping bread edible for traveling was to bake it
twice, thereby drying it and slowing the spoiling process. The
etymology of "zwieback" reflects this baker's trick; it was
borrowed from a German word that literally means "twice baked."

 

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--schlimazel
Pronunciation RealAudio

schlimazel or shlimazel (SHLI-mah-zuhl) noun

Someone prone to having extremely bad luck.

[From Yiddish, from shlim (bad, wrong) + mazl (luck). A related term is Hebrew mazel tov (congratulations or best wishes).]

A schlimazel can be concisely described as a born loser. No discussion of schlimazel could be complete without mentioning his counterpart: schlemiel, a habitual bungler. They go together:

A schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, schlimazel is the one on whom it always lands.

A schlimazel's toast always falls butter-side down. A schlemiel always butters his toast on both sides.

"No one would deny (Virginia Governor Mark) Warner took office under lousy conditions - facing an opposition-party legislature during a recession - which qualifies him as a schlimazel." A. Barton Hinkle; So, is the Governor a Schlemiel or a Schlimazel?; Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia); Jan 28, 2003.

"He (Uncle Danny) ticked off the names on the Pirates' roster. 'Abrams, Gordon, Kravitz, Levy - what are we running, a shlimazel farm?'" Clarke Blaise; Sitting Shivah With Cousin Benny; Salmagundi (Saratoga Springs, New York); Fall 1999.

This week's theme: words borrowed from other languages.

X-Bonus
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. -Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1900-1971)

 

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Word of the Day for Friday September 24, 2004 dictionary.com

quash \KWOSH\, transitive verb:
1. (Law) To abate, annul, overthrow, or make void; as, "to quash an indictment."
2. To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely; as, "to quash a rebellion."

The Shelby Globe attributed her death to acute heart failure and yellow jaundice and did its best to quash a curious town rumor that had her being poisoned by eating oyster sandwiches.
--Tim Page, Dawn Powell: A Biography

The German-French entente made NATO intervention to quash the Balkan civil wars possible, and the collapse of the Soviet Union made NATO's intervention deep into the former Soviet sphere of influence permissible.
--Thomas L. Friedman, "Was Kosovo World War III?" New York Times, July 2, 1999

[The law] . . . also installed newspaper censorship, enabling the government to quash anything "calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty's forces or to assist the enemy."
--Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand


Quash comes from Medieval French quasser, from Latin quassare, "to shake violently, to shatter," frequentative form of quatere, "to shake." Quash, "to annul," has been sense-influenced by Late Latin cassare, "to annul," from Latin cassus, "empty," whereas quash, "to crush," has been sense-influenced by squash.

 

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Word of the Day for Saturday September 25, 2004 Dictionary.com

wiseacre \WY-zay-kuhr\, noun:
One who pretends to knowledge or cleverness; a would-be wise person; a smart aleck.

All across the United States, journalists and other wiseacres would soon have a field day with the popular mayor's personal problems and public trials.
--Herbert Mitgang, Once Upon a Time in New York

A wiseacre on the Oakland to Los Angeles shuttle this week said the next technological leap would be implanting cell phones into people's heads. He was kidding -- we think.
--Chuck Raasch, "California is November prize for candidates," USA Today August 24, 2000


Wiseacre comes from Middle Dutch wijssegger, "a soothsayer," from Old High German wissago, alteration of wizago, "a prophet."

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 25 is:

gritty • \GRIT-ee\ • adjective
1 : containing or resembling grit
2 : courageously persistent : plucky
*3 : having strong qualities of tough uncompromising realism

Example sentence:
Dan is writing a gritty novel about the perils of missionary work.

Did you know?
"Gritty" comes from "grit" ("small hard granules"), which in turn derives (via Middle English) from the Old English word for "sand" or "gravel." "Grit" has been around since before the 12th century, but the first appearance of "gritty" in print in English was near the end of the 16th century, when it was used in the sense of "resembling or containing small hard granules." "Grit" entered American slang in the early 19th century with the meaning "courage or persistence," and, within about 20 years, "gritty" followed suit with a corresponding "plucky" sense. By the 19th century's end, "gritty" was also being used to describe a literary style that was rough and coarse.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 26 is:

terpsichorean \terp-sih-kuh-REE-un\ adjective
: of or relating to dancing

Example sentence:
"Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet headed south to Los Angeles Sunday
afternoon after infecting this town with six days of ...
terpsichorean frenzy...." (Allan Ulrich, _The San Francisco
Examiner_, August 10, 1987)

Did you know?
In Greek and Roman mythology, Terpsichore (\terp-SIH-kuh-
ree\) was one of the nine muses, those graceful sister-goddesses
who presided over learning and the arts. Terpsichore was the
patron of dance and choral song (and later lyric poetry), and in
artistic representations she is often shown dancing and holding
a lyre. Her name, which earned an enduring place in English
through the adjective "terpsichorean," literally means "dance-
enjoying," from "terpsis," meaning "enjoyment," and "choros,"
meaning "dance." "Choros" is also the source of "choreography"
and "chorus" (those "choruses" in Athenian drama consisted of
dancers as well as singers). The only other word we know that
incorporates "terpsis" is "terpodion," an obsolete term for a
piano-like musical instrument that was invented in 1816 but
never really caught on.

 

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Word of the Day for Sunday September 26, 2004 Dictionary.com

cacophony \kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\, noun:
1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.
2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.

New York was then a cacophony of sounds -- a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling.
--Herbert G. Goldman, Banjo Eyes

The mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable.
--Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg


Cacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.

 

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The Webster Word of the Day for September 27 is:

realia \ree-AL-ee-uh\ noun
: objects or activities used to relate classroom teaching
to the real life especially of peoples studied

Example sentence:
The teacher asked the exchange student from Brazil to bring
in photos, food items, and other realia to share with the class.

Did you know?
"Realia," a word invented in the 1930s, is still mostly
used in the classroom by teachers, especially foreign language
teachers, and in the library by cataloguers (realia in libraries
can consist of things as bizarre as an author's hair and teeth
donated posthumously), but it's seeping out. You might, for
example, hear of someone putting "realia" -- objects that
represent present-day life -- in a time capsule. "Realia" is
also sometimes used philosophically to distinguish real things
from the theories about them. "Realia" is one of those plural
formations without a corresponding singular form.
Like "memorabilia" ("memorable things"
or "mementos"), "juvenilia" ("works produced in an artist's or
author's youth"), and "marginalia" ("marginal notes or
embellishments"), it incorporates the Latin plural ending "-ia."

 

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Word of the Day for Monday September 27, 2004 Dictionary.com

excursus \ik-SKUR-sus\, noun:
1. A dissertation that is appended to a work and that contains a more extended exposition of some important point or topic.
2. A digression.

And the eels not only have a role in the narrator's story . . . but receive a 12-page excursus on their genesis and (as it were) life style.
--William H. Pritchard, "The Body in the River Leem," New York Times, March 25, 1984

Sometimes, however, Mr. Honan's historical digressions wander far away from Jane Austen's concerns. An excursus on George III's insanity has precious little to do with "Pride and Prejudice," the subject nominally under discussion.
--Peter Conrad, "'Beside Her Joyce Seems Innocent as Grass,'" New York Times, February 28, 1988

Perhaps the most important objection to Mr. Hughes's method is that he views structural changes in both the Western and the Communist world systems chiefly through the filter of his rebels; sometimes I would have preferred an excursus on economic issues to one on intellectual history.
--Peter Schneider, "A New Breed at the Barricades," New York Times, January 8, 1989

Somewhat sprightlier than the long chapter on Stolypin is his 80-page historical excursus about Nicholas II, the last of Russia's hereditary autocrats.
--Irving Howe, "The Great War and Russian Memory," New York Times, July 2, 1989


Excursus comes from the past participle of Latin excurrere, "to run out," from ex-, "out" + currere, "to run."

 

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Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day--wonk
Pronunciation RealAudio

wonk (wongk) noun

An expert who studies a subject or issue thoroughly and excessively.

[Of unknown origin.]

This word is most often encountered in the term "policy wonk". There are many speculations about the origin of the word, for example an acronym for WithOut Normal Knowledge, or the reverse spelling of the word know, but these claims are not supported by evidence.

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus.

"This sober, well-ordered city - where John Calvin was laid to rest - is also where the WTO is headquartered and where trade wonks get down to serious business." From Cancun to Geneva; The Economist (London, UK); Jul 30, 2004.

"Aside from being a genuine wit and an eloquent policy wonk, (Robert) Reich speaks the language of class." Eric Alterman; The Reich Stuff; Mother Jones (San Francisco, California); Jul/Aug 1995.

If archaic words are the grizzled old veterans of a language, slang terms are its feisty teenagers. These are words that are not afraid to experiment, twist, turn, blend, and innovate with language.

A few weeks ago we featured archaic expressions and now it's time to give slang its due. Since slang is often born on the gritty streets of language rather than in the language lab, its origins are often hard to pin down. We aren't sure where most of the words for this week originated but that shouldn't stop us from giving them a spin.

-Anu Garg

X-Bonus
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. -L.P. Hartley, writer (1895-1972)