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Date: Thu May 1 00:01:08 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--lumpen
X-Bonus: Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. -Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)
lumpen (LUM-pen) adjective
1. Of or relating to dispossessed people who have been cut off from
the social and economic class to which they would normally belong;
belonging to the underclass.
2. Unrefined or unenlightened.
noun
A lumpen person.
[From German Lumpenproletariat (the lowest section of the proletariat) from
Lumpen (rag), from lump (ragamuffin) + French Proletariat (lowest class).]
"Normally, hallyang refers to someone who does not hold a civil service
post, but has enough time and money to indulge himself in, often
extravagant, leisurely activities. This epicurean lifestyle was
romanticized as an ideal way of living, but succumbed to public
criticism -- and in modern Korea, the word hallyang evolved to be
mean something similar to a lumpen or a bum."
Southwestern Dance Tradition to Come Alive; The Korea Times (Seoul,
South Korea); Apr 4, 2000.
"Even as lumpen investors have been sweating out the recent free fall
in global markets, some wealthy investors who hedged their risks have
continued making a tidy 15 percent. What is galling is that the
regulators refuse to let the rest of us in on the secret."
David Ignatius; Hedge Funds for the Wealthy Few; International Herald
Tribune (France); Apr 10, 2001.
This week's theme: words to describe people.
--------
Date: Fri May 2 00:01:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--naif
X-Bonus: Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)
naif (NAA-eef) noun
A naive person: lacking sophistication, artless, credulous.
adjective
Naive.
[From French, masculine form of naive.]
"They've been more daunting as a team of wide-eyes naifs, callow and
gormless, than a team of self-aware veterans with grim-faced
expectations."
Leafs Banking on Experience Over Emotion; The Toronto Star (Canada);
Apr 12, 2000.
"For (Gabriel) Cohen is a naif with a sense of self-criticism. The
richness of his color harmonies and many of his solutions spring from
an ability to build on experience."
Meir Ronnen; The World According to Cohen; Jerusalem Post (Israel);
May 10, 2002.
This week's theme: words to describe people.
--------
Date: Mon May 5 00:01:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--exonym
X-Bonus: The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
exonym (EK-so-nim) noun
A name used by foreigners to refer to a place or people, instead of the
name used by those who live there.
For example: Cologne (native term: Kln), Florence (Firenze),
Japan (Nihon/Nippon), Italy (Italia).
[From Greek ex- (out) + -onym (word, name).]
"Roger Payne: ... Vienna being an exonym, which is a name that other
people use, but the German or Austrian form is Wien."
Renee Montagne; Interview: Roger Payne Discusses an International
Conference to Standardize Geographic Names; Morning Edition (National
Public Radio); Sep 2, 2002.
"The exonyms Thai-Islam (from the part of the Siamese) and MalayMuslim
(from the part of the Malaysians) present an image of the Jawi that is
incomplete or pejorative in their eyes."
Pierre Le Roux; To Be Or Not To Be...The Cultural Identity of the Jawi;
Asian Folklore Studies (Nagoya, Japan); 1998.
"So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words
when we have nothing else but words to do it with," wrote philosopher John
Locke (1632-1704). While there's truth in Locke's assertion, it's possible
to overcome the difficulty to some extent. We construct small unambiguous
building blocks, define them as precisely as we can, and then put them to
work for bigger purposes (though in some languages, such as German, we often
get carried away).
This week we feature word words, or meta-words, all of which end with the
combining form -onym (name or word).
-Anu
(garg AT wordsmith.org)
--------
Date: Tue May 6 00:01:11 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--mononym
X-Bonus: The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
mononym (MON-uh-nim) noun
A term or name consisting of one word only.
For example, Madonna (pop star).
[From Greek mono- (one) + -onym (word, name).]
"Hundreds of kids are gathered along a gentle hill by a soccer field at
George Mason University. The U.S. women's soccer team has just finished
a long practice on a day so hot you half expect the black spots to melt
off the ball. But no one wants to go home. They have all come here to
see Mia Hamm. `Meeee-aaaa!' the girls squeal. It must be a sound Mia
hears in her sleep. Mia, by the way, is a mononym now. Just like
Brazilian soccer great Pele, no last name is needed."
Kelly Whiteside; Mia Mania / Like Pele, Mia Hamm Has Become a One-name
Phenomenon in the World of Soccer; Newsday (New York); Jul 6, 1999.
"That was from Morissette's first second album, 1992's Now Is the Time,
an out-of-print disc from north of the border, released when she was
still an overly made-up, severely bejeweled Canadian teen star using
the mononym of Alanis."
Chris Willman; The Second Coming of Alanis; Entertainment Weekly
(New York); Nov 6, 1998.
This week's theme: words to describe words.
--------
Date: Wed May 7 00:01:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--cryptonym
X-Bonus: Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. -Leo Buscaglia, author, speaker and professor (1924-1998)
cryptonym (KRIP-tuh-nim) noun
A code name or a secret name.
[From Greek crypto- (secret, hidden) + -onym (word, name).]
"`Bek' was Sergei Kurnakov, a Soviet journalist working in New York;
`Camp-2' was the US scientific research centre at Los Alamos, and
`Enormous' was Moscow's cryptonym for the Manhattan Project, America's
top-secret programme to develop the atomic bomb."
Obituary: Theodore Hall US Scientist-Spy Who Escaped Prosecution And
Spent 30 Years in Biological Research at Cambridge; The Guardian
(London, UK); Nov 16, 1999.
"During my first visit to Mount Wilson Observatory, in the late '50s,
solar observer Tommy Cragg took me to its library. I remember being
blown away; this kid had never dreamed that so many astronomy books
existed! One huge set was labeled `AGK2,' and this cryptonym piqued
my curiosity."
Leif J Robinson; The Hipparcos Firehose; Sky and Telescope (Cambridge,
Massachusetts); Jun 1999.
This week's theme: words to describe words.
--------
Date: Thu May 8 00:01:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--teknonym
X-Bonus: Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. -Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)
teknonym (TEK-nuh-nim) noun
A name derived from a child's name that is used to address a parent.
For example, Johnsdad (as opposed to Johnson).
[From Greek teknon (child) + -onym (name).]
Contrast today's term with patronym: https://wordsmith.org/words/patronym.html
"A Baatonu does not automatically receive a teknonym when he or she
becomes a parent, as is the custom among other ethnic groups."
Wendy Schottman; Baatonu Personal Names From Birth to Death; Africa
(Edinburgh, UK); 2000.
"Informants spoke at great length about how respectful Fijian practice
requires avoiding using the personal names of certain categories of people
(or even avoiding their presence altogether). Once people have children,
for instance, they are to be addressed by the teknonym `father of' or
`mother of' their eldest child."
Karen J Brison; Constructing Identity Through Ceremonial Language in
Rural Fiji; Ethnology (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania); Fall 2001.
This week's theme: words to describe words.
--------
Date: Fri May 9 00:01:08 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--matronym
X-Bonus: An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. -James McNeill Whistler, painter (1834-1903)
matronym (MA-truh-nim) noun
A name derived from the name of a mother or maternal ancestor.
Also metronym.
[From Latin metr- (mother) + Greek -onym (name, word).]
It's easy to see that the terms maternal, maternity, matron, and matrimony
have something to do with the sense "mother" and are related to today's word
but what could metropolis, material, matter, matriculate, and matrix have
in common with them? A metropolis is, literally, a mother city; matter and
material derive from Latin materia, woody part of a tree, its source of
growth; one matriculates to what is to be an alma mater; and matrix comes
from Latin matrix, a female animal kept for breeding. All of these terms are
ultimately offsprings of the Indo-European root mater-.
Happy Mother's Day (May 11) to mothers everywhere!
-Anu
"Then there was Stephanie, the cow, contentedly chewing her cud in the
pastures at Ottawa's experimental farm until along came Stephanie, of the
engendered human variety, to object that she considered it `offensive'
to have to share her matronym with a cow. So -- presto! -- faster than
you can say `tax cut,' the farm's director announced that henceforth all
cows will be called by gender-neutral names like Poopsie or Moo or
Milk.com."
Ian Hunter; Free Speech Depends On What You Say; National Post (Canada);
Jan 13, 2000.
"I know a few people who have gone for the lottery approach, naming all
the children after the first, who gets the patronym or the matronym
depending on its sex. This is quite neat, as no one can blame anyone
else later on in life."
Serena; Modern Manners: Your Cut-out-and-keep Guide to Surviving the
Minefield; Independent (London, UK); Nov 14, 1998.
This week's theme: words to describe words.
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Date: Mon May 12 03:33:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--brumal
X-Bonus: Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
brumal (BROO-muhl) adjective
Occurring in or related to winter.
[From Latin brumalis (pertaining to winter), from brevima dies (shortest day
or winter solstice), from brevis (short). Other words that are derived from
the same Latin root are abbreviate, abridge, brevity, breve, and brevet.]
"Our motley platoon of snowmobiles was chewing up a rippled meadow high
on the southwestern flanks of the Gore Range near Vail, Colo., four
bundles of motorized mayhem zigzagging across a brumal landscape."
Rick Lyman; It's Vail in the Winter. Who Needs Skis?; The New York Times;
Jan 26, 2003.
"Now that we've been robbed of yet another blizzard, we're actually
beginning to wish there were a little snow out there. Perhaps we'd feel
more inclined to don our pricey new Christmas ski outfit if the landscape
looked a tad more brumal."
Christopher Muther; Space Oddity; Boston Globe; Jan 8, 2002.
Usually the words in AWAD are organized in a theme, but once in a while we
simply feature words that are engaging by themselves. This week we'll take
a cross-country drive through the dictionary, with no itinerary in hand.
We'll make several stops along the way, but who knows where we might stop.
Let's see what kind of words we might come across. Perhaps we'll meet words
that are long and short and unusual and uncommon, but all of them, just like
people, are interesting only if we care enough to learn about them.
-Anu
(garg AT wordsmith.org)
--------
Date: Tue May 13 00:03:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--potamic
X-Bonus: We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
potamic (po-TAM-ik) adjective
Relating to rivers.
[From Greek potamos (river). Hippopotamus comes from the same root -- it's
literally a river horse: hippos + potamos.]
"This potamic civilization pulsated laboriously around every river
meander and through every lift lock required to distribute the system's
beneficence, and it followed rather slavishly the natural architecture
of river valleys and watersheds."
Michael P Conzen; The National Road, or, a Landward Salient For a Potamic
People; Geographical Review (New York); Oct 1998.
"The Old World was then entering on the third of the three stages of
civilization which Carl Ritter, the geographer, defined as (1) the
potamic, -- developed in extensive river valleys, such as those of the
Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Ganges; (2) the thalassic, --
nourished by the influences and commercial stimulations of a great inland
sea, like the Mediterranean; and, (3) the oceanic, -- which opened to
Europe when exploration of the broad Atlantic was launched from its
western coast."
Josephus Nelson Larned; English Leadership; C.A. Nichols Company; 1918.
This week's theme: miscellaneous words.
--------
Date: Wed May 14 00:03:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--retromingent
X-Bonus: Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. -Walter Bagehot, economist and journalist (1826-1877)
retromingent (re-tro-MIN-jent) adjective
Urinating backwards.
noun
An animal that passes urine backwards, e.g. raccoon.
[From Latin retro- (back) + mingent, stem of mingens, present participle of
mingere (to urinate).]
"When my turn came, I discovered that the bathrooms had been designed for
a retromingent. The rest of the flight? Rather uneventful."
Jeffrey Levine; The Concorde, Firsthand: Built for Speed, Not for Comfort;
The Washington Post ; Dec 17, 1989.
"I can verify that camels are, indeed, retromingent."
Sally Bixby Defty; Just Deserts Midnight at the Oasis Sing Your Camel to
Bed; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; May 16, 1993.
This week's theme: miscellaneous words.
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Date: Thu May 15 00:03:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--intenerate
X-Bonus: A man's style in any art should be like his dress--it should attract as little attention as possible. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)
intenerate (in-TEN-uh-rayt) verb tr.
To make tender or to soften.
[From Latin in- + tener (tender).]
"Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, takes
the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation; 1841.
"Laughter-loving goddess, worldly pleasure's queen,
Intenerate that heart that sets so light."
Samuel Daniel; To Delia: 10; 1592
This week's theme: miscellaneous words.
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Date: Fri May 16 00:03:11 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--impuissance
X-Bonus: I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
impuissance (im-PYOO-i-suhns) noun
Lack of strength or power.
[From Middle English, from Old French, from in- (not) + puissance (power),
ultimately from Indo-European root poti- (powerful). Some other words that
are derived from the same root: possess, power, possible, and potent.]
"In conjunction with their impuissance and low status, the regulated
designs of Zoroastrian houses facilitated tension and conflict between
members of the two groups."
Sanjoy Mazumdar and Shampa Mazumdar; Intergroup Social Relations And
Architecture; Environment and Behavior (Thousand Oaks, California);
May 1997.
"This friendly warning - this forbearance to strike the blow that was
to remove the manacles from millions of bondsmen - was treated by the
masters of the slaves with scorn. It was sneered at by them, as an act of
sheer impuissance."
Benson J. Lossing; Our Country; 1905.
This week's theme: miscellaneous words.
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Date: Mon May 19 01:03:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--zombie
X-Bonus: He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)
zombie (ZOM-bee) noun, also zombi
1. A person behaving like an automaton: listless, wooden, or lacking
energy.
2. A snake god in West Indian, Brazilian, and West African religions.
3. In voodoo, a supernatural force or spirit that can enter a dead body;
also, the soulless body that is revived in this manner.
4. A computer process that has died but is still listed in the
process table.
5. A drink made of various kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice.
[From Kimbundu nzambi (god, ghost). Kimbundu is a Bantu language of northern
Angola.]
"Only a zombie would fail to see the brilliance of Cowan's campaign."
Peter Howell; The Beyond's Zombies Have Long, Gory Family History;
The Toronto Star (Canada); Jun 17, 1998.
"Any film that manages to put together, for example, a battle between two
real-life giants; a zombie emerging from the grave; a six-car demolition
derby in the lobby of the Chrysler Building; a trotting race run by dead
horses; a stunning, blond athlete named Aimee Mullins, who happens to be
a double amputee, ... and much more, including a final scene in which the
Irish giant flings a stone into the sea, where--in time for `Cremaster 4'
-- it becomes the Isle of Man, well, a film like this may be one that
only a Dick Cheney could walk out on without a frisson of self-doubt."
Calvin Tomkins; His Body, Himself; The New Yorker; Jan 27, 2003.
What springs to mind when we think of Africa? Tribal wars? AIDS epidemic?
Mass starvation? Those subjects provide most of the news from Africa, but
there's much more we should know about that vast continent.
Great civilizations and cultures spanned Africa's history before the continent
was ravaged by centuries of slavery and colonialism. Africa has been called
the cradle of civilization and that's no exaggeration. It's believed the first
humans evolved there millions of years ago. The oldest fossils of our human
ancestors have been found on the African continent.
Today Africa is home to more than 50 countries, some 1000 languages, and a
rich mosaic of stories, drumbeats, and landscapes. The English language has
borrowed words from many of those languages: trek, aardvark, impala, gnu,
okra to name a few. This week we'll see words that originate in African
languages.
-Anu
(garg AT wordsmith.org)
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Date: Tue May 20 00:03:07 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--veld
X-Bonus: Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. -Alfred Hitchcock, film-maker (1899-1980)
veld (velt, felt) noun, also veldt
Open grassland in southern Africa.
[From Afrikaans veld, from Dutch veld (field).]
"From elephant turds, it (a dung beetle) molds food balls, which it rolls
backward across the veld by standing on its head and kicking manically
with its heels."
Rob Nixon; Around the Water Hole; The New York Times; Jul 28, 2002.
"The fiercely waged struggle which went on between humans and felines in
those far-off days when sabre-toothed tiger and cave lion contended with
primeval man, has long ago been decided in favour of the most fitly
equipped combatant -- the Thing with a Thumb -- and the descendants of
the dispossessed family are relegated to-day, for the most part, to the
waste lands of jungle and veld, where an existence of self-effacement is
the only alternative to extermination."
Hector Hugh Munro (Saki); The Achievement of the Cat.
This week's theme: words borrowed from African languages.
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Date: Wed May 21 00:03:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--juju
X-Bonus: Few people think more than two or three times a year. I've made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
juju (JOO-joo) noun
1. A fetish or charm.
2. The magic or supernatural power attributed to such an object.
[Of uncertain origin, perhaps from west African language Hausa juju (fetish),
probably from French joujou (toy).]
"So next time they were flying, his pilot aimed the plane upward at
a steep angle and then pointed it downward, and through whatever
aeronautical juju was created, Francis found himself floating in the
air."
Vanessa Grigoriadis; Wild Thing; Rolling Stone (New York); Jun 6, 2002.
"Howard's juju man may even organise largely undeserved credit for him
as a buyer of time to design an acceptable republic."
Frank Devine; Media No Match For a Phantom Juju Man; The Australian
(Sydney); May 25, 2000.
This week's theme: words borrowed from African languages.
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Date: Thu May 22 00:03:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--spoor
X-Bonus: Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. -Neil Postman, professor and author (1931- )
spoor (spoor) noun
The track or trail of an animal, especially a wild animal being hunted.
verb tr., intr.
To track an animal by its trail; to follow a spoor.
[From Afrikaans, from Dutch.]
"I also continue to look for Indian wolves. After eight hectic days of
checking spoor and other signs, I spot my first one in Kutch."
Yadvendradev V Jhala; Cattle And Carnivores, National Wildlife
(Washington, DC); Apr/May 2002.
"The labyrinthine forest's spoor
lead to the patient Minotaur
Deep in the dark and structured core
the bull-man waits inside the maze
and he who dares explore will raze
the beast of fear behind the door."
Isabella Gardner; The Minotaur; 1955.
This week's theme: words borrowed from African languages.
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Date: Fri May 23 00:03:11 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--mumbo jumbo
X-Bonus: Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport. -Robert S. Wieder, journalist
mumbo jumbo (MUM-bo JUM-bo) noun
1. Meaningless, unintelligible, complicated, or confusing language.
2. Complicated language or jargon used in order to confuse.
3. An object believed to possess supernatural powers.
[Or uncertain origin, probably from Mandingo, a group of Mande languages in
western Africa.]
"Its (Greenland's) government, in office for only 37 days, fell
apart because of its civil service chief's penchant for what some
politicians called witch-doctoring, some mumbo jumbo and others
`plain exorcism'."
Andrew Osborn; 'Cleansed' Greenland Cabinet Falls; The Guardian (London,
UK); Jan 11, 2003.
"The master of ceremonies recites some ritual words, and then Taylor
launches into some mumbo-jumbo: 'Consider the great luminary of nature,
which, rising in the east ...'"
Peter Carlson; Fezzes, Sphinxes and Secret Handshakes; The Washington Post;
Nov 25, 2001.
This week's theme: words borrowed from African languages.
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Date: Mon May 26 00:03:08 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--goldbrick
X-Bonus: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry Adams, historian and teacher (1838-1918)
goldbrick (GOLD-brik) noun
1. Something that appears valuable but is worthless.
2. A person who shirks assigned work or does it without proper effort.
verb intr.
To shirk duty.
verb tr.
To cheat or swindle.
[Sense 1 from the con artists' old trick of selling a gold-polished piece of
less valuable metal as solid gold. Sense 2 was originally military slang for
an officer appointed from civilian life.]
"Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko was rushed to the hospital after suffering
a heart attack, and we all felt guilty to learn that we were at fault. ...
Still, it is lucky that the heart attack was real, because the medical
establishment takes a dim view of goldbricks."
Russell Working; Feeling Nazdratenko's Pain; The Moscow Times (Russia);
Feb 5, 2001.
"Underminers, half-steppers, gossips and goldbricks were not tolerated on
his (Jack Kent Cooke) watch."
Thomas Boswell; The Buck Stops With The Man Who Signs The Redskins'
Checks; The Washington Post; Oct 19, 2001.
Oh, how we're fascinated with metals, particularly the yellow variety, and
especially in the business world! We flock to a gold rush (headlong pursuit
of wealth in a new, potentially lucrative field), we retain executives with
golden handcuffs (rewards given at specific intervals) or when the gold rush
is over, we bid them adieu with a golden handshake (generous severance pay
for early retirement). Unless, of course, they had already negotiated a
golden parachute (a contract that guarantees generous severance pay). Let's
just hope they didn't turn out to be goldbricks.
While the yellow metal symbolizes wealth, the gray kind is often used as a
metaphor for strength, toughness, or impenetrability, from nerves of steel
to iron curtain. Often we use them to describe people, from the Iron
Chancellor (Bismarck), or the Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher, also Bosnia's
Biljana Plavsic).
This week we'll discuss metal words used as metaphors.
-Anu
(garg AT wordsmith.org)
--------
Date: Tue May 27 00:03:08 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--silver bullet
X-Bonus: Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar, and the fortitude of the certain. -Leo Buscaglia, author, speaker and professor (1924-1998)
silver bullet (SIL-vuhr BOOL-it) noun
A quick solution to a thorny problem.
[From the belief that werewolves could be killed when shot with silver
bullets.]
"Writing code, he (Stuart Feldman) explains, is like writing poetry: every
word, each placement counts. Except that software is harder, because
digital poems can have millions of lines which are all somehow
interconnected. Try fixing programming errors, known as bugs, and you
often introduce new ones. So far, he laments, nobody has found a silver
bullet to kill the beast of complexity."
Survey: The Beast of Complexity; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 14, 2001.
"The Florida Republican warned recently that a new identity card suggested
by Canadian Immigration Minister Denis Coderre is unlikely to resolve
a thorny issue about how tightly Canadians will be screened at the
border. `A national identity card is not a silver bullet,' (Porter) Goss
said."
Kelly Toughill; National ID Cards 'No Silver Bullet'; The Toronto Star
(Canada); Mar 4, 2003.
This week's theme: metallic words used as metaphors.
--------
Date: Wed May 28 00:03:11 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--brassy
X-Bonus: It's difficult to wake one who is only pretending to be asleep. -Tagalog saying
brassy (BRAS-ee) adjective
1. Made of or resembling brass.
2. Resembling the sound of brass instruments.
3. Brazen; bold; impudent.
4. Showy; pretentious.
[From brass, from Middle English bras, from Old English brs.]
"There was a shot of a muscular, tanned young man playing paddle-ball at
the beach. A blaring radio commercial would be heard in the background
while one of the sisters was preparing lunch in her apartment. With only
a couple of strokes, this depiction of brassy, confident Israel, always
in a hurry to live, made the sisters' lives - slow and sad, with death
behind them and death in front of them - that much more vivid."
Larry Derfner; What's Up, Doc?; Jerusalem Post (Israel); Apr 16, 1999.
"According to Kewalram Sital, a Hong Kong businessman who makes a hobby of
tracking the whereabouts of his countrymen, there are even 4,000 Sindhis -
the most nomadic of Indian communities and its brassiest businessmen - in
the Canary Islands off the northern cost of Africa."
Rahul Jacob and Meenakshi Ganguly; Entrepreneurs: Overseas Indians Make
it Big; Fortune (New York); Nov 15, 1993.
This week's theme: metallic words used as metaphors.
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Date: Thu May 29 00:03:06 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--leaden
X-Bonus: If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. -Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)
leaden (LED-n) adjective
1. Made of or resembling lead.
2. Heavy.
3. Lifeless; inert; lacking energy.
4. Dull, gray in color.
verb tr.
To make dull or sluggish.
[From Middle English leden, from Old English ldan.]
"Stereotypes are peeled away to reveal stereotypes beneath, and a cast
of experienced comic actors (among them Eddie Murphy's brother Charles)
raise few laughs under Ms Davis's leaden direction."
Philip French; Cinema: Dark side of the American Dream; The Guardian
(London, UK); Nov 28, 1993.
"Truth to tell, Ms. Frittoli's majestic Donna Anna (positively smoldering
in Paris under the baton of James Conlon) failed to take off at the Met,
where the leaden tempi of Sylvain Cambreling weighed her down like a ball
and chain."
Matthew Gurewitsch; A Soprano Finds Truth and Poetry in Verdi; The Wall
Street Journal (New York); Mar 18, 2003.
This week's theme: metallic words used as metaphors.
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Date: Fri May 30 00:03:09 EDT 2003
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--tin ear
X-Bonus: He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
tin ear (tin eer) noun
1. Insensitivity to differences in music or speech sounds.
2. Inability to appreciate subtle differences in a particular discipline.
[From the idea of metal being incapable of sensation.]
"For an ex-steelworker, Doug Cameron has a tin ear. He seems deaf to the
motif of the times. If you listen to Cameron - national secretary of the
Australian Manufacturing Union - you'd think Qantas is a certain winner
in the only market that matters: domestic."
Turbulence Ahead For the Airlines; The Australian (Sydney); Oct 24, 2001.
"(Lloyd) Ward's credibility is now under siege. Previously, he had drawn
criticism for failing to disclose that he was a member of Augusta National
Golf Club, which prohibits women from becoming members, a policy in
direct contradiction with the Olympic movement. While Olympic committee
volunteers have shown poor management skills, management types have had
a tin ear for effectively running a sports union."
Jere Longman; Professionalism Eludes U.S. Olympic Committee; The New York
Times; Jan 26, 2003.
This week's theme: metallic words used as metaphors.