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Thread: Word Of The Day

  1. #301
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    DINKUM adjective (ding-kuh m)

    adjective
    1. Australian. genuine; authentic.

    Quotes

    The general opinion among the Australian men is that "the Yanks are dinkum," or words to that effect, and when an Australian makes a comment such as this you may be sure that the praise, which is praise indeed, has been well earned.
--*Marjorie Pearse,*"Australians Like Our Men: Woman War Worker Sends Message to the Women of This Country," New York Times, September 19, 1942

"You said you could get us into your printery. That was true, wasn't it?" "It's dinkum, don't you worry...."
--*Peter Doyle,*The Devil's Jump, 2001


    Origin

    Dinkum is associated nowadays with Australia and New Zealand. The word is probably from Lincolnshire dialect dinkum, dincum “work, hard work,” extended to mean “doing one’s fair share of work,” whence fair dinkum “fair and square.” Dinkum entered English in the 19th century.
    Last edited by Altobelli; 25-04-2017 at 06:43 PM.

  2. #302
    I have known one or two kinkymums in my time but I am sure you mean dinkum?

  3. #303
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Bedlington Terrier View Post
    I have known one or two kinkymums in my time but I am sure you mean dinkum?
    Just testing if folk are still reading them and if its worth it BT

  4. #304
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    PERFIDIOUS adjective (per-fid-ee-uh s)

    adjective
    1. deliberately faithless; treacherous; deceitful: a perfidious lover.

    Quotes

    ... that a brother should / Be so perfidious!
--*William Shakespeare,*The Tempest, 1623

"Soft words will not work with me, for I know you only too well, perfidious knaves!" said Don Quixote.
--*Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616),*The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated by John Rutherford, 2000


    Origin

    Perfidious has an unexceptional history in English except for one curious phrase. The English adjective has always meant much the same as the Latin perfidiōsus “faithless, dishonest.” The unusual phrase is perfidious Albion or its French equivalent Albion perfide. (Albiōn is a Latin name for the island or nation of England). Perfidious entered English in the 16th century; perfidious Albion and Albion perfide in the 19th century (Albion perfide has been in French since the late 18th century).

  5. #305
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    POLLYANNA adjective (pol-ee-an-uh)

    adjective
    1. (often lowercase). unreasonably or illogically optimistic: some pollyanna notions about world peace. Also, Pollyannaish.
    noun
    1. an excessively or blindly optimistic person.

    Quotes
    His is not the Pollyanna attitude of the unthinking, but rather a courageous belief that men can face reality and rise from and through it to an abiding faith in the rightness of things.
--*"Goethe: Editorial Comment," The Rotarian, March 1932

You can dismiss this as Pollyanna-ish--or, alternatively, as what you would say if you were worth forty-five billion dollars. But it's part of what makes Buffett likable: his quintessentially American conviction that there's no problem we can't solve.
--*James Surowiecki,*"Warren's Way," The New Yorker, December 10, 2012


    Origin

    The terms Pollyanna and Pollyannaish come from the name of the child heroine created by the American writer Eleanor Porter (1868-1920).

  6. #306
    For Pollyanna read "Primitive".

  7. #307
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    Given Boris used this today

    mugwump

    nounNORTH AMERICAN

    a person who remains aloof or independent, especially from party politics.

  8. #308
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Bedlington Terrier View Post
    For Pollyanna read "Primitive".

  9. #309
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    DRUPE noun (droop)

    noun
    1. Botany. any fruit, as a peach, cherry, plum, etc., consisting of an outer skin, a usually pulpy and succulent middle layer, and a hard and woody inner shell usually enclosing a single seed.

    Quotes

    Its leaves are shaped like spear-heads; the fruit is a kind of drupe, clothed in fleshy scales.
--*Thomas Mayne Reid,*The Castaways, 1870

This Festival is devoted to the mysteries of Plant Reproduction, especially that of those wondrous trees, the Angiosperms, with special emphasis upon the Drupes and the Pomaceous Fruits.
--*Margaret Atwood,*The Year of the Flood, 2009


    Origin

    Even in Latin, drūpa, druppa “olive, overripe olive” was a term used only by technical writers, e.g., Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79). The Latin noun, a direct borrowing from Greek drýppa, was adopted by Carl Linné (in Latin Carolus Linnaeus) 1707-78, the Swedish botanist and naturalist, in his own scientific writings, written in Latin. Drupe entered English as a technical botanical term in the 18th century.

  10. #310
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    LIONHEARTED adjective (lahy-uh-n-hahr-tid)

    adjective
    1. exceptionally courageous or brave.

    Quotes
    As to his courage, he is absolutely lion-hearted where he can help or defend anyone else.
--*Arthur Conan Doyle,*"Three of Them I: A Chat About Children, Snakes, and Zebus," The Strand Magazine, April 1918

... it was discouraging to see her shrink in the face of her inadequacy rather than plunge ahead, lion-hearted, as if glory might yet be hers ...
--*Tobi Tobias,*"Winter's Tale," New York, January 18, 1993


    Origin

    We associate lionhearted and its shorter brother lionheart with King Richard I of England (1157-99). It is unknown whether King Richard could speak English (we know that he spoke French and Occitan, also called Provençal), but Richard’s nickname was not English; it was the French phrase Coeur de Lion. Lionhearted entered English in the 18th century; lionheart, the English translation of Coeur de Lion, was coined by Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1832.

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