Word Of The Day

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REVERIE noun (rev-uh-ree)

noun

1. a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing: lost in reverie.
2. a daydream.
3. a fantastic, visionary, or impractical idea: reveries that will never come to fruition.
4. Music. an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.


Quotes

Sometimes I'd lie quite still with my eyes closed for as much as half an hour, letting myself sink slowly into a state of reverie that was almost a trance.
--*Christopher Isherwood,*The World in the Evening, 1954


As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him.
--*Edgar Allan Poe,*"The Gold Bug," The Dollar Newspaper, June 21, 1843



Origin

Reverie has calmed down from its original meaning of wild emotion, wild behavior, anger, fury (the 14th and 15th centuries). The Middle French nouns reverie and resverie derive from Middle French verbs resver, raver, rever “to be insane, behave deliriously” (in modern French rȇver means only “to dream”). The current English meaning of daydreaming dates from the 15th century.

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SISYPHEAN adjective (sis-uh-fee-uh n)

adjective

1. endless and unavailing, as labor or a task.
2. of or relating to Sisyphus.


Quotes

Making himself useful as always, he took upon himself the Sisyphean task of keeping all those Modernist surfaces sparkling.
--*Jeffrey Eugenides,*Middle***, 2002


We are shown two inmates toiling at senseless, Sisyphean labors, nursing each other's sores, commiserating and bickering with each other.
--*John Simon,*"Mad, Bad, Sad, and Glad," New York, December 16, 1974



Origin

Many Greek proper names, e.g., Sisyphus, Ephyra, Corinth, and Athens, have no discernible etymology in Greek. In Greek mythology SÃ*syphos was king over Ephýra, the old name for Corinth (the port city on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth), about 50 miles west of Athens. The only mention of Sisyphus in the Iliad (book 6:154-55) is that he lived in Ephyra. In the Odyssey (book 11:593-600), Odysseus saw Sisyphus rolling his huge stone but gave no reason for Sisyphus’s punishment. Later writers state that Sisyphus had offended Zeus by telling the river god Asopus where Zeus had taken his (Asopus’s) daughter Aegina. Zeus had abducted Aegina, and Asopus was in vengeful pursuit against Zeus. Sisyphean entered English in the 17th century.

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FLAKELET noun (fleyk-lit)

noun

1. a small flake, as of snow.


Quotes

I am amazed before a little flakelet of snow, at its loveliness, at the strangeness of its geometry, its combination of angles, at the marvellous chemistry which brought these curious atoms together.
--*Theodore Parker,*Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Man, 1865


The first flake or flakelet that reached me was a mere white speck that came idly circling and eddying to the ground.
--*John Burroughs,*"A Snow-Storm," Signs and Seasons, 1886



Origin

Flakelet was first recorded in the 1880s.

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EARWORM noun (eer-wurm)

noun

1. Informal. a tune or part of a song that repeats in one’s mind.

verb

1. Informal. to work (itself or its way) into a person’s mind: The Pepsi jingles have earwormed their way into my head.


Quotes

Despite the annoying times we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things, ever.
--*Blake Rodgers,*"Weekend Earworms: Good Gracious, the Great Grammys of 1983!" Nerdist, February 12, 2017


The earworm made it all the way to No. 4 on the Hot 100, stalling just shy of breaking through and becoming the extremely rare alternative track to own that all-genre chart.
--*Hugh McIntyre,*"This Hit Single Is Now The Longest-Running No. 1 On The Alternative Songs Chart," Forbes, November 30, 2017



Origin

The English noun earworm is a calque or loan translation of the German compound Ohrwurm “earwig (the insect), catchy tune” (the all but identical Dutch oorworm means only earwig). Earworm entered English in the late 16th century in the sense earwig; its current sense dates from the late 20th century.

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AD ABSURDUM adverb (ad ab-sur-duh m)

adverb

1. to the point of absurdity.


Quotes

"Oh, if any argument's pushed ad absurdum ..." Fido controls her temper.
--*Emma Donoghue,*The Sealed Letter, 2008


André was allergic to the very idea of "matéreal" and smelled one of Theo's attempts to critique "bourgeois morality" by taking it ad absurdum.
--*Peter Schneider,*Couplings, translated by Philip Boehm, 1996



Origin

In Latin ad absurdum is a prepositional phrase composed of the preposition ad “to” and the neuter singular adjective absurdum “out of tune, harsh, rough; senseless, silly.” In English the phrase is used as an adverb and is still unnaturalized. Ad absurdum entered English in the mid-17th century.

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OBSEQUIOUS adjective (uh b-see-kwee-uh s)

adjective

1. characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.
2. servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.
3. obedient; dutiful.


Quotes

At such a moment, the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of her husband.
--*Jane Austen,*Pride and Prejudice, 1813


He was garrulous and obsequious, sprinkling “yes, sir”s around as though casting handfuls of seed on new-raked soil.
--*Annie Proulx,*"A Resolute Man," The New Yorker, March 21, 2016



Origin

The English adjective obsequious, a direct borrowing from Latin obsequiōsus, has undergone pejoration (change in meaning for the worse) from its Latin original. The Latin word means “obedient, compliant,” which is the original English meaning of the word in the 15th century. By the end of the 16th century, in Shakespeare’s time, obsequious developed the meaning "dutiful in showing one’s respect for the dead." Its current sense, "fawning, servile," dates from the early 17th century.

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FENESTRATED adjective (fen-uh-strey-tid)

adjective

1. Architecture. having windows; windowed; characterized by windows.


Quotes

As you approach the formal entrance from State Street on the west, you're looking at five or six stories ... of ornately carved and fenestrated red sandstone.
--*Sarah Andrews,*Fault Line, 2002


Even those who feel queasy at the sight of such ostentatious perpetrations of Sir Gilbert Scott in his Gothic Revival style, may yet feel its presence visually preferable to yet another skyscraping multiplication of a single fenestrated module.
--*Patrick Ryan,*"The last word on ... Diplomatic dilapidation," New Scientist, January 16, 1975



Origin

The English adjective fenestrated is used in the technical language of architecture, anatomy (“pierced, perforated”), and entomology (“having transparent spots”). Fenestrated is obviously derived from the Latin noun fenestra “window.” But Latin fenestra has no clear etymology. Some derive it from Etruscan fnestra, which is not only unattested but also may be a loan word in Etruscan from another, unknown language. Fenestrated entered English in the 19th century.

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EPISTEMIC adjective (ep-uh-stee-mik)

adjective

1. of or relating to knowledge or the conditions for acquiring it.


Quotes

Debates over epistemic principles sound abstract, but they have enormous practical repercussions. For instance, in order to decide policy matters (like what to put in our textbooks and what to teach in science classrooms) we need to decide on the facts.
--*Michael Lynch,*"Defending Science: An Exchange," New York Times, March 11, 2012


The US is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening.
--*David Roberts,*"America is facing an epistemic crisis," Vox, November 2, 2017



Origin

The Greek noun epistḗmē “skill, knowledge, scientific knowledge, science” is a derivative of the verb epistánai “to know how (to do), believe (that), be acquainted with, know, know as a fact.” The verb is composed of the prefix epi- “on, over” and stánai “to stand.” Various languages use different prefixes plus the verb to stand to express intellectual comprehension: in Greek one “stands over”; in German verstehen means literally “stand before’”; and in English one "stands under."

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OBLIVESCENCE noun (ob-luh-ves-uh ns)


noun

1. the process of forgetting.


Quotes

Would that our sins had built-in qualities of oblivescence such as our dreams have.
--*Iris Murdoch,*A Word Child, 1975


Even in reasoning, the gratifying confirmatory instance sticks in the mind, while the negative cases all go glimmering into oblivescence.
--*H. L. Hollingworth,*"The Oblivescence of the Disagreeable," The Journal of Philosophy Psychology and Scientific Methods, Volume VII, January–December 1910



Origin

Oblivescence dates from the late 19th century and is a later spelling of obliviscence, which dates from the late 18th century. The spelling oblivescence arose by influence of the far more common suffix -escence. The English noun is a derivative of the Latin verb oblīviscī “to forget,” literally “to wipe away, smooth over.” The Latin verb is composed of the prefix ob- “away, against” and the same root as the adjective lēvis “smooth.”

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MOXIE noun (mok-see)

noun

1. Slang. courage; nerve; determination.
2. Slang. vigor; verve; pep.
3. Slang. skill; know-how.


Quotes

“The only safe thing is to take a chance,” she told Nichols, who was both amazed at her moxie and inspired by her trust in him.
--*"Sweet and Sour," The New Yorker, June 13, 2005


He's not a natural singer ... but like the kid in the school play who sells the thing by sheer force of moxie, Crowe handily wins us over.
--*Richard Lawson,*"'Les Miserables': Destroying Cynicism with Song," The Atlantic, December 17, 2012



Origin

Moxie originally was the trademark of a carbonated soft drink that was created by Dr. Augustin Thompson, a homeopathic physician who was born in Maine and spent his professional life in Massachusetts. Dr. Thompson patented his beverage in 1885 and promoted it as a “nerve tonic” or “nerve food.” Moxie, the drink, has always been associated with New England: Calvin Coolidge liked it; Ted Williams endorsed it on the radio; the state of Maine made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005. Moxie’s lowercase sense "courage, spirit, vigor" entered English in the 20th century.