Word Of The Day

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PNEUMATIC adjective (noo-mat-ik)

adjective

1. of or relating to air, gases, or wind.
2. of or relating to pneumatics.
3. operated by air or by the pressure or exhaustion of air: a pneumatic drill.
4. filled with or containing compressed air, as a tire.
5. equipped with pneumatic tires.
6. Theology. of or relating to the spirit; spiritual.
7. Zoology. containing air or air cavities.

noun

1. a pneumatic tire.
2. a vehicle having wheels with such tires.


Quotes

... the most immediate impression is that of noise, continuous, oppressive, meaningless noise. Highway noise--from the labored snarl of the big rigs shifting on the grades to the pneumatic whuff of fast passenger traffic.
--*John D. MacDonald,*A Deadly Shade of Gold, 1965


Another voice responded--quieter, murmuring, followed by the pneumatic wheeze of an opening car trunk.
--*Pasha Malla,*People Park, 2012



Origin

The Latin adjective pneumaticus “pertaining to air or wind” refers only to machines or devices powered or driven by wind. The Greek original, pneumatikόs, has many other meanings not in Latin, e.g., (as a neuter noun) a subtle substance or being; (of wine or food) causing flatulence or wind; breath, breathing, exhalation, and respiration; pertaining to the spirit or spirits, spiritual. Modern usage goes far beyond the Greek: practical pneumatic tires for bicycles (which maintain their shape by compressed air) were made toward the end of the 19th century. And the English man of letters Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) used pneumatic in his novel Brave New World (1932) in the sense of “bosomy, busty,” a sense that he likely invented. Pneumatic entered English in the 17th century.

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ATTENUATE verb (uh-ten-yoo-yet)

verb

1. to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value: to attenuate desire.
2. to make thin; make slender or fine.
3. Bacteriology, Immunology. to render less virulent, as a strain of pathogenic virus or bacterium.
4. Electronics. to decrease the amplitude of (an electronic signal).
5. to become thin or fine; lessen.

adjective

1. weakened; diminishing.
2. Botany. tapering gradually to a narrow extremity.


Quotes

Those who direct the state today should do everything to attenuate divisions, put an end to polemics and quarrels so that the entire nation can consecrate its will and energies to the sole effort for peace ...
--*"Politics Overshadowed," New York Times, October 25, 1962


Neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions ...
--*Thomas Hardy,*The Hand of Ethelberta, 1876



Origin

The Latin verbs tenuāre “to make thin, slender, meager; rarefy” and its compound attenuāre “to make thin or weak; weaken, diminish” both occur in classical authors and are just about synonymous (attenuāre seems to have slightly more emphasis on making weak or feeble). The root word is the Latin adjective tenuis “thin,” from the very common Proto-Indo-European root ten- “stretch” (tenuis thus means “stretched out”), appearing in Latin tendere “to stretch” (and source of English tend), Latin tener “soft, delicate” (the source, through French of English tender) and Germanic (English) thin. Attenuate entered English in the 16th century.

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SCRIMSHANK verb (skrim-shangk)

verb

1. British Slang. to avoid one's obligations or share of work; shirk.


Quotes

It is disheartening to have to deal with fellows who are obviously doing their level best to scrimshank on every possible occasion.
--*Lanayre D. Liggera,*The Life of Robert Loraine, 2013


They scrimshanked, just as we had done when we were prisoners, but after they knew what I was looking for they began to get interested and worked hard.
--*Donald Gould,*"Dr John MacArthur, Parasitologist and Microscope Inventor, Talked to Donald Gould," New Scientist, November 22, 1979



Origin

The origin of scrimshank is uncertain. It was first recorded in the 1880s.

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CLAQUE noun (klak)

noun

1. a group of persons hired to applaud an act or performer.
2. a group of sycophants.


Quotes

In such a book Agaat would then have had a band of supporters, a claque of hand-clappers and whistlers, a villain with a feather in his hat who could egg her on.
--*Marlene van Niekerk,*Agaat, translated by Michiel Heyns, 2010


There are speakers being shouted down by organized claques of hecklers — such was the experience of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California, Irvine.
--*Bret Stephens,*"The Dying Art of Disagreement," New York Times, September 24, 2017



Origin

Hired groups or squads to applaud actors and performers are nothing new. The Roman author Suetonius (75–150 a.d.) in his “Life of Nero” (chapter 20, in Lives of the Twelve Caesars) reports that Nero hired 5,000 young men and taught them three different kinds of applause to use in his performances. In Paris by the mid-19th century, claques were organized into “platoons” whose various “squads” were rehearsed to laugh, cry, comment on, and encourage the actors. The great conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957) imposed discipline and decorum on audiences and was instrumental in suppressing claques. Claque entered English in the 19th century.

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NONBOOK noun (non-boo k)

noun

1. a book without artistic or literary merit or substance, especially one that has been developed primarily to exploit a fad or make a profit quickly.
adjective

1. of or relating to such a book.
2. of or indicating what is not a book: pens and other nonbook items for sale in the bookstore.
3. Library Science. of or being a holding other than a book, as a CD, film, or art print.


Quotes

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings, or the lung-deflations you plan for my works.... I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
--*Ray Bradbury,*"Coda," 1979, Fahrenheit 451, 1953


... I'm deeply suspicious ... of such slapdash, thin, random, sprawling, global anthologies.... It is my idea of a book-like non-book, a pseudo-book, which afflicts the field of cookbooks with a chunk of merchandise that is likely to disappear as suddenly as it appeared in the first place.
--*Janice A. Radway,*A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire, 1997



Origin

From a librarian’s point of view, nonbook is an adjective referring to items in a library that are not books, e.g., DVDs, prints, or maps. This is the original sense of the word, dating from the late 1920s. From the critic’s point of view, nonbook is a noun, meaning a book of no artistic or literary merit, a sense first recorded in 1960.

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MACARONIC adjective (mak-uh-ron-ik)

adjective

1. composed of a mixture of languages.
2. composed of or characterized by Latin words mixed with vernacular words or non-Latin words given Latin endings.
3. mixed; jumbled.

noun
1. macaronics, macaronic language.
2. a macaronic verse or other piece of writing.


Quotes

His wife and daughters understood only English but together they rocked in unison on the settle and sang macaronic songs in a mixture of both languages.
--*Benedict Kiely,*"The Heroes in the Dark House," A Journey to the Seven Streams and Other Stories, 1963


At the Manhattan Theatre Club, the play no longer works for me: the macaronic and mystifying use of Romanian and English; the hyper-Pinteresque pauses; the surreal but underevocative presences of an angel, Dracula, a ghost, a talking dog ...
--*John Simon,*"Belfast, Bahia, and Bucharest," New York, October 12, 1992



Origin

Macaronic verse—it can scarcely be called poetry—is associated especially with medieval universities, in which the various “nations” of students, e.g., English, Welsh, Scots, Picards, Normans, Paduans, Milanese, etc., all listened to lectures delivered in Latin and asked and answered questions in Latin. Such bilingualism, more or less fluent, invites bilingual puns and, sad to say, scurrilous verse. Perhaps the most popular macaronic verse in the contemporary United States is the Carmina Burana, a collection of 254 mostly bawdy and irreverent poems dating from the 11th or 12th century, from Benediktbeuern in Bavaria. The carmina were written in Medieval Latin, Middle High German, Old French, or a mélange of Latin and the vernacular languages. The German composer and conductor Carl Orff (1895–1982), who was born in Munich, about 45 miles away from Benediktbeuern, set 24 of the carmina to music in 1936. Macaronic entered English in the early 17th century.

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DEONTOLOGY noun (dee-on-tol-uh-jee)

noun
1. ethics, especially that branch dealing with duty, moral obligation, and right action.


Quotes

In deontology, the ethical theory whose most famous exponent was perhaps the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, I can be a good person by applying my reason to the discovery of moral behavior.
--*Armond Boudreaux and Corey Latta,*"The Dark Knight Returns: Why No Single Principle Is Sufficient," Titans: How Superheroes Can Help Us Make Sense of a Polarized World, 2017


How do we decide what is right? Philosophers had the question to themselves for centuries. Utilitarianism versus deontology. John Stuart Mill against Kant in the ultimate cage match. And after three centures without a resoluion from the philosophers, neuroscientists had begun eyeing the dilemma ...
--*Liam Durcan,*GarcÃ*a's Heart, 2007



Origin

Deontology, the study of moral obligation, derives from Greek déon (stem déont-), a neuter participle used as a noun, meaning “what is binding, necessary, right,” a derivative of the verb déein, deîn “to bind, tie, fetter.” The combining form -logy “science” is completely naturalized in English. Deontology was coined and published by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) in 1826.

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FOOTLOOSE adjective (foot-loos)

adjective

1. free to go or travel about; not confined by responsibilities.


Quotes

... when you're twenty-two and footloose in a foreign city you give no thought to the future.
--*Richard Mason,*Drowning People, 1999


Oh Dapple, Dapple, you wild gadabout, how footloose you have become!
--*Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616),*Don Quixote, translated by John Rutherford, 2000



Origin

Footloose combines the words foot and loose. It was first recorded in the 1690s.

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BAKEMEAT noun (beyk-meet)

noun
1. Obsolete. pastry; pie.
2. Obsolete. cooked food, especially a meat pie.


Quotes

Already the smell of the marriage bake-meats was in the air: they were like to eat them with a sauce of sorrow.
--*E. F. Benson,*"The Dance on the Beefsteak," The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920


Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd-meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
--*William Shakespeare,*Hamlet, 1623



Origin

The English noun bakemeat has been obsolete since the end of the 17th century. The first syllable of bakemeat comes from the English verb bake, a derivative of the uncommon Proto-Indo-European root bhē-, bhō- “to warm, roast,” from which English also derives bathe (and German bähen), and Greek phōgein “to roast.” Meat originally meant food in general, not flesh (a sense that arose in the 13th century), as in the meat of a nut or fruit or in the proverb “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The Old English word was mete, closely akin to Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, and Old Norse matr. Bakemeat entered English in the late 14th century in the prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s (1340?–1400) Canterbury Tales (composed after 1387).

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SCRUMMY adjective (skruhm-ee)

adjective

1. Chiefly British Informal. very pleasing, especially to the senses; delectable; splendid; scrumptious.


Quotes

Once we'd finished the scrummy meal and our tummies were protruding from the carb-fest overload ... I decided to fish for more information on the next day's activities.
--*Giovanna Fletcher,*You're the One That I Want, 2014


The pair of judges who hand down the verdicts are the onomatopoetic foodies Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. Never have two people looked more like the sound of their names: he of the piercing eyes and flirtatious first bite, and she, the gentler and more senior, apt to declare something to be absolutely “scrummy.”
--*Nathan Englander,*"Letters of Recommendation: The Great British Baking Show," New York Times, October 5, 2017



Origin

Scrummy is one of those British colloquialisms that may leave non-Brits scratching their heads. Scrummy has nothing to do with a scrum or the verb to scrummage (in Rugby, equivalent to scrimmage in American football); it is a shortening of scrumptious with the common adjective suffix -y. Scrummy entered English in the mid-19th century.