Word Of The Day

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MUSETTE noun (myoo-zet)

noun

1. a small leather or canvas bag with a shoulder strap, used for carrying personal belongings, food, etc.,while hiking, marching, or the like. Also called musette bag.

2. a French bagpipe of the 17th and early 18th centuries, with several chambers and drones, and with the wind supplied by a bellows rather than a blowpipe.

3. a woodwind instrument similar to but smaller than a shawm.

4. a short musical piece with a drone bass, often forming the middle section of a gavotte.


Quotes

Reaching down the first workman pulled out of his musette a bottle of good red French wine. They had a long drink.
--*Ernest Hemingway,*"French Speed with Movies on the Job," The Toronto Daily Star, May 16, 1923, republished in Dateline: Toronto, 1985

The lieutenant groped into his musette for a pad and scribbled out a pass.
--*Donn Pearce,*Nobody Comes Back, 2005



Origin

There are still some American men who served in the army (if not another branch) during World War II and know what a musette or musette bag is. Musette in the sense “small, lightweight backpack” is an Americanism that first appears in the early 1920s. The word musette comes from French musette “bagpipe” because the shape of the backpack is similar to the sack or bag of the bagpipe. Musette in the sense of bagpipe entered English at the end of the 14th century.

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ATEMPORAL adjective (ey-tem-per-uh l)

adjective

1. free from limitations of time.


Quotes

He seemed to recall--within the memory banks of the body itself--those unconstrained, atemporal afternoons of childhood, twilight playing, parental calls to return home like hooting apes in the suburban gloaming ...
--*Will Self,*Great Apes, 1997


And with them, or after them, may there not come that even bolder adventurer--the first geolinguist, who, ignoring the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks ...
--*Ursula K. Le Guin,*"The Author of the Acacia Seeds," The Compass Rose, 1982



Origin

The first syllable of the English adjective atemporal “not subject to time, timeless” is formed from an, a-, the Greek prefix of negation, absence, or privation (called in the grammar books the “alpha privative”). The Greek forms derive from a reduced form of Proto-Indo-European ne “not,” the same source as Sanskrit an-, a- (the identity of the Greek and Sanskrit forms is one of the features linking Greek and Sanskrit), the Germanic (English) prefix un- and Latin in- (and its assimilated forms il-, im-, ir-). Atemporal entered English in the 19th century.

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ENJAMBMENT noun (en-jam-muh nt)

noun

1. Prosody. the running on of the thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical break.


Quotes

... enjambment is a word that means that you're wending your way along a line of poetry, and you're walking right out to the very end of the line, way out, and it's all going fine, and you're expecting the syntax to give you a polite tap on the shoulder to wait for a moment.... But instead the syntax pokes at you and says hustle it, pumpkin, keep walking, don't rest. So naturally, because you're stepping out onto nothingness, you fall. You tumble forward, gaaaah, and you end up all discombobulated at the beginning of the next line ...
--*Nicholson Baker,*The Anthologist, 2009

Hip-hop historians call this period the Golden Age (Bradley and DuBois date it from 1985 to 1992), and it produced the kinds of lyrical shifts that are easy to spot in print: extended similes and ambitious use of symbolism; an increased attention to character and ideology; unpredictable internal rhyme schemes; enjambment and uneven line lengths.
--*Kelefa Sanneh,*"Word," The New Yorker, December 6, 2010



Origin

Enjambment is a term in rhetoric and poetry with the same meaning as “run-on (line).” The French noun derives from the verb enjamber “to stride over, encroach,” a derivative of jambe “leg.” Jambe is the normal French development of Late Latin gamba “(horse’s) hoof, leg,” used in a treatise on veterinary medicine of the 5th century. Enjambment entered English in the 19th century.

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LOGROLLING noun (lawg-roh-ling)

noun

1. U.S. Politics. the exchange of support or favors, especially by legislators for mutual political gain as by voting for each other's bills.

2. cronyism or mutual favoritism among writers, editors, or critics, as in the form of reciprocal flattering reviews; back scratching.

3. the action of rolling a log or logs to a particular place.

4. the action of rotating a log rapidly in the water by treading upon it, especially as a competitive sport; birling.


Quotes

While spending on earmarks is a tiny portion of the budget, critics like Mr. Flake and Mr. Boehner said they played an insidious role in pushing up federal spending through what is known in legislative terms as logrolling.
--*Carl Hulse,*"How Budget Battles Go Without the Earmarks," New York Times, February 26, 2011


They objected to a lot about Senator Manville. Pork-barreling. Logrolling. One rule for the rich. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
--*David Rain,*The Heat of the Sun, 2012



Origin

Logrolling is an Americanism first recorded at the end of the 18th century and meant exactly what it says: rolling logs away from land being cleared, or a meeting of neighbors to perform the clearance. In the early 19th century, logrolling acquired its distasteful political sense of swapping or trading votes, and by the mid-19th century it also referred to the “literary” practice of authors and reviewers engaging in mutual puffery.

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RAZZLE-DAZZLE noun (raz-uh-l-daz-uh l)

noun

1. Informal. showiness, brilliance, or virtuosity in technique or effect, often without concomitant substance or worth; flashy theatricality: The razzle-dazzle of the essay's metaphors cannot disguise its shallowness of thought.

2. Informal. Chiefly Football. deceptive action typically consisting of a series of complex maneuvers, as a double reverse or hand-off, usually executed in a flashy manner: a team relying more on power and speed than razzle-dazzle.

3. Informal. confusion, commotion, or riotous gaiety.

adjective

1. impressively opulent or decorative, especially in a new way; showy; flashy; eye-catching: a shopping center lined with razzle-dazzle boutiques.

2. energetic, dynamic, or innovative: razzle-dazzle technology; a razzle-dazzle sales pitch.


Quotes

I was not surprised, when I put bow to strings, that all that came off my violin was technical razzle-dazzle.
--*Yael Goldstein,*Overture, 2007

They were spared the noise and litter of summer people, the garish glow of neon signs, the spending of tourist money and tourist razzle-dazzle.
--*John Steinbeck,*The Winter of Our Discontent, 1961



Origin

Razzle-dazzle is an American slang rhyming compound based on the word dazzle. It was first recorded in the 1890s.

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EARTHSHINE noun (urth-shahyn)

noun

1. Astronomy. the faint illumination of the part of the moon not illuminated by sunlight, as during a crescent phase, caused by the reflection of light from the earth.


Quotes

I was in darkness save for the earthshine and the glitter of the stars below me.
--*H. G. Wells,*The First Men in the Moon, 1901

By observing Earthshine, the sunlight that is reflected from Earth onto the surface of the moon, they were able to detect a “vegetation red edge,” a distinctive spike in the near-infrared region that is caused by chlorophyll.
--*Nicola Twilley,*"What Are the Colors of Alien Life?" The New Yorker, April 3, 2015



Origin

Earthshine appears in English in the early 19th century, about 20 years after the synonymous earthlight. Both words, considering their loveliness, are workaday astronomical terms, modeled after the much earlier moonlight (14th century) and moonshine (15th century).

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ARETE noun (ahr-i-tey)

noun

1. the aggregate of qualities, as valor and virtue, making up good character.


Quotes

In general, however, according to Aristotle, we are to determine the arete of man qua man in much the same way as we determine it in any other case; by their works shall we know them.
--*David Carr,*Educating the Virtues, 1991


More than 2,000 years ago, in his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote that integral to a meaningful life is striving for arête, or what we might today call excellence or mastery. Aristotle pointed out, however, that achieving arête — be it by throwing oneself fully into a work of art, intellect, or athletics — is not always pleasant: “A virtuous life,” he wrote, “requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.”
--*Brad Stulberg,*"Your Job Can't Be the Only Meaningful Thing in Your Life," New York, March 27, 2017



Origin

It is hard to imagine a more Greek word than aretḗ “excellence.” The excellence is of all kinds: military (bravery and prowess), sports (footracing), but also intelligence, public speaking, and good character. Aretḗ applies to the gods and women as well as to warriors and heroes: Penelope in the Odyssey (book 18, line 251) complains that “The immortals destroyed all excellence of mine, in beauty and stature, when the Argives sailed for Troy, and with them my husband Odysseus.” Aretḗ also applies to land (“productive”) and domestic animals (horses, dogs). Socrates pursues aretḗ “virtue, excellence” even if it costs him his life. In the Septuagint and New Testament, aretḗ also means “rewards of excellence, distinction,” as also in classical Greek. Arete entered English in the 16th century.

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FORTITUDINOUS adjective (fawr-ti-tood n-uh s)

adjective

1. marked by bravery or courage; having or showing fortitude.


Quotes

... he had the honour to introduce to him as brave and as fortitudinous a man as any in the king's dominions.
--*Henry Fielding,*Amelia, 1751


But that was always her fortitudinous style. She never showed her hand, never articulated the inherent sadness which so clearly lurked behind her stoical veneer.
--*Douglas Kennedy,*The Pursuit of Happiness, 2001



Origin

The uncommon English adjective fortitudinous is more English than Latin. The Latin adjective fortis means “brave, strong, powerful,” both physically and mentally. The noun fortitūdo (inflectional stem fortitūdin-) is a derivative of the adjective; there is no Latin adjective fortitūdinōsus derived from the stem fortitūdin-. Fortitudinous entered English in the 18th century.

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EURHYTHMIC adjective (yoo-rith-mik)

adjective

1. characterized by a pleasing rhythm; harmoniously ordered or proportioned.
2. of or relating to eurhythmics.


Quotes

We must have had some such normal notions to fall back upon as our eyes swept that limitless, tempest-scarred plateau and grasped the almost endless labyrinth of colossal, regular, and geometrically eurhythmic stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet not more than forty or fifty feet deep at its thickest ...
--*H. P. Lovecraft,*"At the Mountains of Madness," Astounding Stories, February–April 1936


There was eurhythmic grace about so much of what went on out there.
--*Geoffrey Moorhouse,*"Class of '46," At the George: And Other Essays on Rugby League, 1989



Origin

The English eurhythmic conflates two Greek adjectives: rhythmikόs meaning “set to time, rhythmical (movement)”; eurhythmόs, having the wider range of meanings “rhythmical, harmonious (in music, dancing, or song); regular (of a pulse); graceful, orderly (of a person).” The prefix eu- is from Greek eû, an adverbial use of the neuter singular of the adjective eǘs “good, brave, noble,” very common in epic poetry. Eurhythmic is restricted in English to harmony and proportion in architecture and to the system of exercise with music and dancing. Eurhythmic entered English in the 19th century for the architecture sense, and in the 20th century for the music and dancing sense.

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WASTREL noun (wey-struh l)

noun

1. a wasteful person; spendthrift.
2. Chiefly British. a. refuse; waste. b. a waif; abandoned child. c. an idler or good-for-nothing.


Quotes

They'd just let you drain your trust fund and be a wastrel.
--*Nora Roberts,*Daring to Dream, 1996


Mr. Hibble had not used the word "wastrel" in reference to my father and money, but the implication hung in the air like so much smoke from his cigar.
--*Louis Begley,*Matters of Honor, 2007



Origin

Wastrel first appears at the end of the 16th century in the sense “something useless or worthless; waste”; by the end of the 18th century it had also come to mean “inferior piece of workmanship.” Its current sense “spendthrift, profligate” dates from the mid-19th century.