Word Of The Day

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LOTUS-EATER noun (loh-tuh s-ee-ter)

noun
1. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer.
2. Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi.

Quotes
Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater's dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-color box and easel--these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight.
--*O. Henry,*"Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches," Whirligigs, 1910

The mood of transcendent ease made me feel as blissful as a lotus-eater, as though I were experiencing a slow afternoon in eternity.
--*Lawrence Millman,*"Yap Magic," Islands, May–June 1999


Origin
In book 9 of the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the story of being blown off course for nine days as he was rounding Cape Malea (the southern tip of the Peloponnesus) westward toward Ithaca, his home island. On the tenth day Odysseus and his companions landed on an unnamed island that the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century b.c.) located on the Libyan coast. The Greek historian Polybius (2nd century b.c.) specifically identified the island as Meninx (now Djerba) off the Tunisian coast. The Greek noun lōtós “lotus” in ancient times referred to several different herbs, plants, shrubs, and trees. One of these, the shrub Ziziphus lotus, is often thought to be the lotus of the Odyssey. Lotus-eater entered English in the 17th century.

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SALAAM noun (suh-lahm)

noun
1. a salutation meaning “peace,” used especially in Islamic countries.
2. a very low bow or obeisance, especially with the palm of the right hand placed on the forehead.
verb
1. to salute with a salaam.

Quotes
And the black-birds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting by whisper with their wings, 'salaam.' Peace and salaam!
--*Ameen Rihani,*The Book of Khalid, 1911

"Salaam aleikum" (Peace be with you), I said, and sat down.
--*Rory Stewart,*The Places in Between, 2004


Origin
Salaam is the most common English spelling of the Arabic noun salām “peace.” Salaam is closely related to the Hebrew shalom (šālōm), both coming from the common Semitic noun šalām “peace, well-being” (from the root šlm “to be whole”). Both Arabic and Hebrew use “peace” in their formulas of greeting: the complete Arabic formula is as-salāmu ʿalaykum “peace to you”; the kindred Hebrew formula is shālōm ʿalēkhem. Salaam entered English in the 17th century.

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FUSILLADE noun (fyoo.suh.leyd)

noun
1. a general discharge or outpouring of anything: a fusillade of questions.
2. a simultaneous or continuous discharge of firearms.
verb
1. to attack or shoot by a fusillade.

Quotes
During this unprecedented fusillade of blows the Gangster hunkered down and didn't move except to deflect the stray chop away from his face.
--*Junot Díaz,*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 2007

The "pitchfork senator" stood their fusillade of questions for about an hour, and then went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting was a strictly party affair.
--*Upton Sinclair,*The Jungle, 1906


Origin
Fusillade comes from the French verb fusiler “to shoot.” The suffix -ade is found in nouns denoting action or process or a person or persons acting, and is often found in French loanwords. Fusillade entered English in the late 18th century.

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MIDDLESCENCE noun (mid-l-es-uh ns)

noun
1. the middle-age period of life, especially when considered a difficult time of self-doubt and readjustment.

Quotes

Just as poor Alonso Quijano, in middle age, was so bewitched by the novels of chivalry that he declared himself Don Quixote de la Mancha, the Knight of Doleful Aspect, so the skipper of Rocinante Cuatro, in his middlescence, was led by his passion for Cervantes's novel to identify himself with both its hero and, eventually, its author.
--*John Barth,*The Tidewater Tales, 1987

He can tint out the gray in his hair, tone up the doughy muscles of middlescence on the most exquisitely devised exercise tables in Manhattan, take the woman of his choice out to dinner at "21," and take back any traces of psychic discomfort to a Park Avenue psychiatrist.
--*Gail Sheehy,*"Catch-30 and Other Predictable Crises of Growing Up Adult," New York, February 18, 1974


Origin

Middlescence is a blend of middle and adolescence. It entered English in the 1960s.

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PORTMANTEAU noun (pawrt-man-toh)

noun
1. Also called portmanteau word. Linguistics. a word made by putting together parts of other words, as motel, made from motor and hotel, brunch, from breakfast and lunch, or guesstimate, from guess and estimate.
2. a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, especially a leather trunk or suitcase that opens into two halves.

Quotes
"Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy.' 'Lithe' is the same as 'active.' You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word."
--*Lewis Carroll,*Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1871

Portmanteaus, or “blends”, according to Ian Roberts, linguistics professor at the University of Cambridge, have been around for more than a century. They exist "mainly as a journalistic fad"—to describe a phenomenon to a mass audience. For example, the word “smog” was first coined in 1905 by one Dr H.A des Voeux of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society to describe the smoky fog, or “smog”, prevalent in British cities.
--*M.S.L.J.,*"From smog to mother fubber," The Economist, August 12, 2013


Origin
A portmanteau was originally a kind of bag or case that opened by a hinge into two equal parts, e.g., a Gladstone bag or a suitcase. Lewis Carroll changed its meaning forever when Humpty Dumpty explicates the nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” that Alice recites to him in chapter six of Through the Looking Glass (1871): “Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’… You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.” Humpty Dumpty so carried the day that modern linguists and grammarians routinely use portmanteau and portmanteau word as technical terms. Portmanteau in its original sense entered English in the 16th century.

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NEWSPEAK noun (noo-speek)


noun
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) an official or semiofficial style of writing or saying one thing in the guise of its opposite, especially in order to serve a political or ideological cause while pretending to be objective, as in referring to “increased taxation” as “revenue enhancement.”

Quotes
A fellow Guardian writer remarked on immigration minister Peter Dutton speaking on ABC Radio National this week, in which he described people in a Nauru camp as “transferees” (a name implying motion) for people indefinitely stuck in a camp. “It is Newspeak of the highest order,” he said.
--*Brigid Delaney,*"Orwell's nightmare vision of 1984 is always right here, right now," The Guardian, October 22, 2015

They may take up, in the official Newspeak, "the broadening of the sphere of commodity and money relations." In translation: moves toward a market economy.
--*Edwin Diamond,*"Lenin Meets Letterman: TV Under Glasnost," New York, April 3, 1989


Origin

Newspeak was coined by George Orwell in his novel 1984, which was published in 1949.

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STRAVAGE noun (struh-veyg)

verb
1. Scot., Irish, and North England. to wander aimlessly.
2. to saunter; stroll.

Quotes
What made ye stravage about the cliffs, castin' sheeps' eyes at some one we know, an' lookin' pitchforks at me an' Long William?
--*Shan F. Bullock,*The Charmer: A Seaside Comedy, 1897

Monks should stay in their cells, not stravage about in castles.
--*Anne Fremantle,*By Grace of Love, 1957


Origin

Stravage is formed by aphesis (loss of the first, unaccented syllable) of ex- from the Medieval Latin verb extrāvagārī “to wander out of bounds.” The Latin verb vagārī, vagāre “to ramble, wander” derives from the adjective vagus “strolling, unsettled.” The participial stem of the verb, vagrant-, is the source of English vagrant. Stravage entered English in the 18th century.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Sounds a lot like Boydy. Stravages around aimlessly!

Attachment 3716

[Altobelli]

Yes we will have to call him Stravage Boyd from now on

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CANARD noun (kuh-nahrd)

noun
1. a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor.
2. Cookery. a duck intended or used for food.
3. Aeronautics. a. an airplane that has its horizontal stabilizer and elevators located forward of the wing. b. Also called canard wing. one of two small lifting wings located in front of the main wings. c. an early airplane having a pusher engine with the rudder and elevator assembly in front of the wings.

Quotes

This week, Lewandowski distinguished himself by reviving the birther canard—the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
--*Margaret Talbot,*"The Trouble with Corey Lewandowski on CNN," The New Yorker, August 6, 2016

In London that night poor Henderson's telegram describing the gradual unscrewing of the shot was judged to be a canard, and his evening paper, after wiring for authentication from him and receiving no reply ... decided not to print a special edition.
--*H. G. Wells,*The War of the Worlds, 1898


Origin

Canard is from Old French quanart “drake,” literally “cackler,” from the onomatopoeic caner “to cackle” and the suffix -art, a variant of -ard, as in mallard or braggart. Canard is all that is left of the Middle French idiom vendre un canard à moitié “to sell half a duck,” i.e., “to take in, swindle, cheat.” Canard entered English in the 19th century.