Word Of The Day

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MEMORIST noun (mem-er-ist)

noun
1. a person who has a remarkably retentive memory.


Quotes

As a memorist he is phenomenally endowed, his retentiveness so acute that he recites readily without reference or prompting, declamations committed in his schoolboys days more than seventy years ago.
--*William Travis,*A History of Clay County Indiana, Volume II, 1909


... a memorist appeared on a Sunday morning TV show. He was introduced to the 100 or so youngsters in the audience and repeated all of their names back to them at the end of the show.
--*Ron Fry,*Improve Your Memory, 2012



Origin

Memorist is a rare word. When it entered English in the late 17th century, it meant “one who prompts the memory or conscience.” Memorist was revived in the late 19th century as an Americanism meaning “one who has a retentive or prodigious memory.”

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SMACKEROO noun (smak-uh-roo)

noun
1. a noisy kiss.
2. a hard slap or swat: He gave the ball a smackeroo.
3. smacker (def 1).


Quotes

Do you grab the first person to cross your path and plant a big wet smackeroo, or leave the party before midnight to avoid the whole issue?
--*Roxanne Roberts,*"A Peck of Advice on the New Year's Eve Kiss," Washington Post, December 30, 1998


I can't possibly discuss all that action, so let me focus on a few key kisses. First, Mary and Matthew’s very cinematic smackeroo ...
--*June Thomas,*“Matthew and Mary, Anna and Bates: Downton’s great couples,” Slate, February 12, 2012



Origin

Smackeroo is originally (and still usually) an American slang term with three meanings: "something very good or excellent; cash, folding money; a sharp slap or hard blow (accidental or deliberate).” The etymology of smackeroo isn’t very clear: it may come from smacker “a dollar; a loud kiss,” or from the verb smack “to strike sharply; kiss loudly.” The suffix -eroo is an Americanism of uncertain origin, used for forming jocular, gaudy variants of neutral or colorless nouns, e.g., switcheroo for switch. Smackeroo entered English in the mid-20th century.

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CHAMPERS noun (sham-pez)

noun
1. British Slang. champagne.


Quotes

He was about to take a whisky, when he was distracted by the larger glasses. "Ah, champers, dear boy," he said, "champers for me."
--*Olivia Manning,*The Great Fortune, 1960


At its beginning, Champagne scarcely resembled the dry, fine-fizzed champers we know today.
--*Jane and Michael Stern,*"A Kick from Champagne," New York Times, December 25, 2008



Origin

Champers is a British slang term for champagne, as the suffix -ers suggests. The suffix originated in the Rugby School (in east Warwickshire) and spread to Oxford University towards the end of the 19th century; champers, therefore, is not old at all, dating from the mid-20th century.

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GUSSY verb (guhs-ee)

verb
1. Informal. to enhance the attractiveness of in a gimmicky, showy manner (usually followed by up): a room gussied up with mirrors and lights.
2. Informal. to dress in one's best clothes (usually followed by up): to gussy up for the ball.


Quotes

When a not-so-careful writer tries to gussy up his prose with an upmarket word that he mistakenly thinks is a synonym of a common one, like simplistic for simple or fulsome for full, his readers are likely to conclude the worst: that he has paid little attention what he has read, is affecting an air of sophistication on the cheap, and is polluting a common resource.
--*Steven Pinker,*The Sense of Style, 2014


... he was busy helping his dad gussy up the old tractors for the parade.
--*Gayle Brandeis,*Delta GIrls, 2010



Origin

The verb gussy is usually followed by up. Gussy up “to dress elaborately, dress up, smarten up” is an American and Canadian slang term, and like many slang terms, its etymology is obscure. Gussy up may derive from gussie, an Australian and American slang term for a weak, effeminate man (first appearing in Australia and the US in 1901 or 1902). The verb phrase gussy up appears in 1906 in Canada and in 1912 in the US.

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TOTSIENS interjection (tawt-seenz)

interjection
1. until we meet again; goodbye.


Quotes

Well Paula I will say 'totsiens' for now ...
--*Emma Brockes,*She Left Me the Gun, 2013


Totsiens, Oom, totsiens, Tannie ... You know where we live. Come and see us sometime.
--*Paul-Constant Smit,*Gold Never Rusts, 2016



Origin

Totsiens is not a misspelling; in Afrikaans totsiens (tot siens) means “goodbye,” literally “until we see (each other again), au revoir, arrivederci, auf Wiedersehen, do widzenia,” from tot “as far as, until” and sien “see.” Totsiens entered English in the 20th century.

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AUSPICATE verb (aw-spi-keyt)

verb
1. to initiate with ceremonies calculated to ensure good luck; inaugurate.


Quotes

He was soon in great request to deliver addresses and auspicate new ventures …
--*“In Memoriam: Edward Thring,” The Cambridge Review, November 2, 1887


If we are conscious of our station, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our situation and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the church, Sursum corda!
--*Edmund Burke,*Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq. on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, 1775



Origin

Romans were addicted to religion, law, and the military (not always sharply differentiated), and no public business could be conducted without first taking the auspices. The basic Latin word is auspex (stem auspic-), literally “bird watcher.” The syllable au- is a reduced form of avi-, the stem of the Latin noun avis “bird”; the suffix -spex means “one who watches or inspects,” a derivative of the verb specere “to observe, watch” (which has many derivatives in English, e.g., expect, inspect, suspect, etc.). The Latin derivative noun auspicium “bird watching” also applied to other forms of divination, e.g., ex caelō, i.e., observing thunder and lightning; ex quadrupedibus, observing the behavior of four-footed animals, e.g. a wolf eating grass; ex dīrīs from observing dreadful, uncanny, or dire signs. There were other forms of auspices too silly to mention, but when the results of public elections were at stake or there was an important, controversial bill being debated in the Senate, why surely the gods had to approve (or not). Auspicate comes from the Latin past participle auspicātus, a derivative of the verb auspicārī “to take the auspices.” Auspicate entered English in the early 17th century.

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NEOTERIC adjective (nee-uh-ter-ik)

adjective
1. modern; new; recent.

noun
1. a new or modern writer, thinker, etc.


Quotes

... they call me a singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.
--*Charles Lamb,*"Fragments from Burton," John Woodvil, 1802


The temporary purpose may be attained; adherents may be gained for some neoteric doctrine; but the world in general is plunged deeper into error, into the misunderstanding of humanity.
--*Charles F. Horne,*The Technique of the Novel, 1908



Origin

English neoteric comes straight from Late Latin neōtericus, straight from Hellenistic Greek neōterikós “young, youthful, modern (in style).” The Greek root is neo- “new” (newo- in some dialects), akin to Latin novus “new” (from newos), Germanic (English) new, and Slavic (Polish) nowy. The Proto-Indo-European suffix -ter- has several functions, one of them showing naturally occurring pairs, e.g., older and younger (as here), right and left, upper and lower. The Latin suffix -icus is of Proto-Indo-European origin, the same source as Greek -ikós, and Germanic -ig- (German -ig, English -y). The most famous of the Greek neōterikói was the poet and critic Callimachus (c310-c240 b.c.); the most famous Latin neōtericus (and the only one whose works has survived) was Catullus (c84-c54 b.c.). Neoteric entered English in the 16th century.

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ELEVENSES noun (ih-lev-uhn-ziz)

noun
1. British. (usually used with a plural verb) a midmorning break for refreshments.
2. British. the refreshments taken.


Quotes

At other times there were merely lots of people eating and drinking -- continuously from elevenses until six-thirty, when the fireworks started.
--*J. R. R. Tolkien,*The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954


The other meals during harvest were breakfast, elevenses, dinner and fourses--in some places elevenses was called 'beaver' or 'cheesing'--but there was a good deal of difference in the local significations of these terms and the times at which the meals were eaten.
--*Thomas Hennell,*Change in the Farm, 1934



Origin

Elevenses is a British colloquialism, familiar to Americans most likely through reading Tolkien (Bilbo Baggins was keen on elevenses) and P.G. Wodehouse. Elevenses was originally a British dialect word, a double plural of eleven (o’clock); it referred to snacks or light refreshments taken at eleven in the morning (as fourses taken about four in the afternoon.) Elevenses entered English in the 19th century.

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NOODLE verb (nood-l)

verb
1. Informal. a. to improvise, experiment, or think creatively: The writers noodled for a week and came up with a better idea for the ad campaign. b. to play; toy: to noodle with numbers as a hobby.
2. to improvise a musical passage in a casual manner, especially as a warm-up exercise.
3. Informal. a. to manipulate or tamper with: She denied that she had noodled the statistics to get a favorable result. b. to make or devise freely as an exercise or experiment (sometimes followed by up): The architects noodled up a model of a solar house.

Verb Phrases
1. noodle around, Informal. to play, experiment, or improvise.


Quotes

80 percent of surveyed drivers ranked their driving skills as “above average.” Noodle on that one.
--*Tim Herrera,*"How to Spot and Overcome Your Hidden Weaknesses," New York Times, April 23, 2018


On the side, he noodled around with the potentially lucrative idea for a heat pump that would use cheap, abundant water in place of costly environmentally unfriendly refrigerants.
--*"Test yields weapon of mass hydration," The Vindicator, August 9, 1998



Origin

The verb noodle “to improvise, think creatively, brainstorm” seems to have originally been American college slang dating from the mid-1940s. Noodle may derive from the German verb nudeln “to sing or play music in a low undertone or in improvisation (as in jazz),” a sense existing in English since the mid-1930s.

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DOUCEUR noun (doo-sur)

noun
1. a conciliatory gift or bribe.
2. a gratuity; tip.
3. Archaic. sweetness or agreeableness.


Quotes

And this in spite of the douceur he received at the opening of the campaign.
--*D. A. Bingham,*A Selection of Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, Volume II, 1884


Prescott and the other keeper have also received a silver medal and a douceur from the society.
--*Frank Buckland,*"The Hippopotamus and Her Baby," Popular Science, May 1873



Origin

The French noun douceur “sweetness, a sweet taste,” comes from Late Latin dulcor (stem dulcōr-) with the same meaning. The French noun also means “pleasure, kindness, gift, reward,” and finally “bribe,” much like English sweetener. Douceur entered English in the 14th century.