Garble

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


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


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


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

Immense

WORD OF THE DAY

immense / ih-MENSS / adjective

Definition

1a: marked by greatness especially in size or degree 

1b: transcending ordinary means of measurement

2: supremely good

Examples

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

— Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 29 May 2017

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

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

Did You Know?

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

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

Schadenfreude

WORD OF THE DAY


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


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


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


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