Fulcrum

WORD OF THE DAY

fulcrum / noun / FULL-krum

Definition

1a: prop 

1b: the support about which a lever turns

1c: one that supplies capability for action

2: a part of an animal that serves as a hinge or support

Examples

"Normally, bending involves using the hip as a fulcrum, and erector spinae muscles to support our trunk. When Jackson leaned over, he transferred the fulcrum to the ankle, with the calf and Achilles tendon under strain." 

— Jake Rossen, Mental Floss, 22 May 2018

"In 2014, then-Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a non-binding opinion advising that bag bans are legal if they are not aimed at 'solid waste management.' That murky phrase, which appears in the Texas Health and Safety Code, has become the fulcrum for debate on the issue." 

— Emma Platoff, The Texas Tribune, 22 June 2018

Did You Know?

Fulcrum, a word that means "bedpost" in Latin, derives from the verb fulcire, which means "to prop." When the word fulcrum was used in the 17th century, it referred to the point on which a lever or similar device (such as the oar of a boat) is supported. 

It did not take long for the word to develop a figurative sense referring to something used as a spur or justification to support a certain action. 

In zoology, fulcrum can also refer to a part of an animal that serves as a hinge or support, such as the joint supporting a bird's wing.

Canorous

WORD OF THE DAY

canorous / adjective / kuh-NOR-us

Definition
1: pleasant sounding
2: melodious

Examples
"His artistry, technical proficiency, and canorous melodies have an introspective yet uplifting feeling by virtue of the beauty and honesty that so naturally accompany the acoustic guitar."
— Kevin Gillies, Noozhawk (Santa Barbara, California), 26 Nov. 2018

"There is an element of truth to that, but Zephyr—such a canorous hippie-child name—sang a populist tune not found in any Beltway progressive songbook."
— Bill Kauffman, American Conservative, 1 Nov. 2014

Did You Know?
In Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), the author Thomas de Quincey describes a manservant who, after accidentally letting a loaded trunk fall down a flight of stairs, "sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter."
Canorous typically describes things, such as church choirs or birds in the spring, that are a pleasure to listen to. It derives from the Latin verb canere ("to sing"), a root it shares with a number of words that evoke what is sweet to the ear, such as chant, canticle ("a song"), cantor ("a leader of a choir"), carmen ("a song, poem, or incantation"), and even accent.

Enervate

WORD OF THE DAY

enervate / verb / EN-er-vayt

Definition

1: to reduce the mental or moral vigor of

2: to lessen the vitality or strength of

Examples

Dehydration and prolonged exposure to the sun had enervated the shipwrecked crew, leaving them almost too weak to hail the passing vessel.

"In contrast, there was dignity in the Joad family (of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). When the Dust Bowl smothered Oklahoma, the Joads were not enervated, they moved west in search of work." 

— George Will, The Washington Post, 7 Dec. 2016

Did You Know?

Enervate is a word that some people use without really knowing what it means. They seem to believe that because enervate looks a little bit like energize and invigorate it must share their meaning—but it is actually their antonym. 

Enervate comes from the Latin enervatus,the past participle of the verb enervare, which literally means "to remove the sinews of," but is also used figuratively in the sense of "to weaken." 

The Latin enervare was formed from the prefix e-, meaning "out of," and nervus, meaning "sinew or nerve." So etymologically, at least, someone who is enervated is "out of nerve."

Utmost

WORD OF THE DAY

utmost / adjective / UT-mohst

Definition
1a: situated at the farthest or most distant point
1b: extreme
2: of the greatest or highest degree, quantity, number, or amount

Examples
"The refuge, which is bordered by the Centennial Mountains and Continental Divide to the south and the Gravelly Mountains to the north, is also home to the utmost point of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers."
— Kelley Christensen, The Montana Standard, 25 Nov. 2013

"The Richmond football team is one of eight 4AA squads with a bye this week, but head coach Bryan Till is still preaching … that keeping a sense of urgency is of the utmost importance."
— Leon Hargrove Jr., The Richmond County (North Carolina) Daily Journal, 15 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
Utmost traces back to the Old English ūtmest, a superlative adjective formed from the adverb ūt, meaning "out." Ūtmest eventually evolved into utmost, perhaps influenced by the spelling of the word most.
Not surprisingly, the earlier sense of utmost carries the same meaning as outermost. The second sense of utmost, meaning "of the greatest or highest degree," first appeared in English in the 14th century. A related word is utter, meaning "absolute" or "total," as in the phrase "utter chaos"; it comes from Old English utera, meaning "outer," and ultimately from ūt.

Benison

WORD OF THE DAY

benison / noun /  BEN-uh-sun

Definition

: blessing, benediction

Examples

"I offer thanks for the little things and the big things, everyday benisons and once-in-a-blue-moon moments of grace." 

— Kati Schardl, The Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat, 17 Nov. 2017

"In the second half of the second act, the show shrinks and darkens as Hamilton's life does. The last song, describing the 50-year widowhood of Eliza, gives an unexpected benison." 

— Richard Brookhiser, The National Review, 6 Apr. 2015

Did You Know?

Benison and its synonym benediction share more than a common meaning; the two words come from the same root, the Latin benedicere, meaning "to bless." (Benedicere comes from the Latin bene dicere—"to speak well of"—a combination of the Latin bene, meaning "well," and dicere, "to say.") 

Of the two words, benediction is more common today, but benison has a longer history in English. Records show that benison has been used in our language since the 13th century, whereas benediction didn't appear in print until the 15th century.

Grinch

WORD OF THE DAY

grinch / noun / GRINCH

Definition

1: one who spoils the pleasure of others 

2: killjoy, spoilsport

Examples

"Chalk it up to a weary world eager for uplifting entertainment, the surprise of a diamond-in-the-rough performer or simply the sheer delight of watching Britain's Got Talent judge and notorious grinch Simon Cowell grow a heart right before the audience's eyes." 

— Michelle Tauber et al., People, 4 May 2009

"Not content with banning Christmas in 2016, the country's supreme grinch, Kim Jong Un, went further by prohibiting gatherings that involve alcohol and singing, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS)." 

— John Onyanga-Omara, The Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), 20 Dec. 2017

Did You Know?

When Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, wrote the children's book How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1957, he probably had no idea that grinch would soon enter the general lexicon of English. 

Like Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge (whose name has become synonymous with miser), the Grinch changes his ways by the story's end, but it's the unreformed character who "hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!" who sticks in our minds. 

The ill-natured Grinch, with his heart "two sizes too small," provides us with a lively symbol of someone we love to hate, and his name has thus come to refer to any disgruntled grump who ruins the pleasure of others.

Solstice

WORD OF THE DAY

solstice / noun / SAHL-stiss

Definition

1: either of the two points on the ecliptic at which its distance from the celestial equator is greatest

2: the time of the sun's passing one such point on the ecliptic which occurs about June 21 to begin summer in the northern hemisphere and about December 21 to begin winter in the northern hemisphere

Examples

People all over the world have observed celebrations linked to the summer and winter solstices since ancient times.

"The Earth wobbles on its axis once every 27,000 years…. This alters the relationship between the solstices and the distance from the Earth to the Sun." 

— Steven A. Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, The Chippewa Herald, 8 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?

In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice usually occurs on June 20 or 21 and the winter solstice on December 21 or 22. 

In the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are reversed, the solstices are exactly the opposite.

For several days around the time of the solstices, the sun's appearance on the horizon at sunrise and sunset seems to occur at the same spot, before it starts drifting to the north or south again. 

Solstice gets its shine from sol, the Latin word for "sun." 

The ancients added sol to -stit- (a participial stem of sistere, which means "to stand still") and came up with solstitium. Middle English speakers shortened solstitium to solstice in the 14th century.

Frenetic

WORD OF THE DAY

frenetic / adjective / frih-NET-ik

Definition
1: marked by excitement, disorder, or anxiety-driven activity
2: frenzied, frantic

Examples
"For Youse and the roughly 90 employees who work at the store, the 5-mile move capped more than a half-year of planning, followed by a frenetic two days in which everything from the one store was transferred to the other."
— Chad Umble, LancasterOnline.com, 22 Oct. 2018

"During his years as a sports broadcaster in Chicago, Adam Harris realized his volunteer work as a youth baseball coach often would provide a welcome break from the frenetic world of media."
— Karen Ann Cullotta, The Chicago Tribune, 18 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane—at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. Frenetik, in Middle English, meant "insane."
When the word no longer denoted stark raving madness, it conjured up fanatical zealots. Today, its seriousness has been downgraded to something more akin to "hectic."
But if you trace frenetic back through Anglo-French and Latin, you'll find that it comes from Greek phrenitis, a term describing an inflammation of the brain.
Phren, the Greek word for "mind," is a root you will recognize in schizophrenic. As for frenzied and frantic, they're not only synonyms of frenetic but relatives as well. Frantic comes from frenetik, and frenzied traces back to phrenitis.

Tchotchke

WORD OF THE DAY

tchotchke / noun / CHAHCH-kuh

Definition
: knickknack, trinket

Examples
"How someone organizes their desk can tell you a lot about how they get work done. That's why we're stepping into the offices of enviably creative (and productive) people to look at what's on their desks—pens and notebooks and gadgets, but also décor and tchotchkes."
— Deva Pardue and Maxine Builder, The New York Magazine, 10 Sept. 2018

"… a review from WireCutter … called it the best 3D pen of the lot. While we're debating whether any home needs the flood of tchotchkes that will inevitably pour forth as a result of this gadget, the idea of drawing something into existence is pretty appealing."
— Talia Milgrom-Elcott, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
Just as trinkets can dress up your shelves or coffee table, many words for "miscellaneous objects" or "nondescript junk" decorate our language.
Knickknack, doodad, gewgaw, and whatnot are some of the more common ones. While many such words are of unknown origin, we know that tchotchke comes from the Yiddish tshatshke of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, czaczko.
Tchotchke is a pretty popular word these days, but it wasn't commonly used in English until the 1970s.

Millefleur

WORD OF THE DAY

millefleur / adjective / meel-FLER

Definition
: having an allover pattern of small flowers and plants

Examples
The museum's collection includes several medieval tapestries with millefleur designs.

"An early 16th century millefleurs tapestry is a charmer, with children playing amidst the birds and animals and the thousand flowers of the style's name."
— Sherry Lucas, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi), 29 Sept. 2002

Did You Know?
Millefleur (which can also be spelled millefleurs) came directly from French into English in the 17th century as a word for a perfume distilled from several different kinds of flowers. The literal meaning of mille fleurs in French is "a thousand flowers," so it is easy to see how millefleur came to be applied to patterns or backgrounds of many tiny flowers or plants.
A similarly colorful extension of "a thousand flowers" can be seen in the word millefiori.
That term, which refers to ornamental glass characterized by multicolored flower-like designs, comes from mille fiori, the Italian phrase meaning "a thousand flowers."

Epitome

WORD OF THE DAY

epitome / noun / ih-PIT-uh-mee

Definition
1a: typical or ideal example
1b: embodiment
2a: a summary of a written work
2b: a brief presentation or statement of something
3: brief or miniature form — usually used with in

Examples
The cabin we rented was the epitome of country charm: wide pine floors, simple sturdy furniture, and clean linen curtains billowing in the breeze of the open windows.

"I really want to make movies about tangible, complicated love, and I think the epitome of love is family love."
— Jeremiah Zagar, quoted in The New York Magazine, 23 Aug. 2018

Did You Know?
Epitome first appeared in print in 1520, when it was used to mean "summary." If someone asks you to summarize a long paper, you effectively cut it up, mentioning only the most important ideas in your synopsis, and the etymology of epitome reflects this process.
The word descends from Greek epitemnein, meaning "to cut short," which in turn was formed from the prefix epi- and the verb temnein, which means "to cut."
Your summary probably also presents all the key points of the original work, which may explain why epitome eventually came to be used for any person or object that is a clear or good example of an abstraction.

Zibeline

WORD OF THE DAY

zibeline /noun / ZIB-uh-leen 

Definition
: a soft lustrous wool fabric with mohair, alpaca, or camel's hair

Examples
"It's a simple, elegant design: high-collar, buttons, long sleeves, with lace and a sheer bodice. Its fabric catches the light very delicately—Bridges found the thick zibeline in London." 
— Hunter Harris, Vulture, 5 Jan. 2018

"The second gown is a more structured design of either silk zibeline or silk taffeta, with hand-embroidered silk thread and Swarovski crystals in three different sizes." 
— Joyce Chen, The Knot, 7 May 2018

Did You Know?
Though zibeline is woven from the hair of alpacas, camels, or Angora goats, its name actually traces back to a Slavic word for the sable, a small mammal related to the weasel. The Slavic term was adopted into Old Italian, and from there it passed to Middle French, then on to English in the late 1500s. 
English zibeline originally referred to the sable or its fur, but in the 19th century it developed a second sense, applying to a soft, smooth, slightly furry material woven from a mixture of animal hairs. 
It's especially suited to women's suits and coats, or, as a fashion columnist in the December 6, 1894 issue of Vogue observed, "Zibeline ... makes an exceedingly pretty, warm theatre cloak, not too fine to be crushed into the small one-chair space."

Perennial

WORD OF THE DA Y

perennial / adjective / puh-REN-ee-ul
Definition
1: present at all seasons of the year
2: persisting for several years usually with new herbaceous growth from a perennating part
3a: persistent, enduring
3b: continuing without interruption : constant, perpetual
3c: regularly repeated or renewed : recurrent

Examples
"Kieran [Culkin] called Saines in 2016 after a two-year hiatus to say, 'You know, I think I want to act again. I want to do This Is Our Youth.' Written by Kenneth Lonergan, … the play has become a perennial showcase for young actors."
— Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair, December 2018

"Making the kids think of school as important to their complicated, often tragic lives—while meeting the demands of the curriculum—was a perennial struggle."
— Sarah Stodder, The Washingtonian, November 2018

Did You Know?
Nowadays when we talk about "perennial plants," or simply "perennials" (perennial can be a noun, too), we mean plants that die back seasonally but produce new growth in the spring.
But originally perennial was equivalent to evergreen, used for plants that remain with us all year. We took this "throughout the year" sense straight from the Romans, whose Latin perennis combined per- ("throughout") with a form of annus ("year").
The poet Ovid, writing around the beginning of the first millennium, used the Latin word to refer to a "perennial spring" (a water source), and the scholar Pliny used it of birds that don't migrate.
Our perennial retains these same uses, for streams and occasionally for birds, but it has long had extended meanings, too.

Lunette

WORD OF THE DAY

lunette / noun / loo-NET

Definition
1a: something that has the shape of a crescent or half-moon
1b: an opening in a vault especially for a window
1c: the surface at the upper part of a wall that is partly surrounded by a vault which the wall intersects and that is often filled by windows or by mural painting
1d: a low crescentic mound (as of sand) formed by the wind
2: the figure or shape of a crescent moon

Examples
"All the windows and doors were topped with lunettes of small-paned glass."
— Theodore Dreiser, The Financier, 1912

"But what people found most striking about the school was the elaborate lunette built on the exterior of the building over the front entrance. With the lunette's intricate sunburst design, Iddles School caught the attention of many passersby."
— Becky Kark, The Herald-Palladium (St. Joseph, Michigan), 15 July 2018

Did You Know?
Lunette, a word borrowed from French, looks like it should mean "little moon"—luna being Latin for "moon" and -ette being a diminutive suffix.
There is indeed some 17th-century evidence of the word being used for a small celestial moon, but that meaning is now obsolete.
Earlier, in the 16th century, lunette referred to a horseshoe having only the front semicircular part—a meaning that still exists but is quite rare. Other senses of lunette that are infrequently used nowadays include "a blinder especially for a vicious horse" and, in the plural form, "spectacles." (Lunettes is the usual term for eyeglasses in modern French.)
The oldest meaning of lunette still in common use is "something shaped like a crescent or half-moon," which our evidence dates to the early 1600s.

Immure

WORD OF THE DAY

immure / verb / ih-MYOOR

Definition
1a: to enclose within or as if within walls
1b: imprison
2a: to build into a wall; especially
2b: to entomb in a wall

Examples
"Agnes … is a suburban lifer, a mousy, resigned little woman whose life is immured by her home, her family, and her church."
— Jonathan Richards, The Santa Fe New Mexican, 7 Sept. 2018

"In the croissants and their variations, the layers are as distinct as ribs, from slabs of cold butter immured in fold after fold of dough; the interior resembles a honeycomb of air, due to steam released during baking as the butter slowly melts."
— Ligaya Mishan, The New York Times, 13 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?
Like mural, immure comes from murus, a Latin noun that means "wall."
Immurare, a Medieval Latin verb, was formed from murus and the prefix in- (meaning "in" or "within").
Immure, which first appeared in English in the late 16th century, literally means "to wall in" or "to enclose with a wall," but it has extended meanings as well. In addition to senses meaning "to imprison" and "to entomb," the word sometimes has broader applications, essentially meaning "to shut in" or "to confine."
One might remark, for example, that a very studious acquaintance spends most of her time "immured in the library" or that a withdrawn teenager "immures himself in his bedroom every night."

Repartee

WORD OF THE DAY

repartee / noun / rep-er-TEE

Definition
1a: a quick and witty reply
1b: a succession or interchange of clever retorts
1c: amusing and usually light sparring with words
2a: adroitness and cleverness in reply
2b: skill in repartee

Examples
"One of my favorite parts of that scene was Kim's repartee with him, trying to show how smart she is, him pretending to forget the case and her knowing it—all just so he could test her."
— Patrick Fabian, quoted in Variety, 11 Sept. 2018

"The joy of the romantic comedy lies less in its mise en scène, and more in its witty repartee and character chemistry…. The will-they-won't-they tension is enough for the movie to power through the silliest moments.
— David Sims, The Atlantic, 21 June 2018

Did You Know?
One person often noted for her repartee was Dorothy Parker, writer and legendary member of the Algonquin Round Table.
Upon hearing that Calvin Coolidge had died, she replied, "How can they tell?" The taciturn Coolidge obviously didn't have a reputation for being the life of the party, but he himself came out with a particularly famous repartee on one occasion.
When a dinner guest approached him and told him she had bet someone she could get him to say more than two words, he replied, "You lose."
Repartee, our word for such a quick, sharp reply (and for skill with such replies) comes from the French repartie, of the same meaning. Repartie itself is formed from the French verb repartir, meaning "to retort."

Sandbag

WORD OF THE DAY 

sandbag / verb / SAND-bag

Definition

1: to bank, stop up, or weight with sandbags

2a: to hit or stun with or as if with a sandbag

2b: to treat unfairly or harshly

2c: to coerce by crude means

2d:to conceal or misrepresent one's true position, potential, or intent especially in order to take advantage over 

2e: to hide the truth about oneself so as to gain an advantage over another

Examples

Management must have realized that reading employee survey responses aloud at the company-wide meeting would make employees feel sandbagged, but they chose to do it anyway.

"Lock's season began with Heisman Trophy dreams. It has detoured toward a familiar and unfortunate destination, the place where the quarterback's career numbers are sandbagged by his struggles when the spotlight shines." 

— Ben Frederickson, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?

In the 19th century, the verb sandbag began to be used to describe the act of bludgeoning someone with a small, sand-filled bag—a tactic employed by ruffians, usually as a prelude to robbing their victims. The verb went on to develop metaphorical extensions, such as "to coerce by crude means." 

By the 1940s, it was being used of a strategy in which a poker player with a good hand bets weakly, in order to draw other players into holding on to their hands and raising the bet. The use of sandbag has since evolved to refer to a general strategy of playing down one's position in order to gain some sort of advantage.

Dossier

WORD OF THE DAY

dossier / noun / DOSS-yay

Definition
: a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject

Examples
The agency maintains extensive dossiers on all of its employees and contractors.

"The council overwhelmingly supported a resolution to set up an 'independent mechanism' that will collect and analyze evidence of the 'most serious international crimes' and prepare dossiers that will make it easier for prosecutors to bring cases to trial in national, regional or international courts."
— Nick Cumming-Bruce, The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?
Gather together various documents relating to the affairs of a certain individual, sort them into separate folders, label the spine of each folder, and arrange the folders in a box.
Dossier, the French word for such a compendium of spine-labeled folders, was picked up by English speakers in the 19th century. It comes from dos, the French word for "back."
The verb endorse (which originally meant "to write on the back of") and the rare adjective addorsed ("set or turned back to back," a term primarily used in heraldry) are also derived, via the Anglo-French endosser and French adosser respectively, from dos.
The French dos has its origins in the Latin dorsum, a word which also gave English the adjective dorsal ("situated on the back"), as in "the dorsal fin of a whale."

Abandon

WORD OF THE DAY

abandon / noun / uh-BAN-dun

Definition

1: a thorough yielding to natural impulses; especially 

1b: enthusiasm, exuberance

Examples

The winning photograph was of a dog bounding with abandon through a field of snow.

"The drum solo has long been a concert punchline. Foo Fighters, in recognition of that, made Hawkins' solo as ridiculous and over the top as possible. His drum kit, perched upon a hydraulic lift, soared twenty feet in the air as he pounded the skins with reckless abandon." 

— Jim Ryan, Forbes, 19 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?

The sense of abandon defined above is a relative newcomer to the English language, dating from the early 1800s, but an earlier noun sense, defined as "the act of abandoning," was in use in the 1600s. 

The earlier sense was influenced by the verb abandon, which was borrowed by Middle English in the 1300s from Anglo-French abanduner. 

The Anglo-French term in turn came from the phrase (mettre) a bandun, meaning "to hand over" or "to put in someone's control." The newer sense has been more directly influenced by French abandon, which means not only "abandonment or surrender" but also "freedom from constraint."

Perspicacious

WORD OF THE DAY

perspicacious / adjective / per-spuh-KAY-shus

Definition
1a: of acute mental vision or discernment
1b: keen

Examples
"Captivated by the breadth of its elegant façade—echoed in the grandeur of the interior spaces—the perspicacious owners enlisted their trusted decorator Jacques Grange … to collaborate on a sensitive renovation.
— Angus Wilkie, Architectural Digest, December 2017

"Elsewhere in his speech, Daniels was perspicacious about the challenges that Purdue graduates are likely to face during the course of their careers and civic lives."
— Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, 6 June 2018

Did You Know?
Perspicacious is similar in meaning to shrewd and astute, but a sharp mind will also discern subtle differences among them.
All three denote being acute in perception and sound in judgment, but shrewd stresses practical, hardheaded cleverness, whereas perspicacious implies unusual power to see through and comprehend what is puzzling or hidden.
Astute suggests both shrewdness and perspicacity, as well as diplomatic skill.

Circumvent

WORD OF THE DAY

circumvent / verb / ser-kum-VENT

Definition
1: to manage to get around especially by ingenuity or stratagem
2a: to hem in
2b: to make a circuit around

Examples
A couple of clever students were able to circumvent the security protocols on the school's network and gain access to the database storing their grades.

"… [P]artygoers stood patiently on another queue for the elevator. Jim Belushi—one of the 29 actors featured in W's 'Best Performances' issue—circumvented the elevator line and went for the steps."
— Jasmin Rosemberg, Variety, 5 Jan. 2018

Did You Know?
If you've ever felt as if someone was circling around the rules, you have an idea of the origins of circumvent—it derives from the Latin circum, meaning "circle," and ventus, the past participle of the Latin verb venire, meaning "to come."
The earliest uses of circumvent referred to a tactic of hunting or warfare in which the quarry or enemy was encircled and captured.
Today, however, circumvent more often suggests avoidance than entrapment; it typically means to "get around" someone or something, as in our example sentences.

Dram

WORD OF THE DAY

dram / noun / DRAM

Definition
1a: a unit of avoirdupois weight equal to 1/16 ounce
1b: a unit of apothecaries' weight equal to 1/8 ounce
1c: a unit of liquid capacity equal to 1/8 fluid ounce
2a: a small portion of something to drink
2b: a small amount

Examples
The two of them don't have a dram of sense between them, so I'm not surprised that they got into so much trouble.

"Do you know what I just found out? Monkey Shoulder blended Scotch? Totally not made from monkey shoulders. As far as I'm informed, there are no monkey parts whatsoever in this delicious dram."
— Mat Dinsmore, The Coloradoan, 22 Jan. 2014

Did You Know?
In avoirdupois weight—that is, the system of weights commonly used in North America and the United Kingdom—a dram is equal to 1/16 ounce (1.772 grams).
The word dram was borrowed from the Anglo-French and Late Latin word dragme, which was originally used for a silver coin used by the ancient Greeks (now known in English as the drachma) as well as for the coin's approximate weight.
In the 16th century, English speakers began also using dram for a weight of fluid measure (also called a fluid dram) equal to 1/8 fluid ounce, and more loosely for any small portion of something to drink. Dram is also used figuratively for any small amount, in much the same way as grain and ounce.

Ritzy

WORD OF THE DAY

ritzy / adjective / RIT-see

Definition
1a: being, characteristic of, or befitting a snob
1b: snobbish
2a; impressively or ostentatiously fancy or stylish
2b: fashionable, posh

Examples
"Pop star Justin Timberlake … hosted a listening party for his new album at a ritzy Manhattan loft where catering was provided by René Redzepi's impossible-to-get-into Copenhagen restaurant…."
— Greg Morabito, Eater.com, 17 Jan. 2018

"Allen owned one of the most desirable properties in California, a 120-acre parcel on a hilltop in ritzy Beverly Crest that is on the market for $150 million."
— Scott Kraft, The Los Angeles Times, 15 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
César Ritz (1850-1918) earned worldwide renown for the luxurious hotels bearing his name in London and Paris. (The Ritz-Carlton hotel company is a contemporary descendant of these enterprises.) Although they were by no means the first to cater to high-end clients, Ritz's hotels quickly earned reputations as symbols of opulence.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer who often focused on the fashionably wealthy, titled one of his short stories "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," and the phrase "to put on the ritz" means "to indulge in ostentatious display."
The adjective ritzy, describing either something fancy or stylish, or the haughty attitudes of the wealthy elite, first checked into the English language in 1920.

Betwixt

WORD OF THE DAY

betwixt / adverb or preposition / bih-TWIKST 

Definition
: between

Examples
"O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times / seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and / an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself." 
— William Shakespeare, Othello, 1622

"Barry is a bit betwixt and between as a viewing experience: too violent for people who don't like violence, not energetic or dramatic enough for people who do." 
— Willa Paskin, Slate Magazine, 23 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?
"Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean." Perhaps you've always said "and so between the two of them" when reciting the tale of Jack Sprat and his wife. That's fine. 
Betwixt and between have similar origins: they both come from a combination of be- and related Old English roots. 
Both words appeared before the 12th century, but use of betwixt dropped off considerably toward the end of the 1600s. 
It survived in the phrase "betwixt and between" ("neither one thing nor the other"), which took on a life of its own in the 18th century. 
Nowadays, betwixt is uncommon, but it isn't archaic; it's simply used more consciously than between.

Yahoo

WORD OF THE DAY

yahoo / noun / YAH-hoo

Definition
1: (capitalized Yahoo) a member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gulliver's Travels who have the form and all the vices of humans
2: a boorish, crass, or stupid person

Examples
The reputation the teenagers had for being a bunch of self-involved yahoos was belied by their courteous treatment of the stranded motorists.

"In a place like America, we seem to revel in these geographic judgments. And so Northerners stereotype Southerners as Confederate flag-waving, pickup driving, moonshine-drinking yahoos and Southerners depict Northerners as snooty, elitist, big city, latte-drinking, Volvo-driving liberals."
— John F. Hudson, The Cambridge (Massachusetts) Chronicle, 31 May 2018

Did You Know?
We know exactly how old yahoo is because its debut in print also marked its entrance into the English language as a whole. Yahoo began life as a made-up word invented by Jonathan Swift in his book Gulliver's Travels, which was published in 1726.
On his fourth and final voyage of the book, Lemuel Gulliver is marooned on an island that is the home of the Houyhnhnms, a species of intelligent, civilized horses who share their land with and rule over the Yahoos, a species of brutes with the form and vices of humans.
These Yahoos represented Swift's view of humankind at its lowest. It is not surprising, then, that yahoo came to be applied to any actual human who was particularly unpleasant or unintelligent.

Quirk

WORD OF THE DAY

quirk / verb / KWERK

Definition
: curve, twist

Examples
"If you quirked your eyebrow at The Shape of Water's merman, your jaw probably dropped clean off when you realized that some viewers were, well, thirsty for the marine man."
— Melissa Broder and Samantha Hunt, Elle, 14 Sept. 2018

"The video was of a laughing baby, and I felt the corners of my mouth quirking up. After, the computer asked me how I'd felt while watching. 'Happy,' I clicked."
— Elizabeth Svoboda, MIT Technology Review, 16 Aug. 2018

Did You Know?
Did you expect quirk to be a noun meaning "a peculiarity of action or behavior"? If so, you're probably not alone; the "peculiarity" sense of the noun quirk is commonly known and has been a part of our language since the 17th century.
But quirk has long worn other hats in English, too. The sense meaning "a curve, turn, or twist" has named everything from curving pen marks on paper (i.e., flourishes) to witty turns of phrase to the vagaries or twists of fate.
In contemporary English, the verb quirk can be used in referring to facial expressions, especially those that involve crooked smiles or furrowed eyebrows.

Impromptu

WORD OF THE DAY

impromptu /adjective  / im-PROMP-too 

Definition
1a: made, done, or formed on or as if on the spur of the moment
1b: improvised
2a: composed or uttered without previous preparation
2b: extemporaneous

Examples
When we got word of Caitlin's good news, we threw an impromptu party to celebrate.

"West capped off his curious musical guest gig, where he subbed for Ariana Grande, with a rambling rant after NBC's broadcast ended. The impromptu speech was captured by Chris Rock, who posted it to his Instagram Story."
— Kim Willis, USA Today, 30 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?
If you think that impromptu looks like a relative of the adjective prompt, you're right; both are ultimately derived from the Latin promere, meaning "to bring forth, take out."
Impromptu was borrowed from French, where it meant "extemporaneously," but French speakers picked it up from the Latin phrase in promptu, a promere descendant meaning "in readiness" or "at hand."
Something that is impromptu is generally "prompted" (that English verb is from Latin promptus, of the same meaning) by an occasion that generates a response in the form of, for example, a party or a speech that has not been planned.
There is also another, much rarer descendant of promere in English: the noun promptuary, meaning "a book of ready reference."

Cornucopia

WORD OF THE DAY

cornucopia / noun / kor-nuh-KOH-pee-uh

Definition

1: a curved, hollow goat's horn or similarly shaped receptacle (such as a horn-shaped basket) that is overflowing especially with fruit and vegetables (such as gourds, ears of corn, apples, and grapes) and that is used as a decorative motif emblematic of abundance

2a: an inexhaustible store 

2b: abundance

3: a receptacle shaped like a horn or cone

Examples

"While the auction will offer a cornucopia of decorative and fine art spanning many centuries and continents, its crown jewels are the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern paintings." 

— James Reginato, Vanity Fair, Holiday 2017

"With the veritable cornucopia of fitness gurus, fad diets, weight-loss programmes, and food boot-camps present today, it's not shocking that there is an information overload on nutrition everywhere." 

— Pooja Sachin Duggal, Business World, 14 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?

Cornucopia comes from Latin cornu copiae, which translates literally as "horn of plenty." 

A traditional staple of feasts, the cornucopia is believed to represent the horn of a goat from Greek mythology. According to legend, it was from this horn that the god Zeus was fed as an infant. Later, the horn was filled with flowers and fruits, and given as a present to Zeus. 

The filled horn (or a receptacle resembling it) has long served as a traditional symbol in art and decoration to suggest a store of abundance. 

The word first appeared in English in the early 16th century; a century later, it developed the figurative sense of an overflowing supply.

Noisome

WORD OF THE DAY

noisome / adjective / NOY-sum

Definition

1: noxious, harmful

2a: offensive to the senses and especially to the sense of smell

2b: highly obnoxious or objectionable

Examples

"The streets were narrow and very dirty, the air smoky and noisome, the people mostly wretched." 

— Ken Follett, The Man From St. Petersburg, 1982

"The last two newspaper offices where I worked were based in not-so-safe or particularly pretty areas of a city, and most nights when I left work I had to breathe in the noisomearomas of swamp gas, paper mill, deteriorating sewer lines and a dog food processing plant…." 

— Jackie Torok, The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, North Carolina), 27 May 2014

Did You Know?

Noisome sounds like it might be a synonym of noisy, but it's not. Something noisome is disgusting, offensive, or harmful, often in its smell. Noisome does not come from noise, but from the Middle English word noysome, which has the same meaning as noisome. 

Noysome was formed by combining the noun noy, which means "annoyance," with the adjectival suffix -some ("characterized by a (specified) thing, quality, state, or action"). 

Noy comes from Anglo-French anui, which also means "annoyance." As you may have already guessed, the English words annoy and annoyance are also related to noisome.

Perforce

WORD OF THE DAY

perforce / adverb / per-FORSS

Definition
: by force of circumstances

Examples
"All that frantic traveling was in lieu of any compelling reason to stay home, and those many, many friendships were perforce conducted at long distance."
— Blake Bailey, The New York Times Book Review, 28 Dec. 2012

"But by making an opera about television—a source of entertainment for the Everyman—they are, perforce, creating a marriage of high and low."
— Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?
English speakers borrowed par force from Anglo-French in the 14th century. Par meant "by" (from Latin per) and the Anglo-French word force had the same meaning as its English equivalent, which was already in use by then.
At first, perforce meant quite literally "by physical coercion." That meaning is no longer used today, but it was still prevalent in William Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616):
"He rush'd into my house and took perforce my ring away," wrote the Bard in The Comedy of Errors.
The "by force of circumstances" sense of perforce had also come into use by Shakespeare's day.
In Henry IV, Part 2, we find "... your health; the which, if you give o'er to stormy passion, must perforce decay."

Henchman

WORD OF THE DAY

henchman / noun / HENCH-mun

Definition
1a: a trusted follower
1b: right-hand man
2: a political follower whose support is chiefly for personal advantage
3: a member of a gang

Examples
"The story follows the lives to two very different characters—Frank Guidry, a henchman for one of New Orleans' most powerful and vicious gangsters, and Charlotte, a woman struggling to raise her two daughters while dealing with a feckless, drunken husband."
— James D. Watts Jr., The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World, 11 Oct. 2018

"Since Mr. Mugabe's ouster, Mr. Mnangagwa has tried to remake Zimbabwe's image by portraying the government as business-friendly. He has appeared often at investors' conferences, wearing warm, colorful scarves to offset his fearsome reputation as Mr. Mugabe's former henchman."
— Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times, 30 July 2018

Did You Know?
The earliest known examples of today's word in written English show it being used as a term for a squire or a page, but the word may have seen earlier use with the meaning "groom."
It first appeared in Middle English in the 14th century and is a combination of Old English hengest ("a male horse") and man. In the mid-1700s, henchman began to be used for the personal attendant of a Scottish Highland chief.
This sense, made familiar to many English readers by Sir Walter Scott, led to the word's use in the broader sense of "right-hand man," which in turn evolved into the other meanings.

Exculpate

WORD OF THE DAY

exculpate / verb / EK-skull-payt

Definition
: to clear from alleged fault or guilt

Examples
A false lead from an ancestry site is no different than eliminating suspects through regular detective work; except people are more easily exculpated."
— Julie O'Connor, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), 13 May 2018

"But the longer and more often you misremember something, the truer it becomes. Misremembering a bad thing as less bad might liberate a survivor, but it also might exculpate a perpetrator."
— Margaret Lyons, The New York Times, 26 May 2018

Did You Know?
You need not take the blame if you're unfamiliar with the origins of exculpate, and we would be glad to enlighten you, if that's the case.
The word, which was adopted in the 17th century from Medieval Latin exculpatus, traces back to the Latin noun culpa, meaning "blame." Some other descendants of culpa in English include culpable ("meriting condemnation or blame") and inculpate ("incriminate"), as well as the considerably rarer culpatory ("accusing") and disculpate (a synonym of exculpate).
You may also be familiar with the borrowed Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as "through my fault" and is used in English to mean "a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error."

Memento

WORD OF THE DAY

memento / noun / muh-MEN-toh

Definition

1: something that serves to warn or remind

2: souvenir

Examples

The box on the shelf in her closet is filled with mementos of Julie's basketball career—awards, newspaper clippings, team photographs, and her old uniform.

"Old photos and other mementos from his father's time in the military covered the small table." 

— Amaris Castillo, The Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun, 6 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?

Memento comes from the imperative form of meminisse, a Latin verb that literally means "to remember." (The term memento mori, meaning "a reminder of mortality," translates as "remember that you must die.") 

The history of memento makes it clear where its spelling came from, but because a memento often helps one remember a particular moment, people occasionally spell the term momento. 

This is usually considered a misspelling, but it appears often enough in edited prose to have been entered in most dictionaries as an acceptable variant spelling.

Tomfoolery

WORD OF THE DAY

tomfoolery / noun / tthm-FOO-luh-ree

Definition
: playful or foolish behavior

Examples
The antics in the play itself apparently inspired tomfoolery behind the scenes as well, as cast members reported a host of practical jokes including a few on opening night.

"Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery."
— Brandy McDonnell, NewsOK.com, 1 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
In the Middle Ages, Thome Fole was a name assigned to those perceived to be of little intelligence. This eventually evolved into the spelling tomfool, which, when capitalized, also referred to a professional clown or a buffoon in a play or pageant.
The name Tom seems to have been chosen for its common-man quality, much like Joe Blow for an ordinary person or Johnny Reb for a soldier in the Confederate army, but tomfoolery need not apply strictly to actions by men.
In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), for example, Marilla Cuthbert complains of Anne: "She's gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or her duties."

Recalcitrant

WORD OF THE DAY

recalcitrant / adjective / rih-KAL-suh-trunt

Definition
1: obstinately defiant of authority or restraint
2a: difficult to manage or operate
2b: not responsive to treatment
2c: resistant

Examples
The magazine, aimed at parents and caregivers of young children, will include the latest in child development science as well as practical information, like tricks for persuading even the most recalcitrant toddler to cooperate.

"But the reforms are stalled, held back by recalcitrant bureaucrats loathe to give up their authority and perks…."
— William M. LeoGrande, Newsweek, 11 May 2018

Did You Know?
Long before any human was dubbed "recalcitrant" in English (that first occurred in the 18th century), there were stubborn mules (and horses) kicking back their heels.
The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it: recalcitrare, which literally means "to kick back." (Its root calc-, meaning "heel," is also the root of calcaneus, the large bone of the heel in humans.)
Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded—as attested by various Latin words meaning "stubborn"—but it wasn't until later that writers of Late Latin applied recalcitrare and its derivative adjective to humans who were stubborn as mules.

Admonish

WORD OF THE DAY

admonish / verb / ad-MAH-nish

Definition

1a: to indicate duties or obligations to 

1b: to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner

2: to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement to

3: to say (something) as advice or a warning

Examples

The teacher admonished the students to not speak over one another.

"Ringo Starr rocked, he rolled, he sang, he spoke, he admonished us all to embrace peace and love, not as a tired cliché, but as a tool for the times." 

— John W. Barry, The Poughkeepsie (New York) Journal, 21 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?

We won't admonish you if you don't know the origins of today's word—its current meanings have strayed slightly from its history. Admonish was borrowed in the 14th century (via Anglo-French amonester) from Vulgar Latin admonestāre, which itself is probably a derivative of admonestus, the past participle of the Latin verb admonēre, meaning "to warn."  

Admonēre, in turn, was formed by the combination of the prefix ad- and monēre, "to warn." 

Other descendants of monēre in English include monitor, monitory ("giving a warning"), premonition, and an archaic synonym of admonish, monish. Incidentally, admonish has a number of other synonyms as well, including reprove, rebuke, reprimand, reproach, and chide.

Multitudinous

WORD OF THE DAY

multitudinous / adjective /mul-tuh-TOO-duh-nus

Definition
1a: including a multitude of individuals
1b: populous
2: existing in a great multitude
3: existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects

Examples
The author's appearance is expected to attract a multitudinous gathering that will fill the entire auditorium.

"First and foremost are the hiking trails, which while multitudinous and beautiful, are remarkably hard to navigate."
— Jamie Hale, The Oregonian, 24 June 2018

Did You Know?
Multitudinous is one of many English words that make use of the combining form multi-, from Latin multus, meaning "much" or "many."
Multicolor, multifunction, and multimillionaire are just a few of the others. Multitudinous is the kind of highly expressive word that you can rely upon when you want something a little more emphatic than plain old numerous.
Among its synonyms are multiple and multifold, two more members of the multi- family.

Palmary

WORD OF THE DAY

palmary / adjective / PAL-muh-ree

Definition
: outstanding, best

Examples
A daughter of missionaries, Pearl S. Buck wrote many works about Chinese life and culture, with her palmary novel, The Good Earth, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

"The palmary case of telling someone what to do is to issue, for instance, the simple imperative 'Go away'—an utterance which may or may not have the effect of making its addressee go away, but at any rate tells him to."
— G. J. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy, 1967

Did You Know?
It was the ancient Romans who first used palmarius to describe someone or something extraordinary. Palmarius literally translates as "deserving the palm." But what does that mean exactly?
Was it inspired by palms of hands coming together in applause? That would be a good guess, but the direct inspiration for palmarius was the palm leaf given to a victor in a sports competition.
That other palm—the one on the hand—is loosely related. The Romans thought the palm tree's leaves resembled an outstretched palm of the hand; they thus used their word palma for both meanings, just as we do with palm in English.
Now, when we award a noun with the modifier palmary, it signifies that thing as the choicest among possible examples.

Gridiron

WORD OF THE DAY

gridiron / noun / GRID-eye-ern

Definition
1: a grate for broiling food
2: something consisting of or covered with a network
3: a football field


Examples
"Despite his prowess on the gridiron, he received little attention from Division-I football programs."
— Tom Layberger, Forbes, 14 Sept. 2018

"[Thomas] Jefferson wanted wide streets, lots of land reserved for public space, and a rectangular pattern of streets. L'Enfant insisted on radial avenues that intersect a gridiron of streets at odd angles. Many city planners believe that if Jefferson's plan had been adopted, there would be fewer traffic problems in Washington, D.C., today."
— Ann Feetham, Cobblestone, 1 Sept. 2012

Did You Know?
Modern gridirons are covered in football players when they're in use, but the original gridirons were more likely to be covered with meat or fish; they were metal gratings used for broiling food over an open fire.
In Middle English, such a grating was called a gredil, a root that gave modern English both gridiron and griddle. How did gridiron become associated with football?
That happened in the late 1800s, when a white grid pattern was added to football fields to help enforce new rules about how many yards a team had to gain to keep possession of the ball.
From high up in the stands, the lines made the playing fields look like cooking gridirons.

Umbrage

WORD OF THE DAY

umbrage / noun / UM-brij

Definition
1: a feeling of pique or resentment at some often fancied slight or insult
2a: shady branches
2b: foliage
3: shade, shadow
4a: an indistinct indication : vague suggestion
4b: hint
4c: a reason for doubt
4d: suspicion

Examples
"Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of friendly umbrage."
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849

"If you can find one of these big roosts, the birds are quite entertaining to watch. When they settle in for the evening, they're noisy and quarrelsome and seem to take umbrage at many things."
— Jim Wright, The Daily Record (Morristown, New Jersey), 26 July 2018

Did You Know?
"Deare amber lockes gave umbrage to her face." This line from a poem by William Drummond, published in 1616, uses umbrage in its original sense of "shade or shadow," a meaning shared by its Latin source, umbra. (Umbella, the diminutive form of umbra, means "a sunshade or parasol" in Latin and is an ancestor of our word umbrella.)
Beginning in the early 17th century, umbrage was also used to mean "a shadowy suggestion or semblance of something," as when William Shakespeare, in Hamlet, wrote, "His semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more."
In the same century, umbrage took on the pejorative senses "a shadow of suspicion cast on someone" and "displeasure, offense"; the latter is commonly used today in the phrases "give umbrage" or "take umbrage."

Mordant

WORD OF THE DAY

mordant / adjective / MOR-dunt

Definition
1a: biting and caustic in thought, manner, or style
1b: incisive
2: acting as a mordant (as in dyeing)
3: burning, pungent

Examples
"When Clementine tried to tell him that the result might well be a blessing in disguise, [Winston Churchill] maintained his normal standards of mordant wit by replying that 'at the moment it's certainly very well disguised.'"
— Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, 2001

"For Lucas Hedges, acting is a kind of ongoing education in how to live in the world. Take his performance as a troubled and mordant young man who's just lost his father in Kenneth Lonergan's gorgeously melancholy 2016 film Manchester by the Sea, which Hedges calls 'the most formative role of my life.'"
— Adam Green, Vogue, 24 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?
The etymology of mordant certainly has some bite to it. That word, which came to modern English through Middle French, ultimately derives from the Latin verb mordēre, which means "to bite."
In modern parlance, mordant usually suggests a wit that is used with deadly effectiveness. Mordēre puts the bite into other English terms, too. For instance, that root gave us the tasty morsel ("a tiny bite").
But nibble too many of those and you'll likely be hit by another mordēre derivative: remorse ("guilt for past wrongs"), which comes from Latin remordēre, meaning "to bite again."

Connive

WORD OF THE DAY

connive / verb / kuh-NYVE

Definition

1: to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something one ought to oppose

2a : to be indulgent or in secret sympathy 

2b: wink

2c: to cooperate secretly or have a secret understanding

3 : conspire, intrigue

Examples

"Arnold worked out a plan not only to turn over the fort and its men to the British but at the same time to connive at the British capture of George Washington." 

— Gordon S. Wood, The Weekly Standard, 1 June 2018

"Officers who connive and cheat to pad their paychecks aren't just stealing money. They're also eroding the crucial bond between the public and those sworn to protect and serve them." 

— The Boston Globe, 16 July 2018

Did You Know?

Connive may not seem like a troublesome term, but it was to Wilson Follett, a usage critic who lamented that the word "was undone during the Second World War, when restless spirits felt the need of a new synonym for plotting, bribing, spying, conspiring, engineering a coup, preparing a secret attack." 

Follett thought connive should only mean "to wink at" or "to pretend ignorance." 

Those senses are closer to the Latin ancestor of the word: connive comes from the Latin connivēre, which means "to close the eyes" and which is descended from -nivēre, a form akin to the Latin verb nictare, meaning "to wink." 

But many English speakers disagreed, and the "conspire" sense is now the word's most widely used meaning.