This Week in Word of the Day – 06/02/2013
mordacious \mawr-DEY-shuhs\, adjective:
1. sharp or caustic in style, tone, etc.
2. biting or given to biting.
Sullen, mordacious, and combative whenever matters of politics emerged among family and friends, Elizabeth diligently protected her black sheep status within the blue bloods of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
She’d made a name for herself when she snuck into a political gala and dumped red paint on her own mother’s fur coat – which turned out to be imitation. She later staged a summer-long protest of the wasted privilege of Martha’s Vineyard by spray-painting starving Ethiopians on vacation houses and loudly declaring her status as a dumpster-diving freegan. Sure, most of her meals were freshly prepared and tightly sealed in Tupperware by her mother, then placed on top of the family’s trash can, but it was the principle that was important.
Yet, Elizabeth knew her actions were still insignificant compared to her brother’s one grand gesture that shocked the entire family and sent their mother to her room in tears. Her brother was the only person that ever understood Elizabeth’s defiance and, though she often verbalized her disdain for American imperialism and the inherent racism of the quote/unquote War on Terror, she never loved her brother more than when he announced he had enlisted in the US Marine Corps.
So, as the family waited at the airport while Elizabeth’s brother limped toward them on a leg still containing the shrapnel he collected in Afghanistan, Elizabeth wore a small American flag pin on her black corduroy blazer right next to a Misfits patch and an over-sized button that read “Save the world, spay/neuter your white people.”
isolato \ahy-suh-LEY-toh\, noun:
a person who is spiritually isolated from or out of sympathy with his or her times or society.
Of course Lawrence Wilhelm was an isolato. What time traveler from the Victorian Age who leapt across 115 years to land in 21st Century wouldn’t be extremely contemptuous of what humans have made of themselves?
As Lawrence stuffed his fists into the pockets of his duster and ducked his head away from the glittering lights of downtown Hong Kong, he cursed the faulty capacitor that had, thus far, failed all his attempts to reignite his time machine and escape this distasteful world.
But so much would change for Lawrence when he returned to his detective agency after his nightly stroll to find the thin and seductive silhouette of his first client leaning against the office door.
Lawrence’s hand instinctively brushed against the copper barrel of his ray gun, then settled on the leather grip.
A match struck in the shadow, then illuminated the mysterious woman’s penetrating, almond eyes and the thin cigar pressed between her voluptuous lips, coated in black lipstick.
She exhaled a plume of smoke through her teeth, making her appear monstrous, like an ancient demon that stole men’s hearts and tore apart their lives, not out of hatred, but out of boredom.
“I am here to change your life Mr. Wilhelm.”
Her accented English rolled out beautifully like an extended sigh. A soul as exhausted by the world as his own. He was instantly in love.
“Is that so?” Lawrence replied with a smirk as he slid past her to unlock the door. She smelled of honey-dipped rose petals. Lawrence guessed that she was a prostitute.
“Would you like to come inside to talk about your case Miss ..?”
He let the comment hang and moments passed as she pierced him with a predator’s smile.
“You survive the night, Mr. Wilhelm,” the woman finally replied. “Then we will worry about formalities.”
battology \buh-TOL-uh-jee\, noun:
wearisome repetition of words in speaking or writing.
Yeah, so Dave Ramsey’s battology can be taxing, and the Christian thing get’s a little annoying, but I am about to go get a root canal without health insurance and the financial discipline I’ve developed over the past few years put me in a position where I can just lay down $1800 in cash and walk away. Part of being old is finally understanding the true joy of not being afraid of financial hurdles anymore.
wuther \WUHTH-er\, verb:
(of wind) to blow fiercely.
Lenny glanced below his feet, to the ninety-seven stories of steel, skeletal nakedness sprouting from the cold, soulless visage of New York City. Jet streams meant only for birds wuthered and whistled through the beams of the skyscraper as workers strolled across wooden planks without a thought of Death, eagerly peering over their shoulders like a child watching a serial.
“The women I love are different now,” Paul called to Lenny with a wistful smile. At the age of 42, Paul was ancient compared to the rest of the young and careless who ventured up to the heavens to earn slave wages constructing the temples of America’s one and true god, capitalism.
Paul opened his lunch pale and pulled out a thermos of Jameson and coffee.
“It’s not like when I was young, when I grasped at every willing bosom and plunged into love, afraid that I would never find another to have me,” Paul continued.
He rambled like this often. Most others on the crew didn’t know what to make of Paul, but Lenny thought the old man was interesting.
Paul offered Lenny the thermos, but Lenny waved it away. Lenny lost his taste for the poison when he watched his friend tumble down the guts of the building two weeks ago.
“It’s like with food, my pallet has refined,” Paul said, wiping the coffee out of his mustache as the whiskey colored his cheeks. “There is beauty in youth, I grant you. But we don’t love beauty, do we? We covet it. The women I love now and have loved for several years are something else, something that took time for me to truly appreciate. It’s a richness in character, a deft mind, a curious eye. And strength, that is the truth of it. I want a woman who can stick up for herself. She doesn’t need me, she just doesn’t mind me being around. You understand?”
Lenny shrugged. He wasn’t in for this liberation nonsense, but he didn’t want to interrupt Paul.
“You see, they’ve made it this long without a man, so they’ve grown ferrel, and I adore them for it. These are not women to marry. No, these are women who cannot be owned. I love them dearly, each and every one, because they might give themselves over for a night, but they will never be corralled, they will never be broken, but will brazenly stand up in this desolate wilderness, alone with eyes on an uncertain horizon that will never frighten them again.”
de profundis \dey proh-FOON-dis\, adverb:
out of the depths (of sorrow, despair, etc.).
He swore he would slap the next mouth that blathered out, “you are only 11, you don’t even know what love is.” The boy knew, because he felt it seize the air in his throat every time he saw her face, muddle his thoughts when her laughter chirped away in the back row of class, and raise the thin peach fuzz on his arms when he caught the scent of her strawberry perfume as she passed.
She moved to Missouri and the devastated boy retreated into himself. No more friends, no more warm words with his family, no more cartoons, only his mother’s collection of Billie Holiday records and a stack of sketchbooks could console him.
Decades later, he would crack open those sketchbooks and witness the art created de profundis and realize that, even though he was just 11, that heartache was still one of the most earnest emotional experiences of his life.
ken \ken\, noun:
1. knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one’s ken.
2. range of sight or vision.
verb:
1. Chiefly Scot. a. to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with (a person or thing). b. to understand or perceive (an idea or situation).
2. Scots Law. to acknowledge as heir; recognize by a judicial act.
3. Archaic. to see; descry; recognize.
4. British Dialect Archaic. a. to declare, acknowledge, or confess (something). b. to teach, direct, or guide (someone).
5. British Dialect. a. to have knowledge of something. b. to understand.
The glow of the fireplace hugged the soft, maple curve of her hip. Her eyes bore into his with a refined aggression as he stammered and suddenly became aware of how naked he really was at that moment.
“Um, okay, this is a poem I did during my Irvine Welsh phase,” he announced as he settled on a page in his college notebook.
“Uh, okay,” she replied, then released a loud and sharp laugh, before raising her wine glass to signal for him to begin.
He cleared his throat.
“I ken ai beligeren freme on bueootifol rounder effenin’,” he began but she held up a finger to stop him.
“Is all your poetry in dialect?” she asked politely.
“No, just, um, that was my Irvine Welsh phase.”
“Why don’t we find another phase, honey?”
lunker \LUHNG-ker\, noun:
1. something unusually large for its kind.
2. Angling. a very large game fish, especially a bass.
By Jeffery’s ninth grade year, humanity had pretty much licked the alien invasion problem. It couldn’t be considered a complete victory since the nasty little, six-legged, bug-eyed wolverine creatures still roamed the flatlands by the millions, but people quickly learned that the vermin mostly kept to themselves. As long people avoided any areas below 500 feet above sea level, we could coexist peacefully.
Jeffery’s uncle was dumb enough to venture below that threshold on foot a few years back and got cornered by a pack of aliens. Poor guy’s skeleton was picked clean in under 30 seconds. Like bulimics, the aliens then vomited the human flesh since they naturally only subsisted on weeds and mold.
Of course, humans needed access to the seas as well as to satiate their roaming nature, so the Backpacker quickly became all the rage. The humanoid robots stood between two to three stories tall with seats affixed to their backs where humans drove the hulking machinations. The aliens didn’t mind the lunkers, even when one of their own accidentally got pancaked under the robot’s foot.
Though entertaining to those that lost kin in the invasion, stepping on aliens was largely avoided because the slimy hides would get stuck to the Backpacker’s heels, which risked toppling it over.
And if you found yourself trapped underneath a 17 ton Backpacker in the middle of a sea of fiercely territorial aliens, well, game over man, game over.
