Word Of The Day

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Alf get back behind the wheel and carry on camping!

[alfinyalcabo]

Alf get back behind the wheel and carry on camping!

Just a ten day break before setting off darn Sarf for four months or so.. I will have a look on from time to time to see how things are..

[Altobelli]

You must have copied & pasted that alf as there is no way you could have spelled it correctly

[Altobelli]

VIM noun (vim)

noun

1. lively or energetic spirit; enthusiasm; *****ity.

Quotes

Certainly no better selection of a leader could have been made, for Neil was full of the vim of youth, and had a newly acquired fund of scientific knowledge just waiting to be applied.
--*Caroline Abbot Stanley,*The Keeper of the Vineyard, 1913

... the exclamation point is kind, happy, full of vim and vigor, ready to take on life. It's excited!
--*Jen Doll,*"Let's Go Ahead and Declare It the Year of the Exclamation Point!" Atlantic, August 8, 2012



Origin

Vim began as an American colloquialism but became standard on both sides of the Atlantic within a generation. It is the accusative singular of the irregular Latin noun vīs (stem vīr-) “power, force.” Latin vīs is related to the Latin noun vir “man (i.e., a male person), husband.” The same Proto-Indo-European root wir-, wīr- in Latin vir appears in English wergild and werewolf. Vim entered English in the mid-19th century.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Attachment 4803

[Altobelli]

BRINKMANSHIP noun (bringk-muh n-ship)

noun

1. the technique or practice of maneuvering a dangerous situation to the limits of tolerance or safety in order to secure the greatest advantage, especially by creating diplomatic crises.

Quotes

If brinkmanship is too timid there is no credibility, hence no deterrence. If it is too vigorous there is war.
--*Anders Boserup,*"Deterrence and defense," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1981

Perhaps more importantly, it would significantly reduce the brinkmanship of shutdown politics, which has become all too common in recent years. This brinkmanship has harmed our political system, our economy and our international reputation, and it is well past time for it to end.
--*Reid Ribble,*"'Shutdown politics' is keeping Congress from working. Here's how to fix it." Washington Post, November 3, 2016



Origin

To those of a certain age, brinkmanship or brinksmanship instantly summons the shade of John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s secretary of state (1953-59). Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-65) coined the term in 1956.

[Altobelli]

SERENDIPITY noun (ser-uh-n-dip-I-tee)

noun

1. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.
2. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.

Quotes

You, Mister Lipwig, are useful and a conduit for serendipity. For example, I understand you have just blessed us with more goblins at a time when we need them.
--*Terry Pratchett,*Raising Steam, 2013

Do some people have a special talent for serendipity? And if so, why?
--*Pagan Kennedy,*"How to Cultivate the Art of Serendipity," New York Times, January 2, 2016



Origin

Serendipity was the felicitous invention of the English man of letters Horace Walpole (1717-97), who wrote it in a letter dated 28 January 1754, explaining that his coinage came from The Three Princes of Serendip in an English translation of a French translation of an Italian translation of a Persian fairy tale based on the life of a Sassanid (Persian) king of the fourth century a.d. The three princely heroes of the story had the knack for making desirable discoveries by accident. Walpole calls the story a "silly fairy tale," but that silly fairy tale was picked up by the French philosophe and writer Voltaire (1698-1778) in his novel Zadig ou la Destinée (Zadig, Or the Book of Destiny, 1747), whose hero, Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia, engages in detective work in which he infers unseen, unknown causes from visible effects. It is at least possible that Zadig influenced Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) in his “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). It is certain that Zadig influenced the English biologist, writer, and proponent of Darwinism Thomas Huxley (1825-95), whose article "On the Method of Zadig" (1880) praised Zadig’s methodology. The proper name Serendip (also Serendib) comes from Sarāndīb, the Arabic name for the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), from Persian Sarândîp, from Pali Sīhaḷadīpa, from Sanskrit Siṃhaladvīpa “island of the Sinhalese people” (dīpa means “island” in Pali and the Sinhalese language, both from Sanskrit dvīpa “island”).

[Altobelli]

CONFLAGRATION noun (kon-fluh-grey-shuh n)

noun
1. a destructive fire, usually an extensive one.

Quotes

The fire department turned out promptly, but found that the mains were frozen and the little water they could pump from nearby wells was useless against a conflagration fanned by a terrific wind.
--*Paul L. Anderson,*"Blizzard Hounds," Boys' Life, February 1923

The conflagration spared four--two cats; the household cook, Mrs. Trame; and Chef Laliberte, who had been hired for the dinner.
--*Annie Proulx,*Barkskins, 2016



Origin

The con- in conflagration is an intensive prefix and does not mean “with,” which would be meaningless here. The noun flagration is obsolete in English, and the verb conflagrate is uncommon. The Latin verb flagrāre and its compound conflagrāre derive from the Latin root flag- “to burn,” the same root as the noun flamma “a flame” (from an unrecorded flagma). Flag- is the Latin development of a complicated Proto-Indo-European root bheleg- (some of its variants are bhelg- bhleg-) “to shine, flash.” Bhleg- is the root forming the Greek verbs phlégein and phlegéthein “to burn, scorch,” whose derivatives include phlégma “inflammation, morbid humor from an excess of heat, phlegm” and Phlegéthōn “the Flaming,” one of the rivers that surrounded Hades and flowed with fire. Conflagration entered English in the mid-16th century.

[Altobelli]

BELLYACHE verb (bel-ee-eyk)

verb
1. Informal. to complain; grumble.
noun
1. Informal. a pain in the abdomen or bowels.

Quotes
People thought the railroad owed them romantic favors, and then they bellyached if a train was slow.
--*Jonathan Franzen,*The Corrections, 2001

I wouldn't have come to this place, but they bellyached and bellyached till they got me here.
--*Bobbie Ann Mason,*"Spence + Lila," 1988


Origin
Bellyache, the noun meaning “pain in the bowels, stomachache” has been in English since the mid-16th century. Its extended, metaphorical sense “to complain; grumble” is an Americanism dating to the late 19th century.

[Altobelli]

HIRELING noun (hahyuh r-ling)

noun

1. a person who works only for pay, especially in a menial or boring job, with little or no concern for the value of the work.

adjective

1. serving for pay only.
2. venal; mercenary.

Quotes

What does it matter what she thinks of you--you're only a hireling!
--*L. P. Hartley,*The Hireling, 1957

Did you ever, O reader, hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house of woe--when the undertaker's decorous hireling fears that the living may hear how he parts them from the dead?
--*Edward Bulwer-Lytton,*My Novel, or Varieties in English Life, 1853



Origin

Old English hӯrling translates the Latin adjective and noun mercēn(n)ārius “for hire, reward or pay; a hired servant, hireling” in Old English translations of the Gospels (a.d. c1000) in the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Christian Bible edited or translated by St. Jerome a.d. c405). Hireling does not occur in Middle English but only reappears in the Coverdale Bible (1535), again translating Latin mercēn(n)ārius.