Word Of The Day

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AXILLA noun (ak-sil-uh)

noun
1. Anatomy. the armpit.
2. Ornithology. the corresponding region under the wing of a bird.
3. Botany. an axil.


Quotes

There is a game of croquet set up on the lawn and my second cousin Sonsoles can be found there any hour of the afternoon, bent over, with a mallet in her hand, and looking out of the corner of her eye, between the arm and the axilla, which form a sort of arch for her thoughtful gaze, at the unwary masculine visitor who appears in the harsh afternoon light.
--*Carlos Fuentes,*"La Desdichada," Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins, translated by Thomas Christensen, 1990


He recoiled from one odor to another until, in resignation, he accepted and his nose pumped steadily at the single generalized odor that was a meld of everything from axilla to organic debris and smelled like clam soil.
--*Thomas McGuane,*The Sporting Club, 1968



Origin

Axilla, the Latin word for “armpit,” is a diminutive of āla “wing (of a bird or insect), fin (of a fish), armpit, flank (of an army).” Āla comes from an earlier, unrecorded ags-lā (axla in Latin orthography), one of the Latin reflexes of Proto-Indo-European ages-, aks- “pivot, pivot point.” Another Proto-Indo-European derivative, aks-lo-s, becomes ahsulaz in Germanic, eaxl in Old English, and axle in English. A third derivative noun, aks-is, becomes Latin axis “axle, axletree, chariot, wagon,” assis in Old Prussian (an extinct Baltic language), and oś in Polish. Axilla entered English in the 17th century.

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BRIO noun (bree-oh)

noun
1. vigor; vivacity.


Quotes

Although Stopsack had probably never before directed such an undertaking, he performed his duties with brio, skillfully heaping verbal abuse on the manacled inmates ...
--*James Morrow,*Galápagos Regained, 2014


Her work rustles with the premonition that she was obsolete, that her splendor and style and ferocious brio had been demoted to a kind of sparkling irrelevance.
--*Tobi Haslett,*"The Other Susan Sontag," The New Yorker, December 11, 2017



Origin

The Italian noun brio comes from Spanish brío “energy, determination,” ultimately from Celtic brīgos “strength” (compare Middle Welsh bri “honor, dignity,” Old Irish bríg “strength, power”). Celtic brīgos derives from Proto-Indo-European gwrīgos, a derivative of the very common and complicated Proto-Indo-European root gwer- “heavy,” which has many variations, including gwerə-, gwerəu-, and gwerī-. From gwerə- and its variants, English has “grave, gravid, gravity” from Latin; the prefixes baro- “heavy” and bary- “deep” from Greek; and guru from Sanskrit. From gwrīgos, the same source as Celtic brīgos, Germanic derives krīgaz “fight, strife,” German Krieg “war.” Brio entered English in the 18th century.

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LIBRATE verb (lahy-breyt)

verb
1. to remain poised or balanced.
2. to oscillate or move from side to side or between two points.


Quotes

Watching them to the ground, the wings of a hawk, or of the brown owl, stretch out, are drawn against the current air by a string as a paper kite, and made to flutter and librate like a kestrel over the place where the woodlark has lodged ...
--*John Leonard Knapp,*Journal of a Naturalist, 1829


At this period the balance of tropic and pole librates, and the vast atmospheric tides pour their flood upon one hemisphere and their ebb upon another.
--*Victor Hugo,*The Toilers of the Sea, translated by William Moy Thomas, 1866



Origin

The verb librate comes from Latin lībrātus, the past participle of lībrāre “to balance, make level,” a derivative of the noun lībra “a balance, a pound (weight).” The further etymology of lībra is difficult. It is related to Sicilian (Doric) Greek lī́tra “a silver coin, a pound (weight),” also a unit of volume, e.g., English litre (via French litre from Latin). Both lī́tra and lībra derive from Italic līthrā. Lībra becomes lira in Italian, libra in Spanish and Portuguese, French livre (both coinage and weight). The abbreviation for lībra (weight) is lb.; the symbol for lībra (the coinage, i.e., the pound sterling) is £. Librate entered English in the 17th century.

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INELUCTABLE adjective (in-i-luhk-tuh-buhl)

adjective
1. incapable of being evaded; inescapable: an ineluctable destiny.


Quotes

The coming of a new day brought a sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of the need of action.
--*Edith Wharton,*Summer, 1917


My world, on the contrary, has been thrown into extreme ethical confusion by my ineluctable connection with the crimes of Tsardom, forced on me by my birth into a family belonging to the minor nobility.
--*Rebecca West,*The Birds Fall Down, 1966



Origin

“Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses, opens with the beautiful but opaque “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.” At least the word ineluctable is easy to analyze, if not the entire sentence. Ineluctable comes directly from Latin inēluctābilis “from which one cannot escape,” which consists of the negative or privative prefix in-, roughly “not” (from the same Proto-Indo-European source as English un-). Ēluctārī is a compound verb meaning “to force one’s way out”; it is formed from the prefix ē-, a form of the preposition and prefix ex, ex- “out of, from within” used only before consonants, and luctārī “to wrestle”; the suffix -bilis is added to verbs and denotes ability. Ineluctable entered English in the 17th century.

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VULGARIAN noun (vuhl-gair-ee-uhn)

noun
1. a vulgar person, especially one whose vulgarity is the more conspicuous because of wealth, prominence, or pretensions to good breeding.


Quotes

"Why, he is a perfect vulgarian," she replied, "and I am astonished at Ethel for allowing him to be so much with her."
--*Rosa Vertner Jeffrey,*Woodburn, 1864


... the vulgarian's restless jealousy of the class above him made him, on this score, especially intractable and suspicious.
--*Allan McAulay,*The Rhymer, 1900



Origin

The Latin noun vulgus (also volgus) meant simply “common people, general public”; it also meant “crowd” and usually had a derogatory sense, but there was nothing of the flashy, tacky nouveau riche in the noun itself or its derivative nouns, adjectives, and verbs, e.g., vulgāre “to make available to the public,” vulgātus ”popular, common, ordinary,” vulgāris “belonging to the common people, conventional.” The Romans claimed to have invented satire, i.e., the genre did not exist among the Greeks. The Romans also created the (literary) type of the current sense of vulgarian “a vulgar person whose vulgarity is the more striking because of wealth, prominence, or pretensions to good breeding.” The first example is Trimalchio, a character in the Satyricon, a Latin novel dating from the mid-first century a.d. written by Gaius Petronius (died ca. 66 a.d.). Trimalchio and most of the Satyricon are familiar nowadays from the movie Fellini Satyricon (1969) by the Italian director Federico Fellini (1920–93). Vulgarian entered English in the early 19th century.

[SERVERNOTRESPONDING]

Lollygag

What a fantastic verb: to lollygag! Nothing to do with lollies or gags, it actually means to be idle and lazy or to waste time. It’s most common in the USA. It’s not unusual to hear parents shout to their children to “stop lollygagging” – now you’ll know what they’re talking about!

The word has been used since the 1800’s. Nobody really knows where it came from though.

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Nice one Server, I like it.

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CLAVIER noun (kluh-verr)

noun
1. any musical instrument having a keyboard, especially a stringed keyboard instrument, as a harpsichord, clavichord, or piano.


Quotes

Herr Gleissner composed twelve songs with clavier accompaniment.
--*Alois Senefelder,*The Invention of Lithography, translated by J. W. Muller, 1911


An engraved portrait that a German artist made of Buchinger, in 1710, includes thir**** surrounding vignettes that picture him at tables, bearing his instruments and props, but just one depicts him in action, playing a hammered clavier.
--*Peter Schjeldahl,*"Seeing and Believing," The New Yorker, January 25, 2016



Origin

English clavier comes from Old French clavier “keyholder, keybearer,” as if from Medieval Latin clāviārius (formed from clāvis “key,” which becomes clef or clé in French, and the common noun suffix -ārius, which becomes -ier in Old French). French clavier also meant "a bank or row of keys on a musical instrument, a keyboard," which is the first sense of the word in English, dating from the early 18th century. German and the other Germanic languages specialized the meaning to “keyboard instrument with strings (particularly the clavichord),” which English adopted in the mid-19th century.

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SENNACHIE noun (sen-uh-kee)

noun
1. Chiefly Scot., Irish. a professional storyteller of family genealogy, history, and legend.


Quotes

... I do not think he could falsify a folk-tale if he tried. At the most he would change it as a few years' passing from sennachie to sennachie must do perforce.
--*William Butler Yeats,*"Irish Folk Tales," The National Observer, 1891


My schoolfellows like my stories well enough-better at least, on most occasions, than they did the lessons of the master; but, beyond the common ground of enjoyment which these ex-tempore compositions furnished to both the "sennachie" and his auditors, our tracts of amusement lay widely apart.
--*Hugh Miller,*My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of My Education, 1854



Origin

There are several English spellings, e.g., shanachie, seannachie, for the exotic Irish and Scottish noun meaning “storyteller, oral historian, genealogist.” The word in Scots Gaelic is seanachaidh (seanachaidhe in Irish) meaning “historian, antiquarian, chronicler,” from sen “old, ancient” and cūis “matter, affair.” Sen is from Proto-Indo-European sen(o)- “old,” most obvious in Latin senex “old man,” senātus “senate,” and senectūs “old age.” Senos appears in Greek in the noun hénos “year,” and the adjective hénos “last year’s”; and in Baltic (Lithuanian) as sẽnas “old,” and sẽnis “old man.” Sennachie entered English in the 16th century.

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POSTERN noun (poh-stern)

noun
1. a back door or gate.
2. a private entrance or any entrance other than the main one.
adjective
1. of, relating to, or resembling a postern.


Quotes

It was the second gate, a postern in the north wall, that accounted for the most noticeable change.
--*James A. Michener,*The Source, 1965


A practicable postern was ajar on the yellow wood of the studded gates.
--*Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford,*Romance, 1903



Origin

English postern comes from Old French posterne, originally “a concealed exit from a fort, a sally port,” later “a small door, a back door.” Posterne is an alteration of Old French posterle “a back door, back way," from Late Latin posterula “a small back door or gate; back way, byway,” a diminutive noun formed from the adjective posterus “(coming or being) after or in the future” and -ula, the feminine form of the common diminutive noun suffix -ulus. The -n- in posterne is likely due to the influence of the Old French adjectives interne (from Latin internus) and externe (from Latin externus). Postern entered English in the early 14th century.