Word Of The Day

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TREEN adjective (tree-uhn)

adjective
1. made entirely of wood.

noun
1. treenware.


Quotes

Much skill had they in runes, and were exceeding deft in scoring them on treen bowls, and on staves, and door-posts and roof-beams and standing-beds and such like things.
--*William Morris,*The Roots of the Mountains, 1889


In old time we had treen chalices and golden priests; but now we have treen priests and golden chalices.
--*John Jewel (1522–1571),*"Sermon on Haggai," The Works of John Jewel, 1847



Origin

The adjective treen dates to Old English (about 1000). Its original adjective meanings “made of tree (i.e., wood), wooden; pertaining to trees or a tree” are obsolete or rare in standard English. Its current sense as a noun meaning “(small) articles or utensils made of wood, woodenware” dates from the 20th century.

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FEINT noun (feynt)

noun
1. a movement made in order to deceive an adversary; an attack aimed at one place or point merely as a distraction from the real place or point of attack: military feints; the feints of a skilled fencer.
2. a feigned or assumed appearance: His air of approval was a feint to conceal his real motives.

verb
1. to make a feint.
2. to make a feint at; deceive with a feint.
3. to make a false show of; simulate.


Quotes

Antagonism in my family comes wrapped in layers of code, sideways feints, full deniability.
--*Karen Joy Fowler,*We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves, 2013


... it always had been understood that when the Germans did decide to take the desperate risk of trying to invade England they would make a feint in a couple of places, and, having drawn off the British fleet, would direct their serious attacks somewhere else.
--*"Coast Attack Expected," New York Times, December 17, 1914



Origin

The English noun feint comes from Old French feinte, a noun use of the feminine past participle of the verb feindre “to feign, pretend, dissemble.” The Old French verb comes from Latin fingere “to shape, form, fashion,” the ultimate source of English faint, fiction, figment, and effigy. Feint entered English in the 17th century.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Traveller.

Off to exotic locations in Europe.

Going soon!

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VAGILITY noun (vuh-jil-i-tee)

noun
1. Biology. the ability of an organism to move about freely and migrate.


Quotes

Using the GPS collars that updated an animal’s location regularly and other data, the project found that vagility—the ability of an organism to move—declines in areas with human footprints by as much as half to two-thirds the distance than in places where there is little or no human activity.
--*Jim Robbins,*"Animals Are Losing Their Vagility, or Ability to Roam Freely," New York Times, February 19, 2018


With this combination of low vagility and narrow habitat requirements, the mayfly faunas of islands around New Zealand provide a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of isolation, dispersal ability and the response of communities to reduced diversity.
--*D. R. Towns,*"The mayflies (Ephemeroptera) of Great Barrier Island, New Zealand: macro- and micro-distributional comparisons," Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 17, 1987



Origin

The rare English adjective vagile is restricted to biology and refers to an organism’s being able to scatter or be scattered in an environment. The English adjective comes from German vagil, of the same meaning. The German adjective derives from Latin vagus “wandering, roaming.” The German suffix -il and the English suffix -ile come directly from Latin -ilis, -ile; the English suffix -ity comes from Latin -itat- (the stem of -itās) via Old French -te (French -té). Vagility entered English in the 20th century.

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MACHIAVELLIAN adjective (mak-ee-uh-vel-ee-uhn)

adjective
1. characterized by subtle or unscrupulous cunning, deception, expediency, or dishonesty: He resorted to Machiavellian tactics in order to get ahead.
2. of, like, or befitting Machiavelli.
3. being or acting in accordance with the principles of government analyzed in Machiavelli's The Prince, in which political expediency isplaced above morality and the use of craft and deceit to maintain the authority and carry out the policies of a ruler is described.

noun
1. a follower of the principles analyzed or described in The Prince, especially with reference to techniques of political manipulation.


Quotes

I need to tell you about my shamefully Machiavellian motive for sending her packing and the subdolous way in which her death facilitated my crowning achievement.
--*Clanash Farjeon,*A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: The Autobiography of 'Jack the Ripper' as Revealed to Clanash Farjeon, 2003


The doctor's mind pursued its own schemes with Machiavellian subtlety.
--*Joseph Conrad,*Nostromo, 1904



Origin

Machiavellian is an adjective derived from Machiavelli, the family name of the Florentine diplomat, historian, and political philosopher Niccolò Bernardo Machiavelli (1469–1527). He wrote his most famous work The Prince (Il Principe) in 1513 while in exile from Florence. Machiavellian entered English in the 16th century.

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TUSSIE-MUSSIE noun (tuhs-ee-muhs-ee)

noun
1. a small bunch of flowers or herbs.
2. a cone-shaped holder for a bouquet.


Quotes

The world would be a kinder and gentler place if we all exchanged tussie-mussies instead of badmouthing people behind their backs or unfriending them on Facebook.
--*Claire Cook,*The Wildwater Walking Club: Back on Track, 2017


When those were finished, they turned to the tussie-mussies--handheld herbal nosegays in which each plant has a special significance--for the women guests.
--*Susan Wittig Albert,*Lavender Lies, 1999



Origin

There is no clear etymology for tussie-mussie “bunch of flowers, nosegay.” The Middle English form, tusemose, and the 17th-century form tussimussie, suggest an assumed Middle English tus or tusse “cluster of flowers.” Tussie-mussie entered English in the mid-15th century.

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POCOCURANTE noun (poh-koh-koo-ran-tee)

noun
1. a careless or indifferent person.

adjective
1. caring little; indifferent; nonchalant.


Quotes

"I believe you are misinformed, sir," said Jekyl dryly, and then resumed as deftly as he could, his proper character of a pococurante.
--*Sir Walter Scott,*St. Ronan's Well, 1823


Calling a careless person a "pococurante" or other fancy name will not, by the precision of the term, suddenly make the careless careful.
--*Jeff VanderMeer,*The Third Bear, 2010



Origin

The English noun and adjective pococurante is a straightforward borrowing from Italian, even retaining its Italian pronunciation. Pococurante in both languages means “caring little, indifferent.” The first element poco in Italian is an indefinite adjective and adverb meaning “little, a little,” descended from the Latin adjective paucus “few” (the Latin adjective is related to Gothic fawai, Old English fēawe, and Middle English fewe, all plural adjectives of indefinite quantity meaning “few”). The Italian adjective curante is the present participle of the verb curare (the Latin forms are cūrant- and cūrāre) "to watch over, look after, cure.” The Latin verb is a derivative of the noun cūra “worry, concern, object of care,” of unknown etymology. Pococurante entered English in the 18th century.

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FORGETIVE adjective (fawr-ji-tiv)

adjective
1. Archaic. inventive; creative.


Quotes

O quick and forgetive power!
--*Dante Alighieri (written c. 1308–21),*The Vision: or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Francis Cary, 1814


A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ... makes it apprehensive quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes ...
--*William Shakespeare,*Henry IV, Part 2, 1623



Origin

At first glance forgetive looks like a derivative of forget, to be pronounced with a hard g, accented on the second syllable, and meaning something like “forgetful.” It is, however, a coinage by Shakespeare, and appears in Henry IV, Part 2 (1596-99). Forgetive, obscure in its etymology and meaning, is usually interpreted as a derivation of the verb forge “to beat into shape, form by hammering” and meaning “creative, inventive.”

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SITH adverb, conjunction, preposition (sith)


adverb, conjunction, preposition
1. since.


Quotes

... for ever sith the lord Clisson turned French, he never loved him.
--*Jean Froissart (1333?– c.1400),*The Chronicles of Froissart, translated by John Bourchier, 1523–25


"Of course you see now, Sir Thomas, how ill a match Master John Feversham should have been for Blanche." "Wherefore?" was the short answer. "Sith he is no longer the heir."
--*Emily Sarah Holt,*Clare Avery, 1876



Origin

In English sith is an archaic or dialect word whose functions as an adverb, preposition, and conjunction have been taken over by since. The Old English siththa is a variant of siththan (originally sīth thām “after that, subsequent to”), an adverbial and prepositional phrase formed from the comparative adverb sīth “subsequently, later” (akin to German seit “since”) and thām, the dative of the demonstrative pronoun, the phrase meaning “subsequent to that, after that.”

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CINQUEFOIL noun (singk-foil)

noun
1. any of several plants belonging to the genus Potentilla, of the rose family, having yellow, red, or white five-petaled flowers, as P. reptans (creeping cinquefoil) of the Old World, or P. argentea (silvery cinquefoil) of North America.
2. Also called quinquefoil, quintefoil. Architecture. a panellike ornament consisting of five lobes, divided by cusps, radiating from a common center.
3. Heraldry. a charge in the form of a five-leaved clover.


Quotes

Cinquefoil, with small yellow blossom, and ranunculus, with glossy yellow cup, edged the sunny roads ...
--*Janet Lewis,*The Trial of Sören Qvist, 1947


This was my curious labor all summer,--to make this portion of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
--*Henry David Thoreau,*Walden, 1854



Origin

The English noun cinquefoil comes from Middle French cincfoille “five leaves.” Cincfoille corresponds to Latin quīnque folia, a translation of Greek pentáphyllon, literally “five leaves,” and the name of the creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans) or the silvery cinquefoil (P. argentea). Cinquefoil entered English in the 15th century.