VocabuLog

Fecund -- Pregnant With Meaning

2010-08-05T09:36:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure I want to feel like I can relate to the character of Jules in the new film The Kids Are All Right, but during a particular scene, I most definitely did.

When Jules suggests allowing the garden to be untamed and fecund, I'm sure many people in the audience had the same reaction as the character Paul, namely a quizzical "what?" Except for any word nerds in the theater, some of whom may have shared my reaction: "Feh-kund? Isn't it fee-kund?"

I've been in that situation, rambling along in a conversation and blurting out some 5- or 10-dollar word that brings the chatter to a stumbling halt and elicits a "wait, what did you just say?" reaction. Most often that reaction is accompanied by a bemused smile, like Paul's, though sometimes by a jeering snicker: "A whatsit?" "C'mon, say that again!"

Oh, sure, some of us logophiles are word snobs, dropping terms like bloviating or versimilitude into a conversation just to show off. (Yeah, I'm thinking about you, George Will.) But many former vocabulary quiz acers really aren't thinking about it when they employ a word like fecund. It's a good word. It perfectly encapsulates the intended meaning. It's just not used by many people, as Paul notes.

Jules is hardly a word snob. Playing Scrabble with her daughter, she argues the case for why zoomer is a perfectly valid word: zoom is a word; ergo, something that zooms is a zoomer. (Hence, I can use acer to refer to someone who aces vocabulary quizzes.) Of course, no dictionary will back up her case (or mine).

If you're going to drop polysyllabic or obscure terms into conversations, you just have to be prepared to accept the smiles and occasional scoffs. Still, as I've stated before in this blog, it's a pity that many people accept the convention that such words should be the sole purview of bookworms or the collegiate set. Whether you pronounce it fee-kund or feh-kund, it's a nifty word to trip off your tongue. I like that Jules and Paul can appreciate a word like fecund. Doesn't make up for their significant character flaws, but it adds a likeable aspect to their characters, at least in my book.

As for the pronunciation of fecund, it's a to-may-to, to-mah-to situation; either is accepted by all dictionaries. However, I prefer the long e given that the term derives from the same root as fetus. Somehow, feh-kund feels as odd to my tongue as feh-tus or feh-tal position. Or as feet-ah cheese does, for that matter. Eeyw.

Dictionary Definition
from Webster's Third New International Dictionary
fecund
1 a: characterized by having produced many offspring or having yielded vegetation, fruit or crops to a marked or satisfying degree
b: capable of producing : not sterile or barren : markedly fertile
2: marked by noteworthy intellectual productivity and inventiveness Syn. see fertile

Minions & Myrmidons - To Serve and Obey

2010-07-31T22:06:00.016-04:00

After watching the animated theatrical treat Despicable Me, how could you not want your own bevy of minions? As cute as little yellow pill bugs, yet ever so much more capable and resourceful, they can shop for a child's toy or build you a fully operational spacecraft! Yes, I want me some minions, as I noted on Facebook recently. To which a friend responded he would prefer some myrmidons. Well, same difference, I wrote back. To which he retorted, au contraire, they are hardly close to the same thing, myrmidons being the warriors who followed the heroic Achilles into battle against Troy and minions being dime-a-dozen servants.

So who would be the better underling -- a minion or a myrmidon? A thorough scan of several dictionaries shows that both terms have at some point been used positively and negatively to label a dutiful follower (see definitions farther down). Minion seems to have carried the negative sense longer and more routinely, but myrmidon at some point accrued its own connotations of lackey.

Perhaps the dualistic definitions of these terms hint at an age-old hierarchy of esteem in which we hold leaders and followers. One follows the leader, as we learn in childhood games. Leaders inspire admiration and even awe. They are exemplars who can do things better than others, or visionaries who can see farther than others, or simply individuals of such great charisma, they inspire loyalty and imitation (for better or worse). Followers are, well, not really celebrated and revered. They are, at best, sidekicks to the heroes. Sure, there are cases when the worker bees get due credit for their essential role in saving the day, as Scotty manages to skirt the Enterprise past a black hole, or dozens of men claim the name of Spartacus, or Patroclus rallies Achilles' men to the Greeks' rescue against the Trojans as the great warrior sits out the battle in a fit of pique. But leaders generally carry the day.

Myrmidon's etymology is entertaining in its own right with its derivation from the Greek term myrmex for ant. According to the renowned classics scholar Edith Hamilton, the Myrmidons were men created by Zeus from ants to repopulate the island nation of Aegina after its people were decimated by a plague. As recounted by the Latin poet Ovid, the pestilence was sent by an enraged Hera, the divine wife of Zeus, after she discovers her husband has once again been philandering, this time with the maiden for whom the island is named. King Aeacus, son of Zeus and Aegina (and grandfather of Achilles), begs his father for help, pointing out a colony of industrious ants and asking Zeus to make of them a people numerous enough to fill his depleted city. The next day he discovers his prayer has been answered as a multitude gathers outside his palace crying out that they are his faithful subjects.

Of course, Ovid and his ancient Roman contemporaries didn't know that the majority of ants are female.

Here's what the dictionaries had to say about minions and myrmidons:

From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Myrmidon
1. Greek Mythology, A member of a warlike Thessalian people who were ruled by Achilles and followed him on the expedition against Troy.
2. myrmidon. A faithful follower who carries out orders without question.

minion
1. An obsequious follower or dependent; a syncophant.
2. A subordinate official.
3. One who is highly esteemed or favored; a darling.
From French mignon, darling, from Old French mignot, mignon.

From the New Oxford American Dictionary:
Myrmidon
• a member of a warlike Thessalian people led by Achilles at the siege of Troy.
• (usu. myrmidon) a hired ruffian or unscrupulous subordinate: e.g., he wrote to one of Hitler's myrmidons.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin Myrmidones (plural), from Greek Murmidones

minion
a follower or underling of a powerful person, esp. a servile or unimportant one.
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from French mignon, mignonne.

And from the granddaddy of dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary:
myrmidon
1. (With capital M.) One of a warlike race of men inhabiting ancient Thessaly, whom, according to the Homeric story, Achilles led to the siege of Troy (Illiad II. 684).
2. A soldier of (one's) body-guard; a faithful follower or servant. [OED notes this usage is now obsolete.]
3. An unscrupulously faithful follower or hireling; a hired ruffian; a base attendant.
b. Chiefly mymrdon of the law, of justice: applied contemptuously to a policeman, bailiff, or other inferior administrative officer of the law.

minion
The ultimate etymology is disputed: according to some the word is a derivative of OHG [Old High German] minnja, minna love; others refer it to Celtic min- small.
1. A beloved object, darling, favourite. [OED notes that this usage is now rare or obsolete.]
a. A lover or lady-love. Chiefly, and in later use exclusively with contemptuous or opprobrious sense, a mistress or paramour.
b. One specially favoured or beloved; a dearest friend, a favourite child, servant, or animal; the 'idol' of a people, a community, etc. Now only in contemptuous sense.
c. esp. a favourite of a sovereign, prince, or other great person; esp. opprobriously, one who owes everything to his patron's favour, and is ready to purchase its continuance by base compliances, a 'creature'.
2. A gallant, an exquisite. [Also obsolete.]
3. A small ordinance. [Ditto.]
4. A kind of peach, in full minion peach. [Apparently still in use as not labeled rare or obsolete.]
5. Printing The name of a type intermediate in size between 'nonpareil' and 'brevier'.
6. adj. Dainty, elegant, fine, pretty, neat.

Cudgel -- Nothing Cuddly About It

2010-03-15T10:36:00.004-04:00

During a conversation last night on group politics and the misunderstandings people in the midst of a debate can have of the other side's intentions, I picked up on Mark's use of the phrase "offer an olive branch." "Well," I said, "one person's olive branch is another person's cudgel."

Mark laughed at that, not because he thought it particularly witty on my part, but rather because of my use of cudgel, which he noted sounds like something sweet and cute, kind of pet-like. "Here, little cudgel!"

I don't why cudgel popped out of my mouth rather than the more pedestrian term club, but that's what a cudgel is. There's nothing cute or fluffy about a cudgel or the verb form to cudgel, which means to beat something -- or someone. Though, for what it's worth, cudgel and cuddle are separated by a mere single definition in Webster's Third International Dictionary.

Webster's defines cudgel as:

1. noun, a short heavy stick that is shorter than a quarterstaff and is used as an instrument of punishment or a weapon.
2. verb, to beat with or as with a cudgel: belabor, thrash, drub, rack.

I was amused to see that a couple of dictionaries offered idiomatic expressions linking the term to the act of thinking: "I cudgeled my brains to recall her name" on Dictionary.com and "cudgeled his brains for a rhyme" in Webster's. Ouch -- that's some painful pondering!

Nominal - A Little Normal

2010-02-24T10:13:00.009-05:00

During Sunday night's landing of Space Shuttle Endeavor, which Mark was watching on his laptop, I caught a command from the CapCom in Houston to the shuttle crew to do a "nominal chute deploy." "Nominal?" I asked. "I would think they'd want full deployment of their parachutes upon landing." "Nominal means normal," Mark said. "No, it means little or less than the full amount," I countered. After a bit of back and forth on the term's meaning, I went to the arbiter of word matters, the dictionary (in this instance the Oxford New American Dictionary loaded on our Mac) and quoted:

nominal
1. (of a role or status) existing in name only: Thailand retained nominal independence under Japanese military occupation. • of, relating to, or consisting of names. • Grammar relating to, headed by, or having the function of a noun.
2. (of a price or amount of money) very small; far below the real value or cost: some firms charge only a nominal fee for the service.
3. (of a quantity or dimension, esp. of manufactured articles) stated or expressed but not necessarily corresponding exactly to the real value: legislation allowed variation around the nominal weight (that printed on each packet). • Economics (of a rate or other figure) expressed in terms of a certain amount, without making allowance for changes in real value over time: the nominal exchange rate.
4. informal (chiefly in the context of space travel) functioning normally or acceptably.

As so often happens, we were both right and our understanding of the term rested on the context within which we were most familiar with it. To a space geek like Mark, NASA staffers' use of the term made perfect sense whereas it sounded bizarre to me. Mark found some information suggesting that NASA's use of the term is borrowed from the term's usage in statistics. "Mission control-types are looking for unusual readings, so readings within an expected, or nominal, range are normal," he noted. This Wikipedia article on the term's various usage contexts provides further insights.

Fortunately, the shuttle experienced a nominal, full deployment of its chutes during its Sunday night landing, completing a safe and successful mission.

Pogonology & Hirsute - A Wild Hair

2010-02-16T22:14:00.010-05:00

There's an ologist for everything under the sun. This morning, a Washington Post article on the waning popularity of mustaches and beards in India enlightened me to the term for the study of facial hair: pogonology. The feature cited commentary from pogonologist Richard McCallum, author of Hair India: A Guide to the Bizarre Beards and Magnificent Mustaches of Hindustan. Now, that's a book to display prominently on your coffee table.

Reading the Post feature about the dwindling of the "facial foliage" that has long distinguished Indian men -- to the extent that someone could create a coffee table book about it -- brought to mind a particularly choice term that didn't find its way into the piece: hirsute. I just like this word. Hirsute is a fun and funky term for "hairy." More specifically, it connotes being covered with hair. Pronounced "her-suit," it sounds vaguely similar to ursine, the Latin term for bear, a creature sporting a great, shaggy pelt. But all good qualities aside, it's a true ten-dollar term. You can see why there aren't many hair restoration product ads proclaiming to "return you to your full hirsute glory in just two weeks!"

Speaking of hair and India, I remember how perplexed I was staring at the saffron-robed men I encountered for the first time in my life in Boston Commons during a vacation many years ago. The sight of their shaved heads was entirely antithetical to the image I'd formed upon hearing my father point out the "hairy krishnas" -- at least that's how my callow teenage brain interpreted the moniker.

Refulgent -- I Gotta Wear Shades

2010-02-11T21:21:00.003-05:00

Mining Simon Mawer's novel The Glass Room for vocabularic gems is proving a most enriching experience. Today, I came across refulgent in this passage describing the the installation of the glass panes forming the eponymous room of the book's title:

It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls, light glistening on the dew in the garden, light reverberating from the glass. It was as though they stood inside a crystal of salt.

Refulgent, according to the Kindle's built-in dictionary, means "shining brightly." The OED says a bit more expansively, "shining with, or reflecting, a brilliant light; radiant, resplendent, gleaming."

Mawer uses the term in this instance to describe the effect of the newly erected glass space, or glass room, as the couple for whom this modernistic house is being built experience it for the first time.

But this isn't the first instance Mawer uses the term in the novel. My eyes skipped over the first usage in an earlier passage when pregnant Liesel, the female half of the couple, is submitting to her friend's efforts to divine the gender of her unborn baby via an old wives' trick (the novel is set pre-ultrasound) of suspending her wedding ring by a string over her belly and watching its movements:

'It's a girl.' The turning is obvious now, incontrovertible, a description of a perfect female circle over the smooth and refulgent dome of Liesel's belly.

Nor is it the term's the last usage in the novel. Mawer applies it once more to Liesel in a passage where he describes her as she "now appears fantastic, a shining refulgent creature."

I'm tempted to take issue with the redundancy of shining. However, I'm more intrigued by the parallels that the author seems to be drawing between the woman and the unparalleled and resplendent house she occupies, a unique structure built exclusively for her and her family. I'm not far enough along in the novel to draw conclusions about the relationship between the character of the house and the character of the woman. However, this strikes me as a good example of how authors can suggest deeper meanings even by something as seemingly simple as their word choice.

Glaucous -- Vocabulary from The Glass Room

2010-02-10T23:56:00.004-05:00

In between snow shoveling, pounding ice out of the gutter downspouts, and chipping away at ice dams on the roof, I've begun reading Simon Mawer's novel, The Glass Room. It's clearly a book full of vocabulary gems, which I'll make a point to mine along the way. My first fun find: glaucous.

The term means, according to the dictionary in the Kindle on which I'm reading the novel:
1. of a dull grayish-green or blue color.
2. covered with a powdery bloom like that on grapes.

The word's ultimate root is the Greek glaukos meaning "bluish-green" or "bluish-gray." This root is shared by glaucoma, the medical term for a gradual loss of sight due to increased pressure on the eyeball, which can be marked by a gray-green haze in the pupil.

Usage of glaucous in the novel is in reference to a model of a pavilion that the modernist architect Ranier von Abt has designed and is now showing off to his new acquaintances and perhaps potential clients:

The colours of the model were those that von Abt had extolled in their voyage down from Saint Mark's: ethereal white, glaucous pearl, glistening chrome.

It sounds cold but lovely to me.

Surfeit -- Let It Snow? Let It No!

2010-02-08T09:02:00.005-05:00

Dear Mother Nature, thank you for your enthusiastic response to my husband's wistful comments lo these past few years about the dearth of snow to mark the winter season, but really, enough is enough. There's a hill of snow in front of our house created from our efforts to shovel a 20-inch deep blanket off our car and driveway, and now we hear forecasts of another 5 to 10 inches that may fall in a couple of days. Thanks, dear lady, but no thanks. We are suffering a surfeit of the white stuff.

I'm afraid that the evidence outside our windows suggests you may not be familiar with the meaning of surfeit, so permit me to share with you this definition from the venerable OED: "1. Excess, superfluity; excessive amount or supply of something." The tome also offers: "An excessive indulgence," and "Disgust arising from excess; nausea, satiety." Not to seem too ungrateful, but it's that last definition that really resonates at the moment.

Oh, sure, come the dog days of August, as I stand in a sweltering Metro train car with beads of sweat slithering down the backs of my legs, I'll think back longingly to plowing through snow up to my kneecaps this winter. But, dear Mother Nature, we're surfeited. Satiated. Done with all that. So that next round of snow on Tuesday? I hear Vancouver is experiencing a deficiency.

Chagrin over Chagrined

2010-01-29T10:26:00.008-05:00

My husband asked me the other day if chagrined was the right word in the opening sentence of my previous blog post.

As the American Heritage Dictionary notes, chagrin can be a noun or verb.

n. A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event: To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived.

tr.v. chagrined, chagrining, chagrins To cause to feel chagrin; mortify or discomfit: He was chagrined at the poor sales of his book. See Synonyms at embarrass.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary offers these definitions:

As a noun:
1. obs. disturbance of mind resulting from care or anxiety: worry: depression of spirits: melancholy.
2. vexation, disquietude, or distress of mind brought on by failure or error

As a verb:
1. archaic to cause to feel anxiety: trouble: grieve
2. to vex through humiliation, hurt pride, or disappointment

As an adjective:
1. feeling or made to feel chagrin: disappointed: mortified

Well, I must express my chagrin that I didn't hew to the nuances of the term's meaning when I used chagrined in my previous posting to mean simply "vexed" or "disappointed." The term has a clear history and linkage to the concepts of shame and humiliation, and while I may feel embarrassed now as a word nerd who misused a term, I certainly had no cause to feel shame myself for the removal of the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary from the classrooms of a school district in California as I had no part in that.

You could argue that my use of chagrin was ok, given that the definitions allow for a broad sense of disappointment not necessarily always connected to humiliation, the same way people sometimes use shame colloquially to mean disappointment, as in "what a shame the rain ruined our picnic." However, as someone who is writing a vocabulary blog and pointing out the importance of the nuances of words' meanings, I have to 'fess up to this lapse. I plead guilty to allowing the allure of alliteration to supersede accurate usage. So, honey, you were right.

School District Blows Off Dictionary Over Graphic Term

2010-01-26T20:53:00.008-05:00

Normally I'm chagrined but not shocked when I hear that a school has banned a book, but my mouth hung agape when I read that a California school district has banned the Merriam Webster Dictionary from its classrooms. Oh, wait, sorry; according to the Los Angeles Times article, the school district didn't ban the tomes, but rather "temporarily housed [them] off location" till their suitability for the district's pupils can be assessed, said a spokeswoman for the Menifee Union School District in southwest Riverside County.

So what evils lurk inside Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.)? Well, oral sex, for one thing. A Menifee parent contacted the principal of Oak Meadows Elementary School to complain that book contained the term and its graphic definition. Now, a committee is being formed to sift the dictionary -- which I'll refer to henceforth as the MWCD -- to see what other potentially explicit terms and definitions skulk inside.

I grant that the aghast parent contacted the elementary school, which presumably means her/his child is at an age at which, you could argue, the term oral sex should not be a part of the common vernacular. Also, the school district's spokeswoman took pains to note that the MWCD, which had been available in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms, is not the only dictionary available in the district's schools. But it turns out that the term oral sex was not actually in the MWCD, according to the Southwest Riverside News!

Does a collegiate dictionary belong in elementary school classrooms? As the district's school board president Rita Peters noted, the schools use the MWCD for their spelling bees. I'm personally inclined to agree with Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, who told the LA Times, "At the end of the day, if my kid is digging through the Merriam Webster dictionary to find words he and his friends are going to giggle over but along the way find other words they will use, I think that is a day well spent in school." But are there other word tomes that eschew terms such as oral sex, yet still provide the range of a collegiate dictionary? I suppose the school district's committee will attempt to figure that out.

In the interim, if you're like me, imaging this group's working sessions conjures more than a few grins.

What's A Looter?

2010-01-19T21:17:00.007-05:00

Think words are innocuous little scratches on paper or so much ephemeral vapor on the air? Then clearly you've not stumbled across the Comments section following a blog post or article talking about the increase of looting in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake there. People are vigorously engaged in an emotional, sometimes heated, debate about the appropriateness and propriety of using the words looters and looting in the context of this disaster.

People's takes on whether these are the "right" or "wrong" terms to use get into issues of race, equality, and socioeconomic status. As vocabulary is the focus of this blog, I will leave the exploration of those topics for other venues. Those interested in delving into the social issues should peruse this useful collection of commentaries my husband compiled regarding earlier debates of the use of looters in coverage and discussions of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath five years ago:

NPR: A Perspective on Looters and Race
N.Y. Times: Who's a Looter? In Storm's Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest
Washington Post: Natural Disasters in Black and White
Poynter Institute: American Behemoth

Turning to a purely logocentric perspective, what do the origins and definitions of the words looter and loot tell us?

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the foremost definition of loot as a noun is "goods, esp. private property, taken from an enemy in war." The dictionary continues:

• stolen money or valuables: two men wearing stocking masks, each swinging a bag of loot.
• informal money; wealth: the thief made off with $5 million in loot.

verb [ trans. ]
steal goods from (a place), typically during a war or riot: police confronted the rioters who were looting shops.
• steal (goods) in such circumstances: tons of food aid awaiting distribution had been looted.

The granddaddy of dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, says of loot:

1. Goods (esp. articles of considerable value) taken from an enemy, a captured city, etc. in time of war; also, in wider sense, something taken by force or with violence; booty, plunder, spoil; now sometimes transf., illicit gains, 'pillage' (e.g. by a public servant). Also, the act or process of looting.

2. slang. Money.

A quick tour through the options on Dictionary.com shows references to spoils, plunder, pillaging, burglary and theft.

The word loot's origins are Sanskrit, either lotra or luptra meaning "booty" or "spoil," the root lup meaning "to break;" or lunt meaning "to rob."

So is what's happening in Haiti looting by definition? You could say yes, whether it's a bag of rice or a bicycle or a TV, something taken without payment is theft and at its origins and within its principal definitions, loot means robbery.

On the other hand, is a desperately hungry individual stealing food or water committing thievery in the same way that someone walking off with a TV is? When the theft is for the purpose of survival, I think it may be more apt to call that person a scavenger. Of course, how does a witness know whether the person taking something out of store or a truck is doing so as a matter or survival or as an opportunist who plans to turn the goods over for profit?

Delving further into the nuances of the term, loot in the sense of "booty" and "valuable goods" conveys the idea that looters are people with the upper hand, conquerors seizing the spoils of their victory. Hard to look at Haiti and see much in the way of victory; rather, it's a scene of utter desperation.

At the same time, loot in the sense of "pillage" conveys disorganization and randomness as well as opportunism. Those seem to be hallmarks of the aftermath of major upheavals such as natural disasters.

I think your sense of whether loot is an appropriate term for discussions about the Haitian earthquake rests on which nuance of the term is embedded in your mind. And if it means theft pure and simple to you, then your sense of appropriateness is likely further shaped by where you come down on the philosophical question of whether taking necessities such as food or clothing without payment as a matter of survival is scavenging or thievery. May we who've never been in a situation to have to weigh that moral distinction as a reality rather than a hypothetical continue to be so fortunate. And may all the help possible come to those in need right now in Haiti.

Inflection Upon Reflection

2010-01-13T17:48:00.013-05:00

Got into a discussion today about the use of the term inflection with another individual who appreciates the finer nuances of words. We were discussing a written description of a program that has encountered sufficient obstacles to undermine its ongoing success. As the document stated, it has "reached an inflection point." I contended that this is an obscure term for conveying the idea that the program has reached a point where change must happen and this usage seems pretentious. I suggested that a more straightforward way to say it would be turning point. My colleague countered that inflection is a particularly apt term that conveys a more deft nuance that turning point doesn't capture. After delving into the matter, I think you could decide either of us is right, depending on how you're familiar with the term.

My understanding of the term inflection comes from the context of language. I am, after all, a former English lit grad student. Inflection is a word I think of as associated with speech, more specifically intonation, how someone inflects, or modulates, his voice to convey meaning. For example, by the inflection of his voice, you can tell whether a person is making a statement or asking a question. Or you can tell whether a teen is using "dude!" to mean "way to go!" or "no way!" The term is also a grammatical device, the variation of a word -- generally the ending -- to signify a particular tense, mood, gender, etc. Given this context, I'd say it's not entirely surprising that I would stumble over its usage upon first read of this document.

Had my background been more science and mathematics oriented, however, perhaps I would have encountered the phrase inflection point or point of inflection previously. In geometry, inflection point refers to the particular point on a line that is changing from convex to concave (or vice versa) at which this change takes place. It's the stationary point right as the change occurs. The Wikipedia page on the topic (assuming it's generally accurate) offers a useful example for us non-math majors: "If one imagines driving a vehicle along a winding road, inflection is the point at which the steering-wheel is momentarily 'straight' when being turned from left to right or vice versa."

At its roots, the word inflect means "to bend inwards, to curve or bend into an angle," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED's first definition of inflection is the literal meaning of "the condition of being bent or curved" and then the figurative meaning of "a mental or moral bending or turning." The use of inflection to refer to the modulation of written or spoken language derives from the figurative use of the term's sense of alteration, change.

So are inflection point and turning point direct synonyms in the context of the document we started with, or do they convey different meanings? My colleague made the case that inflection point conveys a sense of a less radical or less dramatic change, which is appropriate to the program being described, whereas turning point can convey a sense of a sharper or quicker rate of change, a right-angle or 180-degree change. (Grant you, I'm paraphrasing here.) From a scientific mindset, thinking of that steering wheel at that static point before veering into the next curve, I can see how that makes sense. Moreover, in that mathematical sense, the term means being on the cusp of change, and that is another point I think the document's authors wished to convey.

However, as a layperson who found the term's usage in the document akin to a stumbling block that tripped up my reading, I'm still not convinced that it works here. Nor am I convinced that turning point isn't a reasonable substitute. After all, turns can be gradual as well as sharp; and bends can be sharp as well as gradual.

The bottom line of what this document is trying to convey is that this program is at a point where change must happen. Curve, inflection, and turn all figuratively convey the idea of change and therefore, I think, all could substitute for one another in most readers' minds. Given that of these choices, inflection is the least familiar, I personally think turning point would better achieve the ultimate goal of communicating the essential idea to the greatest number of potential audience members.

But you may side with my colleague and my mind is still open to inflection.

New Year, New Commitment & A Supreme Court Vocabulary Lesson

2010-01-12T22:01:00.005-05:00

Talk about taking a hiatus! A fun word in and of itself, from Latin hiare literally meaning "gape." Given the gaping maw between this post and my last, this blog had basically flat-lined. But 'tis January, the month of Janus, the two-faced deity who looks both forward and backward, the god of gateways and doorways, of beginnings and endings. It's the season of resolutions and so mine is to revive my blog and reimmerse myself in the joys of both word-play and writing.

I was reminded of the pleasures of the playground of vocabulary by a fine little item in today's Washington Post, encapsulating an amusing exchange in the hallowed chamber of the Supreme Court, not of legal repartee, but of verbal badinage. Richard D. Friedman, a University of Michigan law professor testifying to the court in the case of Briscoe v. Virginia, piqued the justices' interest with his use of a 10-dollar term in his response to a question from Justice Kennedy. Friedman "added that it was 'entirely orthogonal' to the argument he was making" in the case. As the Post article continued:

Friedman attempted to move on, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stopped him.

"I'm sorry," Roberts said. "Entirely what?"

"Orthogonal," Friedman repeated, and then defined the word: "Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant."

"Oh," Roberts replied.

Scalia then jumped in:

"What was that adjective?" Scalia asked Monday. "I liked that."

"Orthogonal," Friedman said.

"Orthogonal," Roberts said.

"Orthogonal," Scalia said. "Ooh."

I'm tickled to point out that as of 10:30 p.m. ET on the day this article ran as something of a sidebar to the main article about the hearing of the case at hand, the Post web site had logged 29 comments on this vocabulary story. The main article? 14.

Impignoration - Random Word Find

2009-08-25T22:31:00.005-04:00

As long as you have a mobile device with an Internet connection handy, you're never without a dictionary. Can't remember if you should use callous or callow in the sentence you're jotting while on the go? Just look it up! This is wonderful technology. But, to impersonate an old fart Luddite for a moment, we're losing something valuable in the exchange of paging through a paper dictionary for looking up words online. We lose the possibility of stumbling across interesting words along the path to finding the word we went searching for.

If you're not sure of the spelling of a word you're typing into Dictionary.com, you simply get a "no results found" message. If you're unsure of the spelling while paging through a hardback dictionary, you're bound to get pleasantly distracted along the way by intriguing or exotic words that call out like so many carnival barkers, enticing you to step off your path for a moment to see something strange and new.

Impignoration got me tonight as I leafed through the OED en route to check the meaning of impolitic. The word beckoned from the top left corner of the page on which my destination lay, it's all-caps, bold font virtually jumping off the page to grab the attention of the random passer-by. Of course I had to stop to look. Impignoration is "the action or fact of impignorating," a verb which means "to place in pawn; to pledge, pawn, or mortgage." It's a "chiefly Scottish" term, the dictionary notes.

Ok, so maybe this isn't a term I'm going to add to my routine usage anytime soon, even with the ongoing mortgage crisis still coming up occasionally as a topic of conversation. But it was fun to take a brief side trip along the way to the definition I needed and discover an interesting new term. I could indeed have found impignoration in Dictionary.com. But only if I'd purposefully gone looking for it.

Decrepit - Creaking Along

2009-08-24T23:28:00.006-04:00

I like Reggie from Chesterfield, Va., a 6-foot-5-inch, Lincoln Town Car-driving gent who called in this past weekend on Car Talk, the automotive-themed radio program on NPR. It wasn't Reggie's jovial voice punctuated by a slight Southern twang or that he's gotten a highly commendable 432,000 miles out of his 1995 Town Car. No, it was his use of decrepit.

Reggie called the show to mull aloud whether to take advantage of the "Cash for Clunkers" program or keep the car and its lifetime warranty on a complete engine replacement, labor charges included. One disadvantage to ditching the car would be finding a comparably roomy vehicle for his expansive frame. As he put it, his commute to work covers 65 miles each way and "within an hour I have to be able to stretch my left leg out because I'm old and decrepit and it cramps up really bad."

Reggie could have called his body worn-out, run-down or beat-up; he could have described himself as rickety or infirm, done-in or burned-out. But decrepit is a mighty fine term. Its Latin root crepāre means "to crack, creak, or rattle," according to the OED. Decrepit describes the state of being worn out or infirm because of age, long use, or neglect.

The term's noun form is quite a hoot, too: decrepitude. It sounds like being worn out but with conviction. It conveys more than a little creaky or shaky; it sounds like a roof ready to collapse in on itself if just one more splat of bird poop lands on it.

Maybe decrepit would be a more applicable descriptive for a car with more than 400,000 miles on its odometer. But Reggie clearly was attached to the old vehicle, praising the smooth ride it delivered compared to a more contemporary Navigator. When connected to age or long use, decrepit can sometimes convey a sense of endearment.

The Velveteen Rabbit eventually became decrepit with age and play in the classic children's book. But as the Skin Horse told him, "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Rachitis & Pellagra - Scourges of the Past

2009-08-20T21:59:00.005-04:00

Through literature, authors bequeath to us not just ideas but also sights, sounds, tastes and smells from the past. And wonderful heirloom words. My pal Claudette has been vicariously experiencing the flavors and milieu of the Great Depression by reading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. She shared this sentence, which sent her to the dictionary more than once:

The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides.

Rachitic -- there's a lulu of a word! I wasn't even sure how to pronounce it let alone define it. Thank goodness it's a word consigned for the most part to historical narratives here in the U.S. because it means "related to or having rickets." Rachitis, a Greek word referring to inflammation of the spine, is the medical term for the condition, which entails softening of the bones due to a vitamin D or calcium deficiency, usually as a result of malnutrition. The disease manifests in weak, bowlegged or misshapen limbs. (Rachitic is pronounced "rah-kit-ick" by the way.)

Pustules of pellagra certainly induces a wince; even if you're not sure what pellagra is, anything involving pus can't be pleasant. Pellagra turns out to be the term for a wasting disease associated with niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency, which is characterized by skin roughening and lesions as well as diarrhea and dementia. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Diseases associated with malnutrition and carrying archaic sounding monikers like rickets and pellagra seem like historical artifacts in this era and nation of plenty. Yes, there are still people in America who suffer these scourges, some because they're poor, some because they're addicted to drugs or alcohol, some for other reasons. But even among those struggling to make ends meet, such conditions are no longer the norm. In fact, we've traded diseases of dearth for diseases of plenty.

Obesity now looms as America's greatest health threat, sending rates of heart disease and diabetes to alarming levels. Medical professionals no longer refer to "juvenile" and "adult-onset" diabetes. Now it's "type 1" and "type 2" diabetes given that so many teens were developing the adult form, mostly as a result of their weight.

Will future novels that chronicle American society describe obese children laboring to breathe as they cross a schoolyard flanked by unused playground equipment, an abundance of cheap, high-calorie chips, snack cakes, fries, and sugary sodas surrounding them in vending machines, fast-food restaurants and cafeterias? Is it any less a wince-inducing scene?

Gallimaufric - Jumbled With Flair

2009-08-19T23:04:00.007-04:00

I've been gobsmacked by a new word. Deep into John McPhee's The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed, the author hit me with gallimaufric. My eyeballs tripped over this vocabulary stumbling stone and tumbled into the gutter of white space between the lines. Here's the exact reference:

His ambitions and interests were, as they developed, gallimaufric. He invented, among other things, the combination lock.... He invented the wickless oil lamp. He invented a kitchen range for anthracite. As mayor, and also president of the board of health, he designed and built the Perth Ambroy sewer. In barracks constructed by the English Army in the eighteenth century he established workrooms for the manufacture of his inventions, which also included a fumigator, a forging press, a velocipede, a machine to crack nuts.

You get the idea.

Gallimaufric is the adjectival form of gallimaufry, meaning "a confused jumble or a medley of things," according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. Per various dictionaries, it refers to "a jumble or hodgepodge;" "a hash or ragout;" "mishmash or melange." (Incidentally, hodgepodge is an alteration of a Middle English term hochepot, meaning a stew. All these references to food are making me hungry!)

Unless you're a gourmand or Parisian expatriate, perhaps hodgepodge, medley, or jumble are more straightforward terms than gallimaufry. But what then would be the adjectival form? Hodgepodgy? Medleous? Jumbled would work, but it's kind of prosaic. Gallimaufric: now there's a word with panache! (Once you know what it means, that is.)

Callow & Callous - Bald & Hard

2009-08-18T22:42:00.008-04:00

Some words are like red Jelly Belly beans. You pick one out thinking it's a particular flavor, like cherry, but then you realize you just bit into a cinnamon instead. Likewise, it's easy to mistake words that sound similar but have totally different meanings.

Take callow and callous. Callow means "inexperienced, immature;" it's also frequently used to mean "gullible, naive." Callous means "displaying an insensitive, unsympathetic or cruel attitude."

People who believe rumors that current proposals for health care reform include having government officials force end-of-life decisions on people are callow.

People who think it's no big deal that millions of Americans go without any health insurance so long as they have theirs are callous.

Interestingly, these words have distinct roots as well. Callow derives from the Old English term calu meaning "bald," and probably came from the Latin term for bald, calvus. The word originally referred to an unfledged (hence bald) bird and was eventually extended to any immature thing. Callous comes from the Latin callosus and ultimately callum meaning "hard skin." The term shouldn't be confused with callus, the word for a hardened spot of skin, like you might have on the balls of your feet if you have a job that keeps you hopping all day.

Propinquity - A Close Look at a $10 Word

2009-08-14T10:29:00.007-04:00

John McPhee employs some interesting terminology in his intriguingly titled book, The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed. Speaking of Olcott, the test pilot tapped to fly, or at least attempt to fly, a prototype airship -- an "aerobody" as its zealous lead backer William Miller dubbed it -- McPhee wrote:

Why Miller hired him to test the 26 was in part the result of propinquity. Olcott's daylight work was at Aeronautical Research Associates of Princeton, Inc., in Princeton Junction, and a couple of rooms above a bank on Nassau Street in Princeton happened to be the home and only offices of Aeron Corporation.

Propinquity is an interesting word choice. You can make reasonably good assumptions about its meaning from the context if it acts as stumbling stone along your reading path. The term simply means "nearness."

According to the OED, the nearness indicated by the term may refer to spatial closeness, temporal closeness, blood relation or kinship, or similarity in nature, belief, or disposition. But all nearness, just the same.

So why propinquity, this $10 word? Why not proximity, an equally multisyllabic term with deep roots in good ol' Latin? Or, to be as direct as possible, why not simply nearness?

Perhaps in the early '70s when McPhee was penning Pumpkin Seed, propinquity was not quite so arcane a term. Perhaps for McPhee it is one of those preferred terms that many a writer cherishes, like a particularly fine tigereye marble, brought out on rare occasions. Or maybe it's just one of many terms that an accomplished wordsmith knows and uses to convey an idea without any particular intent to be fancy.

And convey McPhee certainly does. He is a magician with words, conjuring graphic images out of ink marks on plain paper. Take his description of an auto mechanic's tool:

Fitzpatrick got out a pair of gooseneck pliers that could have removed a tooth from the Statue of Liberty.

Or his description of the mechanic wielding those pliers:

Fitzpatrick was in his forties -- a short man, around five feet eight. His face was weather-lined, handsome, tough, and sad. There was a sense of grandeur in it, and a sense of ironic humor. His hair was dark and graying, and neatly combed. His body looked hard. He had a muscular, projecting chest. His stomach and abdomen were as flat as two pieces of sidewalk. He had the appearance of a small weight lifter, a German-shepherd owner, an old lifeguard. He was smoking the stub of a thin cigar.

The storyteller who writes in vivid pictures like this, who spins out page after compelling page on a topic as mundane as oranges, who can convince readers with zero interest in aerodynamics that perhaps the world gave up too soon on dirigibles, that storyteller is bound to control a vast vocabulary as myriad as the Pantone shades available to a graphic artist.

Propinquity, proximity, contiguity, vicinity, adjacency, nearness, closeness…

Excoriate - A Tough Scrape

2009-08-11T21:57:00.009-04:00

Michael Chabon's collection of essays, Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, contains this wonderful vocabulary aside about literary criticism:

"To be excoriated, by the way, literally means 'to have one's skin removed'; it's the heavy-duty version of exfoliated."

Suddenly, pumice stones and gritty facial scrubs sound as soft and gentle as dust bunnies.

This literal meaning is borne out by the term's Latin roots: ex meaning "out of" or "from" plus corium for "skin" or "hide," according to the New Oxford American Dictionary. The OED's definitions for excoriate are, essentially, to strip or peel off, as in a skin or hide; to remove a surface or lining by corrosion or abrasion. In other words, to flay or disintegrate.

My childhood reading included its share of pirate stories -- always good fodder for adventure with a touch of villainy and gore. But it wasn't until I ran my hands over the serrated surface of a barnacle-encrusted piece of wood during a beach trip that I truly appreciated the horrors of keelhauling, the practice of dragging a sailor along the underside of the ship, combining the flaying of flesh with the terror of drowning.

As a metaphor for criticism, excoriation is therefore truly the most severe form. Such is the price of fame, I guess, since any writer or any public figure of a certain level of renown faces the potential of being excoriated by his or her critics.

Perhaps those of us who labor in obscurity have the consolation of facing no more than an occasional mild abrasion. However, the vast open ocean of the Web has brought out the pirates, judging by some of the anonymous comments I see posted on many a blog or online article, even some that are pretty obscure. And some of these comments make keelhauling seem like a mere buffing with a loofah by comparison.

Besmirch - Curses, Soiled Again!

2009-08-08T14:18:00.008-04:00

I did it to her again. Finding our cat Ripley curled into a circle of dozing kitty fluffiness on the comforter, I couldn't resist pressing my cheek against her fur while rubbing her fuzzy head. Which she tolerated for about 1 minute before hopping up and stalking to the far corner of the bed where, after casting a baleful glance in my direction, she commenced meticulously washing. Look at that, I said to Mark; her body language almost shrieked, "you have besmirched my lovely coat!"

The prim sound of besmirch aptly fit Ripley's huffy attitude. Sully, however, would have been an equally good choice. Besmirch literally means to soil or discolor as with dirt or soot, as in to drag one's dirty feet or fingers over a surface, leaving behind tracks and smudges of filth. Although the OED is vague on the etymology of besmirch, the word could be a derivation of besmear given that the tome offers besmire as an obsolete form. The ultimate root of besmear is the Old English term smeoru or smeru for ointment or grease. That's definitely smeary stuff!

But the more frequent use of besmirch is metaphorical, as in to dim something's luster, to damage or dishonor someone's reputation. "The candidate's attack ads aimed to besmirch his opponent's stance as a fiscal conservative."

Certainly, my petting in no way tarnished the luster of Ripley's fur or her reputation as a gorgeous feline. Though in her mind, I'd clearly defiled her pelt.

Sully, likewise, means to blemish something's cleanliness or luster, to taint or contaminate. And it also can be used to indicate the marring of the purity of something, such as a reputation. "Her drunken bouts sullied her good name in the community." Sully derives from a French term souiller meaning simply, to soil.

So, there you go: Two fun terms for times when soil or tarnish simply aren't sufficient.

Vertiginous -- Dizzying Word Choice

2009-07-15T15:23:00.013-04:00

In a recent review of the new Sasha Baron Cohen film Brüno, critic Ann Hornaday made this laudatory reference to the movie's predecessor: "These are all quintessential Cohen moments, and in Borat they possessed the vertiginous sense of spontaneity, danger and unwitting honesty that made that movie a cross between Jonathan Swift and Andy Kaufman. But in Brüno, the skits don't add up to anything substantive."

Vertiginous? Ok, so I admit, I had to look it up. My brain got sidetracked by the vert- which led me to thoughts of "green" and "fresh." If I'd paid closer attention to the first two syllables I would've realized that vertiginous is the adjectival form of vertigo and means, "whirling, spinning," and "affected with vertigo or capable of causing a state of dizziness."

So, the real question raised by this is not whether Hornaday is spot-on or off-her-nut in her assessment of the virtues of Brüno v. Borat. It's whether a word like vertiginous belongs in a newspaper movie review. Dredging through my vague recollections of my collegiate journalism courses, I recall the adage that newspapers are written at a fifth-grade reading level. Have they ever challenged the contestants on that "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" reality show to define vertiginous? The point being that if readers have to run for a dictionary to get the gist of what you're saying, you've failed to communicate. And, some might say, you've contributed to the melting of the paper's readership.

On the other hand, I'm tickled to see a term like vertiginous show up in a film review, especially one about a movie making equal opportunity fun of elitist sensibilities about high culture and P.C.ism as well as lowbrow prejudices and willful ignorance. But vertiginous is a 10-dollar word, I grant, and dizzying would've been a perfectly fine, more readily accessible word choice. So does a preference for vertiginous reveal me as one of those latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving, liberal elites -- what Sarah Palin perhaps would call one of the "un-real" Americans? Maybe (though I drive a Prius). But I'd note that my propensity for 10-dollar words puts me in a camp that includes columnist George F. Will, whose word choice merited notation in his Wikipedia entry -- "[his] columns are known for their erudite vocabulary" -- and National Review founder and Firing Line host William F. Buckley Jr., whose prodigious use of arcane words led to the creation of The Lexicon, an entire book devoted to citations of the unusual words he employed.

Though I just checked and vertiginous isn't in The Lexicon.

Facetious -- Frivolous Word Play

2009-07-14T21:35:00.004-04:00

I have to grudgingly give credit to the most recent Sunday Puzzle segment on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday for providing me new appreciation for the words facetious and facetiously. I say grudgingly because I'm not a huge fan of this feature of the show, particularly since they added guest stars' recitations of the rote list of prizes players receive, like it's so much more exciting to hear some minor celebrity's prerecorded voice yammering about lapel pins and dictionaries than hearing show host Liane Hansen tick off the prizes. Anyway, this weekend's puzzle player, Bob Brereton of St. Paul, Minn., enlightened me to the particular significance of facetious and its adverbial form: "[These] are great words because facetious [contains] all the standard vowels of the alphabet in order, and facetiously incorporates the y," which can be used as a vowel, too. That's pretty darn cool!

According to the Web site Fun-with-words.com, the shortest word in English with all five standard vowels in alphabetical order is aerious meaning "airy." The longest such word is phragelliorhynchus, a protozoan (although y as a vowel intrudes before the u so I would argue this isn't a perfect hit). The site also notes that suoidea, meaning the taxonomic group to which pigs belong, is the shortest word in English with the standard vowels in reverse alphabetical order, and the longest such word is punctoschmidtella, a type of crustacean. (Check out the link for more vowel word records.)

Facetious is also curious given the dissonance in the tone accorded to the term by various dictionaries. The granddaddy of dictionaries, the OED, defines facetious as a positive quality: "Characterized by or addicted to pleasantry; jocose, jocular, waggish. Formerly often with a laudatory sense: Witty, humorous, amusing; also gay, sprightly." The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as a negative quality: "Treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant." The American Heritage Dictionary says simply: "Playfully jocular; humorous," while the Random House Dictionary offers both: "1. Amusing, humorous. 2. Lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous."

The term came to English from the French facétieux and facétie, which the French had in turn incorporated from the Latin facetia meaning "jest," from facetus meaning "witty."

Vocabulary an Alzheimer's Shield?

2009-07-09T10:38:00.009-04:00

A sophisticated vocabulary helps ladies stave off Alzheimer's disease, says a health news story today. Yeah, in your face, brain lesions!

As someone who works in the health arena, I'll be the first to say NEVER believe without question everything you read or hear about the latest, hottest new health finding. Health research is a gradual accretion of discoveries and evidence, some of which hold up over time and some of which are refuted by further investigation. The researchers who conducted the study that's the focus of this news report cautioned that no conclusions can be drawn from this small, preliminary study.

But I sure hope further research confirms this tantalizing suggestion that women who developed sophisticated language skills as young adults were less likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer's later in life -- even if they had the tell-tale lesions associated with Alzheimer's at their deaths. The hypothesis is that developing complex language skills builds neural connections that may help stave off the ailment's symptoms. I hope it proves true, because then I could add a tagline to my blog that says, "Vocabulary: It's Not Just Fun; It's Good for You, Too!"

Encomium -- No Faint Praise

2009-07-07T21:54:00.007-04:00

To say the media and blogosphere have been filled with encomiums for Michael Jackson would be like saying the OED contains a smattering of words. Today, the date of his massive memorial service in L.A., you could hardly escape the tidal wave of encomium for the late King of Pop short of renting a rocket ride into near-Earth orbit. A week ago, I'd already found myself rolling my eyes at the outpouring of emotional language about Jackson. I admit, I couldn't quite fathom the level of public reaction even though I once eagerly absorbed the videos for "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Thriller" on that dazzling new medium called MTV back when the "M" actually stood for "music." Still, for heaven's sake, I said, he was just a singer and dancer!

My dear hubby has had his fill of the Jackson coverage, too. But as he noted, it's not inappropriate to say that Jackson's death is the contemporary equivalent of the passing of Elvis. And when people mourn the death of a major star or pop culture figure of their time, it's as much -- or more -- some element of their own lives for which they're feeling those heart pangs. Jackson's hits certainly permeated the 80s and 90s: "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," "Rock With You," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "P.Y.T.," "Beat It," "Billie Jean," "Man In the Mirror," "Human Nature," "Bad," "Black Or White," "Smooth Criminal," "The Way You Make Me Feel," and, of course, "Thriller." Jackson's songs provided the soundtrack for many a date, school dance, amusement park thrill ride, smooth move at the roller rink, beach trip, slumber party, pool party, talent show, summer camp, cruise down the highway, yearbook work weekend, etc. etc. Kids of all ethnicities in middle schools and high schools across America mimed his signature moonwalk step -- they certainly did in the thoroughly white-bread suburban schools I attended.

Yes, Jackson's music was part of the soundtrack of my formative teenage years, too. Though I was not necessarily the typical teen. I hazard a guess that I'm among the very few people who thought that the most impressive element of "Thriller" was that they got Vincent Price (!!) to do that voiceover punctuated with his diabolical laugh -- although the dancing with zombies was pretty sensational, too. But none of Jackson's songs was an "our song" for me and hearing "Don't Stop" or "Billie Jean" doesn't carry me back to a particular youthful experience on a wave of nostalgia. Even so, I can certainly understand how Jackson's songs evoke those memories and emotions for millions of people. And I can understand the pangs of the sense that some part of those memories has slipped away, making those ghosts of feelings seem a little thinner and fainter.

Hence the use of encomium to describe the accolades heaped upon the entertainer today at his memorial service and carried across airwaves and cyberstreams throughout the day. Dictionaries note the formal character of the term. It's more than praise. It's "a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly," says the New Oxford American Dictionary. Encomium derives from the same Greek roots as eulogy: enkōmion from en- meaning "within" and komos meaning "celebration."

I will be thrilled when the media hoopla over Michael Jackson dies down. But I will not roll my eyes at those who tell me they had a videostream of the live coverage of the memorial open on their computer screens all day or that they pulled out and played all their old Jackson albums one evening after hearing about his death. I get it.

Inculcate -- Making an Impression

2009-07-02T12:06:00.007-04:00

As a word connoisseur, I'd like to argue that use of unusual, attention-grabbing terminology would aid listeners' memory by making a real impression. However, I disprove my own hypothesis. On Tuesday, my wandering attention snapped back to a speaker's presentation when my ears caught the word inculcate. Ooh, there's a choice term! However, for the life of me I couldn't tell you now what exactly he was saying should be inculcated.

Even so, the word has stuck in my brain with the stubborn clinginess of a dryer softener sheet on a wool sock. Which is kind of apropos considering inculcate basically means "to impress upon" as well as "to influence" and "to instill via teaching."

Now, maybe it's just me, but I can't help but think the word sounds kind of sinister, its syllables punctuated by the sharp raps of those two hard c's. But obviously you can't always judge a word by its sound any more than you can tell the state of a politician's marital harmony by how many times he invokes "family values." The usage is what counts.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines inculcate as: "1: to teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions; urge on or fix in the mind. 2: to cause (as a person) to become impressed or instilled with something." The term, the dictionary notes, derives from the Latin root culcāre meaning "to tread on, trample."

So inculcate seems to occupy linguistic terrain somewhere between "to teach" and "to indoctrinate." It's not directly synonymous with brainwash, but it means more than simply "to present ideas for consideration." Many an independently minded student has posed the question: Where does teaching stop and indoctrination begin? It comes down to the intent behind the action. Likewise with inculcate: Do you intend to impress an idea on someone or to have your ideas tread on someone else's?

Concatenation -- The Chain Gang

2009-06-28T17:57:00.009-04:00

During a recent catching-up-on-our-lives chat, my college friend Claressa reminded me once again why I've always admired her. Talking about her lab work or new beekeeping hobby -- can't remember which -- she employed the term concatenation. There was no particular motive: She wasn't aiming to be formal or ironic or anything else. We were casually chatting. She just knows such words and employs them as breezily as others use the or going. (And before you go thinking she's just some prissy vocabulary geek, let me note that this is a woman who introduced me to Sid & Nancy, who cultures Legionella bacteria, and who displays on her mantel a black velvet painting of Yoda that she got as a gift from a Hell's Angel.)

Concatenation has been stuck in my head since I started this blog with my hubby's encouragement. Among the helpful tools he bought to noodge me into the blogosphere was a copy of The Lexicon, a compendium of words collected from the writings of wordsmith William F. Buckley Jr. Flipping through this pocket-sized tome, one of the first words I landed on was concatenation. As Mr. Buckley knew, the word means "a series or order of things depending on each other as if linked together," or, in the most basic sense, "a chain of events." It's not a term I happened to have had at the ready in my vocabulary bag of tricks at the time. Nor is it one I've had opportunity to employ since then. So my ears pricked up and I had to smile a little when concatenation tripped off Claressa's tongue. Ah, there it is! If I can't get around to using it, I'm glad someone else could.

Dictionary Definition:

Roots: Latin catēnāre, "to bind," from Latin catēna, meaning "chain"

Pronounced: [kon-kat-n-ay-shuhn]

1. union by chaining or linking together

2. union in a series or chain, of whihc he things united form as it were links

3. an interdependent or unbroken sequence

Lachrymal -- Up to Here in Tears

2009-06-06T21:57:00.006-04:00

Ok, call me a softie, a bleeding heart, whatever, but sure enough, three-quarters of the way through the opening sequence of Pixar's new movie Up, my lip was quivering and the moisture gathering on the edges of my lower eyelids threatened to trickle down my cheeks in the image of the waterfall depicted on-screen. And this is a cartoon, for Pete's sake! What gives with this lachrymal impulse?

Up isn't the first movie to get me teary-eyed and won't be the last, I'm sure. Earlier in our marriage, when Mark was traveling a fair bit, I learned the hard way that revisiting The Sixth Sense when he was away on a business trip wasn't perhaps the best cinematic option to watch solo. The penultimate scene, when Bruce Willis's character realizes the truth of what's happened, had me looking like a cross between a racoon and W.C. Fields, what with my smeared mascara and rubbed-red nose.

Of course, these cinematic scenes strive to be lachrymorose, to jerk those tears right out of our lachrymal ducts. And also, of course, some efforts work better than others and what elicits sniffles from one person as easily evokes snickers from others. But I expect that for just about everyone, there's a scene or song or some other surrogate that has elicited that lachrymal reflex.

So how does this happen? How can a bit of what's so clearly fiction incite this kind of emotional response? The ancient Greeks understood the power of fiction to hold a mirror up to life and to purge oneself emotionally through the experience of catharsis, a term originally meaning "cleansing" and "purification."

But why do we respond with such real emotion to something that we know is, well, not real? Empathy. I can watch Carl's life with Ellie unfold onscreen in Up and relate to these cartoon characters' all too believable experiences. I can see Bruce Willis's character's emotion as he watches the video of his wedding and feel the emotions of my own wedding. Doesn't matter if their fictional experiences are not mirror images of my own; the emotions are the same.

This is the boon of consciousness, the ability to relate to the experiences of others -- even strangers -- because in them we can recognize ourselves. It's both selfish and altruistic at the same time.

So I don't apologize for my lachrymal response to Up. Those tears are part of what makes me human. The trick to being fully human, however, is to be as equally open to the real scenes and emotions around me in the offscreen, mundane world and to be as equally emotionally responsive to them and not jaded or flummoxed into inaction. That's harder than when you're sitting in a theater or movie seat and the lights come back up. A curtain will not magically fall over the hurts, the hunger, the loneliness of the real people around me. Catharsis and tears may be about purging, but it doesn't hurt if they provide a solid kick in the conscience, either.

Acidulent -- Sour Grapes

2009-06-03T20:38:00.004-04:00

Acidulent tripped me up on FreeRice.com tonight and prevented me from donating 450 grains straight without missing a term. If you've never tried FreeRice, give it a whirl. It's a vocabulary building quiz AND hunger-assuaging program all in one site. The site donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every vocabulary word you get right on its quiz.

FreeRice is based on the principle of synonyms. Space on the site is limited as is people's time. Who wants to read long, detailed dictionary definitions while playing a quick game between attempts to finish the document you need to turn in already, because, after all, it's good to stimulate your brain's thinking capacity and get the juices flowing when writer's block has derailed your ability to finish that draft you're already past deadline turning in, right? On FreeRice, you select from four possible synonyms (or an occasional phrase like "strip blubber from") for the word you're given.

Synonyms are useful, but sometimes seem lacking. For example, I recognized that the correct choice for capricious out of the four options given was whimsical. But I think of capricious as meaning "fickle" or "volatile" more so than "whimsical." Still, someone will get some rice for that right answer on the quiz.

But acidulent got me. My choices were "inharmonious," "frisky," "sour" and "temporary." "Sour," I should've concluded, made the most sense given that citric acid is a puckering substance. But I second-guessed myself and bet my grains on "frisky." Doh! Darn my capricious gut instinct! Instead of free rice for a hungry person, I got sour grapes for my wrong answer. Oh well, the next word pops up straightaway, so you can make up for your mistakes and fill that rice bowl.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [uh-sij-uh-luhnt]
Also, acidulous
Root: Latin acidus meaning "sour"
1. slightly sour
2. sharp; caustic: the movie critic's acidulent tone

Laodicean -- Lukewarm About Bees

2009-05-29T21:19:00.007-04:00

What does it mean to own a word? Is it that you know how to pronounce it correctly? Is it not until you can spell it accurately? I think most of us would say you don't really own a word till you can accurately use it in speech or writing. My personal take is that spelling and pronunciation are nice and useful to be sure, definitely preferable, but I'll chuck 'em for a solid, spot-on usage any given day.

I suppose that's vocabulary heresy, especially coming right on the heels of the crowning of 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar as this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. Spelling bees have elevated the art of stringing letters together to the status of gladiatorial competition. As The Washington Post noted:

The high-gloss event, televised on ESPN and prime-time ABC, is perhaps the one time a year that sportscasters cover the English language with the same alacrity they do college football. The contest bore the trappings of an athletic event, with sweeping boom cameras, heavily made-up announcers and 41 semifinalists, who had been winnowed from a field of 293.

Spelling bees edged into popular culture with such fare at the critically acclaimed 2006 movie Akeelah and the Bee and the success of the Broadway production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which earned six Tony award nominations in 2005.

I celebrate bees achieving this level of appreciation and attention, and at the same time, the elevation of spelling over meaning irks me. Oh, sure, the contestants can request the meanings of the words or their parts of speech and ask to hear them used in a sentence, but such information is not always requested and really, did learning or knowing that Laodicean means "lukewarm or indifferent, especially in religion or politics" help Kavya spell it correctly?

In terms of the workings of language, meaning preceded spelling. Well before we finally agreed that it should be spelled l-a-u-g-h and most of us decided to pronounce it as |laf| rather than |lahf|, we in the English-speaking societies agreed that this set of letters and this sound means "to express one's amusement through a vocal exhalation produced by a series of facial and bodily movements." The simple word where has enjoyed a variety of spellings through the years, including wher, wheare, wair, whair, and were. A contemporary middle school student may find it a bit slow-going, but I dare say probably could comprehend one of William Shakespeare's plays with all the words as he originally spelled them (provided of course footnotes explaining archaic terms such as petard).

I'm not anti-bee, however. I guess you could say I'm somewhat Laodicean about them. Maybe I'd be fully enthusiastic if contestants were given points for being able to themselves correctly define the words they're challenged to spell or to use the terms in a sentence. Just think: it would add a whole new level of drama after the nail-biting wait to hear if the contestant correctly used ae instead of y to spell maecenas (meaning "generous benefactor" and the word this year's runner-up missed). A spelling and usage bee -- now that would be real competition!

Abide -- An Enduring Term

2009-05-27T21:10:00.006-04:00

Twice today I used the word abide to mean endure in the sense of tolerate or put up with. The word randomly popped into my mind when I could've just as easily said put up with instead. But I like what the brain sometimes comes up with when it goes into vocabulary shuffle mode, spinning through the collection of synonyms stored in all those terabytes of memory and popping out a random term, perhaps one that hasn't touched the tongue for a while, but you welcome again when it turns up, remembering what a fine, versatile term it is. And like a song, words can churn up feelings, like nostalgia or bemusement.

Abide, for example, conjures for me the velvet-cushioned pews, suppressed coughs, stretching effect of high ceilings on shadows, and poetic psalms from the churches of my youth along with the sonorous lyrics of that oldie but goodie hymn, "Abide With Me." I can't sing the lyrics anymore, but still that slow, dare I say ponderous, tune abides with me, imprinted deep somewhere in my cerebrum, perhaps.

And yes, abide also means endure in the sense of to last, to continue on without fading away. Which evokes a chuckle from me as I hear in my head Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey Lebowski intoning in that middle-aged slacker voice, "The Dude abides." Ah, The Big Lebowski, a witty cinematic confection from the Coen Brothers, full of all manner of memorable quotes!

Abide means "to live or dwell with." It also means "to remain stable or fixed," "to stand fast and unyielding." And it's also used to mean "to submit to" or "to tolerate," as in to abide by a decision or precept. To endure and to endure.

We call on God to abide with us, seeking a steadfast, unwavering presence to see us through life's vagaries. The Dude assures us that he abides. The Narrator at the close of The Big Lebowski tells us, "I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals."

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: ə-bīd
Roots: Old English ābīdan meaning wait from ā- meaning ‘onward’ + bīdan.
1. accept or act in accordance with (a rule, decision, or recommendation)
2. able to tolerate (someone or something)
3. continue without fading or being lost.
4. (archaic) live; dwell

Apoplectic -- Rage Hard

2009-05-18T22:09:00.006-04:00

The driver behind me in the big white SUV was in the throes of an apoplectic fit. It was quite a sight filling my rearview mirror. Hands and arms jerking in gesticulations of rage, mouth stretched wide in one bellow after another, veins in his neck throbbing. Even his eyebrows seemed to stand up and bristle. If the hairs on his head could've acted independently, I'm sure they would've cussed me out in semaphore.

I could indeed see all this pretty clearly since he was tailgating so close he might as well have been in my backseat. My crime? Refusing to drive over 70 mph in the far left lane on the Dulles Toll Road. Ok, sure, I could have taken the hint from his gestures and moved over a lane to let him fly by unimpeded any longer by my pokey vehicle. But I had gotten over to the left so that I could exit onto the access road for the airport where I had a flight to catch. Yeah, I got over a few miles earlier than I really needed to, but I didn't want to miss the exit and besides, this is a 4-lane road and anyone behind me who insisted on doing no more than a minimum of 70 on this 55-mph-limit highway had plenty of space to go around me on the right. Which is finally what my neanderthal buddy did, though he kept pace alongside me long enough to send a few more choice words my way along with a copious amount of spittle. He even tossed a Coke can out the window as he gunned the engine to fly ahead.

I'm only exaggerating somewhat. This guy was the picture you'd see in the encyclopedia entry on apoplexy, a term used since the days of ancient Greece to refer to the symptoms of suffering what we now call a stroke. It morphed into a figurative term for the sort of furor that makes people's eyes bulge and chests heave. The incident might've been -- perhaps should've been -- scary to me at the time given how close he followed for a while. It's funny in hindsight. Yet mostly what I felt at the moment was sadness. For him and for me. What a senseless waste of energy on this guy's part. All that anger, all that emotion, and to what purpose? It didn't get him anywhere any faster, didn't make me repent for being such an impediment to others and swear to mend my ways.

But perhaps it at least made him feel better to let off some steam? I have to think this guy was having a really bad day given the level of rage he demonstrated. Letting off steam is how I justify my own incidents of road rage. Which is why the incident made me feel sad for myself as much as for apoplectic SUV man.

I'd like to think I've never been as bad as this guy, but truth be told, I've done my share of top of the lungs yelling at someone who has cut me off, braked too sharply, coasted too slowly, or just generally driven in a manner that I consider to be moronic. Yet, to what purpose that waste of energy and emotion on my part? It didn't make the other driver mend her error, get me where I needed to go faster, or otherwise do anything other than send some ugly karma out into the universe. If I were honest with myself I'd say it didn't make me feel any better, either. It probably only helped the rancor linger since my pointing out the flaws in other people's driving has never yielded any signs of remorse on their part that would soothe my nerves.

This is true of so many of the annoyances and inconveniences we inevitably encounter throughout our lives. Airports with their long lines at ticket counters and security are notorious for such irritations. So, thanks to apoplectic SUV man, I arrived at the airport in a zen frame of mind. The teen sports team members who had no clue about the new security rules and held up the line? Whatever. The guy in front of me on the plane who reclined his seat as far back as it would go and then occasionally tried to treat it like a rocking chair? Eh, he never hit my book and interrupted my reading.

I can't promise that I'll be able to maintain this zen state of mind on a continuous basis. In fact, I've already reneged a few times since that flight. But I'm going to try to remember the sight of apoplectic SUV man in my rearview mirror and remind myself, you don't want to be such an unhappy, pathetic character yourself so just chill out.

Dictionary Definition:
Roots: Latin apoplecticus, from Greek apoplēktikos meaning ‘disable by a stroke’
Prounounced: ap-uh-plek-tik
1. Of, resembling, or produced by apoplexy, a sudden impairment of nuerological funtion esp. when resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage.
2. Having or inclined to have apoplexy; exhibiting symptoms associated with apoplexy.
3. Extremely angry; furious.

Humidity -- Oh, the Fun of It!

2009-05-12T17:17:00.011-04:00

I have a new colleague who hails from northern California. She's a recent transplant to the D.C. region and everyone keeps warning her about what to expect during her first summer in the American South. Yes, D.C. is in the South, as much as folks here may wish to deny it, thinking themselves oh so cosmopolitan. (I remember when I was in high school in Birmingham, Ala. reading an article that noted "bama" was a slang term used in D.C. to denote a hick with no style. To which I say, bless their hearts, some of those D.C. denizens just can't seem to remember where that Mason-Dixon line runs.)

People who move to the South are given to fear humidity like brain-eating zombies or swine flu. Ok, yes, humidity feels yucky. Even us native Suth'ners cop to that. For those of you who've never experienced it, take a roll of cellophane and wrap yourself in it. The whole roll. From crown to toe. Once you're fully wrapped, have someone blow a hairdryer at you at full heat. While you're standing in a sauna. Now breathe.

Humidity in the Southern summer is that continuous clamminess that comes from hot, moisture-laden air through which you almost feel the need to push yourself with some amount of physical exertion. Fan blades turn slower in the South because the air is that much heavier. A glass of lemonade doesn't just sweat, it cries uncle 30 seconds after you take it out of the fridge.

Humid derives from a Latin term umere meaning "to be moist." It also relates to the medieval physiological term for the elements that, it was thought, determine personality, namely, the four humours. This concept fascinated me as a lit student when I was studying Chaucer and other middle English writers. Back then, people believed that their temperments were ruled by the balance of these humours in their bodies. Your level of blood (emanating from the liver -- so it was believed at the time -- and characterized by courageousness or amorousness), phlegm (secreted by the brain or lungs and associated with calmness or aloofness), yellow bile (stemming from the gall bladder and associated with anger and impulsiveness), and black bile (secreted by the spleen and linked to despondence and irritability) determined your outlook on life. Too much of one or the other explained why you were either melancholy, hot-headed, unflappable, or easily annoyed. I love the adjectives associated with each, pretty much still in use today (though not all in their original sense or usage): sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic, respectively.

Nowadays, humour in its medieval sense of fluids is no more and humor means laughable or having a sense of what's funny. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term humour led to the sense of "'mood, temporary state of mind' (first recorded 1525); the sense of 'amusing quality, funniness' is first recorded 1682, probably via sense of 'whim, caprice' (1565), which also produced the verb sense of 'indulge,' first attested 1588.... Humorous in the modern sense is first recorded 1705."

So the relationship between humidity and humorous is fractured. But if we Southerners couldn't make fun of all the Yankees wilting in the heat, what fun would we have?

Pluvial -- Rain O'er Me

2009-05-07T22:02:00.008-04:00

I nearly had a heart attack today brought on by the shock of a sunbeam streaming through my office window, piercing the chilly clamminess in which I've worked for the past several weeks. It flitted away all too quickly and by the time I exited the building I was once again slogging through the rain, toes all too soon squishing against soggy soles, under the perpetual gray sky that has shrouded D.C. for what seems like weeks. I know it's good for my flowerbeds and shrubs. I know it's keeping the pollen down and alleviating my hubby's seasonal allergy misery. I know I'll be whining about the lack of showers come the dusty, droughty dog days of August. But right now I am sick and tired of this pluvial weather!!!

Not my friend Eric, however, who suggested pluvious to me, another adjectival variation of the term. Looking it up, I half-expected to discover that pluvious or pluvius (yet another accepted spelling variation) was the name of some minor Roman god of rivers, floods, or downpours. According to some online sources, Pluvius was one of a multitude of epithets attached to the big guy himself, Jupiter, the chief god of the Roman pantheon. Makes sense given that Jupiter, or Jove, was depicted as lord of the skies and hurler of thunderbolts. These sources suggest that drought-stricken Romans would pray to Jupiter Pluvius to send rain and relieve their suffering. Does the reverse work? Can I send him a prayer asking him to cut it out already?

According to the OED, however, the root of pluvial is merely the Latin pluvia, meaning rain. But pluvial doesn't mean just rain. It means lots of rain. Characterized by rain. Heavy rain.

Pluvial is a term more likely to turn up in geographical or geological contexts -- e.g., "there were two pluvial periods in the Pleistocene." I doubt Willard Scott ever uttered the term during one of his Today Show weather forecasts slash centenarian birthday shout-outs.

Checking the weather forecast for tomorrow: oh, surprise, surprise -- more pluvial weather! But there's the promise of at least a little sun in the morning, maybe even into the early afternoon. Maybe I'll be visited by that happy little sunbeam again, at least for a few minutes. Right now, I'll take every second's worth of sun I can get.

Factotum -- Jack or Flunky?

2009-05-05T22:18:00.005-04:00

Mark has gotten a lot of attention for a column he did on high-speed rail, including invitations to chat with people in the business. "They do know you're just a dilettante expert, right?" I pointedly remarked, ever supportive of his journalism. Which ultimately led to my dubbing him a factotum (which, I thought, is the nature of the game in much of journalism) to which he took umbrage. "I am not a flunky," he retorted. Well, wait a minute; I didn't call him that. "No, a flunky is a sycophant. I'm calling you a jack-of-all-trades" (which, again, is the nature of much of journalism, or so I thought). Clearly, we had a difference of usage, and the way to settle that is to go to the dictionary.

OED notes the Latin roots of factotum, as facere, meaning "to do," and totum, meaning "the whole." The moniker "Johannes Factotum" and "Frère Jean Factotum" showed up back in the 16th century, meaning "John-do-everything." The term also is akin to the Latin phrase "Dominus factotum," meaning "one who controls everything." It's hard to tell if the term was applied from the beginning with complete straight-faced sincerity or ironically or has always had a dual usage, though the OED seems to indicate the former.

Today, both terms jack-of-all-trades and factotum can be used either admiringly or derisively, meaning either one who can do a bit of everything or one who dabbles or meddles in everything. So, yes, a factotum can designate one hired because she is versatile or because she's suited to be a general go-fer. The OED seems to suggest that factotum is a term for someone above being a sycophant or simple go-fer. It notes that in modern sense, the term signifies, "a man of all-work; also a servant who has the entire management of his master's affairs." (Momentary pause to think that the "modern" sense in the OED still includes the idea of "masters" and "servants.") Our dictionary for college students defines factotum simply as, "an employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities."

Mark contends that using the term factotum to describe journalists is giving them too much credit. He believes dilettante is the appropriate term. As he notes, he has written articles about space travel, genetic enginnering, and any number of other complex things and yet he'd never proclaim any real ability in rocket science, genetics, or other fields. Upon reflection, I think he's generally right, but with caveats.

Dilettante is originally defined as, "one who cultivates [the fine arts] for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional." Yet, the term carries its own weight of deprecation as it evolved to also denote one who interests himself or herself in an area "without real commitment or knowledge" (see the New Oxford American Dictionary).

Well, the journalists I know and work with on health and science beats by and large are committed to understanding what they're covering even if they don't have M.D.s after their names. They strive to grasp the complexities of what they're reporting on and to present it accurately and in a way that we not-even-dilettantes can understand and care about. The loss of this dilettante expertise is what I most lament in the slow demise of traditional mainstream media.

(Thanks to spellcheck and dictionary sites for ensuring that I spelled dilettante -- a French term -- correctly throughout.)

Formidable -- A Force to Be Reckoned With

2009-05-04T22:54:00.005-04:00

Formidable -- there's a term that carries some gravitas. Not a term to use lightly and not a descriptive you hear pinned to the average joe or jane. It's reserved for people like Bea Arthur, the actress who played TV's tough broad Maude in a popular sit-com of the 1970s. Several of the articles about her death last week employed the term formidable about her presence, about the characters she played, about her voice. "Tall and formidable, with that deep voice, Bea Arthur was a star for all the reasons that women aren't stars on TV," said a Washington Post writer.

Or like Britain's former prime minister, who was profiled in London's Daily Telegraph on Saturday under the headline: "Margaret Thatcher: Formidable, Determined, Kittenish, Kind." I wonder which reaction that headline evinced from "the Iron Lady," a smile or a roll of her eyes?

A cursory scan of recent news reveals that formidable turns up more frequently in the sports section than in entertainment or daily news. That's because it's most commonly used to describe a tough or fearsome opponent or situation, like a particularly challenging game.

Formidable has become something of a compliment, albeit a nuanced one. Interesting since the term's original meaning and its Latin root formidare mean "fear." Formidable's principal definition in many dictionaries is a variation on "inspiring dread." I'm sure that seeing a 6-foot, 250-lb. linebacker steaming toward you, ready to pound your helmet into the mud, probably inspires a certain amount of dread in many a freshman recruit. But for all that Arthur's character Maude occasionally made her TV hubby quaver and perhaps Thatcher had some British parliamentarians quaking in their brogues, it seems a little ludicrous to think of these ladies as menacing, terrifying figures.

Formidable has evolved through the years from its roots in fear to emphasizing the sense of admiration and respect that frightful and powerful -- or just powerful -- entities can evoke. You can use the term to convey dread or apprehension -- Rocky faced a formidable foe in Mr. T's "Clubber" Lang -- or respect -- see the references to Bea Arthur above -- and not infrequently both at the same time. E.g., Everest offers a formidable challenge to mountain climbers. Julius Caesar proved to be both a formidable military tactician and politician. In that way, I suppose it's no surprise that a tough, no-nonsense woman who takes charge and brooks no guff from anyone could find herself tagged with formidable in profiles and obits. I expect that a search of the reams of coverage of Hillary Clinton would turn up more than a few instances of the word. Whether you think that it evokes more respect or fear in her case -- well, formidableness is in the eye of the beholder.

Dictionary Definitions
The New Oxford American Dictionary says: "inspiring fear or respect through being impressively large, powerful, intense, or capable."

The American Heritage Dictionary gives: "1. Arousing fear, dread, or alarm: the formidable prospect of major surgery. 2. Inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder: "Though a true hero, he was also a thoroughgoing bureaucrat and politician, a formidable combination" (Mario Puzo). 3. Difficult to undertake, surmount, or defeat: a formidable challenge; a formidable opponent.

The OED seems to resist the evolution of the term's meaning toward conveying admiration. It says, "That which gives cause for fear or alarm; fit to inspire dread or apprehension. Now usually (with some obscuration of the etymological sense): Likely to be difficult to overcome, resist, or deal with; giving cause for serious apprehension of defeat or failure."

Temerity -- How Galling!

2009-05-02T18:59:00.007-04:00

"It didn't storm today, like the weather report said it would," Mark noted. "No, but it had the temerity to rain on my bike ride!" I retorted. We're still watching out of our windows to see when the downpour comes. But, meanwhile, I'm occupying myself exploring that choice word, temerity.

Whenever I see or say it, I can't help but think of termites. That's stupid, of course, and does nothing to help me retain the word's true meaning. Except if I think to myself, what temerity those termites had invading my home! Even if its framework is made out of wooden beams, like a giant banquet hall for these cellulose-chomping critters, I'm appalled that they'd invade my space! I did indeed endure a termite infestation in one of the apartments I lived in during my college years. It was mating season and an orgy was taking place in the living room, mostly in the sunlight of the one large window in that room. In hindsight, I should've burst into a resounding chorus of "Let the Sun Shine In." At the time however, I was reduced to semi-articulate shouting into the telephone to the apartment manager that I was very put out by the lack of effective pest control.

So, anyway, temerity has nothing to do with termites. No, it stems from Latin root temeritas meaning "rashness." Hmm. Accusing Romans of rashness needn't raise any eyebrows -- et tu, Bruté, and all that -- but kind of silly to suggest that the weather acted out of rashness.

Proper usage of temerity merited a special note in the New Oxford American Dictionary, interestingly:

THE RIGHT WORD
The line that divides boldness from foolishness or stupidity is often a fine one.
Someone who rushes hastily into a situation without thinking about the consequences might be accused of rashness, while temerity implies exposing oneself needlessly to danger while failing to estimate one's chances of success (she had the temerity to criticize her teacher in front of the class).
Audacity describes a different kind of boldness, one that disregards moral standards or social conventions (he had the audacity to ask her if she would mind paying for the trip).
Someone who behaves with foolhardiness is reckless or downright foolish (climbing the mountain after dark was foolhardiness and everyone knew it), while impetuosity describes an eager impulsiveness or behavior that is sudden, rash, and sometimes violent (his impetuosity had landed him in trouble before).
Gall and effrontery are always derogatory terms. Effrontery is a more formal word for the flagrant disregard of the rules of propriety and courtesy (she had the effrontery to call the president by his first name), while gall is more colloquial and suggests outright insolence (he was the only one with enough gall to tell the boss off).

I suppose I've been accustomed to using temerity as a direct substitute for effrontery to mean the derogatory sense of disregard for propriety and I need to adjust my terminology. Darn it, I knew I should've just stuck to good ol' gall! But then, did Woody Allen use temerity correctly?

From Love and Death:

(Allen as Boris) Don't you know that murder carries with it a moral imperative that transcends any notion of inherent universal free will?
(Diane Keaton as Sonya) That is incredibly jejune.
(Allen) That's jejune?
(Keaton) Jejune!
(Allen) You have the temerity to say that I'm talking to you out of jejunosity? I am one of the most june people in all of the Russias!

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced: |tə-mer-i-tē|
1. excessive confidence or boldness; audacity

Enormity -- The Size, er, Wickedness of the Problem

2009-04-28T20:49:00.006-04:00

I'm as ignorant as George Bush. George H. W. Bush, that is (the first one). I learned this from Bill Bryson, author of one of the funniest books I've ever read (A Walk in the Woods) and of The Mother Tongue, one word-man's study of how the English language got the way it is. According to Bryson, "The day after he was elected president in 1988, George Bush told a television reporter he couldn't believe the enormity of what had happened. Had President-elect Bush known that the primary meaning of enormity is wickedness or evilness, he would doubtless have selected a more apt term."

Ok, maybe you knew this, but apparently I've been coerced naively into the camp of usage anarchists who have contributed to the shocking degradation of this term into meaning "of great size; immensity." I shall begin acts of penance forthwith.

Seriously, even people who savor words can be ignorant of their historic meanings. I avoid using the adjective true because one of the points of Bryson's book is there isn't a capital T true when it comes to English, and that's a good thing; that fluidity has contributed to the English language's richness, which is what this blog celebrates.

Peeking into the OED, I find the entry for enormity to read: "1. Divergence from a normal standard or type; abnormality, irregularity. Obs. or arch. [Note: these abbreviations signify "obsolete" and "archaic," respectively.] 2. Deviation from moral or legal rectitude. In legal use influenced by enormous 3. Extreme or monstrous wickedness. 2.b. A breach of law or morality; a transgression, crime; in later use, a gross and monstrous offence. 3. Excess in magnitude; hugeness, vastness. Obs.: recent examples might perhaps be found, but the use is now regarded as incorrect."

Now regarded as incorrect? Really? According to whom? Oh, wait, here's what our little ol' American Heritage College Dictionary has to say about enormity: "1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage. 3. Usage Problem. Great size; immensity. Usage Note: Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being enormous, but many would prefer that enormity be reserved for a property that evokes a negative moral judgment. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task."

Oh, the "Usage Panel." Well then, of course, I any every other malingerer stands corrected in the face that that 59% of whoever the "Usage Panel" is. Especially when both the OED and American Heritage immediately follow up their definitions of enormity with their definitions for enormous.

OED says: "1. Deviating from ordinary rule or type; abnormal, unusual, extraordinary, unfettered by rules; hence, mostly in bad sense, strikingly irregular, monstrous, shocking. Obs. [Remember, that abbreviation stands for "obsolete"] 2. Of persons and their actions: Departing from the rule of right, disorderly. Of a state of things: Disordered, irregular. Hence, excessively wicked, outrageous. Obs. 3. Excessive or ordinary in size, magnitude, or intensity; huge, vast, immense." Note that there's no Obs. after that third definition.

American Heritage says of enormous: "1. Very great in size, extent, number, or degree. 2. Archaic. Very wicked; heinous.

Makes sense to you, right?

My point is not simply to blow a razzberry at fuddy-duddy "Usage Panels" trying to rigidly preserve definitions in the face of the great fluidity that has characterized English through centuries of conquest, accretion, invention, and yes, sometimes sheer laziness. It's to underscore that there is going to be evolution because such evolution is natural and it engenders variety both in biology, which makes us who/what we are, and in language, which enables us to express ourselves. In a case like enormity, where a closely related term like enormous has an accepted definition that's related to size and the term's historic meanings are acknowledged to be archaic if not altogether obsolete, I think it's kind of silly to try to stubbornly cling to a definition that's fading without some good case for preserving the original definition. Will a majority of readers/listeners today misunderstand that sentence about engineers and viaducts? No. The whole point of language -- to communicate ideas -- is achieved by the use of enormity in this context for the great majority, if not all, of the audience.

Which is not to say, let's throw up our hands and toss all usage rules out the window, but rather to be judicious and open to natural change at the same time. Bryson wrote: "One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees. It is a natural process that has been going on for centuries. To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency no matter how many authorities hurl themselves into the path of change.

"But at the same time, it seems to me, there is a case for resisting change -- at least slapdash change. Even the most liberal descriptivist would accept that there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one's lap [not my cat, but hey] and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to housebreak. In precisely the same way, clarity is generally better served if we agree to observe a distinction between imply and infer, forego and forgo, fortuitous and fortunate, uninterested and disinterested, and many others. As John Ciardi observed, resistance may in the end prove futile, but at least it tests the changes and makes them prove their worth."

Parsimonious -- Frugal Is In

2009-04-26T15:13:00.010-04:00

If ya got it, don't flaunt it. Wealth, that is. Not in this harsh economic climate when foreclosures, job losses, salary cuts, and unpaid furloughs have hit people across the demographic strata. Even well-heeled professionals earning comfortable six-figure incomes are choosing restaurants that offer half-price nights when they dine out and cutting back on clothes, entertainment, and other discretionary spending, according to a recent Washington Post article.

It's hard to look around a relatively wealthy area like the D.C. metro region -- to note the high per capita number of Beemers, Benzes, and Lexi; the Coach handbags on many a female teenagers' shoulder, the plethora of plastic surgery ads jostling for readers' eyeballs in local media -- and think bling is really out. Nonetheless, it looks like frugality is at least being invited to the party now, even if it's not being feted as the guest of honor.

Frugal is a term that people can accept, some grudgingly, some with chin out-thrust defiance, wearing it like a badge of honor. You can admiringly comment on your frugal mother's ability to feed a family of five on less than $100 a week. But I doubt frugal's lesser-known cousin parsimonious will attain any greater measure of coolness, let alone more frequent use, despite the times.

For one thing, it's a term that sounds antiquated. It makes me think of a poor country parson getting by on a meager salary, an image that has helped me remember the term's meaning all these years since I first encountered it in a high school vocabulary test.

For another thing, parsimonious is a term that has taken on a more derogatory meaning through the years than has frugal, even though it was an equally neutral term originally. The OED gives as the principal definition of parsimonious: "Characterized by parsimony; careful in the use or disposal of money or resources; sparing, saving." Its first definition of parsimony is: "Carefulness in the employment of money or material resources; saving or economic disposition. a. In a good or neutral sense." Only afterward comes, "b. In dyslogistic sense: Stinginess, niggardliness."

More dictionaries now emphasize that dyslogistic sense. E.g., the New Oxford American Dictionary defines parsimonious as: "Unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary gives us: "Exhibiting parsimony; sparing in expenditure of money; frugal to excess; penurious; niggardly; stingy." The American Heritage College Dictionary offers: "Excessively sparing or frugal," and defines parsimony as: "Unusual or excessive frugality."

I can't help but think it's a pity for that imaginary country parson with whom I associate parsimonious; I've always envisioned him more like a Friar Tuck of Robin Hood fame than an Ebeneezer Scrooge. I hadn't thought it would be an insult to comment on my mother's parsimonious ways, such as running errands only two or three times a week in a carefully planned route that minimized mileage and gas usage, keeping junkmail by the phone to jot messages rather than a notepad; squashing the sliver of nearly used up soap onto the new bar so as not to waste that last bit; or using as coasters those once ubiquitous AOL discs we used to get in the mail every other week it seemed.

Oh, sure, parsimony can go to excess, as the infamous casserole crumb topping incident proves (a mixture of the crushed remnants at the bottoms of the bags of three different types of breakfast cereal -- including store-brand Raisin Bran -- that she didn't see the point of just throwing away). But the lessons she and my father taught us about spending our money wisely, keeping enough back to build up a tidy savings account and make investments, avoiding debt when possible and taking on only as much as we knew we could handle have all stood me and my siblings in good stead.

My parents' parsimony allowed them to send three kids through college and supported my extra years in grad school. They don't worry about losing their house or whether they can keep up with the bills. They splurge on themselves occasionally, yet still manage their resources carefully. I may not have grown up an immigrant starting from scratch to build a life out of a few opportunities and meager possessions, as my mother and her family did, and I don't salvage every sliver of soap or avoid every unnecessary car trip. But I learned from her and my father to willingly wear either parsimonious or frugal as a badge of honor.

Flotsam -- Worthy Refuse

2009-04-22T21:00:00.008-04:00

The homeless have been poetically called, "the flotsam of humanity," those who float unmoored through society. I find myself lately surrounded by these drifters, both literally and figuratively.

This morning I passed not only the man who regularly sits near the Metro station with eyes downcast, silently letting the sign proclaiming his diabetes and homelessness speak for him, but also the ragged fellow who sometimes appears near the State Department and loudly curses the world that has so keenly hurt him by shouting a blue streak of invective at passersby. I've been listening with interest to NPR's series on the changing atmosphere of L.A.'s notorious Skid Row, for so long a hangout for drug dealers, buyers and hookers as well as the homeless. Today's report included the story of Nathaniel Ayers, whose tale soon will hit movie screens when The Soloist premieres. Ads for this movie pop out at me from newspapers, magazines, the TV, and Web pages, urging me to immerse myself in the story of this gifted musician whose mental illness carried him from the lofty halls of Juilliard to the mean streets of L.A., his talents lost until a local journalist stumbles into his life.

Many people use the term flotsam to mean an accumulation of miscellaneous items, often with negligible value. "Somewhere in all the flotsam and jetsam on my desk is the contract we're supposed to sign." The term took on this meaning sometime in the 1800s, and then in the 1900s it migrated to attach like a barnacle to displaced people as well.

These figurative uses hark back to the word's original meaning in nautical legalese in which flotsam designates those goods or debris from a vessel accidentally lost overboard (e.g. items floating on the water after a shipwreck). This was to distinguish these materials from jetsam, goods that were purposefully jettisoned (e.g. to lighten a ship in distress because of storm or pursuit by pirates), and the lesser known ligan (or lagan), those items that are labeled by the owner (and perhaps attached to a buoy) before casting overboard so as to be retrieved later. In nautical law, these terms help designate whether it's finders-keepers or the item has to be returned. As such, these terms convey a sense of value to the items. Material from a shipwreck can be worth quite a lot as the rise of treasure-hunting to a profession shows.

Perhaps that part of flotsam's meaning holds true for its figurative application to displaced humanity as well. It's tough to see that, of course. I, like every other passerby I notice, frown and perhaps shake my head at the cussword spewing, rough looking man on the corner, if I bother to pay him any mind at all. And yet, I belong to a Unitarian Universalist congregation that espouses as the first of its core principles the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. It's a tough principle to live up to. It requires arresting the mind's leap to conclusions based on the scant evidence of surface appearance or audible clues. It even requires, dare I say, reaching out and making contact.

Mark helped out one night when our church temporarily served as a berth for homeless people during a cold winter week. He encountered people who'd allowed drugs or alcohol to set them adrift. He saw cases where mental illness had unraveled people's mooring lines. And he met people who were working hard at minimum wage jobs, but who just didn't have or couldn't maintain enough funds to pay rent in this pricey area. None of them appeared to be lost artistic prodigies like the extraordinary Ayers; none of their stories would likely be turned into a series of newspaper columns or a Hollywood movie. They are just so much flotsam of humanity. But flotsam is a word that that conveys value, too.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [flät'-səm]
Roots: Anglo-Norman French floteson, from floter meaning "to float."
1. Such part of the wreckage of a ship or its cargo as is found floating on or washed up by the sea.
2. figurative, people or things that have been rejected or regarded as worthless.

Sogginess -- Why Not Sog?

2009-04-20T15:34:00.007-04:00

On the way to work this morning, I complained to Mark about the chances of my hair ending up "wet and soggy" during the rain-drenched commute. Soggy occurred to me a split-second after I'd uttered wet as my brain searched for a word that would convey a condition of being "wetter than just wet." Soggy hit me as a choice term, one that conveys a sense of being waterlogged, thoroughly weighed down with water.

The word prompted Mark to muse aloud, "Is there such a thing as sog?" Interesting question. Foggy is our way to describe an ample quantity of fog. Ditto for smoggy and smog. You can slosh your way through a bog and take photos of the boggy terrain. And you love your dog but wince at his doggy breath.

But there is no sog as a noun form of soggy. Well, not one in common usage. Oh, there's sog, a southwestern dialect synonym for bog or swamp. And there's sog, also a dialect term, meaning a stupor or daze. It's also an apparently obsolete term for a whale (used in no less a venerable tome than Moby Dick). And there is the verb sog, meaning "to saturate" or "to become soaked or saturated with wetness." But this also is a usage relegated to dialect. Don't look for these variations on the term in any unabridged dictionary; you'll have to heave out your OED, as I did.

It seems that out these obscure terms, the adjectival soggy is the form that managed to escape dialect and become accepted in broader parlance. That's not to say there's no name for the soaked condition you might find yourself in upon stumbling out of a heavy rain, your shoes squelching as you walk, leaving damp footprints on the linoleum. For that there's sogginess, a noun built on the adjective.

Dictionary Definition (soggy)
Pronounced [sä-gē]
Roots: from dialectal sog meaning swamp, or possibly from Scandinavian origins.
1. Of land, soaked with water or moisture.
2. Saturated with wet; soppy, soaked.
3. Of people or things, lacking in vigor; lifeless, dull.

Jack-in-the-Box -- Do You Know Jack?

2009-04-15T11:59:00.012-04:00

A colleague recently suggested I consider jack-in-the-box for this blog, not for its meaning, but rather for the complexities of its plural form (thanks, Lauren). Which is it, jacks-in-the-box or jack-in-the-boxes? (Or how about jacks-in-the-boxes?) Short answer: either (but not the double plural form).

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th ed.) and Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, the plural is -boxes. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, however, says either jacks- or -boxes is accepted (though it lists -boxes first). The American Heritage College Dictionary likewise gives both options.

How well does this convention hold for other jack-in- or jack-of- terms? (slight pause for a brief "Beavis and Butthead" snigger by anyone who just mentally added -off to that list).

For example, do you grow jacks-in-the-pulpit or jack-in-the-pulpits in your bog garden? The results mirror those for jack-in-the-box. Webster's New World and Random House give the plural as -pulpits only. Third New International and American Heritage, however, say either jacks- or -pulpits is fine. (The flower, by the way, got its name from its shape; a spike of flowers -- the "jack," perhaps a colloquial term for a country parson -- is surrounded and overtopped by a modified leaf that resembles the roofed pulpit found in some European churches.)

How about jack-of-all-trades, a fellow who dabbles in a bit of everything? Some dictionaries list this as a hyphenated word, but others don't. The concluding word is already plural, so not surprisingly, more than one is typically given as jacks-of-all-trades. There's also jack-o'-lantern, which is always pluralized by adding an s to the end.

But Jack doesn't get to have all the fun. Johnny does, too. Unless he's a Johnny-come-lately, a newcomer or person who arrives or gets on board late. The plural of this term is given variously as Johnnies-come-lately or Johnny-come-latelies. But more than one Johnny-on-the-spot, a person available and ready to seize an opportunity, would be a passel of Johnnies-on-the-spot. A bouquet of the small form of pansy called Johnny-jump-up is a cluster of Johnny-jump-ups.

The upshot? Pluralization of such terms seems pretty arbitrary despite efforts of the lexical attorneys general -- i.e., the dictionaries -- to arbitrate such matters.

Derailed -- We Gang Aft Agley

2009-04-12T20:18:00.009-04:00

"Do you prefer the spelling DERAILLEUR or DERAILER?" asked the bicycle tutorial Web site at the close of an entry on how to adjust V-brakes. I demonstrated my total greenhorn status by choosing "(c) Doesn't matter." Turned out to be the sentiment of me and just 967 of the rest of us neophytes out of the 6,432 votes cast. Derailer is a term that refers to the device's role, which is to move, or derail, the bicycle chain from one sprocket to the next. This morning, the day of Mark's and my maiden voyage on our brand new bikes, the term seemed more apt to describe what the brakes on Mark's bike portended for our cycling plans. He'd noticed that one of the brake pads was brushing against the front tire with each revolution. An hour later of futzing with nuts and bolts and the brake cable and pads, we somehow achieved reasonable riding status. But heaven only knows what all we screwed up in the attempt.

Derailed literally means run off the rails, like a runaway train. Or figuratively, a project, campaign, marriage, career, anything that was heading toward a fixed destination. We start so many initiatives knowing where they are supposed to end up. The path is clear, the mileage clocked, the GPS will guarantee the exact route. And yet, so often in life, things get unexpectedly derailed. The chain slips off the sprocket and suddenly we're careening out of control. Don't even know why half the time. A bump in the road? Our own ineptitude? Doesn't matter how you spell it because either way, you're derailed.

So what can you do but reset or mend the chain and get going again? Maybe not on the same path. Maybe you have to backtrack a ways, even limp your way to a restarting place. It can take time to get everything back in working order. Time and will. That's the challenge for those with the consciousness to remember the troubles of the past and the foresight to project into the future -- how to muster the will to get back up and ride again. The Scottish bard Robert Burns perhaps put it best in his poem, "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough":

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

"Gang aft agley" is often misquoted and made more familiar as "go oft astray." Is a mouse indeed better off than a man when a home and a lifetime's possession get turned upside down? Well, at least we have the option of getting insurance.

Luckily, our derailers didn't derail Mark's and my inaugural bike journey today. We pedaled along the W&OD Trail from Vienna into Reston, perhaps not as briskly as the many experienced cyclists who passed us nor as far as I thought we could go when we first set out. We're still learning and faltering, tentatively feeling our way, learning about gear shifting, road etiquette, starting and stopping, brakes and chains and tires and cables and car racks. But we're mapping our routes, laying our schemes, and keeping in mind what the bike shop mechanic said: "There are just two types of people -- those who've had flats and those who will." Yup, we got our spare tubes.

(In case you're wondering, the majority of votes -- 3,348 or 54% of the total -- went to derailleur.)

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [dē-rāl']
Roots: French dérailler
1. To run or cause to run off the rails.
2. To come or bring to a sudden halt: a campaign derailed by lack of funds; a policy that derailed under the new administration.

Update: Prevaricate -- A Policeman's Take

2009-04-11T20:29:00.003-04:00

Overheard: A deadpan police officer speaking to one of several young men who had been detained and cuffed beside the Verizon Center arena in downtown D.C. on Friday night as we walked past....

"That is what we say is contradictory to the truth."

How apropos -- prevarication in action!

Prevaricate -- A Bit of a Stretch

2009-04-09T17:13:00.004-04:00

I was overheard today on an elevator using the phrase, "prevaricating too much." Sharing the elevator car were several coworkers who know my penchant for big words and who are understandably quite willing to rib me about it. Prevaricating, one person noted, that's lying. "How much prevaricating is too much?" quipped another.

It took me a couple of hours to get to a dictionary and see if I had indeed bungled the term (wouldn't be the first time). Though I don't have my trusty OED handy, I'm relieved to note that several online dictionaries have vindicated me. To prevaricate is to stretch the truth. (If there were an emoticon for a fist pump, I'd put it here.)

Merriam-Webster gives the definition: "to deviate from the truth: equivocate." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary says: 'To shift or turn from one side to the other, from the direct course, or from truth; to speak with equivocation; to shuffle; to quibble." The American Heritage Dictionary gives its meaning as: "to stray from or evade the truth; equivocate." But, yes, right afterward it says, "See synonyms at lie."

So my colleagues weren't wrong, either. Lie is given as a synonym for prevaricate by several sources as are fib, falsify and deceive. So are dodge, evade, exaggerate, hedge, beat around the bush, and stretch the truth. I think I can indeed argue, given the nuances of this word, that you can prevaricate, or stretch the truth, too much till it becomes an outright lie.

But that begs the question, when is a lie a lie? Isn't the purpose of stretching the truth the same as a bald-faced lie, namely, to deceive? Are there shades of deception? The psychology of lying is a whole fascinating realm. This New York Times article talks about studies showing that exaggeration is psychologically different from lying in that it brings about none of the anxiety associated with lying. This LiveScience.com article on why we lie says it's a matter of self esteem and that "though many animals engage in deliberately misleading another, only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others."

If we agree that a prevaricator is distinct from a liar, then the old "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" taunt won't work for the former crowd and we need a new one. Hmm -- "Prevaricator, prevaricator, pants in an incinerator?"

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [pri-var'-i-keyt]
Roots: Latin vāricāre meaning to straddle, derived from Latin vārus meaning bent.
1. To stray from or evade the truth; equivocate.

Exculpatory -- Don't Blame Me!

2009-04-08T18:31:00.009-04:00

It sounds like a term related to a skin disease or some sort of diagnostic procedure, but if you're on the legal hot seat, like former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, exculpatory is a term you embrace with fervor and glee. Today, a judge threw out the corruption verdict against Stevens and ordered a criminal probe into how lawyers at the Justice Department prosecuted the case. The judge's foremost complaint was that prosecutors deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers.

"Whether you are a public official or a private citizen or a Guantanamo detainee, the government has an obligation to produce exculpatory evidence so that justice can be done," said U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

What an archaic sounding term, exculpatory. From Latin root culp-a meaning blame, as in mea culpa or its contemporary equivalent, my bad. But the addition of ex shifts the term to mean out of blame. Which is what some of that evidence might have meant for Stevens. (Or not, but we'll never know.)

The term is largely confined to legal discourse. Us less lawyerly types are generally more apt to use excusable, defensible, justifiable, or pardonable. Athough exculpatory neatly conveys both the sense of excuse and explain in one word.

What counts as exculpatory evidence? Well, when you're scrambling to mount a defense, you might try just anything. Take Jake Blues's impassioned efforts to exonerate himself to the gun-toting ex-fiancee he abandoned at the altar in The Blues Brothers:

"Oh, please, don't kill us. Please, please don't kill us. You know I love you baby. I wouldn't leave ya. It wasn't my fault. . . . Honest. I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO G-O -O-O-D!"

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [ik-skuhl-puh-tohr-ee]
1. Of statements, evidence, etc. Adapted or intended to clear from blame or a charge of guilt; apologetic, vindicatory.

Hardy, Hearty, Har Har

2009-04-06T22:51:00.005-04:00

It's cherry blossom season here in D.C. and this morning even the small grove of cherry trees lining the sidewalk near the Metro station seemed a picture of fuschia splendor. These same trees come late summer's swelter look so tired and worn, like they'll barely hold on to bloom again next spring. Several of them today bore bare twigs and branches between the puffy blossoms. "Too bad they aren't particularly hardy trees," I thought as I passed. "Or wait -- should that be hearty?" I secondguessed myself as I so often have with that particular pair of words.

Hearty. Hardy. They're almost homonyms (I'd say they are except among the most careful enunciators). But are they interchangeable terms? Hearty, I've tried to remind myself, is basically a shortened version of wholehearted, meaning heartfelt, ardent, enthusiastic, effusive. Hardy, on the other hand, is like a slightly longer version of hard and means tough, durable, rugged. So this morning, of course, I should've used hardy.

But wait -- other synonyms given for hardy are vigorous, lusty, hale and hearty. And other definitions for hearty include, robust, healthy, fit and flourishing, vigorous, and hardy.

So the joke's on me. All this time I've been wondering if I've been erroneously conflating the meaning of these two words and it turns out that they are synonyms in some contexts. Still, hearty has some meanings that diverge from hardy. For example, offering your hearty congratulations to a colleague expresses your heartfelt sentiments in a way that a hardy congratulations doesn't fully convey. You'd be better off praising the troops for their hardiness in the face of the perils of war. And while you might refer to your hearty or hardy grandfather's ability to still cut a rug at age 87, it is more precise to speak fondly of your goofy uncle's hearty penchant for telling silly knock-knock jokes.

Dictionary Definitions:
Hearty
Pronounced: [här'-tē]
Roots: Related to roots of heart: Old English heorte, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch hart and German Herz, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin cor, cord- and Greek kēr, kardia.
1. (of a person or their behavior) loudly vigorous and cheerful; e.g., a hearty and boisterous character, he sang in a hearty baritone.
• (of a feeling or an opinion) heartfelt; e.g., hearty congratulations.
• (of a person) strong and healthy; e.g., a white-bearded but hearty man.
2 (of food) wholesome and substantial; e.g., a hearty meal.
• (of a person's appetite) robust and healthy; e.g., Jim goes for a long walk to work up a hearty appetite for dinner.

Hardy
Pronounced: [här'-dē]
Roots: from Old French hardi, past participle of hardir ‘become bold,’ of Germanic origin; related to hard.
1. robust; capable of enduring hardship, rigors of weather, difficult conditions.
2. bold, courageous, daring.

Pickles & Plinth - A Vocabulary Comic

2009-04-05T12:54:00.006-04:00

Oh, joy; I opened the Sunday comics pages this morning to find a vocabulary joke featured there, this time in the Pickles strip. Earl is learning a new word each day and plinth is his new word this particular day.

(Note: these are the last 4 frames; full Sunday strip won't fit here, but you can see it via the link above to Comics.com)

For the record here are the details on plinth:

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced: [plinth] (just like it looks like it should sound)
Root: from Latin plinthus, from Greek plinthos meaning ‘tile, brick, squared stone.’ The Latin form was in early use in English.
1. a. the lower square member of the base of a column or pedestal.
b. a block of stone, etc., serving as a base or pedestal to a statue, bust, vase, etc.
c. the projecting part of a wall immediately above the ground; also a course of bricks or stones in a wall, above ground level, by which the part of the wall above is made to be set back in relation to the part below.
2. the uppermost or projecting part of a cornice or of a wall. Now rare.
3. a shallow wooden cabinet in which a record deck is mounted. (*Not indicated as rare, but seems like it should be, if you ask me)
4. a block sited on the floor and forming part of the base of the molding of a door or window.

Scarified -- Scratching the Surface or Digging Deeper?

2009-04-04T08:28:00.005-04:00

I had the privilege to hear eminent biologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson speak on protecting the planet's biodiversity at the National Academy of Sciences on April 2. This is a man who seems to appreciate the richness of vocabulary almost as much as the rich diversity of species filling the planet, as he sprinkled his talk with terms like supercilious, venerability, and chimera as well as some earthier words like stupid. There's a reason he's a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his writings.

While answering a question from the audience, he mentioned a recent excursion to a pond where, he said, "the surrounding forest had been scarified," leaving the animals that came to the pond to breed little place to shelter. Scarified. It sounds so harsh, that hard c followed by the rasping r. It brought to my mind an image of desolation. Yet, when I sought out the term's exact meaning in the dictionary, it seemed at first blush to mean something less devastating.

The foremost definition of scarify in dictionaries is a variation of, "to make a number of cuts or scratches in the surface; to cover with scratches or incisions." Certainly, scarification still wouldn't be a good thing for the wooded area surrounding the pond, but it doesn't sound that terrible. Does that mean Wilson misused the term? Plucked a rhinestone rather than a diamond when riffling through his bag of vocabulary gems? Should he have used razed instead?

Well, a secondary definition of scarify is from an agricultural context, "to break up or loosen the surface of, especially soil." It refers to the rows of jumbled, overturned earth after a tiller has rumbled through. Perhaps the scene Wilson visited bore the marks of undergrowth clearing and soil disruption, but not wholesale slash and burn of all growth. If so, razed would be overkill and scarified could fit the bill.

Wilson's talk on the importance of protecting the biodiversity of Earth and how we can do that mixed optimism and pessimism. The 21st century, he said, "is a time when we will either settle down or finish wrecking the planet." He went on, "we could lose half the animal and plant species on Earth by the end of the century. The loss, even if we can slow it, will inflict a heavy price in wealth, security and spirit....The radical reduction of world biodiversity is the folly our descendants will least likely forgive us because they will remember that a thousand years from now." But he added, "if we pass through the bottleneck we are in now, that combination of continuing overpopulation, of very high and rising per capita consumption, if we find that the quality of life is more important than the amount of consumption and stuff we own, then the 22nd century, I believe, will be a paradise." Well said!

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [skār'ə-fī']
Root: from Old French scarifier, via late Latin from Greek skariphasthai meaning ‘scratch an outline,’ from skariphos meaning ‘stylus’
1. To make a number of scratches or slight incisions in a surface.
2. To make sore or wound; figuratively, to distress deeply, lacerate, as with severe criticism
3. To break up or loosen a surface (ground).

Regurgitate -- Back So Soon?

2009-03-31T22:15:00.016-04:00

Bacteria and viruses fascinate the heck out of me. These tiny, invisible creatures can invade a human body -- literally an entire planet to their diminutive armies -- and within a relatively short time wreak such havoc that said human finds herself out of control, muscles and organs churning in ways that a planet under alien bombardment in a sci-fi movie looks like -- a heaving, exploding, debris-spewing mess. Sure, the dazzling and incredibly intricate array of defensive arsenal that is the immune response also boggles my mind, but until it can rally itself to fight back, the body responds with the most primitive and brutal of tools to try to expel the invaders, including regurgitation. (Let's just say that personal reasons bring this word to mind this evening.)

Regurgitate is a word that works especially well for conversations amongst polite company, such as discerning blog readers. Use of the term -- given its well known biological context of sustenance of hungry chicks by doting parents -- conveys all the gruesome imagery of partially digested food without your having to describe any such gory details directly. Certainly there's a colorful array of synonyms to choose from that can convey such imagery more immediately, but since anyone who has raised an infant, cleaned up kitty's hairballs, or attended a particularly celebratory New Year's Eve bash can rattle off a string of these with no help from any blog, I'll forgo the laundry list here.

Rather, it's more interesting (and better for the constitution of someone trying to put heaving innards out of her mind) to consider the additional definitions that regurgitate boasts.

In several dictionaries, its foremost definition is some variation of, "regarding fluids, air or gases, to gush, rush, or pour back again." Though the New Oxford American Dictionary lists the principal definition as "bring (swallowed food) up again to the mouth" in the biological context. But given that the grandfather of English language usage, the Oxford English Dictionary, lists the non-guts-related definition first, it seems this word has had a broader usage history. Other definitions given are variations of, "to pour or cast out again from a receptacle, especially the stomach," so it's clear also that the term's popularity in the biological context is prominent as well.

Eventually, some clever mind conceived a more figurative use of the term as evidenced by the definition, "repeat information from memory," usually in the sense of haven't really having comprehended or considered it. Now, that's some creative play with terminology! Forget partially digested food -- now what we have tumbling out is a mishmash of barely tasted, hardly chewed, unabsorbed bytes and bits of facts and data, perhaps with a bit of bile mixed in. "Ooh" and "eww," both at the same time.

Pronounced: [rē-gûr'jĭ-tāt']
Roots: re + Latin gurgitāre, meaning to engulf or flood (from gurges, gurgit- meaning whirlpool)

Aromatic

2009-03-30T21:30:00.010-04:00

My last post contained a definition that included the term aromatic, which I noted means having a pleasant and distinctive smell. "Doesn't it mean just having an odor," Mark asked?

As I thought about terminology around the sense of smell, I realized that the range of adjectives is somewhat limited, certainly more so than the wide range of terminology around the sense of hearing or the vast vocabulary related to sight.

There are a few terms that are neutral or could be used equally well to mean pleasant or unpleasant smells: odorous (although now more often used in a negative connotation, even though historically it was a neutral term), pungent, and heady.

As for general terms that mean "good smelling," there are just a handful: aromatic, fragrant, perfumed, scented, odoriferous*, and redolent. Of course, you could come up with additional terms that more narrowly refer to particular types of pleasant odors, such as sweet-smelling, spicy, citrusy, fruity, flowery, musky, honeyed, etc., but these aren't so readily interchangeable (or fungible) terms.

There seem to be more general terms related to "bad smelling:" stinky, smelly, reeking, rancid, malodorous, noxious, noisome, putrid, rank, fusty, funky, fetid, loathsome, skunky, and foul. Interesting that we generally use the term smelly to mean something that smells bad, but tasty to mean something that tastes good.

Smell is the sense we humans rely upon the least (a few professional perfume makers, cheese artisans, and wine critics aside), so perhaps it naturally follows that our olfactory vocabulary is relatively limited. At the same time, smell is tied to memory as much as -- or some think more than -- any other sense. The olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area closely associated with memory and feeling. Maybe it's that odors elicit such personal and individualistic responses, we haven't developed as much of a shared vocabulary around this sense. Just my own musings: no scientific hypotheses or studies to back that up.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [a-rə-ma-tik] or [aer-ə-ma-tik]
Root: Middle English aromat meaning spice, from Anglo-French, from Latin aromat-, aroma, from Greek arōmat-, arōma
1. of, relating to, or having aroma; fragrant; having a strong or distinctive smell
2. in chemistry, of or pertaining to an aromatic compound or compounds.
(*In case you've come across odiferous, this is an erroneous shortened variant of odoriferous, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary.)

Phenolic

2009-03-29T14:05:00.003-04:00

Mark and I sampled several fine brews Friday evening at our friend Dave's Belgian ale tasting party. To help us novices understand what flavors and textures to look for in each ale, Dave provided some handy tasting notes drawn from well-known beer guides. The notes for the Chimay Premiere described it as a "rich, malty beer with some spicy/phenolic and mild alcoholic characteristics." Phenolic? That adjective struck those in the group with greater retention of college chemistry as an odd word choice, recalling that phenols, in the lab, are used as disinfectants. When Dave looked the word up, he announced that its definition includes terms like poisonous. Aiyee.

Most dictionaries give definitions of phenolic as "of or relating to phenol," which is defined as "a corrosive, poisonous, crystalline, acidic compound present in the tars of coal and wood that in dilute solution is used as a disinfectant; or any of various acidic compounds analogous to phenol and regarded as hydroxyl derivatives of aromatic hydrocarbons."

Ok, aromatic means having a pleasant and distinctive smell. Now that's somewhat promising in terms of phenolic's application to beer (certainly more so than corrosive).

Looking beyond dictionaries for a better contextual explanation of the term, I found Web sites and pages discussing phenolic properties in beer. Apparently, these are tricky flavors, as often if not more often put in the "off-flavor" category as being "medicinal," or smelling or tasting like plastic or Band-Aids. However, when used correctly, they're also noted for imparting a clove-like or vanilla flavor and smell. That seems to have been the point of the tasting notes that Dave had found on the Chimay.

So not only did we come away with newfound knowledge of a delicious Belgian ale Friday night, we also learned a bit of new vocabulary. Mmmm, love that Chimay Premiere, phenols and all.

Update: Fungible

2009-03-28T09:45:00.004-04:00

So, just goes to show that vocabulary familiarity is contextual. When I told Mark that my word of the day yesterday was fungible, he recognized the word instantly, which I admit surprised me. As we chatted, it became clear that his familiarity stems from his involvement as a manager in the negotiation and writing of business contracts. "'Fungible assets' is how I think of it," Mark said. As I learned from my perusal of various dictionaries yesterday, the term is most often cited in reference to commerce and law, related to commodities.

So based on my further enlightenment on this term, I would revise my concluding paragraph in yesterday's entry to say that if someone is writing a legal document or discussing commercial transactions and other business matters, fungible is a fine and dandy term to convey the precise meaning of interchangeable goods or one item that can replace or be replaced by another identical item.

I should also add that Mark laughed at my thinking that transposable is a more familiar synonym for fungible. As I said, familiarity is contextual.

Fungible

2009-03-27T17:15:00.005-04:00

I came across this word as I was reading a draft report today and I think I felt my eyeballs stumble, kind of like when your feet snag on a pothole. Fungible? Looks kind of like fungus. Of course, I had to scurry to a dictionary to ferret out the meaning of this unfamiliar term, which I learned basically means interchangeable or transposable.

Looking back at the sentence in the document, I have to scratch my head. I can see how it fits but still, is there a particular reason in any circumstance to use a word like fungible when you have interchangeable, transposable, convertible, identical, correspondent, equivalent, reciprocal, compatible, and so many others to choose from? Some would say absolutely not; the sole reason you'd select fungible over all of its fungible synonyms is to show off. Others would say it's a fine word in its own right, if a bit obscure, and if used correctly, it conveys the intended meaning as well as any of its equivalents. But it does send even a word junkie like me reaching for a dictionary.

So if the goal is to communicate an idea as quickly and cleanly as possible, fungible probably isn't the best choice. But if you were writing an essay or story or something where the goal was to engage readers in the play of rhetoric, then fungible may be a fun word to add to the mix.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [fuhn-juh-buhl]
Root: from Latin fungi meaning to perform
1. Interchangeable; especially in legal terms as being of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in order to satisfy an obligation; e.g. fungible commodities are those that can be estimated readily and replaced according to weight, measure, and amount.

Gourmet & Gourmand

2009-03-26T20:18:00.007-04:00

I frequently misuse words (yeah, cue the chorus of mock gasps of surprise). Sometimes when people do that, it's funny or endearing. The quintessential example is Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan's 18th century play The Rivals from whose name the term malapropism was coined. For example, she calls upon her coquettish young charge to "promise to forget this fellow - to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory." Of course, the dear lady meant obliterate.

But lacking the charms of a fussy dowager, I'm not so amused at myself when I fumble a term. And one of those words I've fumbled on multiple occasions is gourmand.

It sounds like gourmet, after all. And gourmet is so frequently used as an adjective -- a gourmet dinner at Chez François, a gourmet appetizer to impress your guests, a gourmet brunch, a gourmet quiche, a gourmet soufflé (notice how you seldom hear someone refer to a "gourmet hotdog" or "gourmet bingo night potluck," however) -- that it's easy to forget it's a noun as well. But yes, it is. "She's a true gourmet" is the most precise way to refer to your friend who has refined palate for foods and flavors. But gosh darn it, gourmand sounds like it fits just as well in that sentence. Only, if you use it instead, you've just called your friend a greedy pig, just in a nicer sounding way.

Except that so many people have misused the term throughout history that ironically it has also come to mean being a judge of good eating as well. So, it's a slippery term.

Still, the original meaning still holds sway. So, forgive me, anyone who believes I've referred to him as a glutton. I swear it was unintentional. Really. (Except for the guy who sawed off the hunk of cheese at the open house and put the larger chunk in a takeout container leaving the part he'd grasped in his big, beefy hand on the table for the next guests; I thought I was being ironic about him.) This is why I've bookmarked online dictionaries and keep the trusty OED (the bible of those with obsessive etymological disorder) handy to check myself.

Dictionary Definitions
Gourmand
Pronounced: [goor-mahnd or goor-muhnd]
Root: French, but of unknown origin
1. one who is fond of over-eating; one who eats greedily or to excess; a glutton
2. one who is fond of delicate fare; a judge of good eating. Says OED: "in this sense only partially anglicized, and often pronounced [gurmã]. (Cf. GOURMET)."

Gourmet
Pronounced: [goor-mey]
Root: Old French gourmet, groumet, gromet meaning a wine merchant's assistant, a wine taster
1. a connoisseur of fine food and drink; epicure
2. of a kind or standard suitable for a gourmet

Dudgeon

2009-03-25T20:36:00.010-04:00

Are you, like me, getting a little tired of outrage? No, not of the emotion -- that's still righteously burning -- but of the word? We keep hearing it, on the radio, on TV, how outraged we all are at reckless financial firms and their toxic assets. President Obama shares our outrage at AIG executives getting million-dollar, taxpayer funded bonuses. Members of Congress trumpet their outrage on behalf of their constituents on the House and Senate floors. Our top economic leaders, Bernacke and Geithner, understand our outrage. Financial experts warn of the peril of letting our collective outrage derail the measured responses needed to get the financial sector working again.

Say any word enough times and it starts to lose its impact. Watch a Tarantino movie and afterward the "f-word" will sound about as commonplace and innocuous as "darn" or "shucks." I'm thinking it's time for policymakers and the media to get a new word.

How about dudgeon? Now there's a word for our times, despite its archaic sound. Contained within its meaning are indignation and resentment as well as anger. That sure sums up my feelings about the firms and policies that got us into this financial mess.

However, the word is now almost always used in the phrase, "in high dudgeon," as in, "Her platinum card rejected, the shopaholic socialite stormed away from the register in high dudgeon." That probably makes its usage a little clunky for a Congressional floor speech or snappy news brief. Though I'd be impressed by any cable TV pundit who declared into the camera, "We are a nation in high dudgeon!"

Ok, so how about instead furious anger, a la Jules in Pulp Fiction? Now that's some serious dudgeon! (Well, no, that's an example of wrath, not dudgeon, but it sure is fun to listen to, no?)

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: də-jən
Root: Origin unknown; conjectural derivation is Welsh dygen meaning malice, resentment
1. a feeling of anger, resentment, or offense; intense indignation.

Serendipity

2009-03-24T21:14:00.013-04:00

I hope all like-minded word junkies out there noted today's Doonesbury comic, which featured a vocabulary-focused punchline! B.D.'s veteran buddy Leo (a.k.a. Toggle), who is coping with a traumatic brain injury that affects his speech, is commenting on the fortunate coincidence of befriending online someone B.D. knows. "It's serendipity," he manages to stammer after several halting tries -- only to be told by B.D. and his mom that what he has uttered is not a real word and to try again.

I appreciate the humor of the other characters assuming that Toggle has failed in getting out a complete or right word due to his aphasia when it's their ignorance that has been exposed. I also appreciate the unexpected use of a polysyllabic word in the context of a comic strip. Yes, yes, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau is an Ivy League liberal arts graduate, so of course he must have an extensive vocabulary that he can put in the mouths of his characters and all that. But here he's challenging us to think about our assumptions of vocabulary.

It's kind of funny that Toggle chooses a word like serendipity, but why? Because he's depicted as a young man from what appears to be a blue-collar background who hasn't attended college? By the same token, why is it frequently the case that someone who utters words like serendipity offhand is seen as sort of eggheaded or snooty? Who made an unwritten rule that polysyllabic or somewhat obscure words should be the sole province of only one segment of society, that only brandy-snifting, Shakespeare-quoting, sheepskin-holding people (for the record, I'm a wine sipper rather than brandy snifter) can use serendipity while others must confine themselves to a neat coincidence or a lucky chance discovery? Why should anyone be denied the fun of rolling their tongue around a particularly well-formed cluster of syllables, or just enjoying a rich variety of synonyms to describe their insights and ideas instead being confined to the same few words over and over?

Let's here it for Toggle and Trudeau!

Dictionary Definition
Prounounced: |ser-ən-dip-i-tē|
Root: Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka; the term serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole who said he was inspired by the title of a fairytale, "The Three Princes of Serendip," which featured characters who frequently made beneficial discoveries by chance.
1. The occurrence or development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way; good fortune, providence, happy coincidence
2. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

Obdurate

2009-03-23T22:18:00.006-04:00

I dedicate today's blog entry, obdurate, to my hubby. Whether you pronounce it |äb-doo-ət| or |äb-dyoo-ət|, it just means stubborn. Which is what Mark was being the other evening, getting in my way, insisting on doing the dishes when he should've been working on tax stuff. So when I hit him with the big gun, his foremost question -- after "what the heck was that word," and "is that a real word?" -- was, "don't you mean obstinate?" Ah, clearly I've been rubbing off on him!

Truth be told, obstinate is better than obdurate, but both really should just take a backseat to good, old stubborn or inflexible. But, hey, whatever works for you; I'm pliable.

Dictionary Definition
From Latin obduratus, meaning hardened, or hardened in heart.
1. hardened in wickedness or sin, persistently impenitent, stubbornly resisting or insensible to moral influence (oops, sorry honey -- didn't mean that!)
2. hardened or hardening oneself against persuasion, entreaty, the sentiment of pity, etc.; stubborn, obstinate, unyielding, inflexible, relentless, hard-hearted, inexorable.

Discombobulated

2009-03-22T20:01:00.005-04:00

Discombobulated is one of those words I love to pull out on occasion, like an especially colorful scarf or jaunty necklace that adds that extra touch of flair. This is indeed a 10-dollar word. It's one of those words that should come with a warning label: "Caution: Use with care. Excessive usage can result in the speaker sounding bombastic and highfalutin'." But in the right circumstances, it's such a delightful sequence of syllables to convey the feeling of discomfort that it almost has to be used tongue-in-cheek.

Perhaps my take on the word reflects the source from which I learned it. No, not one of those high school vocabulary books or the venerable OED (the bible of those with obsessive etymological disorder), but the somewhat-less-than-venerable Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper and their ballad to bad coiffure, "Don't Want No Foo-Foo Haircut on My Head."

"I was mighty discombobulated. I said to myself, discombobulation is sweeping the nation and I don't want no foo-foo haircut sitting on my head!"

(Thanks to Brian for introducing me to that gem at college!)

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced: |diskəmˈbäbyəˌlāted|
Root words: none listed. American jocular, origins 19th century. Probably an alteration of discompose or discomfit.
1. To be disturbed, upset, confused, disconcerted.
Also, discomboberated.

Of course, if one can be discombobulated, can one be combobulated? According to the OED, which progresses from combo to comboloio, there is no such word. However, according to urbandictionary.com, the definition of combobulated is, "removed from the state of confusion," or "having your stuff together," or "the period before the feeling of discombobulation." Apparently, being combobulated relies on the existence of discombobulation to some extent. Yin and yang, the universal principle, at work, I guess.

Nuance

2009-03-21T15:18:00.005-04:00

Nuance is this blog's inaugural word because although vocabulary is about meaning -- finding a word that gets across an intended thought or idea -- it's also about nuance. It's about finding that precise word that not only conveys a thought or idea, but does so with just the right tone and flavor. And that's what makes vocabulary fun.

Sure, you can describe your artistic friend's newest painting as colorful. But maybe vibrant would better suggest its particularly bright hues. Or vivid. Though perhaps to your taste it's so brightly hued as to be downright garish. Or, conversely, you may appreciate such a playful harlequin display.

Dictionary Definition:
Pronounced |n(y)oōˌäns|
From root words nuer meaning "to shade" and nue meaning "cloud."
1. A slight or delicate variation or difference in expression, feeling, opinion, etc.
2. A shade of color; a slight difference or variation in shade or tone.
3. A delicate gradation in musical expression.

Nuance is a fine word, I say, notwithstanding the elliptical critique of the word delivered by Paul Reiser's character Modell in the movie Diner:

"You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word. Like gesture. Gesture's a real word. With gesture you know where you stand. But nuance? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."