Word Of The Day

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BICAMERAL adjective (bahy-kam-er-uh t)


adjective

1. Government. having two branches, chambers, or houses, as a legislative body.


Quotes

In five centuries it evolved by 1848 from a loose confederacy of almost sovereign states into a sovereign confederation with a bicameral legislature patterned on the U.S. model.
--*"Switzerland: Its Citizen Army Ably Guards Its Old Freedom," Life, September 4, 1939

“Absent such a bipartisan, bicameral agreement, we are reticent to support any budget resolution on the House floor,” a group of 20 moderates wrote in a letter to the leadership in late June.
--*Russell Berman,*"Why Republicans Can't Just Pivot to Tax Reform," The Atlantic, August 7, 2017



Origin

The closest Latin equivalent to bicameral is the adjective bicamerātus “double vaulted, with double arches.” The Latin prefix bi- derives from bis “two, twice.” In Old Latin the form was duis: Old Latin duidens “having two teeth, two-toothed; a sacrificial animal” becomes bidens in Latin. Likewise Old Latin duellum “war” becomes bellum in Latin. The Latin noun camera “vault, arched roof” comes from Greek kamára “vaulted chamber, covered carriage, vault (of heaven or a tomb).” Bicameral entered English in the 19th century.

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Thooid
adjective tho·oid \ˈthōˌȯid\

Definition of thooid
: resembling a wolf —used of a wolf, dog, or jackal as distinguished from the foxes or alopecoid members of the genus Canis

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CATACHRESIS noun (kat-uh-kree-sis)

noun

1. misuse or strained use of words, as in a mixed metaphor, occurring either in error or for rhetorical effect.


Quotes

By catachresis ... I designate any indirection of meaning, any displacement or deviation from the sociolect, in short the whole system of ungrammaticalities described above, including traditional categories like tropes and figures but by no means limited to them.
--*Michael Riffaterre,*"The Interpretant in Literary Semiotics," Reading Eco: An Anthology, 1997

“No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone” .... Can colours ever be “sane,” “wholesome,” “hectic,” or “diseased”? This rhetorical device is known as catacresis, the deliberate abuse of language, such as mixed metaphors.
--*Roger Luckhurst,*"Introduction," The Classic Horror Stories, 2013



Origin

Abūsiō (“abuse, misuse”) is the “pure” Latin word for “misuse of a word” in rhetoric; Latin catachrēsis is a direct borrowing from Greek katáchrēsis, which first meant “analogical extension of a term” (e.g., calling a joint of a grass or reed a “knee”). Katáchrēsis in Greek later acquired the sense “misuse of a word, misapplication of a word or phrase.” Hardly any two people agree on particular examples, one critic’s catachresis being another’s “striking” mixed metaphor. Catachresis entered English in the late 16th century.

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WHOOSIS noun (hoo-zis)

noun

1. Informal. an object or person whose name is not known or cannot be recalled: It's the whoosis next to the volume control.
2. Informal. a person or thing considered typical or illustrative: the usual paragraph about the party given by Mme. Whoosis.


Quotes

We'll forget about what the King sent whoosis--Abdulmecid.
--*Stanley Elkin,*George Mills, 1982

Compare the Phelps, Dillon, Hillyer, whoosis and whoosis, damn if I can remember their names, with the men whose point of view is excluded from the goddamn colleges and subsidized reviews....
--*Ezra Pound,*"To Douglas McPherson, September 2, 1939," The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941, 1950



Origin

Whoosis is an alteration of the phrase “who's this.” It was first recorded between 1920–25.

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FOSSICK verb (fos-ik)

verb

1. Australian. to hunt; seek; ferret out.
2. Australian. Mining. to undermine another's digging; search for waste gold in relinquished workings, washing places, etc.
3. Australian. to search for any object by which to make gain: to fossick for clients.


Quotes

His mind, however, was a garbage bag; he could fossick in it and come up with a fact that nailed a piece of evidence to any number of courtroom walls.
--*Jon Cleary,*A Different Turf, 1997

In cooking there are a few guidelines, traditional combinations with roots in social history or environmental accident: apple may first have been matched with pork, for example, because ancient pigs used to fossick in the orchards, and their flesh may already have carried the hint of apple ...
--*Colin Tudge,*"Thoughts of Sorts: A matter of taste," New Scientist, September 28, 1978



Origin

The verb fossick is confined pretty much to Australia and New Zealand. As with many regional and dialect words, its etymology is unclear: the verb seems to be a regional British term fussock, fursick meaning “to fuss, fidget, bustle.” In Australia and New Zealand fossick originally meant to hunt for gold or other precious metals or precious stones by digging with a knife or by studying the ground for overlooked fragments. Fossick has an additional sense of hunting for or foraging for small items e.g., to fossick through a drawer for scissors. Fossick entered English in the 19th century.

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GRAMARYE noun (gram-uh-ree)

noun
1. occult learning; magic.


Quotes

Whereas these kids, floundering as they were in the choppy, frigid waters of introductory gramarye, would have been lost without him.
--*Lev Grossman,*The Magician's Land, 2014

Thereupon the blocks of the barrel-vaulted ceiling began to glow with a pale, gentle lavender light that grew rapidly brighter until the entire cellar was clearly illuminated. That was gramarye.
--*Dave Duncan,*Demon Rider, 1997



Origin

Gramarye, from Old French gramaire “grammar,” originally meant “(Latin) grammar, learning in general,” and later “black magic.” The word was all but obsolete by the end of the 16th century. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) revived the word in its sense of black magic or necromancy in his “Lay of the Last Minstrel” (1805). By the Middle Ages, when no one spoke Latin as a first language, gramarye was restricted to “high” learning, which included astrology, occult sciences, and magic. Gramarye entered English in the 14th century.

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VAMOOSE verb (va-moos)

verb
1. Slang. to leave hurriedly or quickly; decamp.
2. Slang. to leave hurriedly or quickly from; decamp from.


Quotes

"I swear to you, man to man, I did not come to Butte to stir up trouble. What more can I do to convince you?" "Leave town. Vamoose."
--*Ivan Doig,*Work Song, 2010

Somewhere east of the Wayne and west of Arness, the romantic Cowboy Hero was tracked down by a posse of hard-eyed realists and told to vamoose. It was time for a Truth about the Old West.
--*"For Young Readers: In the Days of the Cowboy," New York Times, February 14, 1971



Origin

Vamoose meaning “leave in a hurry” has long been associated with cowboys of the American West and Southwest in the 19th century. The American pronunciation væˈmus is an approximate pronunciation of Spanish vamos “let’s go!” The Spanish form derives straightforwardly from Latin vādāmus, the 1st person plural subjunctive used as a “hortatory subjunctive” (a 1st person imperative) of vādere “to go.” Latin vādere is related to English wade. Vamoose entered English in the 19th century.

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ANTINOME noun (an-tuh-nohm)

noun
1. something that is contradictory or opposite to another; a logical contradiction.


Quotes

... both terms of any antinome tend to become of equal importance. Thus Good-Evil; as soon as one has admitted the existence of evil, one is led inevitably to a dualism and a balance.
--*Malcom Cowley,*"To Kenneth Burke, March 13, 1922," The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987, 2014

His notion of the real value of the precious metals was the antinome, as it were, of his view that their cost prevented the supply of money in sufficient abundance; that they were too dear, in short, and ought to be discarded for a cheaper and more prolific medium.
--*"The Scot Abroad," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, July 1856



Origin

The uncommon noun antinome (“contradiction, opposition”) is from the Greek preposition and combining form antí- “opposite; in opposition to” and the noun nómos “usage, custom, law.” Nómos derives from the Greek (and Proto-Indo-European) root nem-, nom- “to assign, allot, take.” The same root is the source of Greek nomós “pasture land, pasturage.” The root appears in Germanic, as in Gothic and Old English niman “to take” (surviving in English in the adjective numb “taken or seized with cold or pain”) and the German verb nehmen “to take.” Antinome entered English in the 19th century.

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SINECURE noun (sahy-ni-kyoo r)

noun
1. an office or position requiring little or no work, especially one yielding profitable returns.
2. an ecclesiastical benefice without cure of souls.


Quotes

He thinks it better to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary," said Mr. May; "everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure.
--*Margaret Oliphant,*Phoebe, Junior, 1876

... Governor James E. McGreevey, courageously or foolishly, proclaimed Baraka [poet] laureate, a sinecure worth ten thousand dollars a year ...
--*Nick Paumgarten,*"Goodbye, Paramus," The New Yorker, October 14, 2002



Origin

Sinecure comes from the Medieval Latin phrase (beneficium) sine cūrā “(benefice) without cure," i.e., an ecclesiastical post that does not involve the cure of souls, or seeing to the needs of parishioners. Sinecures were used and abused in patronage. Sinecure entered English in the 17th century.

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CONCATENATION noun (kon-kat-n-ey-shuh n)

noun
1. a series of interconnected or interdependent things or events.
2. the act of concatenating.
3. the state of being concatenated; connection, as in a chain.


Quotes

We're nothing but “a fortuitous concatenation of atoms.”
--*Lucy Maud Montgomery,*Anne of Ingleside, 1939

Owing to an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, Stilton is viewing me with concern. He has got the idea rooted in his bean that I've come down here to try to steal Florence from him.
--*P. G. Wodehouse,*Joy in the Morning, 1946



Origin

Concatenation comes straight from the Late Latin noun concatēnātiō (stem concatēnātiōn-) “connection, sequence” (literally “chaining together”), a derivation of catēna “chain.” The Italian and Spanish words for “chain” (catena and cadena, respectively) far more closely resemble the Latin original than does the modern French chaîne (the English source for “chain”), which passed through the stages chaeine (Old French), from caeine (Old North French), from Latin catēna. Concatenation entered English in the early 17th century.