Ensconce

WORD OF THE DAY


ensconce \ in-SKAHNSS \ verb
 
Definition
1a: to place or hide securely
1b: conceal
2: to establish or settle firmly, comfortably, or snugly


Examples
Though kept—and used—for years in a private home, the unusual 17th-century porcelain bowl is now safely ensconced behind glass in a local museum.


"Using their strong back legs, female loggerheads dig until a pit is created that is deep enough to safely ensconce their eggs."
— The Press and Standard (Walterboro, South Carolina), 20 July 2016


Did You Know?
You might think of a sconce as a type of candleholder or lamp, but the word can also refer to a defensive fortification, usually one made of earth. Originally, then, a person who was ensconced was enclosed in or concealed by such a structure, out of harm's way.
One of the earliest writers to apply the verb ensconce with the general sense of "hide" was William Shakespeare. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, the character Falstaff, hoping to avoid detection when he is surprised during an amorous moment with Mrs. Ford, says "She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind the arras." (An arras is a tapestry or wall hanging.)

Pace

WORD OF THE DAY


pace \ PAY-see \ preposition
 
Definition
: contrary to the opinion of — usually used as an expression of deference to someone's contrary opinion


Examples
Pace the editorialist, there are in fact multiple solutions to these kinds of problems.


"The public museums, great and small, that are one of America's educational glories house collections expensively assembled by rich men and (pace Isabella Gardner and Baltimore's Cone sisters) women with lofty but not selfless motives."
— John Updike, The New York Review of Books, 5 Oct. 2006


Did You Know?
Though used in English since the 19th century, the preposition pace has yet to shed its Latin mantle, and for that reason it's most at home in formal writing or in contexts in which one is playing at formality.
The Latin word pace is a form of pax, meaning "peace" or "permission," and when used sincerely the word does indeed suggest a desire for both.
This Latin borrowing is unrelated to the more common noun pace (as in "keeping pace") and its related verb ("pacing the room"); these also come from Latin, but from the word pandere, meaning "to spread."

Disparate

WORD OF THE DAY
disparate \ DISS-puh-rut  \ adjective
 
Definition
1 : containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements
2 : markedly distinct in quality or character


Examples
The proposed law has the support of a disparate collection of interest groups.


"Released at San Diego's Comic-Con, the first full-length trailer for the CBS All Access series shows off all the Star Trek hallmarks, sweet ships, scary aliens, and the very human struggle that comes from disparate cultures coming together in unsure times."
— Tim Surette, TV Guide, 23 July 2017


Did You Know?
Have you ever tried to sort differing objects into separate categories? If so, you're well prepared to understand the origins of disparate. The word, which first appeared in English in the 16th century, derives from disparatus, the past participle of the Latin verb disparare, meaning "to separate."
Disparare, in turn, comes from parare, a verb meaning "to prepare." Other descendants of parare in English include both separate and prepare, as well as repair, apparatus, and even vituperate ("to criticize harshly and usually publicly").
Disparate also functions as a noun. The noun, which is rare and usually used in the plural, means "one of two or more things so unequal or unlike that they cannot be compared with each other," as in "The yoking of disparates, the old and the new, continues to be a [poet Anne] Carson strategy" (Daisy Fried, The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2013).

Broadside

WORD OF THE DAY
broadside \ BRAWD-syde \ noun
 
Definition
1a: a sizable sheet of paper printed on one side; also : a sheet of paper printed on one or both sides and folded (such as for mailing)
1b: something (such as a ballad) printed on a broadside
2: all the guns on one side of a ship; also their simultaneous discharge
3a: a volley of abuse or denunciation
3b: a strongly worded attack
4: a broad or unbroken surface


Examples
"When the Declaration of Independence was ratified, Congress ordered that it be read throughout the colonies. The first broadside was printed in Philadelphia by John Dunlap on the evening of July 4, 1776."
— The Salem (Massachusetts) News, 29 Mar. 2016


"In response, Kobach said Hensley's broadside was larded with misrepresentations certain to be distasteful to Kansans hungry for decency in politics."
— Tim Carpenter, The Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal, 16 Aug. 2017


Did You Know?
What do sheets of printed paper and a ship's artillery have in common? Not a whole lot besides their broadsides. The printing and naval senses of broadside arose independently of one another. Printed broadsides may have first been decrees intended for public posting, so they were necessarily printed on one side of large sheets of paper.
Soon even matters printed on one side of smallish sheets were called broadsides—advertisements, for example, or the so-called "broadside ballads," popular ditties that people stuck on the wall to sing from. In the nautical sense, broadside was originally the entire side of a ship above the water—which is where the guns were placed.
The further use of broadside to refer to firing of the guns eventually led to the figurative "volley of abuse" sense.

Anathematize

WORD OF THE DAY
anathematize \ uh-NATH-uh-muh-tyze \ verb
 
Definition
: curse, denounce


Examples
"A great deal has happened in a very short time.… Feminist reforms in the home and workplace … have gained renewed momentum. Youth culture has anathematized bullying and accorded pride of place to nerd culture."
— Jonathan Chait, The New York Magazine, 29 June 2015


"Its reception of [George] Orwell serves as a fascinating case study of Commonweal's history and editorial culture. The magazine's editors and contributors neither anathematized Orwell nor sprinkled him with holy water. Instead they simply gave him the respect they thought he deserved…."
— John Rodden and John Rossi, Commonweal, 23 Sept. 2016


Did You Know?
When 16th-century English speakers needed a verb meaning "to condemn by anathema" (that is, by an official curse from church authority), anathematize proved to be just the right word.
But anathematize didn't originate in English as a combination of the noun anathema and the suffix -ize. Rather, our verb is based on forebears in Late Latin (anathematizare) and Greek (anathematizein).
Anathematize can still indicate solemn, formal condemnation, but today it can also have milder applications. The same is true of anathema, which now often means simply "a vigorous denunciation," or more frequently, "something or someone intensely disliked or loathed."

Yeasty

WORD OF THE DAY
yeasty \ YEE-stee \ adjective
 
Definition
1: of, relating to, or resembling yeast
2a: immature, unsettled
2b: marked by change
2c: full of vitality
2d: frivolous


Examples
"[A]ll this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts with vague but deep impressions … had been disturbing her during the weeks of her engagement."
— George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, 1876


"'O.K., I'm ready,' Ms. Boym said, addressing this reporter's microphone and letting loose a warm, yeasty laugh."
— William L. Hamilton, The New York Times, 28 Nov. 2002


Did You Know?
The word yeast has existed in English for as long as the language has existed. Spellings have varied over time—in Middle English it was yest and in Old English gist or giest—but the word's meaning has remained basically the same for centuries.
In its first documented English uses in the 1500s, the adjective yeasty described people or things with a yellowish or frothy appearance similar to the froth that forms on the top of fermented beverages (such as beers or ales).
Since then, a number of extended figurative senses of yeasty have surfaced, all of which play in some way or another on the excitable, chemical nature of fermentation, such as by connoting unsettled activity or significant change.

Travesty

WORD OF THE DAY
travesty \ TRAV-uh-stee \ noun
 
Definition
1: a burlesque translation or literary or artistic imitation usually grotesquely incongruous in style, treatment, or subject matter
2: a debased, distorted, or grossly inferior imitation


Examples
"What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people's cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext."
— Émile Zola, letter, 13 Jan. 1898


"Fans of anime are ferociously purist and loyal, and for them, I suspect, the very notion of converting [Mamoru] Oshii's masterpiece (as it is deemed to be) into a live-action Hollywood remake smells of both travesty and sellout."
— Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2017


Did You Know?
The noun travesty, which current evidence dates to the 17th century, comes from the French verb travestir, meaning "to disguise." The word's roots, however, wind back through Italian to the Latin verb vestire, meaning "to clothe" or "to dress."
Travesty is not the only English descendent of vestire. Others include vestment, divest, and investiture. Travesty, incidentally, can also be a verb meaning "to make a travesty of" or "to parody."

Portentous

WORD OF THE DAY
portentous \ por-TEN-tuss \ ADJECTIVE
 
Definition
1: of, relating to, or constituting a portent
2: eliciting amazement or wonder : prodigious
3a: being a grave or serious matter
3b: self-consciously solemn or important
3c: pompous
3d : ponderously excessive


Examples
Our host had a habit of making portentous proclamations about the state of modern art, which was a bit of a turnoff for us as two art majors.


"[Glen Campbell] briefly joined the instrumental rock group the Champs, who'd had some success, in 1958, with 'Tequila,' still one of the best encapsulations of the portentous elation brought on by ice-cold margaritas."

— Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2017


Did You Know?
At the heart of portentous is portent, a word for an omen or sign, which comes to us from the Latin noun portentum of the same meaning. And indeed, the first uses of portentous did refer to omens.
The second sense of portentous, describing that which is extremely impressive, developed in the 16th century.
A third definition—"grave, solemn, significant"—was then added to the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary in 1934.
The word's connotations, however, have since moved into less estimable territory. It now frequently describes both the pompous and the excessive.

Glabrous

WORD OF THE DAY


glabrous \ GLAY-brus \ adjective
 
Definition
1: smooth
2: having a surface without hairs or projections


Examples
Unlike the fuzzy peach, the nectarine has a glabrous skin.


"[T]o augment the body's own ability to shed heat …, Roy Kornbluh and his colleagues … are focusing on the body's glabrous, or hairless, areas. In mammals, these parts act like a car radiator, helping heat escape from the surface. In humans, the palms of the hands and soles of the feet are vital."
— Hal Hodson, New Scientist, 30 Jan. 2016


Did You Know?
"Before them an old man, / wearing a fringe of long white hair, bareheaded, / his glabrous skull reflecting the sun's / light…." No question about it—the bald crown of an old man's head (as described here in William Carlos Williams's poem "Sunday in the Park") is a surface without hairs. Williams's use isn't typical, though.
More often glabrous appears in scientific contexts, such as the following description of wheat: "The white glumes are glabrous, with narrow acuminate beaks."
And although Latin glaber, our word's source, can mean simply "bald," when glabrous refers to skin with no hair in scientific English, it usually means skin that never had hair (such as the palms of the hands).

Amanuensis

WORD OF THE DAY
amanuensis \ uh-man-yuh-WEN-sis \ noun
 
Definition
: one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript


Examples
"He then proceeded in his investigation, dictating, as he went on, the import of the questions and answers to the amanuensis, by whom it was written down."
— Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, 1814


"In this version of the myth, Holmes is a real-world character whose exploits were rendered in print by his sidekick and amanuensis Dr. Watson, who's long since dead."
— Marc Mohan, The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 17 July 2015


Did You Know?
In Latin, the phrase servus a manu translates loosely as "slave with secretarial duties." (The noun manu, meaning "hand," gave us words such as manuscript, which originally referred to a document written or typed by hand.)
In the 17th century the second part of this phrase was borrowed into English to create amanuensis, a word for a person who is employed (willingly) to do the important but sometimes menial work of transcribing the words of another.
While other quaint words, such as scribe or scrivener, might have similarly described the functions of such a person in the past, these days we're likely to call him or her a secretary or an administrative assistant.

Inoculate

WORD OF THE DAY

inoculate /  ih-NAHK-yuh-layt / verb

Definition

1a: to introduce a microorganism into

1b: to introduce (something, such as a microorganism) into a suitable situation for growth

1c: to introduce immunologically active material (such as an antibody or antigen) into especially in order to treat or prevent a disease

2: to introduce something into the mind of

3: to protect as if by inoculation

Examples

In 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner discovered that inoculating people with cowpox could provide immunity against smallpox.

"Typically, ambrosia beetles have a symbiotic relationship with a fungus the beetles carry as spores on their bodies. When the beetles bore into the sapwood of the host tree, the galleries formed from the beetle boring are inoculated with the fungal spores." 

— Les Harrison, The Wakulla News (Crawfordville, Florida), 12 July 2017

Did You Know?

If you think you see a connection between inoculate and ocular ("of or relating to the eye"), you are not mistaken—both words look back to oculus, the Latin word for "eye." 

But what does the eye have to do with inoculation? Our answer lies in the original use of inoculate in Middle English: "to insert a bud in a plant for propagation." Latin oculus was sometimes applied to things that were seen to resemble eyes, and one such thing was the bud of a plant. 

Inoculate was later applied to other forms of engrafting or implanting, including the introduction of vaccines as a preventative against disease.

Marginalia

WORD OF THE DAY
marginalia \ mahr-juh-NAY-lee-uh \ noun
 
Definition
1 : marginal notes or embellishments (such as in a book)
2 : nonessential items


Examples
"Over the next nine days, [John Hughes] completed the first draft of Home Alone, capped by an eight-hour, 44-page dash to the finale. Before finishing, he'd expressed concerns in the marginalia of his journal that he was working too slowly."
— James Hughes, The Chicago Magazine, 10 Nov. 2015


"In Arderne's texts the marginalia has a clear purpose, but in other manuscripts the meaning of the drawings can be indecipherable. There are countless examples of unusual marginalia—monkeys playing the bagpipes, centaurs, knights in combat with snails, naked bishops, and strange human-animal hybrids that seem to defy categorization."
— Anika Burgess, Atlas Obscura, 9 May 2017


Did You Know?
We don't consider a word's etymology to be marginalia, so we'll start off by telling you the etymology of this one. Marginalia is a New Latin word that borrows from the Medieval Latin adjective marginalis ("marginal") and ultimately from the noun margo, meaning "border."
Marginalia is a relatively new word; it dates from the 19th century despite describing something—notes in the margin of a text—that had existed as far back as the 11th century. An older word, apostille (or apostil) once referred to a single annotation made in a margin, but that word is rare today.

Precocious

WORD OF THE DAY
precocious / prih-KOH-shus \ adjective


Definition
1: exceptionally early in development or occurrence
2: exhibiting mature qualities at an unusually early age


Examples
"They explained to me that we were going to watch people audition…. I ended up jumping onstage and singing something…. They thought I was precocious enough to be put in the chorus of the production. I was the only kid."
— Johnny Galecki, quoted in The Las Cruces (New Mexico) Sun-News, 8 Mar. 2017


"Apricots, almonds, and other fruit trees are notoriously vulnerable to frost damage of buds or precocious flowers…."
— Michael Bone et al., Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World's Semi-arid Regions, 2015


Did You Know?
Precocious got started in Latin when the prefix prae-, meaning "ahead of," was combined with the verb coquere, meaning "to cook" or "to ripen," to form the adjective praecox, which means "early ripening" or "premature."
By the mid-1600s, English speakers had turned praecox into precocious and were using it especially of plants that produced blossoms before their leaves came out.
By the 1670s, precocious was also being used to describe humans who developed skills or talents before others typically did.

Scour

WORD OF THE DAY


scour \ SKOW-er \  verb
 
Definition
1 : to move about quickly especially in search
2 : to go through or range over in or as if in a search


Examples
The dog scoured the terrain in search of the tennis ball I had thrown.


"The rescue team scoured the ground and a New Hampshire National Guard Black Hawk helicopter also searched the area."
— Emily Sweeney, The Boston Globe, 18 July 2017


Did You Know?
There are two distinct homographs of the verb scour in English. One means to clean something by rubbing it hard with a rough object; that scour, which goes back to at least the early 14th century, probably derives—via Middle Dutch and Old French—from a Late Latin verb, excurare, meaning "to clean off."
Today's word, however, which appears in the 13th century, is believed to derive from the Old Norse skūr, meaning "shower." (Skūr is also distantly related to the Old English scūr, the ancestor of our English word shower.)
Many disparate things can be scoured. For example, one can scour an area (as in "scoured the woods in search of the lost dog") or publications (as in "scouring magazine and newspaper articles").

Bibelot

WORD OF THE DAY
bibelot / BEE-buh-loh / noun
 
Definition
1: a small household ornament or decorative object
2: trinket


Examples
"Moonlight furbished the brown cylindrical floor vase and its gnarled branch, as well as an aquarium bibelot in the shape of a ruined arch on his bedside table."
— Nicholson Baker, The New Yorker, 27 June - 4 July 1994


"The sitting room is inviting, with its smart soft furnishings and bibelots, many of them from Samantha's mother, Lady Astor's, furnishing business, OKA—a sort of one-stop-tasteful decorating shop for the well-heeled."
— Debora Robertson, The Telegraph (UK), 4 Aug. 2017


Did You Know?
Can you think of a six-letter synonym of bibelot that starts with the letter "g"? No? How about an eight-letter one? Crossword puzzle whizzes might guess that the words we are thinking of are gewgaw and gimcrack.
Like these, bibelot, which English speakers borrowed from French, has uses beyond wordplay.
In addition to its general use as a synonym of trinket, it can refer specifically to a miniature book of elegant design (such as those made by Tiffany and Faberge). It also appears regularly in the names of things as diverse as restaurants and show dogs.

Extemporaneous

WORD OF THE DAY

extemporaneous / ek-stem-puh-RAY-nee-us / adjective

Definition

1a: composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment 

1b: impromptu

2a: provided, made, or put to use as an expedient 

2b: makeshift

Examples

Everyone was surprised to hear my normally taciturn brother give a heartfelt, extemporaneous speech at our parents' 50th-anniversary party.

"At the last Japanese performance—in Fukui, some 200 miles to the west of Tokyo—audiences were so exuberant that Slatkin and solo pianist Makoto Ozone indulged in an extemporaneous duet." 

— Michael H. Hodges, The Detroit News, 26 July 2017

Did You Know?

Extemporaneous, which comes from Latin ex tempore ("out of the time"), joined the English language sometime in the mid-17th century. The word impromptu was improvised soon after that. 

In general usage, extemporaneous and impromptu are used interchangeably to describe off-the-cuff remarks or speeches, but this is not the case when they are used in reference to the learned art of public speaking. 

Teachers of speech will tell you that an extemporaneous speech is one that has been thoroughly prepared and planned but not memorized, whereas an impromptu speech is one for which absolutely no preparations have been made.

Propagate

WORD OF THE DAY

propagate / PRAH-puh-gayt / verb

Definition

1a: to reproduce or cause to reproduce biologically 

1b: multiply

2a: to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area 

2b: extend

3a: to pass along to offspring

4a: to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (such as an idea or belief) 

4b: publicize

Examples

"It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say." 

— Samuel Johnson, The Adventurer, 25 Aug. 1753

"… Jonathan Anderson … wonders if he could propagate a honeysuckle-scented yellow azalea that is blooming around an early Georgian garden temple…." 

— Hamish Bowles, Vogue, August 2017

Did You Know?

The origins of propagate are firmly rooted in the field of horticulture. The word was borrowed into English in the 16th century from Latin propagatus, the past participle of the verb propagare, which means "to set (onto a plant) a small shoot or twig cut for planting or grafting." Propagare, in turn, derives from propages, meaning "layer (of a plant), slip, offspring." 

It makes sense, therefore, that the earliest uses of propagate referred to facilitating reproduction of a plant or animal. Nowadays, however, the meaning of propagate extends to the "reproduction" of something intangible, such as an idea or belief. Incidentally, propaganda also comes to us from propagare, although it took a somewhat different route into English.

Scrupulous

WORD OF THE DAY

scrupulous / SKROO-pyuh-lus / adjective

Definition

1a: having moral integrity 

1b: acting in strict regard for what is considered right or proper

2a: punctiliously exact 

2b: painstaking

Examples

"As a child, I somehow absorbed the idea that getting in the way of other people or wasting their time was a terrible offense. I have been scrupulous about standing to the right on escalators, not blocking aisles, not showing up late." 

— Rebecca Solnit, Harper's, July 2017

"Don't do business on the side with an elected official who can benefit your clients by lowering their property assessments. But if you do, be absolutely scrupulous about filling out every disclosure form. Or you'll look like you're trying to hide something—and maybe you are." 

— The Chicago Sun-Times, 27 July 2017

Did You Know?

Scrupulous and its close relative scruple ("an ethical consideration or principle") come from the Latin noun scrupulus, the diminutive of scrupus. Scrupus refers to a sharp stone, so scrupulus means "a small sharp stone." 

Scrupus retained its literal meaning but eventually also came to be used with the metaphorical meaning "a source of anxiety or uneasiness," the way a sharp pebble in one's shoe would be a source of pain. When the adjective scrupulous entered the language, it meant "principled," but now it also commonly means "painstaking" or "careful."

Accoutrement

WORD OF THE DAY

accoutrement / uh-KOO-truh-munt / noun

Definition

1a: equipment, trappings 

1b: a soldier's outfit usually not including clothes and weapons — usually used in plural

1c: an accessory item of clothing or equipment — usually used in plural

2: an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device — usually used in plural

Examples

The little closet was cluttered with belts and scarves and other accoutrements of use to a fashion-conscious teenager.

"Tour a contemporary American college campus and the guide will apologize for anything without the accoutrements of a yuppie condo. Stainless steel appliances and granite countertops became necessary to learning linear algebra while I wasn't looking." 

— Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, Inside Higher Ed (insidehighered.com), 23 July 2017

Did You Know?

Accoutrement and its relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter. Their French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "seam" and ultimately traces to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." 

You probably won't be too surprised to learn that consuere is also an ancestor of couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves.

Temporize

WORD OF THE DAY

temporize / TEM-puh-ryze / verb

Definition

1: to act to suit the time or occasion : to yield to current or dominant opinion

2: to draw out discussions or negotiations so as to gain time

Examples

"The pontiff's recent declaration to that effect brought headlines but no action….  Francis wouldn't be the first leader who temporized before doing something that had to be done. Think of Lincoln, who vexed abolitionists by waiting two years after his election before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation." 

— Rich Barlow, WBUR.org, 5 June 2014

"Ostensibly, 'Dan in Real Life' is about how Dan and Marie … figure out how to deal with their mutual attraction, even as she's supposed to be on the arm of Dan's genial but dim brother Mitch …. Of course, this particular problem isn't beyond the purview of mature adults: You smolder, you ponder, you temporize, it gets messy, you deal." 

— Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post, 26 Oct. 2007

Did You Know?

Temporize comes from the Medieval Latin verb temporizare ("to pass the time"), which itself comes from the Latin noun tempus, meaning "time." Tempus is also the root of such words as tempo, contemporary, and temporal. If you need to buy some time, you might resort to temporizing—but you probably won't win admiration for doing so. 

Temporize can have a somewhat negative connotation. For instance, a political leader faced with a difficult issue might temporize by talking vaguely about possible solutions without actually doing anything. The point of such temporizing is to avoid taking definite—and possibly unpopular—action, in hopes that the problem will somehow go away. But the effect is often just to make matters worse.