Word of the Day for Thursday, June 30, 2011

haw \HAW\, verb:

1. To utter a sound representing a hesitation or pause in speech.

2. To turn or make a turn to the left.

noun:

1. A sound or pause of hesitation.

2. The fruit of the Old World hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata, or of other species of the same genus.

interjection:

1. Used as a word of command to a horse or other draft animal, usually directing it to turn to the left.)

When left to his own amazing depths of oratory, and without the assistance of his omnipresent teleprompters, the B.O. wows us with his hems and haws and nonsensical verbal ejaculations!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

I find that I cannot make poor Mr. Gresham hem and haw -- Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne: Volume 3

If you ask Frank Lockyear about his philosophy regarding trees, he will haw and dig about searching for the words.-- Robert Gray, "He plants trees everywhere," Scouting, 1985.

Haw has many senses, but the origin of this sense is uncertain, possibly imitative of the sound.

Word of the Day for Wednesday, June 29, 2011

aphorism \AF-uh-riz-uhm\, noun:

A terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation.

Hey, B.O., here's an aphorism for you: You're a stinking socialist-Marxist!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

He who first uttered the boast was a public benefactor, and every man who repeated the aphorism, and believed it, furthered a good work, and helped to build up the structure of his country's greatness.-- Charles Mackay, The gouty philosopher

The aphorism wants to deflate our pretensions, to pull us "back to earth," by challenging us to change the way we live.-- Carl Rakosi, The collected prose of Carl Rakosi

Aphorism comes from the Greek aphorismós, "definition."

Word of the Day for Tuesday, June 28, 2011

catawampus \kat-uh-WOM-puhs\, adjective:

1. Off-center; askew; awry.

2. Positioned diagonally; cater-cornered.

I dare say that the B.O.'s catawampus view of America is not a good thing!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Very circuitous, I must say- most sidelong and backhanded, cockeyed and skew-jawed, catawampus and wonky.-- Candace A. Croft, Annalia's Simply Splendid Flight: From Another Side of Day

The only traditional touches are the catawampus walls and whichaway entrances dictated by Feng Shui, the art of placing things so as to ensure luck and not disturb spirits.-- P. J. O'Rourke, Eat the rich

Catawampus arose in the United States around 1840, during a particular vogue in elaborate coinages. Cata- stems from cater-, a now-archaic root meaning "diagonal," while the source of -wampus is subject to debate.

Word of the Day for Monday, June 27, 2011

attenuate \uh-TEN-yoo-eyt\, verb:

1. To weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value

2. To make thin; make slender or fine.

3. In medicine, to render less virulent, as a strain of pathogenic virus or bacterium.

4. In electronics, to decrease the amplitude of an electronic signal.

The B.O. and his fellow Dems will not attenuate their rhetoric with regards to their socialist agenda!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

With no reactor coolant to absorb the heat of the uranium rods, the nuclear reaction actually stopped - there was no water to attenuate the neutron flux.-- Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

But before she could attenuate in any way the crudity of her collapse he gave an impatient jerk which took him to the window.-- Henry James, What Maise Knew

Attenuate is based on the Latin attenuāre, "to thin, reduce."

Word of the Day for Friday, June 24, 2011

sabbatical \suh-BAT-i-kuhl\, noun:

1. Any extended period of leave from one's customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.

adjective:

1. Of or pertaining to or appropriate to the Sabbath.

2. Bringing a period of rest.

I think that the B.O.'s life has been one long sabbatical; first he took a sabbatical from his community organizing to go be president; now he is on sabbatical from his presidential duties such as passing an actual budget that doesn't bankrupt the United States!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

The problem was his sabbatical, for which he had been given a large additional foundation grant, would begin in the summer.-- Jim Harrison, Dalva

But taking a sabbatical wasn't supposed to include cheating on him.-- Melissa Senate, The Secret of Joy

Sabbatical originates in reference to the Judeo-Christian Sabbath, and comes from the Greek sabbatikos.

Word of the Day for Thursday, June 23, 2011

jujitsu \joo-JIT-soo\, noun:

1. The ability to accomplish a task with no apparent effort or resistance.

2. Method developed in Japan of defending oneself without the use of weapons by using the strength and weight of an adversary to disable him.

The Tea Party needs to use some political jujitsu to disable the B.O. and throw him out of office!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

She stared at me as though I were some kind of bizarre math whiz, and she feared I was about to do some jujitsu calculus on her.-- Stephen White, Blinded

Edmund has always had a way of turning things around on their head, practicing his own brand of moral jujitsu, Claire's holy zeal for humanity in the abstract!-- Francine du Plessix Gray, World Without End

Jujitsu comes from the Japanese martial art of the same name, with the word being a combination of ju, "soft," and jitsu, "technique."

Word of the Day for Wednesday, June 22, 2011

xenogenic \zen-uh-JEN-ik\, adjective:

1. To be completely different from either parent, or from the source of an object's creation.

2. In biology, originating outside the organism or from a foreign substance introduced into the organism.

I wonder if being both a horse's rear end and a socialist-Marxist makes the B.O. xenogenic!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Dr. Forssmann also believes that it was wrong to put a pig's liver in a dying woman in Buenos Aires - presumably on the ground that hetero- grafts or xenogenic (i.e., interspecific) transplants are "unnatural."-- Stephen E. Lammers, Allen Verhey, On moral medicine: theological perspectives in medical ethics

I can picture it because he is still the furnace, the heat source in any room: booming, proud, imperious, xenogenic.-- Clark Blaise, Bharati Mukherjee, Days and nights in Calcutta

Xenogenic combines the Greek roots xeno-, "strange, or other," and -genic, "produced or caused by."

Go Green in 2012

My voting is going green in 2012. No, ding dong. We haven't switched parties.

Among many words used to say money, green is a common one used by multiple generations.

If your small business or family household is suffering, like most, it is highly advisable that you, your family, friends and any acquaintances should really consider an aggressive recycling program. Specifically applying this to your state politicians.

Here's a quick look at why it is so easy for them to just tax the snot out of you.

2011 Salary Breakdown

Members of the House and Senate is $174,000.

House & Senate salary for Minority & Majority leaders is $193,400.

Salary for the Speaker of the House is $223,500.

Most of these people have never run a business.

So, it shouldn't surprise you that they can't balance a budget. Let alone understand the basic economics that govern the idea that you can't spend your way out of the red zone - fiscally speaking.

Give it time, says Barack Hussein Obama. Right. This is the same guy that guaranteed shovel ready projects. The same one that now has the "results" of 1.9 MILLION fewer American jobs since he took office.

Time to vote green.

U.S. Economy - Fixed By A Cup Of Coffee

Everyone, in some fashion, has been affected by the economy. This lousy, unemployment soaring, stock market interrupting, unimproving economy. All the talking heads on TV news outlets and talk radio talk about it daily. Today I figured out why. Okay, I knew part of it is that it keeps agitated viewers tuned in. But, they also keep talking about it, I believe, in hopes that someone actually offers a truly viable solution. I mentioned at one point a friend of mine with One Cent Solution has a good idea. It can be a little complex when you read about it in detail, but hey - we're talking about a multi-trillion dollar deficit.

So, I have decided to float this budget solution to my political friends. It dials it down into something manageable, something we can all (government employees and civilians) genuinely wrap our brains around - and it is a completely viable, non-partisan solution. It'll make politicians on either side with a spend-us-into-oblivion agenda stick out like sore thumbs. Those people (Republicans, Democrats, Independents, etc.) all need to be voted out of office if they can't handle fiscal responsibility. This approach to finding the solution to our nation's budget crisis is "stupid easy". While I still maintain there are many unnecessary programs, this approach provides a solution that allows them to stay in existence, albeit with a smaller budget.

If each politician approached their respective budget the same way Americans have to approach their personal coffee consumption, then we can eliminate this mess. Option 1 is the optimal choice for most people. When that doesn't fit in the budget, you need to look at options. Here are 11 alternate options to the Venti Latte at Starbucks. Going from Starbucks, to Folgers isn't ideal, but sometimes you have to make uncomfortable changes to keep things working.

Option 1 - Venti Latte at Starbucks

Option 2 - Grande Latte at Starbucks

Option 3 - Tall Latte at Starbucks

Option 4 - Venti drip coffee at Starbucks

Option 5 - Grande drip coffee at Starbucks

Option 6 - Tall drip coffee at Starbucks

Option 7 - Large drip coffee at 7-Eleven

Option 8 - Medium drip coffee at 7-Eleven

Option 9 - Small drip coffee at 7-Eleven

Option 10 - Drip coffee, nice roaster (Newhall Coffee) at home

Option 11 - Drip coffee, Folgers, at home

Option 12 - (worst case scenario) no coffee until the budget increases

Please send this very simple analogy to our nation's budget to your State Rep, State Senator, member of Congress and Senate and tell them you EXPECT them to take this approach or they will be voted out of office in 2012 - regardless of their party affiliation and your past support of them. Then tell everyone you know (yes, even the politically inactive friends of yours) to do the same.

Their information is easy to find. Your state name .gov is the site you'd visit to find local representatives to send this to. Then there are two easy national sites for Congress & Senate.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, June 14, 2011

orison \AWR-uh-zuhn\, noun:

A prayer.

Our orison is thus: That the Good Lord above will deliver us from the B.O. in 2012!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Federigo, disappointed of the supper that he was to have had with her, and apprehending the words of the orison aright, hied him to the garden, and having found the two capons and the wine and the eggs at the foot of the peach-tree, took them home with him, and supped very comfortably.-- Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

The orison that passed her rosy lips was for my present and eternal happiness; and so innocently but ardently was the petition offered up, that I knelt beside her and united my prayer to hers.-- William Hamilton Maxwell, The bivouac: Volume 2

Orison derives from the Late Latin oratio-, a conjugation of the Latin "plea, oration."

Word of the Day for Monday, June 13, 2011

cosher \KOSH-er\, verb:

To treat with special fondness.

The B.O. has a propensity to cosher the hard core socialists!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Skinny Guts was rarely known to shell out his money for tucker when there were clan members at hand to cosher himself upon.-- Miles Franklin, Ten Creeks Run: a tale of the horse and cattle stations of the Murrumbidgee

"The poor Irish peasantry," writes Prendergast, "with a generosity characteristic of their race and country, never refused hospitality to the dispossessed owners, but maintained them as gentlemen; allowing them to cosher upon them, as the Irish called the giving their lord a certain number of days' board and lodging."-- John O'Hart, Irish pedigrees, or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation

Cosher is a phonetic spelling of the Irish coisir, "feast, entertainment."

Word of the Day for Friday, June 10, 2011

umbra \UHM-bruh\, noun:

1. The invariable or characteristic accompaniment or companion of a person or thing.

2. Shade; shadow.

3. In astronomy, the complete shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the direct light from the source of illumination is completely cut off.

4. A phantom or shadowy apparition, as of someone or something not physically present; ghost; spectral image.

The spectre of Jimmy Carter's umbra of being the Worst President of the United States has finally lifted for the B.O.; but alas, there is no more shadow, just by him looking in the mirror he will now see who holds the title of the Worst President of the United States!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

She leaned over me, dark and mother-warm, and I could hardly breathe in her umbra of cigarettes and gin.-- Jonathan Strahan, Eidolon

The umbra - shade, shadow, uninvited guest - is invited in; as a dream, the guest becomes host to a sensuous pleasure that is all the more real for being an imitation, and all the more an artifice for being imaginal, "only" a dream.-- Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture

Umbra is borrowed from the same word in Latin, meaning "shadow."

Word of the Day for Thursday, June 9, 2011

lucubrate \LOO-kyoo-breyt\, verb:

1. To work, write, or study laboriously, especially at night.

2. To write learnedly.

While conservatives lucubrate, the B.O. confiscates!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

He gives me to understand that you chew various cuds of reflection; that you lucubrate ominously day and night.-- Edgar Lee Masters, Skeeters Kir: a novel

Nature designed that I should lucubrate for the high-heeled sock; managers have resolved that I shall scribble for the low-heeled buskin.-- Charles Dickens, Tragic Case of a Common Writer

Lucubrate derives from the Latin lucubratus, "to work by artificial light."

Word of the Day for Wednesday, June 8, 2011

cater-cousin \KEY-ter-kuhz-uhn\, noun:

An intimate friend.

It's no wonder that the B.O. is such a socialist-Marxist, what with cater-cousins the likes of Bill Ayers, Van Jones, Louis Farrakhan, and Rev. White!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

The world talks loudly of your learning, your skill, and cunning in arts the most abstruse ; nay, sooth to say, some look coldly on you therefore, and stickle not to aver that you are cater-cousin with Beelzebub himself.-- Thomas Ingolds, The Ingolds legends; or, Mirth and marvels

A discovery already operated upon elsewhere has given to vessels of glass the toughness of metal, and in consequence the delicate Venetian ware which was said to be so finely tempered that it would break in the hand of its owner should poison be offered him therein will become cater-cousin to substantial cooking utensils, which will endure the very highest temperature and the hardest blows incidental to "high life below stairs."-- Charles Richard Tuttle, Ames Castle Pennock, The centennial Northwest: an illustrated history of the Northwest

Cater-cousin combines the common English cousin with Cater-, an archaic prefix meaning "to buy, or serve."

Word of the Day for Tuesday, June 7, 2011

wiredrawn \WAH-yuhr-drawn\, adjective:

1. Finely spun; extremely intricate; minute.

2. Drawn out long and thin like a wire.

The B.O.'s wiredrawn and hairbrained ideas on restoring the economy have led us to the precipice of economic oblivion!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

I am aware that many educators consider such reading foolish and harmful, but I care nothing for wiredrawn pedagogic theories.-- Hamlin Garland, Keith Newlin, A Daughter of the Middle Border

When his right arm rises, all the force in his veins flows straight from shoulder to fingertips; not an ounce is diverted into sudden impulses, sentimental regrets, wiredrawn distinctions.-- Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Wiredrawn is a back-formation from the verb to wiredraw, "to draw (metal) out into wire, especially by pulling forcibly through a series of holes of gradually decreasing diameter."

Word of the Day for Monday, June 6, 2011

pecksniffian \pek-SNIF-ee-uhn\, adjective:

Hypocritically and smugly affecting benevolence or high moral principles.

I know that if Charles Dickens were alive today he would say that the B.O. and his Democrat toadies are a bunch of pecksniffian hornswogglers!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

With such departing words, did this strong minded female paralyze the Pecksniffian energies; and so she swept out of the room, and out of the house, attended her daughters, who, as with one accord, elevated their three noses in the air, and joined in a contemptuous titter.-- Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Volume 1

The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity.-- H. L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny

Pecksniffian is named after Seth Pecksniff, a character in "Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel" (1843), by Charles Dickens.

Word of the Day for Friday, June 3, 2011
decollete \dey-kol-TEY\, adjective:

1. (Of a garment) low-necked.

2. Wearing a low-necked garment.

It was heard on the street today that the B.O. and his Mrs. B.O. will be secretly attending a fund raising party Saturday evening for the Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven Foundation for a Better Socialist Society; the Mrs. B.O. will be wearing a symbolic red decollete evening gown bejeweled with red rubies, all charged to her taxpayer paid expense account!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

Since it was essential that a masquerade costume be decollete, she had devised a backless costume, the front cut to display her over-full bust and with one long sleeve to cover her right arm.-- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

There was a pearl-handled fan made of large, colored feathers; there was a faded silk, cream-colored parasol; there was a long, tea-colored ruffled voile dress which had huge pleats and a decollete neck-line; and there was a pair of fragile, high-heeled slippers.-- Richard Wright, The Outsider

Decollete is a loan word from the French décolleter, "to expose the neck," from de + collet "collar of a dress."

Word of the Day for Thursday, June 2, 2011

intestable \in-TES-tuh-buhl\, adjective:

Not legally qualified to make a will, as an infant or a lunatic.

"I said the B.O. was detestable, not intestable," said the attorney, "although an argument could be made for him being a socialist lunatic!"

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

To unsoundness of mind is shown; there was certainly a degree of debility from age and supervening infirmities, the understanding was weakened and impaired, but that does not render a person intestable or incapable of judging of injuries done to him or of benefits confered upon him.-- The Law Times, Volume 69, 1880

I understood that a man convicted by the verdict of his country of housebreaking is infamous and intestable.-- James Boswell, Mark Harris, The heart of Boswell: six journals in one volume

Intestable shares the same root as testify, the Latin testā, "to bear witness."

Word of the Day for Wednesday, June 1, 2011

catarrh \kuh-TAHR\, noun:

Inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the respiratory tract, accompanied by excessive secretions.

The B.O. and a bad case of catarrh have something in common - they are both toxic and need to be gone sooner rather than later!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

An ugly catarrh, you see, is not like a pretty baby, though you do perhaps feed both with gruel; you nurse one in order to destroy it, and the other in order to keep it safe and sound.-- Charles Dickens, Household words, Volume 8

Maggie had taken to her bed with a minor bout of catarrh that rumbled with fluid in her lungs.-- Sheila Seclearr, A Tree on Turtle Island

Catarrh enters English in the 1300s, derived from the Greek katárrous, "down-flowing."