Word Of The Day

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LUNULA noun (loo-nyuh-luh)

noun
1. something shaped like a narrow crescent, as the small, pale area at the base of the fingernail.


Quotes

It refuses to grow back, the nail of this one finger, the lunula destroyed, a moon permanently obliterated by one smash of his interrogator's pistol.
--*Vaddey Ratner,*Music of the Ghosts, 2017


I ... wore only a simple shift of amber-and-brown plaid wool, and only ghillies, ovals of calfskin, laced around my feet. No golden tore, no silver lunula, nor am I royal of stature or of mien.
--*Nancy Springer,*“The Kingmaker,” Firebird Soaring, 2009



Origin

The uncommon noun lunula is restricted to anatomy, biology, and archaeology or art history. It’s a straightforward borrowing of Latin lūnula, literally “little moon,” but meaning “crescent-shaped ornament” (one of its senses in English). The only common meaning for this uncommon noun is the pale, crescent-shaped are at the base of a fingernail or toenail. Lūnula is a diminutive of lūna “moon,” which is disconcertingly similar to Russian luná “moon.” (The cognate Polish łuna means “glow.”) Both the Slavic and the Latin nouns derive from the same Proto-Indo-European source, louksnā, the same source as Avestan raoxshna- “shining; a light.” (Raoxshna is also used as a proper female name that in Greek is rendered Rhōxánē “Roxane.” The “original” Raoxshna/Roxane was a Bactrian princess born c340 b.c.; she married Alexander the Great in 327 b.c., and was poisoned in prison in 310 b.c.). Proto-Indo-European louksnā becomes in Old Prussian the plural noun lauxnos “stars,” and Middle Irish luan “moon.” All of these forms derive from the very common Proto-Indo-European root leuk- and its variants louk- and luk- “light, bright.” Lunula entered English in the 16th century.

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KYOODLE verb (kahy-ood-l)

verb
1. to bark or yelp noisily or foolishly; yap.


Quotes

No living thing moved upon it, not even a medicine wolf to kyoodle to the invisible moon.
--*Richard Sale,*The White Buffalo, 1975


But the dogs waved their tails happily and sought out a rabbit and went kyoodling after it.
--*John Steinbeck,*Tortilla Flat, 1935



Origin

Kyoodle began as and still may be an Americanism. The word has no distinguished etymology (except for the vague label Imitative), which exactly fits the verb and also one of its noun meanings: mutt, noisy dog. Some distinguished American authors have used the word, however, including John Steinbeck, John O’Hara, and Sinclair Lewis. Kyoodle entered English in the late 19th century.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

That fcuking Kyoodler across our street is going to get my foot up its arse if it does not wrap up!

[Altobelli]

You need one of these BT

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RAFFISH adjective (raf-ish)

adjective
1. mildly or sometimes engagingly disreputable or nonconformist; rakish: a matinee idol whose raffish offstage behavior amused millions.
2. gaudily vulgar or cheap; tawdry.


Quotes

In trying to look like raffish characters, American men spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on hairpieces, urban cowboy clothes, disco lessons, imported sports cars, aviator glasses, tailored jogging suits or jump suits, health club memberships, and *** manuals.
--*Mike Royko,*"Jay's Bottom Line," Chicago Sun-Times, September 24, 1980


He was wearing a dark suit and a collar and tie, but he had that raffish seediness about him of a newspaper journalist.
--*M. C. Beaton,*The Potted Gardener, 1994



Origin

Raffish is protean in its meanings and possible origins. Its meanings include “mildly, engagingly nonconformist, rakish; gaudy, vulgar, tawdry.” Raffish is obviously a derivative of the noun raff, but it is with raff that real problems arise. Raff means “rabble, the lower sort of people, riffraff.” Raff may be a shortening of riffraff (earlier riffe raffe), from Middle English rif and raf, a catchall phrase of very uncertain origin meaning “everything, every particle, things of slight value, everyone, one and all.” Related phrases or idioms exist in other languages: Walloon French has rif-raf “fast and sloppy”; Middle Dutch has rijf ende raf “everything, everyone, one and all; Italian has di riffa o di raffa “one way or another.” Raffish entered English in the late 18th century.

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CAPITULATE verb (kuh-pich-uh-leyt)

verb
1. to give up resistance: He finally capitulated and agreed to do the job my way.
2. to surrender unconditionally or on stipulated terms.


Quotes

He was just too stubborn and pigheaded unless--and here was the one possible case in which he might capitulate--if it were to save his only son.
--*Wilbur Smith,*Birds of Prey, 1997


She realized that living in midtown would shorten her time on the train each day by half, and decided to capitulate. She would stay with her father weeknights, then return to Brooklyn for the weekends.
--*Elizabeth Gaffney,*When the World Was Young, 2014



Origin

The English verb capitulate is from the Late Latin capitulātus “drawn up or arranged in chapters or headings,” from the verb capitulāre “to arrange in chapters, summarize, stipulate (in a contract), agree.” Capitulāre is a derivative of the noun capitulum, one of whose meanings in Late Latin is “section of a law,” in the Corpus Juris Civilis of the emperor Justinian (483-565). Capitulate entered English in the 16th century.

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GLANCEABLE adjective (glan-suh-buhl)

adjective
1. Digital Technology. noting or relating to information on an electronic screen that can be understood quickly or at a glance: glanceable data; a glanceable scoreboard.
2. Digital Technology. enabling information on a screen to be quickly understood: a glanceable design; glanceable interfaces.


Quotes

I still use my Apple Watch every day. It tracks my health, makes my notifications glanceable, and actually looks nice.
--*Brandt Ranj,*"5 stands to keep your Apple Watch charged all the time," Business Insider, December 27, 2017


He called it the Ambient Orb, and it’s a nice example of what he describes as glanceable technology, a device that presents information in a way that you can read simply and quickly, with just a glance, without taking too much of your attention.
--*Penelope Green,*"Putting Magic in the Mundane," New York Times, July 16, 2014



Origin

The adjective glanceable is awkward in formation: it means not “able to glance” but “able to be comprehended at a glance,” which is desirable when one sees a large red octagonal sign with STOP in the middle of it, less so in other situations.

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EMBOSK verb (em-bosk)

verb
1. to hide or conceal (something, oneself, etc.) with or as if with foliage, greenery, or the like: to embosk oneself within a grape arbor.


Quotes

[Sancho] said as much to his lord, requesting him to depart presently from thence, and embosk himself in the mountain, which was very near.
--*Miguel de Cervantes,*Don Quixote of the Mancha, translated by Thomas Shelton, 1612


... they seek the dark, the bushy, the tangled forest; they would embosk.
--*John Milton,*"Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England," 1641



Origin

The verb embosk “to hide in bushes” doesn’t look quite as bogus as embiggen, but it’s not far off. The prefix em-, a form of en- used before labial consonants (p, b, m) as in embalm, embankment, and embark, is familiar enough. Bosk is the funny word. It first appears as a singular noun boske (and plural boskes) in the late 13th century, meaning bush, bushes, and is last recorded about 1400 in Cleanness (or Purity), a poem by an unknown author known as the Gawain Poet. Bosk survives in British dialect but reentered standard English in the 19th century through the poetry of Sir Walter Scott and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. As rare as bosk is, its derivative embosk is even rarer. Embosk entered English in the late 20th century.

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DREAMBOAT noun (dreem-boht)

noun
1. Slang. a highly attractive or desirable person.
2. Slang. anything considered as highly desirable of its kind: His new car is a dreamboat.


Quotes

Hunter was a studio player at Warner Brothers: a blond, blue-eyed dreamboat, whom the studio was selling—quite successfully—as the quintessential boy next door.
--*Michael Schulman,*"Tab Hunter's Secrets," The New Yorker, October 16, 2015


A tall dreamboat of a pilot in a grey uniform was chatting with a group of four people.
--*Raymond Chandler,*The Long Good-bye, 1953



Origin

If you associate dreamboat, a.k.a. heartthrob, with the movies that Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney made in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, you are correct on the date of origin and datedness of the word. Guy Lombardo, the Canadian-American bandleader (1902-1977), popularized dreamboat in his song When My Dream Boat Comes Home (1936).

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ANDRAGOGY noun (an-druh-goh-jee)

noun
1. the methods or techniques used to teach adults: Many educators believe that the principles of andragogy, as advanced by Malcolm Knowles, have great relevance to adult education; others are not so certain.


Quotes

... in the technology of andragogy there is decreasing emphasis on the transmittal techniques of traditional teaching and increasing emphasis on experimental techniques which tap the experience of the learners and involve them in analyzing their experience.
--*Malcolm Knowles,*The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species, 1973


We focus on adults and so prefer to use the term “andragogy.” We've found that adults have their own specific challenges in the learning journey, and we've specifically set up to address them.
--*Michael Horn,*"What the Closure of Bootcamps Means for the Industry's Future," Forbes, August 3, 2017



Origin

English andragogy is modeled upon pedagogy, which ultimately comes from Greek paidagōgÃ*a “the function of a paidagōgós,” by extension “education.” A paidagōgós, literally “child guide,” was a slave who walked a child to and from school. Paidagōgós is a compound formed from paid-, inflectional stem of paîs ”child,” and agōgós “guide,” a derivative of the verb ágein “to lead, take away, carry.” The combining form andr- of andragogy is one of the stems of the Greek noun anḗr (aner-, andr-) “man” (as opposed to a woman or child). Greek anḗr comes from Proto-Indo-European ner-, ǝner-, source of Sanskrit nár “man, human,” and the Latin proper name Nerō. According to Roman grammarians, nero among the Sabines, a rural people that lived northeast of Rome, meant fortis ac strenuus “brave and energetic.” In Celtic (Welsh) Proto-Indo-European ner- becomes ner “hero.” Andragogy entered English in the 20th century.