Stentorian

WORD OF THE DAY

stentorian / adjective / sten-TOR-ee-un

Definition

: extremely loud

Examples

"'Let it Be' … was uncannily similar to 'Bridge Over Troubled Water,' not only in sentiment, but even to its churchy flavor. 'They're both very gospely songs,' [David] Wills says. 'I think 1968 was a very turbulent year … and in 1969 there was this life-affirming achievement of going to the moon. So I think that was in the zeitgeist, those stentorian, stately gospel piano-based songs.'" 

— Jim Beckerman, NorthJersey.com, 14 May 2020

"'Laughing together is as close as you can get without touching,' I wrote in my first book…. Laughter has always been the best medicine; I wasn't exactly making any boldly original statement almost three decades ago. I wasn't expecting a MacArthur grant. But what I expected even less … was that the not-touching part of my line would eventually be part of a stentorian, global prescription to combat COVID-19." 

— Gina Barreca, The Bedford (Pennsylvania) Gazette, 23 Mar 2020

Did You Know?

The Greek herald Stentor was known for having a voice that came through loud and clear. In fact, in the Iliad, Homer described Stentor as a man whose voice was as loud as that of fifty men together. 

Stentor's powerful voice made him a natural choice for delivering announcements and proclamations to the assembled Greek army during the Trojan War, and it also made his name a byword for any person with a loud, strong voice. 

Both the noun stentor and the related adjective stentorian pay homage to the big-voiced warrior, and both have been making noise in English since the early 17th century.

Obtain

WORD OF THE DAY

obtain / verb / ub-TAYN 

Definition

1: to gain or attain usually by planned action or effort

2a: to be generally recognized or established 

2b: prevail

Examples

The experiment was designed to obtain more accurate data about weather patterns.

"By time of competition, [NHL deputy commissioner Bill] Daly said, the league will test players every night and obtain results by the time they report to the rink the next morning." 

— Matt Porter, The Boston Globe, 26 May 2020

Did You Know?

Obtain, which was adopted into English in the 15th century, comes to us via Anglo-French from the Latin obtinēre, meaning "to hold on to, possess." 

Obtinēre was itself formed by the combination of ob-, meaning "in the way," and the verb tenēre, meaning "to hold." In its earliest uses, obtain often implied a conquest or a successful victory in battle, but it is now used for any attainment through planned action or effort. 

The verb tenēre has incontestably prevailed in the English language, providing us with such common words as abstain, contain, detain, sustain, and, perhaps less obviously, the adjectives tenable and tenacious.

Farrago

WORD OF THE DAY

farrago / noun / fuh-RAH-goh 

Definition

1: a confused mixture 

2: hodgepodge

Examples

"Combining these plots is a terrible idea for multiple reasons. One is simply logistical; the fusion turns two improbable but engaging stories into a ludicrous farrago." 

— Laura Miller, Slate, 8 Nov. 2019

"Although it's hard to know anything for sure about North Korea, the fertilizer-plant photo suggests the reporting about Kim over the past few weeks was a farrago of misinformation, non-information, half speculation and outright guessing." 

— Paul Farhi, The Washington Post, 5 May 2020

Did You Know?

Farrago might seem an unlikely relative of farina (the name for the mealy breakfast cereal), but the two terms have their roots in the same Latin noun. 

Both derive from far, the Latin name for spelt (a type of grain). In Latin, farrago meant "mixed fodder"—cattle feed, that is. 

It was also used more generally to mean "mixture." When it was adopted into English in the early 1600s, farrago retained the "mixture" sense of its ancestor. 

Today, we often use it for a jumble or medley of disorganized, haphazard, or even nonsensical ideas or elements.