Word of the Day for Friday, April 29, 2011

osmose \oz-MOHS\, verb:

1. To gradually or unconsciously assimilate some principle or object.

2. To undergo osmosis.

The B.O. must have figured that he would osmose the role of President, but he found out that his brain was apparently made of lead and was thus impermeable to the rational thought and behavior normally consistent with the vast majority of the citizens of the United States, i.e., he can't get it through his thick skull that few people like what he has done to the U.S.!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

They set off assuming that somehow or other the information that they were on their way would osmose through the settlement or that Mme. Legrand might mention in passing that she'd asked them to come.-- Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly, Irish girls about town

Not a man osmose but he hath the wit to lose his hair.-- William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

Osmose comes from the biological term osmosis, "the tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semipermeable membrane into a solution where the solvent concentration is higher, thus equalizing the concentrations of materials on either side of the membrane." Osmosis derives from endosmose, with endo- being French for "inward" and osmos meaning "push, thrust" in Greek.

Word of the Day for Thursday, April 28, 2011

polymorphous \pol-ee-MAWR-fuhs\, adjective:

Having, assuming, or passing through many or various forms, stages, or the like.

The B.O. has had a polymorphous life, from an angry young pot smoking cocaine addict to an angry Marxist-socialist college student to an angry community organizer of angry union thugs to a jovial president cracking jokes on The View!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

It's a time machine, a polymorphous funk jazz rollercoaster transporting you from Art Blakey's hard bop and Weather Report's jazz rock to more speculative free form fusions.-- Miles Keylock , "The Disconnection is the Connection," Mail & Guardian Online

It had surprised me, at first, that a city so polymorphous as Bombay, with its unceasing variety of peoples, languages, and pursuits, tended to such narrow concentrations.-- Gregory David Roberts , Shantaram

Polymorphous combines the Greek roots Poly-, "many," and -morphous, "shape."

Word of the Day for Wednesday, April 27, 2011

jamboree \JAM-buh-ree\, noun:

1. A carousal; any noisy merrymaking.

2. A large gathering, as of a political party or the teams of a sporting league, often including a program of speeches and entertainment.

3. A large gathering of members of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, usually nationwide or international in scope

The B.O.'s toadies will be holding a jamboree celebrating the "proof positive" that he was born in Hawaii; now, let's get on with him trying to explain why he's so hellbent on turning the U.S. into just another socialist Euro-trash country!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Several thoughtful riflemen had foregone the shooting jamboree to place themselves as cover guards for the MG.-- James Jones , The thin red line

Well, the great jamboree was over at last, not only the jamboree of the two Armistice Days (and really, we could have celebrated a dozen), but of the past several years. -- Charles Jackson , The sunnier side: Arcadian tales

Jamboree is an American invention, an apparent blend of jabber and shivaree.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 26, 2011

anneal \uh-NEEL\, verb:

1. To toughen or temper.

2. To heat (glass, earthenware, metals, etc.) to remove or prevent internal stress.

3. To free from internal stress by heating and gradually cooling.

4. To fuse colors onto (a vitreous or metallic surface) by heating.

The B.O.'s scurrilous and recalcitrant attitude against his opponents has served to anneal the Tea Party activists!

Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Bracelets and spiral-headed pins of copper, and also of gold, which is even easier to anneal, appear almost at once.-- Leon E. Stover, Bruce Kraig, Stonehenge: the Indo-European Heritage

The sinister imputations that could be drawn from that damning conversation on the tape, and her acceptance of their treachery, had only served to anneal her mind. -- Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance

Anneal has ancient roots in the Old English root anǣlan, "to kindle."

Word of the Day for Monday, April 25, 2011

marginalia \mahr-juh-NEY-lee-uh\, noun:

Notes in the margin of a book, manuscript, or letter.

Wouldn't you just love to write some gibberish in the marginalia of the B.O.'s notes that pop up on his teleprompters; it would be kind of like Bruce Almighty when he was messing with Evan Baxter and making him talk gibberish on screen!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand.-- Howard Phillips Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi, The thing on the doorstep and other weird stories

But the scribbled marginalia in Myhre's notebook tells a different tale.-- "Sweat without the Wet?," Popular Science, Vol. 261, No. 3

Marginalia derives from the Latin marginalis, "the space or edge of something, or something of little importance."

Word of the Day for Friday, April 22, 2011

homunculus \huh-MUHNG-kyuh-luhs\, noun:

1. An artificially made miniature person or creature, supposedly produced in a flask by an alchemist.

2. A fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon.

3. A diminutive human being.

4. The human fetus.

The B.O. is actually a homunculus created in Kenya by his village tribe and then sold off to his alleged parents in Hawaii and passed off as their own; he grew beyond the normally diminutive size of the run of the mill homunculus because of the witch doctor that his new parents hired to correct the size problem!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

There is no little homunculus up there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed.-- David Brooks, "When Preaching Flops," The New York Times, June 22, 2007

Goethe made the experiment famous in Faust, where an adept grows a homunculus in a bottle, but it is extremely rare in the alchemical literature.-- James Elkins, What Painting Is

Homunculus is a borrowing from Latin, literally meaning "little person." homo- equals "man, human being," and -culus is a suffix meaning "small," from which English derives the suffix -cle.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 19, 2011

akimbo \uh-KIM-boh\, adjective:

With hand on hip and elbow bent outward.

Can't you just see Michelle yammering away at the B.O. with her arms all akimbo after she caught him smoking...again!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

With yards akimbo, she says unto him scornfully, as the old beldam said to the little dwarf: - "Help yourself.-- Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of the South Seas

Which kind of sounds like he's going to stand in the middle of the path, arms akimbo, to prevent bikes from going through.-- "Path to confusion in Carlton Gardens," Melbounre Times Weekly, 2011

Akimbo is the descendent of the Middle English kenebowe, which itself is a modification of the Old Norse i keng boginn, both meaning "bent into a crook."

Word of the Day for Monday, April 18, 2011

corybantic \kawr-uh-BAN-tik\, adjective:

Frenzied; agitated; unrestrained.

The B.O. and his regime have been in a corybantic state ever since Rep. Paul Ryan presented his proposed budget!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

The key turned with a snap, the door was flung open, and there stood Martha, in a corybantic attitude, brandishing a dinner-plate in one hand, a poker in the other ; her hair was dishevelled, her face red, and fury blazed in her eyes.-- George Gissing, Will Warburton: A Romance of Life

I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the semicuacua, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the invention of the performers, and very little to the imagination of the spectator.-- Bret Harte, The Writings of Bret Harte: Volume 10

Corybantic owes its English use from Latin, but originally refered to a Corybant, a a wild attendant of the goddess Cybele.

Word of the Day for Friday, April 15, 2011

vociferate \voh-SIF-uh-reyt\, verb:

To speak or cry out loudly or noisily; shout; bawl.

And now the B.O. is vociferating that the Republicans are going to turn the U.S. into a third world country and that they want Granny to eat dog food!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Julius continued to vociferate the awful cry until he roused Reuben and mine host, and waked the ladies, who began to echo him with all the might of female lungs.-- James Kirke Paulding, Childe Roeliff's Pilgrimage: A Travelling Legend

He replied audibly enough, in a fashion which made my companion vociferate, more clamorously than before, that a wide distinction might be drawn between saints like himself and sinners like his master.-- Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Vociferate derives from the Latin combination vox, "voice," and ferre, "to bear."

Word of the Day for Thursday, April 14, 2011

moratory \MAWR-uh-tawr-ee\, adjective:

Authorizing delay of payment.

The Republicans were attempting to place moratory measures on ObamaCare in the recent budget bill; the B.O. and his spendthrift cohorts have been resistant to those efforts!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Notwithstanding these admonitions, appellant persisted in his moratory ways.-- Employment practices decisions, Volume 60

Moratory measures were adopted to protect the banks.-- Achille Viallate, Economic imperialism and international relations during the last fifty years

Moratory is based on the Late Latin mora, "delay."

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 12, 2011

oppugn \uh-PYOON\, verb:

1. To assail by criticism, argument, or action.

2. To call in question; dispute.

The B.O. and his fellow Dems are not leaders, they only know how to oppugn the Republicans for coming up with solutions!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Aspects of the Novel, published in 1927, was one of the first critical works to oppugn modernism.-- John A. Dern, Monsters, Martians and Madonna: Fiction and Form In the World of Martin Amis

I do not wish to oppugn the character of Miss Goodrich by bearing false witness in regard to her activities.-- Jeffrey D. Marshall, The Inquest

Oppugn is born from the combination the Latin op-, "to oppose, attack," and pugnare, "to fight," similar to pugilsim.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 5, 2011

irascible \ih-RASS-uh-buhl\, adjective:

Prone to anger; easily provoked to anger; hot-tempered.

The B.O. is showing his irascible side in confronting Congress over the budget!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

The lawyer described his client as an irascible eighty-two-year-old eccentric who alternated between spinning fascinating tales about her past and cussing him out.-- Jack Olsen, Hastened to the Grave

His father was an irascible and boastful bully, a heavy drinker and a gambler.-- Robin Waterfield, Prophet: The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran

Irascible is from Latin irascibilis, "prone to anger," from ira, "anger," which is also the source of ire and irate.

Word of the Day for Monday, April 4, 2011

dapple \DAP-uhl\, noun:

1. A small contrasting spot or blotch.

2. A mottled appearance, especially of the coat of an animal (as a horse).

transitive verb:

1. To mark with patches of a color or shade; to spot.

intransitive verb:

1. To become dappled.

adjective:

1. Marked with contrasting patches or spots; dappled.

The B.O.'s foreign policy is about as discernible as a dappled military camouflage outfit viewed at a distance of 10 km through the naked eye!

Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Look at . . . his cows with their comic camouflage dapples . . . .-- Arthur C. Danto, "Sometimes Red", ArtForum, January 2002

70 diamond- and hexagonal-shaped holes, 35 between the North End ramp and the northbound lanes, and 35 between the northbound and southbound lanes, allow light to filter through and dapple the river below.-- Raphael Lewis, "A walk into the future", Boston Globe, May 9, 2002

Gentle shafts of sunlight . . . dapple the grass.-- Gail Sheehy, Hillary's Choice

Dapple derives from Old Norse depill, "a spot."

Word of the Day for Friday, April 1, 2011

gravitas \GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:

High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

The B.O.'s lack of gravitas and knowledge about how capitalism and not government drive our economy is stunning! --Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

At first sight the tall, stooped figure with the hawk-like features and bloodless cheeks, the look of extreme gravitas, seems forbidding and austere, the abbot of an ascetic order, scion of an imperial family who has foresworn the world.-- John Lehmann, "T.S. Eliot Talks About Himself and the Drive to Create", New York Times, November 9, 1953

And we want to tell our readers about sharp, clever books, utterly lacking in gravitas, that we know will delight them on the beach or the bus.-- Benjamin Schwarz, "(Some of) the best books of 2001", The Atlantic, December 2001

That gravitas and germaphobic hypersensitivity sometimes led to situations bordering on slapstick. -- Pauline W. Chen, M.D., "Why Don't Doctors Wash Their Hands More? ", New York Times, September 17, 2009

Gravitas is from the Latin gravitas, "heaviness, seriousness," from gravis, "heavy, serious."