Word Of The Day

[Altobelli]

ISOPOLITY noun (ahy-suh-pol-I-tee)

noun
1. equal rights of citizenship, as in different communities; mutual political rights.


Quotes

Isopolity agreements offered states and their citizens a way to share most fully in each other's judicial systems, political processes, religious and cultural life, without giving up their prized mutual autonomy.
--*Richard Billows,*"International Relations," The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Volume I, 2007


In the nine****th century, the British lawyer and legal theorist A. V. Dicey proposed the creation of a common citizenship, or “isopolity,” between the United States and the United Kingdom.
--*Linda Kinstler,*"A New Way for the Wealthy to Shop for Citizenships," The New Yorker, June 11, 2016



Origin

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) was the first author to use isopolīteía “equality of civic rights.” Isopolīteía applied to individuals and communities; it also meant reciprocity of such rights between states (as by treaty). Polīteía “citizenship, daily life of a citizen, body of citizens; government, polity, constitution” is a derivative of the noun pólis “citadel (of a city), city, one’s city or country.” Pólis comes the very complicated Proto-Indo-European root pel-, pelǝ-, plē- “citadel, fortified elevation, city.” The same root yields the Sanskrit noun pū́r “citadel, city” (Singapur “Singapore” means “Lion City”), and Lithuanian pilìs “citadel, castle.” Isopolity entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

PUNNET noun (puhn-it)

noun
1. British, Australian. a small container or basket for strawberries or other fruit.


Quotes

Next time you buy strawberries take a look a good look in the punnet. Do the berries still have the stem attached or has it been plucked off leaving only the green hat of leaves called the calyx?
--*Lucy Hooker,*"The strawberry-picking robots doing a job humans won't," BBC, May 25, 2018


We've each got a cardboard tray with twenty-five punnets in, and our job's to fill each punnet with ripe strawberries, or nearly ripe.
--*David Mitchell,*The Bone Clocks, 2014



Origin

In the “Cyclops” episode (chapter 12) of Ulysses, there are 33 parodies in exaggerated, sentimental, or pompous styles. The first of these parodies begins “In Inisfail the fair,” a parody of a poem by the Irish poet James Mangin (1803-49), and contains, among other things, an extravagant list of Irish products: “… pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and custard marrows….” A punnet is a light, shallow container for fruits or other produce. The word is used in Ireland, England, and Australia but not in America. Its origin is uncertain. Punnet entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

HYPNOPEDIA noun (hip-nuh-pee-dee-uh)

noun
1. sleep learning.


Quotes

Years of intensive hypnopaedia and, from twelve to seven****, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.
--*Aldous Huxley,*Brave New World, 1932


The idea that humans can learn while asleep, a concept sometimes called hypnopedia, has a long and odd history. It hit a particularly strange note in 1927, when New York inventor A. B. Saliger debuted the Psycho-phone. He billed the device as an “automatic suggestion machine.”
--*Ben Guarino,*"Your brain can form new memories while you are asleep, neuroscientists show," Washington Post, August 8, 2017



Origin

Hypnopedia is first recorded in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), and the word may well be a coinage of his. Hypnopedia is a compound word formed from the Greek nouns hýpnos “sleep” and paideía “child-rearing, education.” Hýpnos is a regular Greek development of the Proto-Indo-European noun sup-nos, from the root swep, swop-, sup- “to sleep.” In preclassical Latin the noun swep-nos becomes swop-nos and finally somnus in classical Latin. The Germanic equivalent root, swef-no-, becomes swefen “sleep, dream” in Old English and sweven in Middle English, e.g., in Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Paideía is a derivative of the noun país (stem paid-) “child.”

[Altobelli]

CAUSERIE noun (koh-zuh-ree)

noun
1. an informal talk or chat.
2. a short, informal essay, article, etc.


Quotes

I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of a New York millionaire.
--*Mark Twain,*"A Little Note to M. Paul Bourget," How to Tell a Story and Other Essays, 1897


It hardly seemed a speech when he was at the tribune, more like a causerie, though he told very plain truths sometimes to the peuple souverain.
--*Mary Alsop King Waddington,*My First Years as a Frenchwoman, 1914



Origin

In French the noun causerie means “a chat; a talk (as at a conference).” As a literary style a causerie is a short, topical essay, personal and humorous (there is no one precise English translation for causerie). Causerie is a derivative of the verb causer “to chat, talk, gossip.” The French verb comes from Latin causārī “to plead a case, bring a (legal) action; to plead as an excuse or reason,” a derivative of the noun causa “legal case or proceeding, trial.” Causerie entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

CONTEXTOMY noun (kon-teks-tuh-mee)

noun
1. the practice of misquoting someone by shortening the quotation or by leaving out surrounding words or sentences that would place the quotation in context.
2. an instance of this.


Quotes

Contextomy can be used to create a false impression of a source's attitudes in the service of motives as harmless as selling movie tickets or as harmful as character assassination, which is typical of its employment in political advertising.
--*Joseph McGlynn III, Matthew S. McGlone,*"Language," Encyclopedia of Deception, Volume 2, 2014


They engage in what writer Milton Mayer once called "contextomy": cutting a statement out of context (e.g. John Adams on religion) in order to give a completely misleading impression what what some famous person believes.
--*Paul. F. Boller, Jr., John H. George,*"Preface," They Never Said It, 1989



Origin

Contextomy is a blend of the words context and -tomy, a Greek suffix meaning “cutting.” In was first recorded in English in 1965–70.

[Altobelli]

HAGRIDDEN adjective (hag-rid-n)

adjective
1. worried or tormented, as by a witch.


Quotes

We are a simple people, but we are hagridden by our fear of darkness.
--*Jack Whyte,*The Saxon Shore, 1995


Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled.
--*Thomas Carlyle,*Sartor Resartus, 1836



Origin

The hag in hagridden has always meant “evil spirit (in female form), ghost, woman who deals with the Devil, a witch; an ugly, repellent, malicious old woman.” The noun is very rare in Middle English (hegge appears once in the 13th century, and hagge once in the 14th) and becomes common only in the 16th century as heg, hegge. Hag is generally believed to descend from Old English hægtesse, hægtis “a fury, witch,” akin to Old High German hagazissa, German Hexe (cf. hex signs on barns, especially in Amish country), from West Germanic hagatusjōn-. Hagridden entered English in the 17th century.

[Altobelli]

IMPROBITY noun (im-proh-bi-tee)

noun
1. lack of honesty or moral scruples.
2. perseverance.


Quotes

But apart from these hurtful factors, the Ring itself radiated improbity. It had but recently been said by Henry Ward Beecher that perhaps the government of the City of New York did more harm to its people than all the churches together did good.
--*Edgar Fawcett,*A New York Family, 1891


"Beelzebub" had been floundering in the sea of improbity, holding by a slender life-line to the respectable world that had cast him overboard.
--*O. Henry,*"The Remnants of the Code," Cabbages and Kings, 1904



Origin

The English noun improbity comes from Latin improbitās (stem improbitāt-) “dishonesty, unscrupulousness,” a derivative of improbus “inferior, improper.” The parts of improbus break down fairly easily: the prefix im- is a variant of the Latin negative prefix in- used before labial consonants (e.g., b, p) from the same Proto-Indo-European source as Germanic (English) un-, Greek a-, an-, and Sanskrit a-, an-. The element pro- is from the very common (and complicated) Proto-Indo-European prefix and preposition per “forward, through, in front of, early, first.” The -bus is the same ending as in the Latin adjective superbus “proud, haughty” (the ultimate source of English superb) from the Proto-Indo-European root bheu- “to be, exist, grow,” source of Germanic (English) be, Latin fuï “I was, have been” (the perfect of esse “to be”), and Slavic (Polish) być “to be.” The original sense of probus would be “going well, growing well,” and improbus “not going well.” Improbity entered English in the late 16th century.

[Altobelli]

NUBILOUS adjective (noo-buh-luhs)

adjective
1. cloudy or foggy.
2. obscure or vague; indefinite.


Quotes

... it seemed, in their arbitrary disposition of the world's affairs, the Fates had ordained that Peyton's sky should always be nubilous ...
--*Montgomery G. Preston,*"An Eventful Evening," Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine," February 1876


Her azure eyes are nubilous.
--*Antoinette van Heugten,*Saving Max, 2010



Origin

The English adjective nubilous comes straight from Latin nūbilus, a derivative of nūbēs “cloud.” The uncommon Proto-Indo-European root sneudh- “fog, mist, cloud” lies behind the Latin words and appears as well in several Iranian languages, e.g., Avestan snaodha- “clouds” and Baluchi nōd “light clouds, fog”; Greek nythós “dark, dumb,” and Welsh nudd “mist, fog.” Nubilous entered English in the 16th century.

[Altobelli]

ARCTOPHILE noun (ahrk-tuh-fahyl)

noun
1. a person who is very fond of and is usually a collector of teddy bears.


Quotes

Unless you're an arctophile, which is just a fancy way of saying a teddy bear devotee, the name likely doesn't mean much, but it means a lot to collectors.
--*John J. Lamb,*The Crafty Teddy, 2007


I am a past president of the American Society of Teddy Bear Collectors and have contributed dozens of articles to Teddy Bear Review and other arctophile journals.
--*Clifford Chase,*Winkie, 2006



Origin

Arctophile means just “bear loving, bear lover,” but in modern English specifically a lover of teddy bears, not grizzlies. The suffix -phile “lover of, enthusiast for” is completely naturalized in English, as in cinephile, audiophile. The element arcto- comes from Greek árktos “bear,” the Greek result of a very widespread (and complicated in its development) Proto-Indo-European noun ṛ́tko- (earlier H₂ṛ́tko-) “bear” (the H₂ was possibly pronounced as in German Bach). Greek transposed the -tk- to -kt-. In Hittite the original H₂ṛ́tkos (spelled ḫartaggaš in the clumsy Hittite cuneiform) was probably pronounced hartkas, which is very close to the hypothetical form but is of uncertain meaning: the name of a predatory animal (?), a cult official (?). In the Indo-Iranian languages, Sanskrit ṛkṣa- and Avestan arša- are regular developments from ṛ́tko-. Italic (Latin) ursus has two problems: u- instead of o-, and the exact source of the first s. Celtic artos becomes art in Middle Irish, and arth in Welsh (Arthur in Welsh means “bear man”). Arctophile entered English in the 20th century.

[Altobelli]

SQUIZ noun (skwiz)

noun
1. a quick, close look.

verb
1. to peer at quickly and closely.


Quotes

He'd been at me for months to come in and have a squiz at the work he'd done, but I really didn't care that much, and kept putting him off.
--*Peter Doyle,*The Devil's Jump, 2001


She shrugged--which sort of annoyed me too--and I led her clomping to the front room where the sun was streaming in, and I had another squiz.
--*Anne Kennedy,*The Last Days of the National Costume, 2013



Origin

The noun squiz is a piece of slang used in Australian and New Zealand. Most slang terms are of uncertain origin, and squiz is no exception: it is possibly a blend of quiz and squint. Squiz entered English in the 20th century.