Word Of The Day

[Altobelli]

VESPINE adjective (ves-pahn)

adjective
1. of or relating to wasps.
2. resembling a wasp.


Quotes

From above the cubicles looked like a magnified insect battery, a nest uncovered by mistake, a glimpse of geometrically precise rows of pods, lines of tiny vespine heads, shining with black Sony ovals, trembling with larval energy on T-shirt thoraces.
--*Rana Dasgupta,*Tokyo Cancelled, 2005


The trees had turned a vespine yellow, as if trying to terrify what would eat them.
--*Bennett Sims,*A Questionable Shape, 2013



Origin

English vespine is a straightforward borrowing from the Latin noun vespa “wasp” plus the adjective suffix -ine, from Latin -īnus, and one could reasonably--but wrongly--conclude that wespā was the original Proto-Indo-European word for wasp. The original form was wepsā, wopsā, and Latin and English (among other languages) simply metathesized (or transposed) the consonants. Old English has many different forms for the insect: wæfs, wæps, wæsp, etc. The other Germanic languages also display the -ps- and -sp- forms. Outside Germanic, the extremely conservative Baltic languages have vapsvà (Lithuanian) and wobse (Old Prussian), both meaning “wasp.” The Baltic forms, especially the Old Prussian, also show more clearly the Proto-Indo-European root behind wasp and vespa: webh-, wobh- “to weave” (from the nests that wasps construct). Vespine entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

CHEVELURE noun (shev-uh-loor)

noun
1. a head of hair.


Quotes

The arrangement of this chevelure is performed for the chiefs by professional barbers, and is a work of great labour. Six hours are sometimes occupied in dressing a head; and the process is repeated at intervals of two or three weeks.
--*Robert Gordon Latham,*The Natural History of the Varieties of Man, 1850


... time has stolen away his raven locks, and given him a chevelure of snow instead.
--*Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu,*The Mysterious Lodger, 1850



Origin

The pronunciation of English chevelure, accented on the final syllable, reveals the still unnaturalized status of the word after nearly six centuries. Chevelure looks like--and is--a French word meaning “head of hair, wig.” In Old French the word was spelled cheveleüre, from Latin capillātūra “hairlike flaw in a gem or gemstone,” a derivative of the adjective capillātus “longhaired,” itself a derivative of capillus “the hair on the head” (and like English hair a collective noun). Chevelure entered English in the 15th century.

[oldcolner]

6 hours to do your hair!
Mine takes 10 seconds
Lol

[Altobelli]

6 hours to do your hair!
Mine takes 10 seconds
Lol

And I thought Matron took a long time.

[Altobelli]

NORMCORE noun (nawrm-kawr)

noun
1. a fashion style or way of dressing characterized by ordinary, plain clothing with no designer names, often a reaction against trendy fashion.
2. clothes that conform to this style: I wear normcore on weekends—usually a t-shirt and jeans.

adjective
1. noting or relating to this style: She’s definitely a normcore dresser.


Quotes

At first, I spotted just occasional forays into normcore: the rare cool kid wearing clothes as lukewarm as the last sips of deli coffee—mock turtlenecks with Tevas and Patagonia windbreakers; Uniqlo khakis with New Balance sneakers or Crocs and souvenir-stand baseball caps.
--*Fiona Duncan,*"Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They're One in 7 Billion," New York, February 26, 2014


Never mind that she’s royalty, Kate is in the vanguard of something that’s a bit like normcore (deliberately dressing in an untrendy way), only bigger and broader, which henceforth shall be known as Katenorm.
--*Shane Watson,*"The Duchess of Cambridge's new relaxed style is like a royal version of 'normcore'," Telegraph, June 14, 2018



Origin

Normcore has the unpleasant feel of a neologism such as doublethink in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Normcore may be formed from norm (“a standard, the average level”) or normal (“conforming to a standard”); core may simply be from core (“essential part”) or be a shortening of hard-core (“uncompromising”). Normcore entered English in 2014.

[Altobelli]

CALESCENT adjective (kuh-les-uhnt)

adjective
1. growing warm; increasing in heat.


Quotes

I've tested the misting fan’s potency in several clammy places, from subway stations to the congested, calescent queues at Disney World (where, on a stinking-hot day, I’d unwisely worn a boiler suit).
--*Laura Bannister,*"The Misting Fan That Kept Me Cool at Disney World," New York, June 12, 2017


Otis' earlier statements had been calm, but calescent anger foamed in him and was soon to explode.
--*Arelo C. Sederberg,*The Dynamite Conspiracy, 2001



Origin

The English adjective calescent comes directly from Latin calescent-, the inflectional stem of calescēns, the present participle of the verb calescere “to become warm or hot,” a verb derivative of calēre “to be warm or hot.” In Latin the element -sc- in the present tense has inceptive force (i.e., “I am beginning to x”); thus the present tense of noscere (also gnoscere) means “I get to know, I find out” and is the source of English recognize, cognition, and other words. Calescent entered English in the early 19th century.

[Altobelli]

LITTORAL adjective (lit-er-uhl)

adjective
1. of or relating to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.
2. (on ocean shores) of or relating to the biogeographic region between the sublittoral zone and the high-water line and sometimes including the supralittoral zone above the high-water line.
3. of or relating to the region of freshwater lake beds from the sublittoral zone up to and including damp areas on shore.

noun
1. a littoral region.


Quotes

The Center for Advanced Studies would be built--perhaps there was still some virgin littoral stretch and the building he envisaged could be nestled somewhere along this lake or the other--but there would be modifications in the plan.
--*Ralph McInerny,*The Green Revolution, 2008


In another hour the horns of motors began to blow down from the winding road along the low range of the Maures, which separates the littoral from true Provençal France.
--*F. Scott Fitzgerald,*Tender Is the Night, 1934



Origin

English littoral comes from the Latin adjective littorālis (lītorālis is more correct), a derivative of littor- (lītor-), the inflectional stem of lītus (littus) “shore, shoreline.” In general littoral is used for technical subjects, e.g., geography, biology. The one exception is the common noun lido meaning “fashionable beach resort,” and the somewhat less fashionable “public open-air swimming pool.” Lido comes directly from Venetian Italian Lido (di Venezia) (from Latin lītus), the name of a sandbar or chain of sandy islands between the Lagoon of Venice and the Adriatic, the site of the annual Venice Film Festival. Littoral entered English in the 17th century.

[Altobelli]

AGORA noun (ag-er-uh)

noun
1. the place where a popular political assembly met in Ancient Greece, originally a marketplace or public square.
2. a popular political assembly.
3. the Agora, the chief marketplace of Athens, center of the city's civic life.


Quotes

In the fall of 1964, left-wing students at U.C. Berkeley demanded the right to hand out antiwar literature on Sproul Plaza, the red brick agora at the center of the campus.
--*Andrew Marantz,*"How Social-Media Trolls Turned U.C. Berkeley Into a Free-Speech Circus," The New Yorker, July 2, 2018


... it has become a commonplace among ancient historians to single out the agora as the political centre of the polis where the people met to make all important decisions or, in oligarchies and tyrannies, to rubber stamp the decisions made by the rulers.
--*"The Agora as the Political Centre of the Polis," The Polis as an Urban Centre and as a Political Community, Symposium, August 29–31, 1996



Origin

In Greek agorá originally meant “assembly,” especially of the common people, not of the ruling class. Agorá gradually developed the meanings “marketplace, the business that goes on in the marketplace, public speaking.” The Greek noun is a derivative of the verb ageírein “to gather,” from the Proto-Indo-European root ger-, gere- “to gather, collect,” source also of Latin grex “flock, herd,” with its English derivatives aggregate, egregious, and gregarious. Agora entered English in the late 16th century.

[Altobelli]

DECOROUS adjective (dek-er-uhs)

adjective
1. characterized by dignified propriety in conduct, manners, appearance, character, etc.


Quotes

If you think British historical dramas are all decorous whisperings about how one should behave upon meeting the queen, this mini-series is here to prove that notion wrong ...
--*Joanna Scutts,*"The Very Real Story Behind A Very English Scandal," Slate, July 4, 2018


The normally decorous Senate has been rocked by heated confrontations this week as fellow Republicans have traded personal and profane insults over how much loyalty to show President Trump.
--*Sean Sullivan and Seung Min Kim,*"Animosity in the Senate as GOP trades insults over criticism of Trump," Washington Post, June 14, 2018



Origin

The English adjective decorous ultimately derives from Latin decōrus “acceptable, fitting, proper.” The adjective decōrus is a derivative of the noun decus (inflectional stem decor-) “esteem, honor.” The Latin words derive from the Proto-Indo-European root dek-, dok- “to accept, take,” from which Latin also derives the verb decēre “to be acceptable, be fitting,” whose present participle stem decent- is the source of English decent. From the root dok- Latin forms the verb docēre “to teach (i.e., to make acceptable, make fitting).” The English derivatives of docēre include doctrine and docent. The same root appears in Greek dokeîn “to expect, suppose, imagine, seem, seem good,” and its derivative nouns dógma “what seems good, opinion, belief,” source of English dogma, and dóxa “expectation, opinion, estimation, repute,” and in the Septuagint and the New Testament, “glory, splendor,” which forms the first element in doxology “hymn of praise.” Decorous entered English in the 17th century.

[Altobelli]

PERSEID noun (pur-see-id)

noun
1. Astronomy. any of a shower of meteors appearing in August and radiating from a point in the constellation Perseus.


Quotes

Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest object known to repeatedly pass by Earth; its nucleus is about 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide. It last passed nearby Earth during its orbit around the sun in 1992, and the next time will be in 2126. But it won't be forgotten in the meantime, because Earth passes through the dust and debris it leaves behind every year, creating the annual Perseid meteor shower.
--*Sarah Lewin,*"Perseid Meteor Shower 2018: When, Where & How to See It," Space.com, July 9, 2018


The Perseids also feature “fireballs,” which are meteors of bright color and longer streaks that sometimes have “magnitudes greater than -3.”
--*Aimée Lutkin,*"How to Watch the Perseids Meteor Showers This Season," Lifehacker, July 9, 2018



Origin

Perseid may have been introduced into English from Italian Perseidi, coined by the distinguished Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910), who is unfortunately best remembered today for the mistranslation into English of Italian canali “channels” on Mars as “canals,” which has inspired decades and decades of science fiction. Perseid ultimately comes from Greek Perseídēs “offspring or daughters of Perseus,” because the meteors appear to be coming from the constellation Perseus. Perseid entered English in the 19th century.