Friday, July 29, 2011



Word of the Day for Friday, July 29, 2011


aureate \AWR-ee-it\, adjective:


1. Characterized by an ornate style of writing or speaking.

2. Golden or gilded.

3. Brilliant; splendid.


The B.O. and most of the rest of the country has found that an aureate speech does not necessarily make a good presidency; the President must lead, and he is profoundly incapable of doing any such thing!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


"Nothing in the aureate language of the English poets can match the splendid virtuosity of Ane Ballat of Our Lady."-- Whitney French Bolton, The Middle Ages


"Scholasms, by the way, may be divided into two classes: aureate terms and inkhorn terms."-- Charles Harrington Elster, There's a Word for It!: A Grandiloquent Guide to Life


Aureate originally comes from the Latin aureus, "golden."

Wednesday, July 27, 2011



Word of the Day for Wednesday, July 27, 2011


hoary \HAWR-ee\, adjective:


1. Tedious from familiarity; stale.

2. Gray or white with age.

3. Ancient or venerable.


The B.O. has become a bit hoary over the last couple of years, although I'm sure he simply sees himself as the mantic leader of the world!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Compare that with the elements of a musical in about 1920: the star in a cliche story that was merely a framing device for generic musical numbers, hoary joke-book gags, and the usual specialty performers in a staging more often than not by a hack.-- Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses


Had Mozart lived to the hoary old age of 73, he might indeed have fallen out of favor in an era besotted with Rossini, becoming a "largely forgotten, neglected, unperformed composer."-- Marilyn Stasio, "Crime", New York Times, June 23, 1996


Hoary derives from Middle English hor, from Old English har, "gray; old (and gray-haired)."

Monday, July 25, 2011



Word of the Day for Monday, July 25, 2011


handsel \HAN-suhl\, noun:


1. First encounter with or use of something taken as a token of what will follow.

2. A gift or token for good luck or as an expression of good wishes.

3. A first installment of payment.


The havoc that the B.O. has wrought upon this country is but a handsel of what we will get if he is re-elected in 2012!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Breakfast done, the seekers made little delay, so eager as they were to behold the King, and to have handsel of their new sweet life.-- William Morris, The Story of the Glittering Plain: Or the Land of Living Men


Or (if what they say is true and the ability cum willingness to speak the unspeakable proves the unspeakable's on the way out at last) does it on the contrary provoke a handsel, a prosperous new era, one long overdue, for all concerned?-- Michael Brodsky, Limit point


Handsel is a venerable English word, literally consisting of "hand" and an early word for "gift."

Thursday, July 21, 2011


Word of the Day for Thursday, July 21, 2011

detente \dey-TAHNT\, noun:

A relaxing of tension, especially between nations.

The B.O. has found that there will be no detente between the Tea Party and the Progressives!
--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog

But he'd just smiled - almost sadly, it seemed to her - just smiled and said that détente was a balancing act, that he was the only one who knew how to walk that line.-- David J. Williams, The Burning Skies

But these were unspoken claims, and a firm détente developed between Han Jung-joo and her husband as a matter of course.-- Sonya Chung, Long for this world: a novel

Detente borrows from the French word that means "a loosening," related to an Old French word for the catch of a crossbow.


Word of the Day for Wednesday, July 20, 2011


dearth \DURTH\, adjective:


An inadequate supply; scarcity; lack.


The B.O. and his regime suffer from a horrific dearth of good judgment!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Laundry pile followed laundry pile-at long intervals; dearth of handkerchief followed dearth of handkerchief-at short ones; not to mention dearth of sock, of shirt, of everything.-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned


While smiles were rare enough in a place like the Pentagon, the total dearth of them on this day was most telling.-- Harold Coyle, More Than Courage


Dearth relates to the same Old English root from which "dear" is derived.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011



Word of the Day for Tuesday, July 19, 2011


zugzwang \TSOOK-tsvahng\, noun:


A situation in which a player is limited to moves that have a damaging effect.


The B.O. has made such a mess of the economy that he has metaphorically painted himself into an economic corner, created his own economic zugzwang!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Oh, he understands his position: he is in trouble, he is faced with the zugzwang to end all zugzwangs.-- Doug Dorst, The Surf Guru


Party rulers in China are trapped in a position that chess players deeply fear - zugzwang - where any move made puts you at disadvantage.-- Vitaliy Katsenelson, "How China Will Crash And Burn," Forbes, July, 2011


Zugzwang combines two German words, zug, "move," and zwang, "constraint."

Friday, July 15, 2011



Word of the Day for Friday, July 15, 2011


apodictic \ap-uh-DIK-tik\, adjective:


1. Necessarily true or logically certain.

2. Incontestable because of having been demonstrated or proved to be demonstrable.


The apodictic truth of the matter is the B.O. is an unrepentant socialist-Marxist!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Though she might caution her unborn child, Phoebe's more than accustomed to Sasha's apodictic utterances, delivered in the husky voice that had once intoxicated the audiences of Warsaw's Yiddish art theater.-- Rebecca Goldstein, Mazel


They might, if we could get apodictic proof that there was no paper in Dahlmann's wallet containing the answers, but we can't.-- Rex Stout, Before Midnight


Apodictic evolves from the Greek apodeiktikós, "proving fully."

Thursday, July 14, 2011



Word of the Day for Thursday, July 14, 2011


usufruct \YOO-zoo-fruhkt\, noun:


The right to use the property of another as long as it isn't damaged.


The B.O. considers the confiscation of other people's money nothing more than usufruct!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


She shall have the usufruct of field and garden and all that her father gave her so long as she lives, but she cannot sell or assign it to others.-- Charles Francis Horne, Rossiter Johnson, John Rudd, The Great Events by Famous Historians


Others might advise you to settle the capital on your wife's relatives, so that if you were to die it would not go to your own family, and meanwhile to enjoy the usufruct during your own lifetime.-- Denis Diderot, Philip Nicholas Furbank, This is not a story and other stories


Usufruct is a legal term derived from two Latin roots, usu-, "use," and fruct, "fruit."

Tuesday, July 12, 2011



Word of the Day for Tuesday, July 12, 2011


assay \a-SEY\, verb:


1. To examine or analyze.

2. In metallurgy, to analyze (an ore, alloy, etc.) in order to determine the quantity of gold, silver, or other metal in it.

3. To attempt; try.


If the B.O. were to have an assay done of his head, they would find it to be made of solid lead!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


The basic information will come from computers, but men, not machines, will assay its meaning before airing it.-- "TV gets ready for the election," Kiplinger's Personal Finance, April 1968


He sat down on one of the park benches to assay his release, to scan the landscape of his dishonorable freedom.-- Henry Roth, Diving Rock on the Hudson


Assay stems from Middle French, a variation on essay.

Thursday, July 7, 2011



Word of the Day for Thursday, July 7, 2011


futilitarian \fyoo-til-i-TAIR-ee-uhn\, adjective:


Believing that human hopes are vain and unjustified.


If the B.O. is reelected in 2012 it will leave conservatives with a futilitarian view of the future of the United States of America!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


In America the silence was more oppressive than the ignorance; but perhaps elsewhere the world might still hide some haunt of futilitarian silence where content reigned - although long search had not revealed it - and so the pilgramage began anew!-- Henry Adams, The education of Henry Adams


There is another way of looking at the problem which I hope Feigl will not regard as wholly futilitarian in character, although I am not sure that it solves anything.-- Paul Feyerabend, Herbert Feigl, Grover Maxwell, Mind, matter, and method


Futilitarian is a satirical coinage from the 1820s combining "futility" and "utilitarian."

Tuesday, July 5, 2011



Word of the Day for Tuesday, July 5, 2011


aporia \uh-PAWR-ee-uh\, noun:


1. Difficulty determining the truth of an idea due to equally valid arguments for and against it.

2. In rhetoric, the expression of a simulated or real doubt, as about where to begin or what to do or say.


The B.O. suffers from a terminal case of both brain cloud and aporia!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


Yet he has his moments when he manages to confound our feelings and induce a moral uncertainty, something like the ironic aporia with which Socrates leaves the Sophists at the end of a Platonic dialogue.-- John Simon, "Talk to the Animals: A review of the play 'Sylvia,'" New York Magazine Jun 5, 1995


Writing from a position of love means allowing others to see and point out the aporia in one's writing, what perhaps has been missed, overlooked or hidden (there is relief here, a lessening of the burden).-- Claudia Eppert, "A Lover's Discourse," Taboo, Spring-Summer 2001


Aporia derives from the Greek roots aporos, "impassable," and -ia, "the state or condition."

Friday, July 1, 2011



Word of the Day for Friday, July 1, 2011


deciduous \dih-SIJ-oo-uhs\, adjective:


1. Falling off or shed at a particular season, stage of growth, etc.

2. Shedding the leaves annually, as certain trees and shrubs.

3. Not permanent; transitory.


The deciduous presidency of the B.O. is a riotous color of reds, and as the red leaves of the Maple Tree turn red and fall off in the autumn, so will the reds in his administration all leave next year in the fall!

--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog


At last they discover that all which at first drew them together, - those once sacred features, that magical play of charms, - was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart from year to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their conciousness.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Love & Friendship


Pine and fir trees kept their green while their deciduous brothers were a riot of color.-- Crickett Starr, Violet Among the Roses


Deciduous derives from the Latin dēciduus, "tending to fall."