Word Of The Day

[Altobelli]

DECIDUOUS adjective (dih-sij-oo-uh s)

adjective
1. shedding the leaves annually, as certain trees and shrubs.
2. falling off or shed at a particular season, stage of growth, etc., as leaves, horns, or teeth.
3. not permanent; transitory.


Quotes

Having grown up in the high desert of eastern California, where hardwoods existed only in front yards and forests were of pine, Anna never tired of the falling leaves in a true deciduous forest. Day after day, as though there were an endless supply, leaves rained down.
--*Nevada Barr,*Hunting Season, 2002

The lake is encircled by deciduous woodland that is now dying, owing to the steady erosion of the coastline by the sea.
--*W. G. Sebald,*The Rings of Saturn, translated by Michael Hulse, 1998



Origin

The English adjective deciduous is straight from Latin dēciduus “falling off or down, tending to fall off or down,” formed from the preposition dē (and prefix dē-) “down, from” and the verb cadere (combining form -cidere) “to fall”). In Latin dēciduus is used for leaves (dēcidua folia), (baby) teeth (dēciduτ dentēs), descending testicles (testēs dēciduτ), and, charmingly, for shooting stars or falling stars (dēcidua sidera). Deciduous entered English in the 17th century.

[Altobelli]

TATTERSALL noun (tat-er-sawl)

noun

1. a pattern of squares formed by colored crossbars on a solid-color, usually light background.
2. a fabric with this pattern.
adjective

1. having this pattern or made of such fabric: a tattersall vest.


Quotes

Surely the muumuu is just a tattersall away from a housedress (think Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba).
--*Tim Gunn,*A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style, 2007

Checks such as gingham and windowpane are usually even, while checks such as tattersall and houndstooth are uneven.
--*Claire Shaeffer,*Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Sewing Guide, 2008



Origin

Richard Tattersall (1724-95) was an Englishman who in 1766 bought a 99-year lease at Hyde Park Corner (now within London), where he established his business as a horse auctioneer. Tattersall became very wealthy and influential because of his honesty and efficiency in business. His horse market sold blankets woven in a check or plaid pattern for use on horses. Tattersall, designating the fabric, entered English at the end of the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

TITTLE noun (tit-l)

noun
1. a dot or other small mark in writing or printing, used as a diacritic, punctuation, etc.
2. a very small part or quantity; a particle, jot, or whit: He said he didn't care a tittle.


Quotes

The great singularity of the latter was, that they did not place the dot or tittle over the i; and at the end of words they put the long s.
--*Thomas Curson Hansard,*Typographia: An Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing, 1825

The weaver that, at forty-two, could write such a bit of prose narrative, must have had latent in him, all through his life at the loom, the express genius, perfect save in a tittle or two, of a born man of letters.
--*David Masson,*"Dead Men whom I have known," MacMillan's Magazine, Volume IX, November 1863–April 1864



Origin

Tittle, ultimately from Latin titulus “inscription, superscription, label, ticket, title, etc.” will be familiar to many from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:18), “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” “Jot or tittle” is a hendiadys (a single idea expressed by two words and a conjunction) meaning “smallest detail.” Jot derives from the Greek letter iota (ι), the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. Tittle also means any accent mark or diacritic, e.g., an acute, a grave, a circumflex (as in á, à, or â). The Spanish word tilde, most familiar in the character ñ (as in año “year), in Spanish means any diacritic mark, e.g., an acute accent marking accentuation of a word accent (as in difícil “difficult”). The Spanish word tilde also is a derivative of Latin titulus. Tittle entered English in the 14th century.

[Altobelli]

noun (mon-ti-kyool)

noun
1. a small mountain, hill, or mound.
2. a subordinate volcanic cone.


Quotes

... Ken walked purposelessly just less than half a mile into the grassland, toward a monticule, a low mound that rose out of the barren ground.
--*Petru Popescu,*Almost Adam, 1996

Not far away, about a mile, there lay a hill, no summit in the Dolomites it was true, but none the less a hill, a little monticule.
--*John Lodwick,*The Cradle of Neptune, 1951



Origin

Monticule comes from the Late Latin term monticulus, equivalent to Latin monti- meaning “mount.” The second element -culus is a suffix found in French loanwords of Latin origin, originally used with diminutive nouns. Monticule entered English in the late 1700s.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

TITTLE noun (tit-l)

noun
1. a dot or other small mark in writing or printing, used as a diacritic, punctuation, etc.
2. a very small part or quantity; a particle, jot, or whit: He said he didn't care a tittle.


Quotes

The great singularity of the latter was, that they did not place the dot or tittle over the i; and at the end of words they put the long s.
--*Thomas Curson Hansard,*Typographia: An Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing, 1825

The weaver that, at forty-two, could write such a bit of prose narrative, must have had latent in him, all through his life at the loom, the express genius, perfect save in a tittle or two, of a born man of letters.
--*David Masson,*"Dead Men whom I have known," MacMillan's Magazine, Volume IX, November 1863–April 1864



Origin

Tittle, ultimately from Latin titulus “inscription, superscription, label, ticket, title, etc.” will be familiar to many from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:18), “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” “Jot or tittle” is a hendiadys (a single idea expressed by two words and a conjunction) meaning “smallest detail.” Jot derives from the Greek letter iota (ι), the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. Tittle also means any accent mark or diacritic, e.g., an acute, a grave, a circumflex (as in á, à, or â). The Spanish word tilde, most familiar in the character ñ (as in año “year), in Spanish means any diacritic mark, e.g., an acute accent marking accentuation of a word accent (as in difícil “difficult”). The Spanish word tilde also is a derivative of Latin titulus. Tittle entered English in the 14th century.

Tattle?

[The Bedlington Terrier]

TATTERSALL noun (tat-er-sawl)

noun

1. a pattern of squares formed by colored crossbars on a solid-color, usually light background.
2. a fabric with this pattern.
adjective

1. having this pattern or made of such fabric: a tattersall vest.


Quotes

Surely the muumuu is just a tattersall away from a housedress (think Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba).
--*Tim Gunn,*A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style, 2007

Checks such as gingham and windowpane are usually even, while checks such as tattersall and houndstooth are uneven.
--*Claire Shaeffer,*Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Sewing Guide, 2008



Origin

Richard Tattersall (1724-95) was an Englishman who in 1766 bought a 99-year lease at Hyde Park Corner (now within London), where he established his business as a horse auctioneer. Tattersall became very wealthy and influential because of his honesty and efficiency in business. His horse market sold blankets woven in a check or plaid pattern for use on horses. Tattersall, designating the fabric, entered English at the end of the 19th century.

Albert? Interesting story from WW1.

Attachment 6614

[Altobelli]

SOBERSIDES noun (soh-ber-sahydz)

noun
1. Slang. a humorless or habitually serious person.


Quotes

What right has such a sobersides to sit in the stalls and criticize the human comedy?
--*Richard Gordon,*Doctor on the Ball, 1985

Mel Gibson ... gives his loosest, goosiest performance yet, though I still find Danny Glover, in the harder role of the square, a trial to watch. In the next sequel, Glover should be liberated and Gibson turned into a sobersides.
--*David Denby,*"Now, Voyeur," New York, August 7, 1989



Origin

Sobersides was first recorded in the late 1600s or early 1700s. It’s a blend of the words sober and side.

[Altobelli]

AGGIORNAMENTO noun (uh-jawr-nuh-men-toh)

noun
1. the act of bringing something up to date to meet current needs.


Quotes

It was as if the great cathedral had been opened up to an aggiornamento. A wind of modernisation was blowing hard through the portals of San Marco. It would become a gale.
--*Adrian d'Hagé,*The Omega Scroll, 2005

Finally there comes the placental outpouring at the end ... which is an aggiornamento of style into contemporary slang.
--*Richard Ellman,*Ulysses on the Liffey, 1972



Origin

Aggiornamento has been in Italian since the late 17th century; it is a borrowing from French ajorner “to postpone to a later date, adjourn.” “Adjournment” is one of the meanings of aggiornamento; the other sense is “bringing up to date, modernization,” familiar in English because of the almost exclusive association of aggiornamento with Pope John XXIII’s (pope from 1958-63) use of the word, in a speech in 1959, referring to the updating the Code of Canon Law, and in 1961 to the Second Vatican Council.

[Altobelli]

PANGRAM noun (pan-gru m)

noun
1. a sentence, verse, etc., that includes all the letters of the alphabet.


Quotes

Formerly Utopianna, the country's name was changed in 1904 to honor native son Nevin Nollop, the author of the popular pangram sentence The Quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
--*Mark Dunn,*Ella Minnow Pea, 2001

Having learned my alphabet letters on a school-room chalkboard, I never thought I'd have a chance to witness nature reënacting this English-language pangram. One quibble: the dog seems more patient than lazy, and the fox more determined than quick.
--*Thessaly La Force,*"Lazy Dogs and Brown Foxes," The New Yorker, January 14, 2010



Origin

The most familiar English pangram, a sentence using every character of the alphabet, is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” which dates from about 1885 and was used to practice touch-typing on a typewriter. The word pangram, deriving from Greek pân “all” and grámma “letter,” entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

LONELY-HEARTS adjective (lohn-lee-hahrts)

adjective
1. of or for people seeking counseling or companionship to bring love or romance into their lives: a lonely-hearts column in the newspaper.


Quotes

She told me that she and Dad had met through a lonely hearts column in the local newspaper.
--*Robert Barnard,*A Cry from the Dark, 2003

She had once answered a Lonely Hearts advertisement and eaten dinner with a small young man who mended organ pipes.
--*Jeanette Winterson,*"O'Brien's First Christmas," The World and Other Places: Stories, 1998



Origin

The noun lonely heart in the sense “a lonely or friendless person” and the adjective lonely-hearts, referring especially to a column or feature in a newspaper feature entered English nearly simultaneously. The terms are probably most closely associated with the novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (1903-40). The noun lonely heart entered English in 1932; the adjective lonely-hearts entered English in 1933.