Word Of The Day

[Altobelli]

SYNASTRY noun (si-nas-tree)

noun
1. Astrology. the comparison of two or more natal charts in order to analyze or forecast the interaction of the individuals involved.


Quotes

... she matches people according to chart comparison, a branch of astrology called Synastry.
--*Rick Smith,*"Astrologer makes matches in heavens," The Daily Reporter, April 9, 1984


I find this sad because the synastry was really pretty good.
--*Eugenia Last,*"The Last Word in Astrology," The Register-Guard, June 7, 1997



Origin

English synastry is an astrological term coming ultimately from Greek synastría, a noun compounded of the Greek preposition and prefix syn, syn- “with,” completely naturalized in English, the Greek noun ástro(n) “star,” familiar in astronomy, astronaut, and astrology, and the abstract noun suffix -ia, which is also native to Latin, becoming the noun suffix -y in English. Synastry entered English in the 17th century.

[Altobelli]

ATTRACTANCY noun (uh-trak-tuhn-see)

noun
1. the capacity, especially of a pheromone, to attract.


Quotes

From these various investigations it became very clear that numerous components of the cotton plant had some attractancy for the boll weevil, although their effects were often short-ranged.
--*Richard L. Ridgway, May N. Inscoe, and Willard A. Dickerson,*"Role of the Boll Weevil Pheromone in Pest Management," Behavior-Modifying Chemicals for Insect Management, 1990


The attractancy of the brown-rot fungus was discovered by Dr. Glenn Esenther, an entomologist at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin.
--*T. Allan Wolter,*"Your Wayne National Forest," Sunday Times-Sentinel, July 27, 1975



Origin

Attractant is to attractance and attractancy as repellent is to repellence and repellency. Both sets of words are used mostly in biochemistry to describe chemicals, such as pheromones or insectifuges, that attract, drive away, or affect the behavior of other creatures. Attractancy entered English in the 20th century.

[Altobelli]

ONOMASTIC adjective (on-uh-mas-tik)

adjective
1. of or relating to proper names.
2. of or relating to*onomastics.
3. *Law.*(of a signature) written in the handwriting other than that of the document, instrument, etc., to which it is appended.


Quotes

Today’s baseball rosters are filled with names, not nicknames, not like the ones that used to be. The N.B.A. playoffs are equally devoid of onomastic pleasures, just cheap echoes of Magic and the Mailman, Tiny and Tree, Chief and Cornbread.
--*John Branch,*"Like Magic, Great Sports Nicknames Are Disappearing," New York Times, May 10, 2011


... the survey found that mothers’ top reason for onomastic discontent was that they hadn’t been bold enough ...
--*Ruth Graham,*"A Lot of Mothers Regret the Names They Gave Their Children, According to a New Survey," Slate, September 1, 2016



Origin

English onomastic comes straight from the Greek adjective and noun onomastikós, which has quite a few meanings: “pertaining to a name, naming, special name; (in grammar) nominative (case); vocabulary (organized by subject and not by letter).” Onomastikós is a derivative of the verb onomázein “to name, call by name,” itself a derivative of the noun ónoma, the Greek development of Proto-Indo-European nomen-, which appears in Latin as nōmen, Germanic (English) name, and Sanskrit nā́ma. One of the things that make Greek Greek is the presence of prothetic vowels (prothetic means “put in front”) at the beginning of a word, such as the o- in ónoma, the a- in ástron “star” (akin to English star and Latin stella, from assumed sterla), the e- in ennéa “nine” (Latin novem, Sanskrit náva). Some of the prothetic vowels can be explained according to Indo-European linguistics, others not; they are a source of endless research and speculation. Onomastic entered English in the 18th century.

[Altobelli]

SNOWBIRD noun (snoh-burd)

noun
1. Informal. a person who vacations in or moves to a warmer climate during cold weather.
2. any of various birds that winter in a cold, snowy climate, especially the*dark-eyed junco*and the snow bunting.


Quotes

I don’t know if I can be a snowbird every year... But I’m going to try, even if it’s only for a week or two: for more winter sunrises, for more sunlight, and even for more — why not? — joyful crying.
--*Jen A. Miller,*"How I Became a 37-Year-Old Snowbird," New York Times, February 23, 2018


As the temperature drops and months of cold weather loom ahead, snowbirds pack up for warmer climates, anticipating sunny days free of freezing ice, snow shoveling and other winter worries.
--*Mary Kane,*"Prep Your House for Snowbird Season," Kiplinger's Retirement Report, January 2018



Origin

Snowbird has three distinct meanings. The original meaning, “a bird that spends winters in a cold climate,” dates from the late 17th century; the second, “a person who travels from the cold north to spend the winter in the warm, sunny south,” dates from the mid-1920s; the third sense, “a person addicted to heroin or cocaine,” dates from around 1915.

[Altobelli]

MILIEU noun (mil-yoo)

noun
1. surroundings, especially of a social or cultural nature:*a snobbish milieu.


Quotes

... he grew up in Dagenham, on the eastern outskirts of London, a milieu that he has recalled as “gray and grimy.”
--*Patrick Radden Keefe,*"How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success," The New Yorker, January 7, 2019


Most crucial, though ... is a deeply informed, deeply immersive essay from Luc Sante, “Beastie Revolution,” that places the then-nascent band amidst the cultural milieu of New York City, and the world at large, in 1981, from the Walkman and Ronald Reagan and Grandmaster Flash getting booed off stage while opening up for the Clash in Times Square to Robert Mapplethorpe and WBLS radio and the Mudd Club and still-cheap rent.
--*Corey Seymour,*"The Beastie Boys Book Tour Is as Nutty, Irreverent, and Fun as You think It Would Be," Vogue, October 31, 2018



Origin

Milieu is still unnaturalized in English, as its several pronunciations indicate. The French word means “middle, medium, environment.” (In Old French miliu means “the middle.”) Milieu breaks down into the prefix mi- and the noun lieu. Mi- ultimately derives from the Latin adjective medius “middle, middle of, in the middle” (the same prefix occurs in French Midi “midday, the south”). The French noun lieu “place” comes from Latin locus. A lieutenant is literally “a place holder, one who holds the place of another, a substitute” (for a higher authority). Milieu entered English in the mid-19th century.

[Altobelli]

FOURSCORE adjective (fawr-skawr)

adjective
1. four*times twenty; eighty.


Quotes

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
--*President Abraham Lincoln,*"The Gettysburg Address," November 19, 1873


Of the fish, I need say nothing in this hot weather, but that it comes sixty, seventy, fourscore, and a hundred miles by land-carriage ...
--*Tobias Smollett,*The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, 1771



Origin

Americans will recognize the phrase “Fourscore and seven years ago” from the Gettysburg Address (whether they will know what a score of years amounts to is another question). Most Americans will recognize the line from Psalm 90, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten” and will probably guess 70. The noun score comes from Old English scoru “a tally of 20,” from Old Norse skoru “a notch, scratch, tally of 20.” Score is one of the developments from the very complicated Proto-Indo-European root sker-, ker- “to cut.” In Latin the suffixed form ker-sna appears in cēna “dinner,” literally “a slice.” Old Latin also has the form cesnas; Oscan (an Italic language spoken in southern Italy) has the very conservative form kersnu “dinner.” Sker-, ker- in Germanic (English) appears in shear "to cut" and shears "scissors," shard, shirt (from Old English scyrte), and skirt (from Old Norse skyrta). Fourscore entered English at the end of the 13th century.

[Altobelli]

MARE noun (mahr-ey)

noun
1. Astronomy. any of the several large, dark plains on the moon and Mars: Galileo believed that the lunar features were seas when he first saw them through a telescope.


Quotes

The wheels were large and open, and absorbed the unevenness of the mare; Malenfant felt as if he were riding across the Moon in a soap bubble.
--*Stephen Baxter,*Manifold: Space, 2000


The craft will attempt to retrieve up to 2 kilograms of soil and rock from the Oceanus Procellarum, a vast lunar mare on the near side that has yet to be visited by any spacecraft.
--*Dennis Normile,*"Chinese spacecraft successfully lands on moon's far saide and sends pictures back home," Science, January 3, 2019



Origin

Latin mare “sea” is obviously but irregularly derived from Proto-Indo-European mori- “body of water, lake.” The Latin word “ought” to be more (the a is unexplained). The Proto-Indo-European mori- becomes Old Church Slavonic morje “sea, ocean,” Lithuanian marė “lagoon, bay,” and, in the Germanic languages, English mere (i.e., a lake or a pond), German Meer “sea, ocean,” Gothic marei “sea.” Latin mare used to describe the lunar feature first appears in Michael van Langren’s map of the moon (1645). Mare first entered English in the 19th century.

[Altobelli]

BEHEMOTH noun (bih-hee-muhth)

noun
1. any creature or thing of monstrous size or power:*The army's new tank is a behemoth.*The cartel is a behemoth that small business owners fear.
2. an animal, perhaps the hippopotamus, mentioned in Job 40:15–24.


Quotes

... in a play for the ideological high ground, Mr. de Blasio has cast Uber as a corporate behemoth with a singular goal.
--*Matt Flegenheimer,*"City Hall, in a Counterattack, Casts Uber as a Corporate Behemoth," New York Times, July 20, 2015


Power - this one word sums up the rise in concerns on the left about tech behemoth Facebook.
--*Tim Mak,*"Congress May Soon Impose New Regulations on Facebook," All Things Considered, NPR, January 15, 2019



Origin

The traditional etymology of the Hebrew noun behemoth is that it is an augmentative or intensive plural of bəhēmāh “beast,” a derivative of the West Semitic root bhm “to be dumb.” It is also possible that Hebrew bəhēmāh is an adaptation to Hebrew phonology of Egyptian p-ehe-mau “hippopotamus” (literally “ox of the water”). Behemoth entered English in the 14th century.

[Altobelli]

TABULA RASA noun (tab-yuh-luh rah-suh)

noun
1. a mind not yet affected by experiences, impressions, etc.
2. anything existing undisturbed in its original pure state.


Quotes

The notion that the brain is a tabula rasa that can be easily transformed by digital technology is, as yet, the stuff of science fiction.
--*Richard A. Friedman,*"The Big Myth About ****age Anxiety," New York Times, September 7, 2018


The alarm wakes him, and he opens his eyes to a new day. He feels rested, reset, a tabula rasa.
--*Lisa Genova,*Inside the O'Briens, 2015



Origin

In Latin tabula rasa means “erased tablet, a tablet rubbed clean (of writing).” Tabula has many meanings: “flat board, plank, table, notice board, notice, game board, public document, deed, will.” For schoolchildren the schoolmaster’s command Manum dē tabulā "Hand(s) off the tablet!" meant “Pencils down!” Rasa is the past participle of radere “to scrape, scratch, shave, clip.” The inside surfaces of a folded wooden tablet were raised along the edges and filled with wax for writing. The wax could be erased by smoothing with the blunt end of a stylus (more correctly stilus) or by mild heat. The Latin phrase is a translation of Greek pinakìs ágraphos “tablet with nothing written on it, blank tablet,” from Aristotle’s De Anima (Greek Perì Psychês, “On the Soul): “What it [the mind] thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing tablet (pinakìs) on which nothing is yet actually written (ágraphos).” Tabula rasa entered English in the 16th century.

[Altobelli]

FUTILITARIAN noun (fyoo-til-i-tair-ee-uhn)

noun
1. a person who believes that human hopes are vain, and human strivings unjustified.

adjective
1. believing that human hopes are vain, and human strivings unjustified.


Quotes

A lot of artists in America tend to be self-deprecating futilitarians, because we’ve grown up in a culture in which art doesn’t matter except, occasionally, as a high-end investment.
--*Tim Kreider,*"When Art Is Dangerous (or Not)," New York Times, January 10, 2015


For it is significant that much of the work of Bierce seems to be that of what he would have called a futilitarian, that he seldom seems able to find a suitable field for his satire, a foeman worthy of such perfect steel as he brings ot he encounter ...
--*Bertha Clark Pope,*"Introduction" to The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, 1922



Origin

Futilitarian is a humorous blend of futile and utilitarian. The word was coined in scorn for the utilitarian philosophy for the jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Futilitarian entered English in the 19th century.