Word Of The Day

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SWEETING noun (swee-ting)

noun
1. a sweet variety of apple.
2. Archaic. sweetheart.


Quotes

... I do give her the frut of two appel trees one a sweeting ye nothermost of ye sweetings in ye Lower yard and ye westermost tree by ye highway.
--*"A Trip to Old Harwich," The Owl, September 1903


They be not righteous actions that make a righteous man; nor be they evil actions that make a wicked man: for a tree must be a sweeting tree before it yield sweetings; and a crab tree before it bring forth crabs.
--*John Bunyan,*A Discourse Upon the Pharisee and the Publican, 1685



Origin

Sweeting is an obvious noun formed from the adjective sweet and the noun suffix -ing “one belonging to, descended from.” The sense “sweetheart,” not used nowadays, dates from about 1300; the sense “a variety of sweet apple” dates from the 16th century.

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TAUTOLOGY noun (taw-tol-uh-jee)

noun
1. needless repetition of an idea, especially in words other than those of the immediate context, without imparting additional force or clearness, as in “widow woman.”
2. an instance of such repetition.
3. Logic. a. a compound propositional form all of whose instances are true, as “A or not A.” b. an instance of such a form, as “This candidate will win or will not win.”


Quotes

Take away perspective and you are stranded in a universal present, something akin, weirdly, to the unhistoried — and, at the risk of tautology, perspective-less — art of the Middle Ages.
--*Geoff Dyer,*"Andreas Gursky's photos visually articulate the world around us, framing modern society," Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2015


... the central moral question is whether we are going to use the language of tautology and self-justification – one that gives us alone the right to be called reasonable and human – or whether we labour to discover other ways of speaking and imagining.
--*Rowan Williams,*"What Orwell can teach us about the language of terror and war," The Guardian, December 12, 2015



Origin

Tautology comes from Late Latin tautologia, a borrowing of a Hellenistic Greek rhetorical term tautología “repetition of something already said.” The second half of tautology is clear enough, being the same suffix as in theology or philology. The first element tauto- needs some clarification: it comes from tò autó “the same,” formed from the neuter singular of the definite article and the third person pronoun (the combination of tò autó to tautó is called krâsis “mixture,” which appears in idiosyncrasy “personal temperament”—a “personal blend” as it were. Tautology entered English in the 16th century.

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ATWEEL adverb (uh-tweel, at-weel)

adverb
1. Scot. surely.


Quotes

Atweel, I can do that, and help her to buy her parapharnauls.
--*John Galt,*The Entail, 1823


Atweel, I dinna ken yet.
--*George MacDonald,*Robert Falconer, 1868



Origin

Atweel is an alteration and contraction of Scots (I) wat weel, (I) wot well in standard if archaic English, meaning (I) know well in modern standard English. Unsurprisingly, atweel is found only in Scottish authors, the two most famous being Robert Burns (1759–1796) and Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Atweel entered English in the 18th century.

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RETICULATION noun (ri-tik-yuh-ley-shuhn)

noun
1. a netlike formation, arrangement, or appearance; network.


Quotes

... Ralph Marvell, stretched on his back in the grass, lay gazing up at a black reticulation of branches between which bits of sky gleamed with the hardness and brilliancy of blue enamel.
--*Edith Wharton,*The Custom of the Country, 1913


Her appearance has changed as well, and I don't mean just the intense reticulation of lines and wrinkles, the true stigmata of life.
--*Rabih Alameddine,*An Unnecessary Woman, 2013



Origin

Reticulation Is a derivative of the adjective reticulate (and the noun suffix -ion), of Latin origin. Reticulate comes from Latin rēticulātus “covered with a net, having a netlike pattern,” a derivative of the noun rēticulum “small net, a network bag,” itself a derivative of rēte “net (for hunting, fishing, fowling).” Reticulation entered English in the 17th century.

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EXOTERIC adjective (ek-suh-ter-ik)

adjective
1. popular; simple; commonplace.
2. suitable for or communicated to the general public.
3. not belonging, limited, or pertaining to the inner or select circle, as of disciples or intimates.
4. pertaining to the outside; exterior; external.


Quotes

I was on a holiday, and was engaged in that rich and intricate mass of pleasures, duties, and discoveries which for the keeping off of the profane, we disguise by the exoteric name of Nothing.
--*G. K. Chesterton,*Tremendous Trifles, 1909


Practical or exoteric alchemy was concerned chiefly with attempts to prepare the philosopher's stone, a hypothetical transmuting and healing agent capable of curing the imagined diseases of metals and the real ones of man.
--*John Read,*"A grandiose philosophical system," New Scientist, February 21, 1957



Origin

Exoteric, the opposite of esoteric, comes from Latin exōtericus “popular (e.g., of books); not overly technical or abstruse,” a borrowing of Greek exōterikós “external, outside, popular.” The first element of the Greek word is the adverb éxō “out, out of, outside”; the last element, -ikós, is a typical adjective suffix. The middle element, -ter-, is usually called a comparative suffix, which is only one of its functions. The suffix -ter is also used in Latin and Greek to form natural or complementary pairs, e.g., Latin nōster “our” and vester “your,” and dexter “right (hand)” and sinister “left (hand).” The Latin adjectives correspond with Greek hēméteros “our” and hyméteros “your,” and dexiterós “right (hand)” and aristerós “left (hand).” Aristerós is a euphemism meaning “better (hand)” (áristos means “best” in Greek, as in aristocracy “rule of the best”). Exoteric entered English in the 17th century.

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INTERREGNUM noun (in-ter-reg-nuhm)

noun
1. any period during which a state has no ruler or only a temporary executive.
2. an interval of time between the close of a sovereign's reign and the accession of his or her normal or legitimate successor.
3. any period of freedom from the usual authority.
4. any pause or interruption in continuity.


Quotes

But now, he has been on the job for two decades, save for a brief interregnum when he switched posts with his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.
--*Michael McFaul,*"I've been in meetings with Putin. Here's what Trump can expect." Washington Post, July 15, 2018


During the two years of interregnum, during Dr. Aagaard's administration and in the year of two following his resignation to accept a similar position at the University of Washington, all major clinical chairmanships fell vacant and new appointments had to be made.
--*John S. Chapman,*"The Cinderella School of Medicine," The Alcalde, January 1962



Origin

Interregnum, a straightforward borrowing from Latin, applies far back in Roman history, to the period of kings (traditionally, 753 b.c.–509 b.c.). An interregnum was the period between the death of the old king and the accession of the new one. During the time of the Roman Republic (509 b.c.–27 b.c.), an interregnum was a period when both consuls or other patrician magistrates were dead or out of office. The Roman Senate then appointed from among themselves an interrex (or a series of interregēs) with consular powers for five-day terms whose principal duty was to supervise the election of new consuls. Interregnum entered English in the 16th century.

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PIACULAR adjective (pahy-ak-yuh-ler)

adjective
1. expiatory; atoning; reparatory.
2. requiring expiation; sinful or wicked.


Quotes

T. S. Eliot made a fetish of using long-dormant adjectives like defunctive, anfractuous, and polyphiloprogenetive; he apparently felt piacular (meaning something done or offered in order to make up for a sin or sacrilegious action) was too run-of-the-mill, so he made up a new form: piaculative.
--*Ben Yagoda,*When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It, March 11, 2007


Sacrifices have generally been divided into three classes of (1) honorific, where the offering is believed to be in some sense a gift to the deity; (2) piacular, or sin-offerings, where the victim was usually burnt whole, no part being retained for eating ...
--*W. Warde Fowler,*The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911



Origin

Piacular comes directly from the Latin adjective piāculāris “(of a rite or sacrifice) performed or offered by way of atonement; expiatory.” Piāculāris is a derivative of the noun piāculum “a sacrificial victim or expiatory offering,” itself a derivative of the verb piāre “to propitiate a god, remove or avert by expiation.” Finally, piāre is a derivative of the adjective pius “faithful, loyal, and dutiful to the gods, one’s country, family, kindred and friends.” Pius is one of the most potent words in Latin and typical of the Romans. The phrase pius Aenēās “loyal, faithful, dutiful Aeneas” occurs 17 times in the Aeneid. Piacular entered English in the 17th century.

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TUNESMITH noun (toon-smith)

noun
1. Informal. a person who composes popular music or songs.


Quotes

The monthly pay Walnut Records offered me as a tunesmith would barely amount to enough for rent and groceries, but held the promise of royalties should one of my songs get recorded.
--*Kenny Rogers with Mike Blakely,*What Are the Chances, 2013


Granted, the limited palette of film scores sometimes results from the limited abilities of the practitioners, but almost any Hollywood tunesmith could achieve more distinctive results if the iron fist of cliché were to relax just a little.
--*Alex Ross,*"Composing for Hollywood," The New Yorker, February 27, 2015



Origin

Tunesmith was originally an Americanism, dating from the Jazz Age (roughly from the 1918 Armistice to the stock-market crash of 1929). Fittingly enough, an early citation for tunesmith (1923) is attributed to the American bandleader Paul Whiteman (1890–1967), who debuted George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924).

[Altobelli]

ASPERSION noun (uh-spur-zhuhn)

noun
1. a damaging or derogatory remark or criticism; slander: casting aspersions on a campaign rival.
2. the act of slandering; vilification; defamation; calumniation; derogation: Such vehement aspersions cannot be ignored.
3. the act of sprinkling, as in baptism.
4. Archaic. a shower or spray.


Quotes

The full enormity of this remark then dawned on me; it was at once a lie and a cruel aspersion on my mother, who would certainly have got me some lighter clothes had I not discouraged her.
--*L. P. Hartley,*The Go-Between, 1953


A notorious New York magazine profile this fall, which cast aspersions on Kaur’s reading habits and penchant for gold rings, showed its cards in the first paragraph ...
--*Carl Wilson,*"Why Rupi Kaur and Her Peers Are the Most Popular Poets in the World," New York Times, December 15, 2017



Origin

Aspersion comes from aspersion-, the stem of the Latin noun aspersiō “a sprinkling.” In classical Latin the noun is restricted to literal sprinkling. In the Vulgate (the Latin version of the Bible prepared by Saint Jerome at the end of the 4th century a.d.), aspersiō also refers to the sprinkling of blood (as for a sacrifice). Aspersiō in the sense “sprinkling with holy water” has always been practiced in the Roman Catholic Church, e.g., in baptisms. The metaphorical sense “sprinkling calumnies; slander” is a development within English. Aspersion entered English in the 16th century.

[Altobelli]

JOHNSONESE noun (jon-suh-neez)

noun
1. a literary style characterized by rhetorically balanced, often pompous phraseology and an excessively Latinate vocabulary: so called from the style of writing practiced by Samuel Johnson.


Quotes

Though I, too, admired his Dictionary, his delightfully wrong-headed “Lives of the Poets” and his countless celebrated apothegms, I agree with Macaulay that he translated the English language into a “Johnsonese” dialect whose now deflated orotundities still disfigure public speaking and other such pious utterances.
--*Anatole Broyard,*"Books of the Times: The Man Behind the Myth," New York Times, February 8, 1973


He valued its uncluttered prose – its freedom from the Johnsonese and Gallicisms that had marred Burney’s late style.
--*Thomas Keymer,*"Too Many Pears," London Review of Books, August 27, 2015



Origin

Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is indeed guilty of Johnsonese, as in his (1755) dictionary definition for network “Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections,” which is incomprehensible (and unforgivable in a dictionary). But far more often Dr. Johnson is direct and pungent (and sometimes amusing), as in his definition for lexicographer “A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge…” Johnsonese entered English in the 19th century.