Word Of The Day

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DUNDREARIES plural noun (duhn-dreer-eez)

plural noun

1. long, full sideburns or muttonchop whiskers.


Quotes

... Mr. Pierce pulled at his dundrearies and everybody was very jolly and they talked about the schooner Mary Wentworth and how Colonel Hodgeson and Father Murphy looked so hard on the cheery glass ...
--*John Dos Passos,*The 42nd Parallel, 1930


... old Glory Allelujerum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her.
--*James Joyce,*Ulysses, 1922



Origin

Dundreries came to English in the 1860s after the sideburns worn by actor Edward A. Sothern as Lord Dundreary, a character in the play Our American Cousin (1858) by Tom Taylor.

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PERVIOUS adjective (pur-vee-uh s)

adjective

1. open or accessible to reason, feeling, argument, etc.
2. admitting of passage or entrance; permeable: pervious soil.


Quotes

But all things are pervious to love, even fire, water, and Scythian snows.
--*Longus,*Daphnis and Chloe, translated by George Thornley, 1916


But the man was one who was pervious to ideas of duty, and might be probably pervious to feelings of family respect.
--*Anthony Trollope,*The Vicar of Bullhampton, 1870



Origin

The adjective pervious is far less common than its opposite, impervious. Both adjectives come from the Latin root noun via “road, street, highway.” Latin via derives from the very common Proto-Indo-European root wegh- “to go, travel by vehicle,” source of Latin vehere “to carry, convey” and its derivative noun vehiculum “carriage, conveyance, vehicle,” as well as Germanic (English) “wagon, wain, way.” Pervious entered English in the 17th century.

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BRACHYLOGY noun (bruh.-kil-uh-jee)

noun

1. brevity of diction; concise or abridged form of expression.


Quotes

The term for the omission of words that are intended to be "understood" by the reader is ellipses. Its extreme or irregular form has a name in Greek rhetoric: brachylogy, relying on the listener to supply the missing words, much as I relied on the reader to put a verb in the sentence fragment "A profound question, that."
--*William Safire,*“On Language: Microwave of the Future,” New York Times, September 30, 1990


If Plato is letting Socrates allude to his elaborate comparison in the Republic of the class structure of the city to the soul's structure, it is safe to say that so compressed a brachylogy can hardly be matched anywhere else.
--*Seth Benardete,*The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, 1991



Origin

English brachylogy comes straight from the Greek noun brachylogía “brevity of speech or writing” and is generally positive in its connotations. Brachylogía, unsurprisingly, was attributed to the Spartans. Brachylogy entered English at the end of the 16th century.

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CRI DE COEUR noun (kreeduh koer

noun

1. French. an anguished cry of distress or indignation; outcry.


Quotes

It’s time. Women have resounded their cri de coeur. Listen.
--*Molly Ringwald,*"All the Other Harvey Weinsteins," The New Yorker, October 17, 2017


While Cooked ... is based on Pollan’s 2013 book of the same name, the sifting of Americans from their ******** has been his cri de coeur for much longer, particularly as food-themed television became mainstream.
--*Adam Chandler,*"Michael Pollan and the Luxury of Time," The Atlantic, April 12, 2016



Origin

Cri de Coeur was first recorded in the 1890s. It literally means “cry of (the) heart.”

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WANDERJAHR noun (vahn-duh r-yahr)

noun

1. German. a year or period of travel, especially following one's schooling and before practicing a profession.
2. German. (formerly) a year in which an apprentice traveled and improved his skills before settling down to the practice of his trade.


Quotes

When your father finished college, he had his Wanderjahr, a fine year's ramble up the Rhine and down the Loire, with a pretty girl on one arm and a good comrade on the other.
--*Walker Percy,*The Moviegoer, 1961


She has to be bored by Bill ... she's probably pleased with the daughter ... and increasingly worried about the son, as his Wanderjahr has become a Wanderlife.
--*Michael Cunningham,*By Nightfall, 2010



Origin

Wander-year, the English translation of German Wanderjahr, was first recorded in English about 1880. Its German original entered English about a dozen years later. Like the German noun, wander-years meant the period between one’s finishing artisanal training or graduation from university and the beginning of one’s career. German and English wander derive from the Proto-Indo-European root wendh- “to turn, weave,” the source of “wind” (the verb) and “wend,” whose past tense, “went,” now serves as the past tense of the verb “to go.” Year and Jahr derive from the Proto-Indo-European root yēr- “year, season,” source of Greek hṓrā “period, season,” adopted into Latin as hōra “hour” (of varying length), the source, through Old French of English “hour.”

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DEASIL adverb (dee-zuh l)

adverb

1. Chiefly Scot. clockwise or in a direction following the apparent course of the sun: considered as lucky or auspicious.


Quotes

The high-peaked roof of moss-grown shingles reared above like the back of a green, scaly dragon, and the rafters at each end of it crossed like an X, carved into facing spirals, deasil and widdershins to balance the energies.
--*S. M. Stirling,*A Meeting at Corvallis, 2006


So let me walk the deasil round you, that you may go safe out into the far foreign land, and come safe home.
--*Sir Walter Scott,*"The Two Drovers," Chronicles of Canongate, 1827



Origin

The “Oxen of the Sun,” the 14th episode of Ulysses (if one makes it that far) begins, “Deshil Holles eamus,” a three-word sentence in three languages (Irish, English, Latin) meaning, “Let us go towards the right (i.e., auspiciously) to Holles (Street, site of the maternity hospital).” Deasil is a Gaelic adverb and adjective meaning “toward the right, clockwise, following the sun (i.e., auspiciously).” The word has several spellings (e.g., deiseal, deisal, and Joyce’s deshil) and several pronunciations. The Gaelic root is des(s)- “to the right,” derived from the Proto-Indo-European extended root deks-, source of Latin dexter, Greek dexiόs, both meaning “to the right, on the right, right,” and Sanskrit dákṣina- “to the right, southerly." Deasil entered English in the 18th century.

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TIDINGS noun (Tahy-dingz)

noun

1. news, information, or intelligence: sad tidings.


Quotes

That night it seemed that everyone in the little town and surrounding farmsteads flocked into the inn to raise a mug to the wonderful tidingsed.
--*Robin Hobb,*"Blue Boots," Songs of Love and Death, 2010


She loved being the bearer of good tidings, and she was ready with Russian tea and Yupik sympathy when the tidings were bad.
--*Dana Stabenow,*Nothing Gold Can Stay, 2000



Origin

Tidings “news, events,” the archaic verb tide “to happen, occur,” the noun tide, “regular rise and fall of ocean water,” the verb betide “to happen to, befall,” and the noun time “duration or the measurement of duration” all derive from the Germanic root tī- “to divide,” from the complicated Proto-Indo-European root dā- and its variants dai- and dī-. In form tidings derives from the Old English noun tīdung “announcement, news item,” from the verb tīdan “to happen” (source of the archaic verb tide), influenced by the Old Norse neuter plural noun tīthindi “news, events.” The singular noun tiding entered English before 1100, and the plural noun appeared in the 14th century.

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MISHPOCHA noun (mish-paw-khuh)

noun

1. Yiddish. an entire family network comprising relatives by blood and marriage and sometimes including close friends; clan.


Quotes

You can speak now. We're all mishpocha here and we got no secrets.
--*Leon Uris,*Exodus, 1958


Soon she was photographing her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—the whole mishpocha—finding loopy antics and exaggerated period detail in holiday gatherings and daily ritual.
--*"Seventies Long Island: The Whole Mishpocha," The New Yorker, June 3, 2015



Origin

There are several spellings for mishpocha (e.g., mishpochah, mishpacha, mishpachah) and pronunciations for the -ch- (representing the Hebrew letter heth) that Americans find difficult. Mishpocha comes from mishpokhe, the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrew mishpāḥāh “family, clan.” Mishpocha entered English in the mid-19th century.

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APOPEMPTIC adjective (ap-uh-pemp-tic)

adjective

1. pertaining to leave-taking or departing; valedictory.

noun

1. Obsolete. a farewell address; valedictory.


Quotes

Only to the fool who believes all truths debatable, who believes true virtue resides not in men but in eulogies, true sorrow not in partings but in apopemptic hymns, and true thought nowhere but in atramentaceous scrollery--only to him is elegant style, mere scent, good food.
--*John Gardner,*Jason & Medeia, 1973


Their apopemptic ride was an escape, and because pursuit was assumed--because the men at the door to Major Medicine had been told that they were fugitives from Dallas justice--it took on the character of a stampede.
--*William Manchester,*The Death of a President, 1967



Origin

The English apopemptic is a straightforward borrowing of the Greek adjective apopemptikós, “pertaining to dismissal, valedictory,” a derivative of the adverb and preposition apό- “off, away” and the verb pémpein “to send,” a verb with no clear etymology. The Greek noun pompḗ, a derivative of pémpein, means “escort, procession, parade, magnificence,” adopted into Latin as pompa (with the same meanings), used in Christian Latin to refer to the ostentations of the devil, especially in baptismal formulas, e.g., “Do you reject the devil and all his pomps?” Apopemptic entered English in the mid-18th century.

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BAGATELLE noun (bag-uh-tel)

noun

1. something of little value or importance; a trifle.
2. a game played on a board having holes at one end into which balls are to be struck with a cue.
3. pinball.
4. a short and light musical composition, typically for the piano.


Quotes
My horse was an excellent roadster; and I was expecting to do the fifty miles--a mere bagatelle to a South American steed--before sunset.
--*Mayne Reid,*The Finger of Fate, 1872


... the reserve price had been fixed at $1,100,000. This amount for a financial society dealing with such matters was a mere bagatelle, if the transaction could offer any advantages ...
--*Jules Verne,*Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery, translated 1883



Origin

Bagatelle came to English from French, from Upper Italian bagat(t)ella, equivalent to bagatt(a) “small possession.” It entered English in the 1630s.