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 Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:04 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 24, 2006
torpid TOR-pid, adjective:
1. Having lost motion or the power of exertion and feeling; numb; benumbed.
2. Dormant; hibernating or estivating.
3. Dull; sluggish; apathetic.
Canary Islanders are citizens of Spain, but geography asserts itself from time to time, as a reminder that this land will always be Africa's: the trade winds get interrupted by strong gusts from the east that bring hot dust and sometimes even torpid, wind-buffeted locusts.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Where the Map Stopped", New York Times, May 17, 1992
For more than twenty years--all my adult life--I have lived here: my great weight sunk, torpid in the heat, into this sagged chair on my rooftop patio.
-- Peggy Payne, Sister India
Some animals became torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
The debacle over signatures has roused the normally politically torpid Mayor, who dislikes pressing the flesh.
-- Jan Cienski, "Petition bungle robs Mayor of spot on ballot", National Post, July 30, 2002
It is a man's own fault . . . if his mind grows torpid in old age.
-- Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson
Torpid comes from Latin torpidus, "numb, sluggish," from torpere, "to be sluggish, inert, or numb."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 6:12 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Monday, May 29, 2006
forfend for-FEND, transitive verb:
1. a. (Archaic) To prohibit; to forbid. b. To ward off; to prevent; to avert.
2. To defend; to protect; to preserve.
The Tory leader sort of wanted to say that the government should deploy the army more rapidly, but -- heaven forfend -- he didn't want to imply that it was anybody's fault that the soldiers hadn't been deployed!
-- Simon Hoggart, "A greasy whiff dispels the stench of worthiness", Guardian, March 22, 2001
If one of us is missing, heaven forfend, then the king's forces are diminished.
-- Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish
The river of discovery will continue to flow without cessation, deepening our understanding of the world and enhancing our capacity to forfend calamity and live congenial lives.
-- John Maddox, What Remains To Be Discovered
In addition, to forfend direct Chinese involvement, which was extremely unlikely, the administration guaranteed the northern regime, thus removing a major deterrent.
-- Morton A. Kaplan, "Cruel Vietnam Follies", The World & I, September 1, 1995
Forfend is from Middle English forfenden, from for-, "for-" + fenden, "to ward off."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:13 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 31, 2006
pleonasm PLEE-uh-naz-uhm, noun:
1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.
Dougan uses many words where few would do, as if pleonasm were a way of wringing every possibility out of the material he has, and stretching sentences a form of spreading the word.
-- Paula Cocozza, "Book review: How Dynamo Kiev beat the Luftwaffe", Independent, March 2, 2001
Such a phrase from President Nixon's era, much favored by politicians, is "at this moment in time." Presumably these five words mean "now." That pleonasm probably does little harm except, perhaps, to the reputation of the speaker.
-- Eoin McKiernan, "Last Word: Special Relationships", Irish America, August 31, 1994
Pleonasm is from Greek pleonasmos, from pleon, "greater, more."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:14 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Sunday, June 4, 2006
extricate EK-struh-kayt, transitive verb:
To free or release from a difficulty or entanglement; to get free; to disengage.
Sean introduced himself and then extricated his hand from Ronan's persistent grasp in order to show him the photo.
-- Naeem Murr, The Boy
Ultimately they extricated Ned by lifting up the whole table-and-chair structure, thus allowing him to fall out onto the floor.
-- Joan L. Richards, Angles of Reflection: Logic and a Mother's Love
I knelt down, either out of weakness or out of gratitude to a god who had extricated me from yet another predicament.
-- Christa Wolf, Medea: A Modern Retelling
Extricate comes from Latin extricare, "to disentangle, to extricate," from ex-, "out" + tricae, "trifles, impediments, perplexities."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 8:03 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Monday, June 5, 2006
contumely kon-TYOO-muh-lee; -TOO-; KON-tyoo-mee-lee; -too-; KON-tum-lee, noun:
1. Rudeness or rough treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt; scornful insolence.
2. An instance of contemptuousness in act or speech.
Nothing aggravates tyranny so much as contumely.
-- Edmund Burke
The pedlars find satisfaction for all contumelies in making good bargains.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks
Following years of police harassment and public contumely, he was arrested and charged with high treason, espionage and "anti-Soviet activity."
-- "Know Thyself, Free Thyself", New York Times, June 5, 1988
Contumely comes ultimately from Latin contumelia, outrage, insult.
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 2:48 am
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 15, 2008
miasma my-AZ-muh; mee-, noun:
1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.
2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog.
The critics, he says, "will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a miasma of toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette."
-- Charles E. Little, "No One Communes Anymore", New York Times, October 17, 1993
To destroy such prejudices, which many a time rise and spread themselves like a miasma, is an imperative duty of theory, for the misbegotten offspring of human reason can also be in turn destroyed by pure reason.
-- Carl von Clausewitz, On War (translated by Colonel James John Graham)
He spends whatever money he has on hash and eventually heroin . . . and proceeds to sink into a miasma of anger and alienation.
-- Jhumpa Lahiri, "Money Talks in Pakistan", New York Times, March 12, 2000
Girls of my generation stumbled through much of our early adolescence in a dense miasma of longing.
-- Ellen Pall, "She had a Crush on Them", New York Times, July 29, 1990
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:21 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
gravid GRAV-id, adjective:
Being with child; heavy with young or eggs; pregnant.
For the moment the Cap'n Toby lies at rest outside the harbor, and the twelve-inch mackerels that Brian and I are cutting up for lobster bait are ripe, their bellies gravid with either blood-red roe or milt the color of sailors' bones.
-- Richard Adams Carey, Against the Tide
In North America, in contrast, the British conquered an empire; New France disappeared from history. But -- Anderson's profound theme -- Britain's triumph was gravid with defeat.
-- Jack Beatty, "Defeat in Victory", The Atlantic, December 2000
she is a bored society matron who seduces him before a carload gravid with already weary, now grossed-out morning commuters.
-- Rita Kempley, review of The Adjuster (MGM/UA Studios movie), Washington Post, June 29, 1992
Gravid derives from Latin gravidus, from gravis, "heavy."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:20 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Monday, June 19, 2006
ephemeron ih-FEM-uh-ron, noun;
plural ephemera ih-FEM-uh-ruh:
1. Something short-lived or of no lasting significance.
2. ephemera: Items, especially printed matter (as posters, broadsides, pamphlets, etc.), intended to be of use or importance for only a short time but preserved by collectors.
And collections of correspondence will always reveal "a remarkable mind, grappling with everything from the ephemera of day-to-day life to the mysteries of the universe."
-- John Bloom, "The 'Art' of the Review", National Review, May 21, 2002
The Sanskrit word for the world is jagati, while the word for changing or evanescent is jagat: the world's evanescent nature is actually built into the very definition of "world." Yet behind this shimmering ephemeron lies the deeper, sacred reality -- Brahman, the infinite, transcendent reality that covers and pervades all things.
-- Pravrajika Vrajaprana, "Contemporary Spirituality and the Thinning of the Sacred: A Hindu Perspective", Cross Currents, Spring-Summer 2000
It is one of the most collectable of all cult shows, with an army of fans hungry for a plethora of Star Trek ephemera.
-- Nick Pandya, "To boldly go where others don't", The Guardian, March 23, 2002
Ephemeron is from Greek, from ephemeros, "daily; lasting or living only a day," from epi, "upon" + hemera, "day."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:23 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Tuesday, June 20, 2006
clemency KLEM-uhn-see, noun:
1. Disposition to forgive and spare, as offenders; mercy.
2. An act or instance of mercy or leniency.
3. Mildness, especially of weather.
He put in a strong plea for clemency, begging the king to spare the alchemist's life.
-- Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story
The commission . . . hinted that many of those on death row in Illinois deserved clemency.
-- Jodi Wilgoren, "Can use of the penalty be cut back? Illinois study fuels debate", International Herald Tribune, April 17, 2002
Clemency comes from Latin clementia, from clemens, "mild, merciful."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:34 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Wednesday, June 21, 2006
languor LANG-guhr; LANG-uhr, noun:
1. Mental or physical weariness or fatigue.
2. Listless indolence, especially the indolence of one who is satiated by a life of luxury or pleasure.
3. A heaviness or oppressive stillness of the air.
Without health life is not life, wrote Rabelais, "life is not livable. . . . Without health life is nothing but languor."
-- Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool
Charles's court exuded a congenial hedonism. It was exuberant and intemperate, given to both languor and excess.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Outside the window, New Orleans . . . brooded in a faintly tarnished languor, like an aging yet still beautiful courtesan in a smokefilled room, avid yet weary too of ardent ways.
-- Thomas S. Hines, William Faulkner and the Tangible Past
Sleep and dreams would swallow up the languor of daytime.
-- Patrick Chamoiseau, School Days (translated by Linda Coverdale)
Languor is from Latin languor, from languere, "to be faint or weak." The adjective form is languorous.
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:42 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
sobriquet SO-brih-kay; -ket; so-brih-KAY; -KET, noun:
A nickname; an assumed name; an epithet.
In addition to his notorious amours, he became distinguished for a turbulent naval career, particularly for the storms he weathered, thus bringing him the sobriquet "Foulweather Jack".
-- Phyllis Grosskurth, Byron: The Flawed Angel
At a small reception on the occasion of my twenty-fifth anniversary in this position, my good friend Izzy Landes raised a glass and dubbed me the Curator of the Curators, a sobriquet I have worn with pride ever since.
-- Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man
There was an omnivorous intellect that won him the family sobriquet of Walking Encyclopedia.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian
Sobriquet is from the French, from Old French soubriquet, "a chuck under the chin, hence, an affront, a nickname."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:44 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Sunday, June 25, 2006
sedulous SEJ-uh-luhs, adjective:
1. Diligent in application or pursuit; steadily industrious.
2. Characterized by or accomplished with care and perseverance.
He did not attain this distinction by accident but by sedulous study from the cradle forward.
-- Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Al Gore: A User's Manual
This writing is clearly the product of sedulous art, but it has the flame of spontaneity and the grit of independence both as to mode and spirit.
-- "The Wonder and Wackiness of Man", New York Times, January 17, 1954
And so he reminded the legion that, even though his veneration of his country's flag may not have inhibited sedulous avoidance of the inconveniences of serving under it, he is a patriot so wholehearted that he signed the Arkansas law that forbids flag-burning.
-- Murray Kempton, "Signs of Defeat In the Wind", Newsday, August 30, 1992
Sedulous is from Latin sedulus, "busy, diligent," from se-, "apart, without" + dolus, "guile, trickery."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 4:12 pm
Moaaaaaaaar
[Gimme gimmeh.]
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Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:23 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 7, 2008
contrite KON-tryt; kuhn-TRYT, adjective:
1. Deeply affected with grief and regret for having done wrong; penitent; as, "a contrite sinner."
2. Expressing or arising from contrition; as, "contrite words."
Contrite sinners forgiven, yes.
-- Richard de Mille, My Secret Mother
Within days, a contrite Clarence Arthur was sending her roses and violets, even a bad poem.
-- Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower
Often he'd look contrite and even apologize.
-- Rafer Johnson with Philip Goldberg, The Best That I Can Be
Contrite derives from Latin conterere, "to rub away, to grind," hence "to obliterate, to abase," from con- + terere, "to rub, to rub away."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 5:05 pm
Taste The Saline Rolling Down Your Cheekbone, Feel Your Heart It Breaks Within Your Chest Now...
Word of the Day for Tuesday, May 6, 2008
amalgam uh-MAL-guhm, noun:
1. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals; used especially (with silver) as a dental filling.
2. A mixture or compound of different things.
In that year, Zola struck back at the novelist and critic Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, that curious amalgam of religious conservative and blasphemous melodramatist -- Zola called him a"hysterical Catholic" -- whom he had long detested for his superior bearing and his unfortunate sallies against writers Zola admired.
-- Gary B. Nash, History on Trial
The so-called "protest" literature of the thirties was often an amalgam of the private rebellion of youth with social revolt.
-- Nona Balakian, The World of William Saroyan
The governing body of college athletics is gradually extruding a regulatory text that reads like some crazed amalgam of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Uniform Commercial Code.
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania
Her vocabulary was an amalgam of slang, especially the show-business jargon of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, and a requisite amount of cultivated English.
-- James A. Drake, Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography
Amalgam comes from Old French amalgame, from Medieval Latin amalgama, probably from Greek malagma, "emollient," from malassein, "to soften," from malakos, "soft."
...I Hear Sound Echo In The Emptiness, All Around, But You Can't Change This Loneliness. Look At What You Found. I Am Falling Down
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