Exegesis

WORD OF THE DAY

exegesis / noun / ek-suh-JEE-sis 
 
Definition
1: exposition, explanation
2: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text

Examples

"He has … a real gift for exegesis, unpacking poems in language that is nearly as eloquent as the poet's, and as clear as faithfulness allows."
— Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 2 May 2016

"Every participant was expected to read a passage from his/her holy text. And then, rather than a scholarly interpretation or exegesis rooted in centuries of tradition, they share what they personally understood from it."
— Ali R. Cadir, The Houston Chronicle, 22 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?
Theological scholars have long been preoccupied with interpreting the meanings of various passages in the Bible. In fact, because of the sacred status of the Bible in both Judaism and Christianity, biblical interpretation has played a crucial role in both of those religions throughout their histories.
English speakers have used the word exegesis—a descendant of the Greek term exēgeisthai, meaning "to explain" or "to interpret"—to refer to explanations of Scripture since the early 17th century. Nowadays, however, academic writers interpret all sorts of texts, and exegesis is no longer associated mainly with the Bible.

Tenebrous

WORD OF THE DAY
tenebrous /adjective / TEN-uh-brus 
 
Definition
1a: shut off from the light
1b: dark, murky
2a: hard to understand
2b: obscure
3 : causing gloom


Examples
"Stay close to me," said my brother as we walked through the tenebrous alley alongside the apartment building.


"HBO's newest critical hit, which … centers on a serial-killer case in a story that unfolds over 17 years, is haunting and tenebrous, with compelling acting, brilliant dialogue and ethereal scenery."
— Robert Zullo, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9 Mar. 2014


Did You Know?
Tenebrous means "obscure" or "murky," but there's nothing unclear about its history. Etymologists know that the word derives from the Latin noun tenebrae, which means "darkness."
Tenebrous has been used in English since the 15th century, and in the 20th century it was joined by some interesting relations. Tenebrionid is the name of a nocturnal beetle that is usually dark-colored and is also called a darkling beetle.
Tenebrism refers to a style of painting—associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio—in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by concentrated light.

Validate

WORD OF THE DAY

validate / verb VAL-uh-dayt

Definition

1a: to make legally valid 

1b: ratify

1c: to grant official sanction to by marking

1d: to confirm the validity of (an election); also : to declare (a person) elected

2a: to support or corroborate on a sound or authoritative basis

2b: to recognize, establish, or illustrate the worthiness or legitimacy of

Examples

"Reaching home, I anxiously handed my report card to Mother. Validating my angst, she took it and reached into a battered shoebox containing the report cards of my older sister Tanja." 

— Charles van der Horst, The Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina), 6 Nov. 2017

"Recognizing outstanding teachers establishes a culture that rewards excellence in teaching and validates the work of the teacher. It gives students a sense of pride in their teachers, displays teachers as positive role models, and encourages students to think about teaching as a career." 

— The Yankton (South Dakota) Daily Press & Dakotan, 11 Jan. 2018

Did You Know?

Validate, confirm, corroborate, substantiate, verify, and authenticate all mean to attest to the truth or validity of something. Validate implies establishing validity by authoritative affirmation or factual proof ("a hypothesis validated by experiments"). 

Confirm implies the removing of doubts by an authoritative statement or indisputable fact ("evidence that confirmed the reports"). 

Corroborate suggests the strengthening of what is already partly established ("witnesses who corroborated the story"). 

Substantiate implies the offering of evidence that sustains the contention ("claims that have yet to be substantiated"). 

Verify implies the establishing of correspondence of actual facts or details with those proposed or guessed at ("statements that have been verified"). 

Authenticate implies establishing genuineness by legal or official documents or expert opinion ("handwriting experts who authenticated the diaries").

Meld

WORD OF THE DAY
meld / verb / MELD 
 
Definition
1: to blend or mix together
2: merge


Examples
"Right away you perceive a chorus of instruments—trumpet, piano, saxophone and vibes—that have acquired the ability to meld their individual voices into a complementary, unified sound that delights the ears."
— Ralph A. Miriello, The Huffington Post, 1 Jan. 2018


"Formed in Limerick, Ireland, at the end of the 1980s, The Cranberries became international stars in the 1990s with hits including 'Zombie' and 'Linger' that melded alternative rock edge with Celtic-infused pop tunefulness."
— The Associated Press, 15 Jan. 2018


Did You Know?
As a verb meaning "to blend or merge," meld dates only to the first half of the 20th century. In its early days, the word attracted some unfavorable attention. Those who didn't like it tended to perceive it as a misuse of an older meld meaning "to declare or announce (a card or cards) for a score in a card game" (such as pinochle or gin rummy).
The more recent meld, a blend of melt and weld, was an entirely new coinage suggesting a smooth and thorough blending of two or more things into a single, homogeneous whole. The word is no longer controversial.

Plangent

WORD OF THE DAY
plangent / adjective / PLAN-junt 
 
Definition
1 : having a loud reverberating sound
2 : having an expressive and especially plaintive quality


Examples
The campers were awoken by the plangent howl of a coyote off in the distance.


"The music makes for exciting listening and shows Britten's mastery of choral music with each movement a contrast to the next. The movements range from plainsong, to plangent solos, through smooth polyphony and sections with angular rhythms and harmonies."
— The Mountain Democrat (Placerville, California), 1 Dec. 2017


Did You Know?
Plangent adds power to our poetry and prose: the pounding of waves, the beat of wings, the tolling of a bell, the throbbing of the human heart, a lover's knocking at the door—all have been described as plangent.
The word plangent traces back to the Latin verb plangere, which has two meanings. The first of those meanings, "to strike or beat," was sometimes used by Latin speakers in reference to striking one's breast in grief. This, in turn, led to the verb's second meaning: "to lament."
The sense division carried over to the Latin adjective plangens and then into English, giving us the two distinct meanings of plangent: "pounding" and "expressive of melancholy."

Demarcate

WORD OF THE DAY
demarcate / verb / dih-MAHR-kayt 
 
Definition
1a: to fix or define the limits of
1b: delimit
2a: to set apart
2b: distinguish


Examples
Treaty negotiations are underway, and both parties have agreed to accept whatever boundaries are demarcated in that document.


"These so-called stelae, some roughly 10 stories high with intricately carved stone, are thought to have demarcated royal burial places."
— Marcus Eliason, The Denver Post, 14 Jan. 2018


Did You Know?
Demarcate is set apart by its unique history. Scholars think it may have descended from the Italian verb marcare ("to mark"), which is itself of Germanic origin (the Old High German word for boundary, marha, is a relative).
Marcare is the probable source of the Spanish marcar (also "to mark"), from which comes the Spanish demarcar ("to fix the boundary of").
In 1494, a Spanish noun, demarcación, was used to name the meridian dividing New World territory between Spain and Portugal. Later (about 1730), English speakers began calling this boundary the "line of demarcation," and eventually we began applying that phrase to other dividing lines as well. Demarcation, in turn, gave rise to demarcate in the early 19th century.

Sanguine

WORD OF THE DAY

sanguine / adjective / SANG-gwun

Definition

1: bloodred

2a: consisting of or relating to blood

2b: bloodthirsty, sanguinary

2c: ruddy

3a: having blood as the predominating bodily humor

3b: having the bodily conformation and temperament held characteristic of such predominance and marked by sturdiness, ruddy color, and cheerfulness

4: confident, optimistic

Examples

The coach insisted that he was sanguine about his team's chances in the playoffs, even though his star player was injured.

"Some of us hear the term AI [artificial intelligence] and picture a dystopian future where people lose jobs and control to robots who possess artificial—and superior—intelligence to human beings. Others are more sanguine about our ability to control and harness technology to achieve more and greater things." 

— Georgene Huang, Forbes, 27 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

If you're the sort of cheery soul who always looks on the bright side no matter what happens, you have a sanguine personality. Sanguine describes one of the temperaments that ancient and medieval scholars believed was caused by an abundance of one of the four humors (another is phlegmatic, an adjective that describes the calm, cool, and collected among us). The word sanguine derives from sanguineus, Latin for "blood" or "bloody," and over the more than 600 years it's been in use it has had meanings ranging from "bloodthirsty" and "bloodred" to today's most common one, "confident, optimistic."

Refection

WORD OF THE DAY

refection / noun / rih-FEK-shun

Definition

1a: refreshment of mind, spirit, or body; especially 

1b: nourishment

2a: the taking of refreshment

2b: food and drink together 

2c: repast

Did You Know?

Whether you sit down for nourishment or sustenance, aliment or pabulum, a meal or a repast, you are unlikely to encounter a shortage of English words for food or the partaking of food. 

Refection is just such a word. It was first borrowed by Middle English (as refeccioun) from Anglo-French refectiun, which in turn was derived from Latin refectio (meaning "refreshment" or "repairing"). 

Refectiocomes from the verb reficere ("to remake, renew, or restore"), a combination of the prefix re- ("again") and the verb facere ("to make or do"). Refection is not only applied to food, however. It has been used to describe many means of restoring or refreshing one's body, and of mental and spiritual sustenance as well.

Examples

"… I should prefer that even in the 'Children's Houses' which are situated in tenements and from which little ones, being at home, can go up to eat with the family, school refectionshould be instituted." 

— Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, 1912

"The transparency of the venue is a testament to its promise of offering 'fresh and healthy' choices—being able to intimately view the process of preparation and see the fresh ingredients used to concoct your food will make you feel reassured that you'll be biting into a crisp, original, unprocessed refection." 

— Vasudha Diojode, The Daily Californian(University of California, Berkeley), 19 June 2014

Recuse

WORD OF THE DAY

recuse /verb / rih-KYOOZ

Definition

1: to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case; broadly 

2: to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest

Examples

Because she was a frequent customer at the plaintiff's shop, the judge recused herself from the case.

"If HB 1225 becomes law in its current form, any county official who has an agreement with a wind developer must recuse himself or herself from any matter that involves the ownership, operation, construction or location of a wind power device in the county." 

— Travis Weik, The Courier-Times (New Castle, Indiana), 14 Jan. 2018

Did You Know?

Recuse is derived from the Middle French word recuser, which comes from the Latin recusare, meaning "to refuse." English speakers began using recuse with the meaning "to refuse or reject" in the 14th century. By the 15th century, the term had acquired the meaning "to challenge or object to (a judge)." 

The current legal use of recuse as a term specifically meaning "to disqualify (oneself) as a judge" didn't come into frequent use until the 19th century. Broader applications soon followed from this sense—you can now recuse yourself from such things as debates and decisions as well as court cases.

Nebbish

WORD OF THE DAY

nebbish / noun / NEB-ish

Definition

: a timid, meek, or ineffectual person

Examples

Lyle may have come across as a nebbish, but he stood up to the bully who gave him a hard time—and the students in the cafeteria who witnessed the confrontation showed their support.

"Arthur Darvill is known to 'Doctor Who' fans as the nebbish-turned-stalwart-hero Rory Williams and to CW superhero fans as Rip Hunter, organizer of the 'Legends of Tomorrow' on that series." 

— Mike Suchcicki, The Pensacola (Florida) News Journal, 26 Nov. 2017

Did You Know?

"From what I read ... it looks like Pa isn't anything like the nebbish Ma is always making him out to be…." Sounds like poor Pa got a bum rap, at least according to a 1951 book review that appeared in The New York Times. The unfortunate Pa unwittingly demonstrates much about the etymology of nebbish, which derives from the Yiddish nebekh, meaning "poor" or "unfortunate." 

As you might expect for a timid word like nebbish, the journey from Yiddish to English wasn't accomplished in a single bold leap of spelling and meaning. It originally entered English in the 1800s as the adjective nebbich, meaning "innocuous or ineffectual." Nebbich (sometimes spelled nebekh) has also been used as an interjection to express dismay, pity, sympathy, or regret, but that use is far less widespread and is not included in most general-use English dictionaries.

Frolic

WORD OF THE DAY

frolic / verb / FRAH-lik

Definition

1: to amuse oneself : make merry

2a: to play and run about happily 

2b: romp

Examples

"Every year, Trolley Dances takes us on a unique journey.… Audiences are introduced to new, site-specific dance performances at stops along the trolley line…. In years past, for instance, dancers have frolicked in public fountains, executed seductive tango moves in a narrow alley and rolled down grassy slopes." 

— Marcia Manna, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Sept. 2017

"When we ask our viewers to send us photos of the snow, we always get the usual—kids, dogs, porches—but this year, one viewer stepped it up a notch. Oak Island resident Wendy Brumagin was able to capture a beautiful, and what some might consider rare, image of a coyote frolicking in the snow." 

— ABC11.com (Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina), 8 Jan. 2018

Did You Know?

Frolic is a playful word with a happy history. It traces back to the Dutch word vroolijk ("merry"), which in turn evolved from a Middle Dutch combination of vro ("happy") and the adjectival suffix -lijc ("-ly"). Vro is related to the Old Frisian and Old High German fro, which also means "happy." (It is also a distant relative of Old English frogga, from which Modern English derived frog.) 

When frolic first entered English in the early-mid 16th century, it was used as an adjective meaning "merry" or "full of fun." The verb came into use by the end of that century, followed a few decades later by a noun use, as in "an evening of fun and frolic."

Nuts

WORD OF THE DAY

nuts / adjective / NUTS

Definition

1: enthusiastic, keen

2: insane, crazy

Examples

"On Friday nights, when my kids … were younger, we would sit and watch a film. It's a fantastic feeling when you see them getting drawn into something you love. My husband, Phil, and I are nuts about West Wing, and we've gradually got my son into that as well." 

— Rebecca Front, quoted in Good Housekeeping (UK), April 2016

"I think the most irresponsible thing I did was invest in a company that was going nowhere.… It kept falling apart. People kept telling me I was nuts. I kept pushing forward." 

— Jessica Alba, quoted in Cosmopolitan, 1 Mar. 2016

Did You Know?

The informal adjective nuts dates to the early 1900s but developed from an earlier 17th-century slang meaning often found in phrases like "nuts to me" and "nuts for me," where it referred to a source of delight, as in this quote from English satirist Jonathan Swift's A Journal to Stella (1766): "Why, we had not one word of quarrel; only he railed at me when I was gone: and Lord Keeper and Treasurer teased me for a week. It was nuts to them; a serious thing with a vengeance." 

The use likely had something to do with the taste of the dry fruit or seed since early figurative examples of the noun include the expression "nuts and cheese." Adjectival use, typically describing enthusiasm about or fondness for someone or something came about in the late 18th century. 

In Britain, the term was often used in the phrase "dead nuts on," as "She is dead nuts on the boy next door." The notion that enthusiasm and infatuation often lead to obsession may have played a role in the early 20th-century senses of nuts denoting extreme devotion, as in "nuts about baseball," and functioning as a synonym of "insane."

Adust

WORD OF THE DAY
adust / adjective / uh-DUST 
 
Definition
: scorched, burned




Examples
The adust landscape of volcanic rock and sand can be particularly beautiful at sunset.




"These arid and adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some antediluvian animals, … had to all appearance come out from this long tempest of trial unscathed and unharmed."
— Thomas De Quincey, Revolt of the Tartars, 1837


Did You Know?
Adust comes from Latin adustus, the past participle of adūrere ("to set fire to"), a verb formed from the Latin prefix ad- and the verb ūrere ("to burn").
It entered the English language in the early 15th century as a medical term related to the four bodily humors—black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile—which were believed at the time to determine a person's health and temperament.
Adust was used to describe a condition of the humors in which they supposedly became heated or combusted. Adust black bile in particular was believed to be a source of melancholy.
The association with melancholy gave rise to a sense of adust meaning "of a gloomy appearance or disposition," but that sense is now considered archaic.

Mnemonic

WORD OF THE DAY

mnemonic / adjective / nih-MAH-nik

Definition

1: assisting or intended to assist memory; also : of or relating to a technique of improving the memory

2: of or relating to memory

Examples

James taught his students the mnemonic sentence "King Philip Came Over For Good Spaghetti" to help them remember the levels of biological classification (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species).

"Let's illustrate this point with a simple exercise using the elementary school mnemonic'Every Good Boy Deserves Fun.' Teachers use this tool to help students learn the letters of the musical staff: EGBDF." 

— Richard Klasco and Lewis H. Glinert, The Washington Post, 14 Jan. 2018

Did You Know?

The word mnemonic derives from the Greek mnēmōn ("mindful"), which itself comes from the verb mimnēskesthai, meaning "to remember." (In classical mythology, Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, is the goddess of memory.) 

In addition to its adjectival use, mnemonic is also a noun meaning "a mnemonic device," and the plural from mnemonics is used in the sense of "a technique of improving the memory." 

As with many classical borrowings, we retained the double initial consonant, but not the pronunciation of both, since the combination doesn't occur naturally in English (pneumonia is a similar case). If this spelling strikes you as particularly fiendish to remember, keep this mnemonic in mind: although the word's pronunciation begins with an n sound, the spelling begins with an m, as in memory.

Embargo

WORD OF THE DAY
embargo / noun / im-BAHR-goh 
 
Definition
1  an order of a government prohibiting the departure of commercial ships from its ports
2: a legal prohibition on commerce
3: stoppage, impediment
3b: prohibition
4: an order by a common carrier or public regulatory agency prohibiting or restricting freight transportation


Examples
"The embargo has forced freight companies to find new routes. Indian food suppliers, for example, used to make a stop in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Now they fly their products on cargo planes direct to Qatar."
— Zahraa Alkhalisi, CNN Money, 23 June 2017


"The Trump administration … tightened the economic embargo on Cuba, restricting Americans from access to hotels, stores and other businesses tied to the Cuban military."
— Gardiner Harris, The New York Times, 8 Nov. 2017


Did You Know?
Embargoes may be put in place for any number of reasons. For instance, a government may place a trade embargo against another country to express its disapproval with that country's policies. But governments are not the only bodies that can place embargoes.
A publisher, for example, could place an embargo on a highly anticipated book to prevent stores from selling it before its official release date. The word embargo, dating from around the year 1600, derives via Spanish embargar from Vulgar Latin imbarricare, formed from the prefix im- and the noun barra ("bar").

Carp

WORD OF THE DAY
carp / verb / KAHRP 
 
Definition
: to find fault or complain querulously


Examples
"The play begins in 1619, three years after his death, when a few of his former colleagues are carping about the pirated versions of his plays now cluttering London stages and bookstalls."
— Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, 25 July 2017


"Cynthia began her work day with a contentious discussion involving a contract dispute.... From there she went right into a staff meeting where a number of her employees carped about minor operational issues as if they were monumental. At various junctures, she found herself holding her breath and gritting her teeth."
— Philip Chard, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 25 June 2017


Did You Know?
You might guess that today's word is a descendant of the noun carp, referring to a type of fish. That's a reasonable speculation, but the words are unrelated. Both entered the English language in the 15th century but from different sources.
Whereas the fish's name traces back to Latin carpa, the verb is of Scandinavian origin: it may be related to the Icelandic verb karpa, meaning "to dispute" or "to wrangle," and beyond that perhaps to Old Norse karp, meaning "boasting" or "arrogance."
There is a noun carp that is related to the Scandinavian verb, however: it means "complaint," and it dates to that same century.

Logomachy

WORD OF THE DAY
logomachy / noun / loh-GAH-muh-kee 
 
Definition
1: a dispute over or about words
2: a controversy marked by verbiage


Examples
"All politics is local, and that goes double for school politics. But just what does 'local' mean? Georgians are going to have an argument about that word between now and the November referendum on the proposed Opportunity School District. A great logomachy over localism, if you like."
— Kyle Wingfield, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11 Sept. 2016


"Not that anyone could accuse this city of lacking logophiles—that's 'lovers of words,' if you have to ask. But where could word warriors go to engage in spirited logomachy?"
— Ron Fletcher, The Boston Globe, 29 Apr. 2007


Did You Know?
It doesn't take much to start people arguing about words, but there's no quarrel about the origin of logomachy. It comes from the Greek roots logos, meaning "word" or "speech," and machesthai, meaning "to fight," and it entered English in the mid-1500s.
If you're a word enthusiast, you probably know that logos is the root of many English words (monologue, neologism, logic, and most words ending in -logy, for example), but what about other derivatives of machesthai? Actually, this is a tough one even for word whizzes.
Only a few very rare English words come from machesthai. Here are two of them: heresimach ("an active opponent of heresy and heretics") and naumachia ("an ancient Roman spectacle representing a naval battle").

Spavined

WORD OF THE DAY
spavined / adjective / SPAV-ind 
 
Definition
1: affected with swelling
2a: old and decrepit
2b: over-the-hill


Examples
The team is sadly spavined, and the new coaching staff will have to look to rebuild over the next couple of seasons.


"Large and medium-sized canvases in varying stages of completion covered most of the wall space in the studio, a long, windowless room that was once an auto-body shop, and the floor was a palimpsest of rags, used paper palettes, brushes, spavined art books, … and other debris."
— Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, The New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2017


Did You Know?
"His horse [is] … troubled with the lampas, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins...." Petruchio's poor, decrepit horse in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is beset by just about every known equine malady, including a kind of swelling in the mouth (lampas), skin lesions (fashions), tumors on his fetlocks (windgalls), and bony enlargements on his hocks (spavins).
The spavins alone can be enough to render a horse lame and useless.
In the 17th century, "spavined" horses brought to mind other things that are obsolete, out-of-date, or long past their prime, and we began using the adjective figuratively. Spavined still serves a purpose, despite its age. It originated in Middle English as spaveyned and can be traced to the Middle French word for spavin, which was espavain.

Divest

WORD OF THE DAY

divest / verb / dye-VEST  

  

Definition

1a: to deprive or dispossess especially of property, authority, or title

1b: to undress or strip especially of clothing, ornament, or equipment

1c: rid, free

2: to take away from a person

Examples

The court's ruling does not divest the family of their ability to use the property.

"A news release went out from Governor Andrew Cuomo's office, saying that New York was going to divest its vast pension-fund investments in fossil fuels." 

— Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2017

Did You Know?

Divest is one of many English words that come from the Latin verb vestire ("to clothe") and ultimately from the noun vestis ("clothing, garment"). Others include vest, vestment, invest, and travesty. 

Divest and its older form devest can mean "to unclothe" or "to remove the clothing of," but the word had broader applications even when it was first being used in the 16th and 17th centuries. 

In the opening scene of Shakespeare's King Lear, Lear uses the term to mean "rid oneself of" or "put aside":

"Tell me, my daughters

(Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state),

Which of you shall we say doth love us most?"

In addition to clothing, one can be divested of power, authority, possessions, or burdens.

Preternatural

WORD OF THE DAY
preternatural / adjective / pree-ter-NATCH-uh-rul 
 
Definition
1: existing outside of nature
2a: exceeding what is natural or regular
2b: extraordinary
3a: inexplicable by ordinary means; especially
3b: psychic


Examples
"[Steven] Spielberg has ridden his preternatural talent to a career that has brought in nearly $10 billion at the box office, around $3 billion more than his nearest competitor. He's the ideal of a Hollywood director."
— Ryan Bort, Newsweek, 29 Sept. 2017


"He has an almost preternatural emotional intelligence; when we meet for the second time I give him a hug, and he calls me out on it: 'What's up with that hug? That didn't have any feeling! Where's my hug?'"
— Allison Samuels, Wired, February 2017


Did You Know?
Preternatural derives from the Latin phrase praeter naturam, which means "beyond nature." Medieval Latin scholars rendered the term as praeternaturalis, and that form inspired the modern English version.
Unusual things are sometimes considered positive and sometimes negative, and throughout its history preternatural has been used to refer to both exceptionally good things and unnaturally evil ones.
In its earliest documented uses in the 1500s, it tended to emphasize the strange, ominous, or foreboding, but by the 1700s, people were using it more benignly to refer to fascinating supernatural (or even heavenly) phenomena. Nowadays, people regularly use it to describe the remarkable abilities of exceptional humans.