Word Of The Day

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CONLANG noun (kon-lang)

noun
1. an artificially constructed language used by a group of speakers, as opposed to one that has naturally evolved:*conlangs such as Esperanto and Klingon.


Quotes

A good conlang takes time to develop, and a conlanger who works on their own has all the time in the world.
--*David J. Peterson,*The Art of Language Invention, 2015


... I want figurative language. I’ve been pushing for this in Klingon for 20 years. Because if you really are driving your conlang, then you should be able to use metaphors in that language and be understood.
--*Lawrence M. Schoen,*"How the Klingon and Dothraki Languages Conquered Hollywood," Wired, October 4, 2014, from*Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, Episode 119, September 30, 2014



Origin

Conlang, a blend of con(structed) and lang(uage), dates only from around 1991, but the idea of an artificially constructed international auxiliary language has been around since at least the second half of the 19th century. The most famous of these 19th-century conlangs is Esperanto (invented in 1887); other such languages include Volapük (invented about 1879). Twentieth-century conlangs include Ido, derived from Esperanto and developed in 1907; Interlingua (developed between 1924 and 1951); and the half dozen or so languages that J.R.R. Tolkien invented for his trilogy Lord of the Rings. Speakers of conlangs*range from those who would like to see them*in wide use, e.g., Esperanto, to the aficionados of sci-fi conventions, who delight in the extravagances of, say, Klingon.

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GABELLE noun (guh-bel)

noun
1. a tax; excise.


Quotes

In 1355, the successor of Philip of Valois, John II of France, imposed a gabelle on salt, and again doubled the tax, so that it then rose to eight deniers upon the pound.
--*Henry Morley,*Palissy the Potter: The Life of Bernard Palissy, of Saintes, 1853


They paid a gabelle in order to wear a forbidden ornament and did their best to interfere with the enforcement of the law.
--*Susan Mosher Stuard,*Gilding the Market, 2006



Origin

The rare noun gabelle “a tax on salt” comes from Anglo-French (the variety of French used in England after the Norman Conquest) and other Romance languages and dialects from Late and Medieval Latin gabella “tax, salt tax.” Gabella derives ultimately from Arabic qabāla “tax, duty, impost.” There is an understandable confusion in form and meaning between gabelle "a tax on salt," and gavel “feudal rent, tribute to a superior.” Gavel comes from Old English gafol, a noun that dates from about 725, occurs only in Old English, and derives from the same Germanic root as the verb give.*Gabelle entered English in the 15th century.

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UMAMI noun (oo-mah-mee)

noun
1. a strong meaty taste, often considered to be one of the basic taste sensations along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, imparted by glutamate and certain other amino acids.


Quotes

Complex, creamy and very comforting, its intense umami character was exactly what Ms. Nguyen tried to capture in this garlicky noodle recipe ... .
--*Melissa Clark,*"These Generously Buttered Noodles Have Loads of Umami," New York Times, March 15, 2019


Glutamate also occurs naturally in all the foods that we associate with*umami: aged hard cheeses, tomatoes, mushrooms, dried and fermented fish and fish sauces, and savory condiments like Marmite and Worcestershire sauce.
--*Helen Rosner,*"An MSG Convert Visits the High Church of Umami," The New Yorker, April 27, 2018



Origin

Umami comes unchanged from Japanese umami “savory taste, delicious taste.” Umami comes from umi-, the inflectional stem of umai “(to be) delicious” and -mi, a suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives. Umami entered English in the 20th century.

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LESE MAJESTY noun (leez-maj-uh-stee)

noun
1. an attack on any custom, institution, belief, etc., held sacred or revered by numbers of people: Her speech against Mother's Day was criticized as lese majesty.


Quotes

At the risk of lese-majesty, it [Windsor Castle] reminded me of a toy castle, part Disney, part Austrian schloss.
--*Nick Glass,*"St. George's Chapel: The historic venue where Harry and Meghan are getting married," CNN, May 3, 2018


... his father was in jail for lese majesty—what you call speaking the truth about the Emperor.
--*Jack London,*The Iron Heel, 1907



Origin

It is not very often that there is a transparent connection between French (and English) and Latin, but lese majesty is such a term. In modern French the term is lèse-majesté, from Middle French laise majeste “a crime against the king, treason.” The French forms derive from Latin laesa mājestās “injured majesty (of the sovereign people, state, or emperor).” Laesa is the past participle of the verb laedere “to hurt, harm” (of uncertain etymology); mājestās is a derivative of the comparative adjective major “greater, larger, bigger.” Lese majesty entered English in the 15th century.

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FACULTATIVE abjective (fak-uhl-tey-tiv)

adjective
1. left to one's option or choice; optional: The last questions in the examination were facultative.


Quotes

I cannot but be conscious, when this toast of "Science and Literature" is given, that in what tends to become the popular view it is Sir William Grove and Science who are obligatory; it is I and Literature who are facultative.
--*Matthew Arnold,*"Banquet at the Royal Academy," The Times, May 2, 1881


From the facultative point of view, Poe thinks of poetry as a rhythmic and musical use of language which is the province of Taste alone, and which aspires to Beauty.
--*Richard Wilbur,*"Terror Wasn't His Only Talent," New York Times, September 9, 1984



Origin

The adjective facultative comes via the French adjective facultatif (masculine), facultative (feminine) “conveying or granting a right or power,” from the noun faculté “knowledge, learning, physical or moral capacity." French faculté*is*ultimately from Latin facultāt-, the stem of facultās “ability, power, capacity” (originally a doublet of the noun facilitās “ease, ease of performance or completion, facility”). The French adjective suffix -atif, -ative comes from the Latin suffix -ātivus; the English suffix -ative comes from both French and Latin. Facultative entered English in the 19th century.

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YEALING noun (yee-lin)

noun
1. a person of the same age as oneself.


Quotes

Oh ye, my dear-remember'd ancient yealings, / Were ye but here to share my wounded feelings!
--*Robert Burns,*"The Brigs of Ayr,"*Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,*Edinburgh Edition, 1787


His bonny, various, yeelin' frien's / Cam a' in bourrochs there ....
--*Robert Couper,*"Macguldrochiana," Poetry Chiefly in the Scottish Language, 1804



Origin

Yealing “a contemporary, a coeval” is a word of uncertain etymology, used by only three Scottish poets: Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), Robert Burns (1759–1796), and Robert Couper (1750–1818). Yealing entered English in the 18th century.

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EXODUS noun (ek-suh-duhs)

noun
1. a going out; a departure or emigration, usually of a large number of people: the summer exodus to the country and shore.


Quotes

The California exodus has been far more significant in the more lightly populated states of the West, where people born in California now represent a huge share of the population.
--*Nate Cohn,*"The California Exodus,"*New York Times, August 14, 2014


Signs point to an exodus.*A study published earlier this month*suggests that senior civil servants leave in droves during the first year of a new administration.
--*Andrew McGill,*"The Coming Exodus of Career Civil Servants," The Atlantic, December 28, 2016



Origin

Exodus dates from Old English times: the English abbot and scholar Aelfric Grammaticus (“Aelfric the Grammarian,” c955–c1020) writes the sentence sēo ōther bōc is Exodus gehāten “The second book (of the Bible) is called Exodus.” The Old English noun comes straight from Latin Latin exodus, a direct borrowing of Greek éxodos “a going out, a march, military expedition.” Éxodos is the Greek title, not a translation, of the opening words of the Hebrew text, wě ʾēlleh shěmōth “And these (are) the names.”

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EASTER EGG noun (ee-ster-eg)

noun
1. a hidden message, as a cryptic reference, iconic image, or inside joke, that fans are intended to discover in a television show or movie.


Quotes

Peele, who also wrote the film, also packed his film with funny, bizarre, and meaningful Easter eggs and references.
--*Yohana Desta,*"5 Chilling Things You Didn't Notice About Get Out the First Time Around," Vanity Fair, March 6, 2017


Wade is one of the many, likely millions, who take part in a new game for earnest stakes: a competition to find three Easter eggs, or embedded tricks, in a virtual game.
--*Richard Brody,*"Steven Spielberg's Oblivious, Chilling Pop-Culture Nostalgia in 'Ready Player One'," The New Yorker, April 2, 2018



Origin

Easter egg, in the sense “a hidden message, reference, or inside joke that fans are intended to discover in a piece of software, television show, or movie,” is meant to invoke the traditional Easter egg hunt and dates from the mid-1980s. The original sense of Easter egg dates from the 16th century.

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ANTHROPOCENE noun (an-thruh-puh-seen)

noun
1. a proposed epoch of the present time, occurring since mid-20th century, when human activity began to effect significant environmental consequences, specifically on ecosystems and climate.


Quotes

He*proposed*that humans had so throughly altered the fundamental processes of the planet—through agriculture, climate change, and nuclear testing, and other phenomena—that a new geological epoch had commenced: the*Anthropocene, the age of humans.
--*Robinson Meyer,*"Geology's Timekeepers Are Feuding," The Atlantic, July 20, 2018


The meetings addressed ideas including how to accessibly present complex data, and grappled with many aspects of life in the Anthropocene age—today’s geological era, marked by human domination of the environment.
--*Kimberly Bradley,*"The End Is Nigh. Can Design Save Us?"*New York Times, March 20, 2019



Origin

Anthropocene is a compound of Greek ánthrōpos “human being, man (as opposed to an animal or a god)” and the English combining form -cene, which was extracted from words like Miocene, Pliocene, and Oligocene, names of geological strata and epochs. The combining form -cene ultimately comes from the Greek adjective kainós “new, recent”; it was coined by the English geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875). Anthropocene entered English in the 20th century.

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BARDOLATRY noun (bahr-dol-uh-tree_

noun
1. great or excessive adoration of or reverence for*William Shakespeare:*I crossed the line into bardolatry halfway through my thesis on the psyche of Lady Macbeth.


Quotes

So much for Bardolatry!
--*George Bernard Shaw,*"Better Than Shakespear?"*Three Plays for Puritans,*1901


... a fellow who'd been sizing up Aaron's Bardolatry credentials had boasted that he himself had disproven all three leading theories about the identities of Shakespeare's Dark Lady and Fair Youth, and would soon be the one to unearth the true identities of Shakespeare's female and male paramours.
--*Rachel Kadish,*The Weight of Ink, 2017



Origin

Bardolatry, an excessive devotion to “the Bard” (William Shakespeare), is a combination of bard, from common Celtic bardos (Old Irish bard, Welsh bardd), and the combining form -latry, from Greek latreía “service, worship.” Bardolatry was coined by George Bernard Shaw in 1901.