Burgle

WORD OF THE DAY

burgle / BER-gul / verb

Definition

1: to break into and steal from

2: to commit burglary against

Examples

The broken window alerted the security guard that the office may have been burgled.

"Residents … had long been complaining about a surge in crime. One area resident tells Newsweek her house had been burgled a few years ago while she and her husband were inside." 

— Jeff Stein, Newsweek, 16 Sept. 2016

Did You Know?

Burglary, which means "forcible entry into a building especially at night with the intent to commit a crime (such as theft)," and burglar ("one who commits burglary") have been with us since the 16th century. Burgle and its synonym burglarize didn't break into the language until the 19th century. 

Burgle is a back-formation (that is, a word formed by removing a suffix or prefix) from burglar. Burglarize comes from burglar as well, with the addition of the familiar -ize ending. Both verbs were once disparaged by grammarians—burgle was considered to be "facetious" and burglarize was labeled "colloquial"—but they are both now generally accepted. Burglarize is more common in American English, whereas burgle is preferred in British English.

Interstice

WORD OF THE DAY

interstice / in-TER-stus / noun

Definition

1: a space that intervenes between things 

1b: a space between closely spaced things

2: a short space of time between events

Examples

"The vehicle of this affirmation—if indeed it is that—is a message that the Mara character writes on a scrap of paper and then jams into an interstice in an archway before painting over it, evoking a prayer wedged in the Western Wall." 

— Nick Pinkerton, Artforum, 6 July 2017

"You will find no wittily sardonic yet sympathetic aunts who happen to write fiction in the interstices of the day's other duties, no talented and unmarried daughters of deceased clergymen negotiating with London publishers from a Hampshire cottage." 

— Nicholas Dames, The Atlantic, September 2017

Did You Know?

You don't need to read between the lines to understand the history of interstice; its etymology is plain to see. Interstice derives from the Latin interstitium, which is itself formed from the prefix inter-, meaning "between," and -stes, meaning "standing." 

Interstices are the cracks and crevices of life, and the word is often used for both the literal and figurative gaps of the world. In modern uses, interstice can even refer to gaps in time or to special niches in the larger expanse of something else. 

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used it, for example, to comment, "Dinosaurs held sway for 100 million years while mammals, all the while, lived as small animals in the interstices of their world."

Coalesce

WORD OF THE DAY


coalesce \ koh-uh-LESS \ verb
 
Definition
1: to grow together
2a: to unite into a whole
2b: fuse
2c: to unite for a common end
2d: join forces
3: to arise from the combination of distinct elements


Examples
"Parties typically struggle to coalesce on complex legislative issues."
— Frances Lee, The Washington Post, 23 July 2017


"Their first gig was at the Kennedy Center. More gigs followed, ... and the musicians coalesced into a working band, on the road three weeks out of every month."
— Fred Kaplan, The New Yorker, 22 May 2017


Did You Know?
Coalesce unites the prefix co- ("together") and the Latin verb alescere, meaning "to grow." (The words adolescent and adult also grew from alescere.) Coalesce, which first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, is one of a number of verbs in English (along with mix, commingle, merge, and amalgamate) that refer to the act of combining parts into a whole. In particular, coalesce usually implies the merging of similar parts to form a cohesive unit.

Emissary

WORD OF THE DAY 

emissary / EM-uh-sair-ee / noun

Definition

1a: one designated as the agent of another 

1b: representative

2: a secret agent

Examples

As the company's emissary to the meeting, Sarah was tasked with presenting the proposal that had been the focus of the team's work for several months.

"In recent years, emissaries of Belgium's soccer association have been invited around the planet to advise larger, richer nations on how to develop young players." 

— Rory Smith, The New York Times, 4 July 2017

Did You Know?

An emissary is often a person who is sent somewhere in order to act as a representative. The key word in that sentence is sent; emissary derives from Latin emissus, the past participle of the verb emittere, meaning "to send out." 

Emissary first appeared in print in English in the early 1600s, not too long after the arrival of another emittere descendant: emit. 

In addition, emittere itself comes from Latin mittere ("to send"), which is an ancestor of many English words, including admit, commit, mission, omit, permit, premise, promise, and submit.

Picaresque

WORD OF THE DAY
picaresque / pik-uh-RESK / adjective
 
Definition
: of or relating to rogues or rascals; also : of, relating to, suggesting, or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist


Examples
"His specialty was the picaresque novel, which took the hero (with the reader happily perched on his shoulder) on a wild ride…."
— Martin Rubin, The Washington Times, 16 Mar. 2012


"Rafting down the Mississippi, Twain captured pre-Civil War America with a picaresque tale of marks and swindlers, innocents and thugs."
— Ron Charles, The Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2017


Did You Know?
Picaresque derives from Spanish picaresco, which means "of or relating to a picaro," the picaro being the rogue or bohemian usually at the center of picaresque fiction.
The typical picaro is a wandering individual of low social standing who happens into a series of adventures among people of various higher classes, and often relies on wits and a little dishonesty to get by.
The first known novel in this style is "Lazarillo de Tormes" (circa 1554), an irreverent work about a poor boy who works for a series of masters of dubious character. The novel has been attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, but his authorship is disputable.

Flagrant

WORD OF THE DAY

flagrant / FLAY-grunt / adjective

Definition

1: conspicuously offensive

2: so obviously inconsistent with what is right or proper as to appear to be a flouting of law or morality

Examples

In a flagrant violation of the family's code of ethics, someone had finished the ice cream and left the empty container in the freezer.

"The history of acting, in [Dan] Fox's account, is one of constant flux between naturalism and styles of flagrant artifice, but both are modes of pretending." 

— Christian Lorentzen, The New York Magazine, 4 Apr. 2016

Did You Know?

In Latin, flagrare means "to burn," and flagrans means "burning" or "fiery hot" (both literally and figuratively). When it was first used in the 16th century, flagrant had the same meaning as flagrans, but by the 18th century it had acquired its current meaning of "conspicuously bad." Some usage commentators warn against using flagrant and blatant interchangeably. 

While both words denote conspicuousness, they are not exact synonyms. Blatant is usually used of some person, action, or thing that attracts disapproving attention (e.g., "a blatant grammatical error"). Flagrant is used similarly, but usually carries a heavier weight of violated morality (e.g., "flagrant abuse of public office").

Hebetude

WORD OF THE DAY
hebetude \ HEB-uh-tood \ noun
 
Definition
: lethargy, dullness


Examples
Tired from being out late the night before, Jennifer allowed herself to fall into the hebetude of a lazy Sunday afternoon.


"The leaden weight of an irremediable idleness descended upon General Feraud, who having no resources within himself sank into a state of awe-inspiring hebetude."
— Joseph Conrad, "The Duel: A Military Story," 1908


Did You Know?
Hebetude usually suggests mental dullness, often marked by laziness or torpor. As such, it was a good word for one Queenslander correspondent, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the Weekend Australian of "an epidemic of hebetude among young people who … are placing too great a reliance on electronic devices to do their thinking and remembering."
Hebetude comes from Late Latin hebetudo, which means pretty much the same thing as our word. It is also closely related to the Latin word for "dull," hebes, which has extended meanings such as "obtuse," "doltish," and "stupid."
 Other hebe- words in English include hebetudinous ("marked by hebetude") and hebetate ("to make dull").

Depredate

WORD OF THE DAY

depredate / DEP-ruh-dayt / verb

Definition

1a: to lay waste 

1b: plunder, ravage

2: to engage in plunder

Examples

The bear that depredated the beekeeper's hives has been caught and relocated.

"IDFG Director Virgil Moore … talked to the commissioners about possible solutions to the growing problem of destructive elk tearing down fences, depredating ranch haystacks and pushing beef cows and calves off their feed." 

— The Challis (Idaho) Messenger, 10 Nov. 2016

Did You Know?

Depredate derives primarily from the Latin verb praedari, meaning "to plunder," an ancestor to our words ‘predator’ and ‘prey’. 

Dating to the 17th century, the word most commonly appears in contexts relating to nature and ecology, where it is often used to describe the methodical, almost automatic destruction of life. 

That's how the film critic Stanley Kauffman, for example, used it to summarize the plot of the famous horror movie Jaws (1975): "A killer shark depredates the beach of an island summer resort. Several people are killed. Finally, the shark is killed. That's the story."

Waif

WORD OF THE DAY

waif / WAYF / noun

Definition

1a: a piece of property found (as washed up by the sea) but unclaimed 

1b: (plural) stolen goods which are thrown away by a thief in flight

2a: something found without an owner and especially by chance 

2b: a stray person or animal

2c: a homeless child

3: an extremely thin and usually young woman

Examples

At the center of the novel is a parentless waif who is befriended by the first mate of a ship she is hiding aboard.

"Parker, playing a souped-up version of her trademark crazy-eyed waif, reprises her role as Georgie Burns, a character whose lack of a filter suggests a personality disorder in search of a diagnosis." 

— Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2017

Did You Know?

Waif itself is a stray if we consider its first meaning the home from which it came. Tracing back to an Anglo-French adjective waif meaning "stray, unclaimed," the English noun waif referred in its earliest 14th century uses to unclaimed found items, such as those gone astray (think cattle) and those washed ashore (think jetsam), as well as to the king's (or lord's) right to such property. 

Stolen goods abandoned by a thief in flight eventually came to be referred to as waifs as well, as later did anything found without an owner and especially by chance. (It's interesting to note that the verb waive, used in modern English in phrases like "waive a fee" or "waive one's rights" comes from the same Anglo-French source as waif and was at one time used to mean "to throw away (stolen goods).") 

The emphasis on being found faded as waif came to be applied to any stray animal or person, and especially to a homeless child, and in the late 20th century the current most common meaning of "an extremely thin and usually young woman" developed.

Oppugn

WORD OF THE DAY
oppugn \ uh-PYOON \ verb
 
Definition
1: to fight against
2: to call in question


Examples
"Carmel Valley speller Justin Song navigated the second and third rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee yesterday with a precision no one could oppugn."
— Paul M. Krawzak, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 May 2008


"However, if [bicyclists] consider themselves excellent climbers, here's the real question: How fast can they ascend a hill or mountain? That's the real point to oppugn."
— Ken Allen, The Morning Sentinel (Waterville, Maine), 16 Mar. 2013


Did You Know?
Oppugn was first recorded in English in the 15th century. It came to Middle English from the Latin verb oppugnare, which in turn derived from the combination of ob-, meaning "against," and pugnare, meaning "to fight." Pugnare itself is descended from the same ancient word that gave Latin the word pugnus, meaning "fist."
It's no surprise, then, that oppugn was adopted into English to refer to fighting against something or someone, either physically (as in "the dictatorship will oppugn all who oppose it") or verbally (as in "oppugn an argument").
Other descendants of pugnare in English include the equally aggressive pugnacious, impugn, repugnant, and the rare inexpugnable ("incapable of being subdued or overthrown").

Perfunctory

WORD OF THE DAY
perfunctory \ per-FUNK-tuh-ree \ adjective
 
Definition
1a: characterized by routine or superficiality
1b: mechanical
2: lacking in interest or enthusiasm


Examples
Clearly exhausted after a long day on her feet, our server gave us only a perfunctory greeting before taking our drink orders.


"Yet avoiding the heat altogether and watching Netflix from the confines of your cool couch—even while performing a perfunctory sit-up or two—is not the way to stay healthy and active this summer."
— Leslie Barker, The Dallas Morning News, 13 June 2017

Did You Know?
Perfunctory is a word whose origins are found entirely in Latin. It first appeared in English in the late 16th century and is derived from the Late Latin perfunctorius, meaning "done in a careless or superficial manner." (Perfunctorius was also borrowed for the synonymous, and now archaic, English adjective perfunctorious at around the same time.)
Perfunctorius comes from the earlier Latin perfunctus, a past participle of perfungi, meaning "to accomplish" or "to get through with." That verb is formed by combining the prefix per-, meaning "through," with the verb fungi, meaning "to perform." Fungi can be found in the roots of such words as function, defunct, and fungible.

Lamster

WORD OF THE DAY

lamster / LAM-ster / noun

Definition

: a fugitive especially from the law

Examples

"After the Vivian Gordon furor died down, I began to think of going home. I needed money, I was bored with Miami, and tired of living the life of a lamster." 

— Polly Adler, A House Is Not a Home, 1953

"During his time as a lamster, Lepke was looked after by gangsters associated with a gang based in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn." 

— Marc Mappen, Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation, 2013

DID YOU KNOW?

Lamsters as a class are probably as old as the law from which they flee, but the term lamster didn't sneak into our language until the early 1900s, less than ten years after the appearance of the earliest known evidence of the noun lam, meaning "sudden or hurried flight especially from the law" (as in the phrase "on the lam"). Both words have an old verb relation, though. 

Lam has meant "to beat soundly" or "to strike or thrash" since the late 16th century (and consequently gave us our verb lambaste), but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it developed another meaning: "to flee hastily." The origins of the verb are obscure, but etymologists suggest that it is Scandinavian in origin and akin to the Old Norse lemja, meaning "to thrash."

Bifurcate

WORD OF THE DAY

bifurcate / BYE-fer-kayt / verb

Definition

: to divide or cause to divide into two branches or parts

Examples

"If colleges don't begin to also focus on middle-income families, they will end up with campuses bifurcated by income that don't reflect the economic diversity of the United States." 

— Jeffrey J. Selingo, The Washington Post, 15 May 2017

"In the late 14th century [secretary] meant a 'person entrusted with secrets,' a trusted counselor, with some letter-writing and note-taking duties. The word has since bifurcated to refer either to the kind of secretary who nowadays prefers to be known as an executive assistant, thank you, or the kind who heads an executive department of the federal government." 

— Ruth Walker, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 June 2017

Did You Know?

Yogi Berra, the baseball great who was noted for his head-scratching quotes, is purported to have said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Yogi's advice might not offer much help when making tough decisions in life, but perhaps it will help you remember today's word, bifurcate. A road that bifurcates splits in two like the one in Yogi's adage. Other things can bifurcate as well, such as an organization that splits into two factions. Bifurcate derives from the Latin bifurcus, meaning "two-pronged," a combination of the prefix bi- ("two") and the noun furca ("fork"). Furca, as you can probably tell, gave us our word fork.

Pandemonium

WORD OF THE DAY
Pandemonium \ pan-duh-MOH-nee-um \ noun
 
Definition
1: the capital of Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost
2a: the infernal regions
2b: hell
3: (not capitalized) a wild uproar
3b: tumult
Examples
The power failure occurred during rush hour, and with none of the traffic lights working, pandemonium ensued as drivers struggled to get home.


"Czernowin's score includes eruptions of orchestral, vocal, and electronic pandemonium that evoke with unnerving immediacy the chaos of battle and its aftermath."
— Alexander M. Ross, The New Yorker, 15 May 2017


Did You Know?
When John Milton needed a name for the gathering place of all demons for Paradise Lost, he turned to the classics as any sensible 17th-century writer would. Pandæmonium, as the capital of Hell is known in the epic poem, combines the Greek prefix pan-, meaning "all," with the Late Latin daemonium, meaning "evil spirit." (Daemonium itself traces back to the far more innocuous Greek word daimōn, meaning "spirit, deity.") 
Over time, Pandæmonium (or Pandemonium) came to designate all of hell and was used as well for earthbound dens of iniquity. By the late-18th century, the word implied a place or state of confusion or uproar, and from there, it didn't take long for pandemonium to become associated with states of utter disorder and wildness.

élan

WORD OF THE DAY


élan \ ay-LAHN \ noun
 
Definition
: vigorous spirit or enthusiasm


Examples
Jeremy told the story of his trip to Mexico with such élan that by the next week people were begging him to share it again.


"The Waldorf has long had a reputation for elegance and élan, a reputation that began when it opened in 1931 as the largest, tallest and most expensive hotel ever built...."
— James Barron, The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2017


Did You Know?
Once upon a time, English speakers did not have élan (the word, that is; we have always had the potential for vigorous spirit). We had, however, the verb elance, meaning "to throw," that was used for the launching of darts, javelins, and similar weaponry.
Elance is derived from the Middle French (s')eslancer, meaning "to rush or dash" (that is, "to hurl oneself forth"). Elance enjoyed only a short flight in English, largely falling into disuse by the mid-1800s, around which time English speakers picked up élan, another French word that traces back, via the Middle French noun eslan ("dash, rush"), to (s')eslancer.
We copied élan in form from the French, but we dispensed with the French sense of a literal "rush" or "dash," retaining the sense of enthusiastic animation that we sometimes characterize as dash.

Garble

WORD OF THE DAY
garble \ GAR-bul \ verb
 
Definition
1: to sift impurities from
2a: to alter or distort as to create a wrong impression or change the meaning
2b: to introduce textual error into (a message) by inaccurate encipherment, transmission, or decipherment


Examples
The best man was nervous and garbled the inspirational quote at the end of his speech.


"Some calls are garbled, making it difficult for dispatchers to understand the caller."
— Joe Wilson, quoted in The Cleveland Daily Banner, 5 June 2017


Did You Know?
Garble developed from Late Latin cribellare, a verb meaning "to sift." Arabic speakers borrowed cribellare as gharbala, and the Arabic word passed into Old Italian as garbellare; both of these words also meant "to sift."
When the word first entered Middle English as garbelen, its meaning stayed close to the original; it meant "to sort out the best." But that sort of sifting can cause a distortion, and in early Modern English garble came to mean "to distort the sound or meaning of."

Immense

WORD OF THE DAY

immense / ih-MENSS / adjective

Definition

1a: marked by greatness especially in size or degree 

1b: transcending ordinary means of measurement

2: supremely good

Examples

"At the bridge site, teams of workers watched over drills the size of redwood trees, which rammed steel piles into the seafloor. The scale of construction was almost too immense to comprehend." 

— Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 29 May 2017

"Sometimes it's very humorous and camp and silly. Strutting around in leather and furs and huge metal helmets and what have you. Other days it's exciting. It's exciting because it somehow harks back to Old Hollywood and the idea of being in something immense and epic."

— Jude Law, quoted in The Los Angeles Times, 23 Apr. 2017

Did You Know?

Just how big is something if it is immense? Huge? Colossal? Humongous? Ginormous? Or merely enormous? Immense is often used as a synonym of all of the above and, as such, can simply function as yet another way for English speakers to say "really, really, really big." 

Immense is also used, however, in a sense which goes beyond merely really, really, really big to describe something that is so great in size or degree that it transcends ordinary means of measurement. This sense harks back to the original sense of immense for something which is so tremendously big that it has not been or cannot be measured. This sense reflects the word's roots in the Latin immensus, from in- ("un-") and mensus, the past participle (look out - grammar!) of metiri ("to measure").

Schadenfreude

WORD OF THE DAY


Schadenfreude \ SHAH-dun-froy-duh \ noun
 
Definition
: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others


Examples
Elaine couldn't help but feel a tinge of schadenfreude when her chief rival was kicked off the soccer team.


"Much attention (and a decent amount of schadenfreude) has been paid to the relative erosion of the NFL's massive television ratings in recent years…."
— Chad Finn, The Boston Globe, 26 May 2017


Did You Know?
Schadenfreude is a compound of the German nouns Schaden, meaning "damage" or "harm," and Freude, meaning "joy," so it makes sense that schadenfreude means joy over some harm or misfortune suffered by another.
"What a fearful thing is it that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others," wrote Richard Trench of Dublin, an archbishop with literary predilections, of the German Schadenfreude in 1852; perhaps it was just as well he didn't live to see the word embraced by English speakers before the century was out.