What's Your Word for the Day? Showing 501-550 of 3,049

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Cute Ruth!!

[Gail]

Well, Happy Anniversary, Stamatia. I love anniversaries. We've been married, uh, um, 22 years. Sometimes it's seems as though we've been married all my life (in a good way) and sometimes it's as though we got married yesterday. I find that Beastly Bastard is appearing less and less as time goes on...which is considerable of a relief, as the first five years or so of two extremely strong-willed people in the same house took some, shall we say, adjustment.
Anyway, I hope you and your Best Buddy have a great day and many, many more.

[Stamatia]

Thanks everybody!!!

[[deleted user]]

My WFTD after reading about anniversaries: LONGEVITY :)

[Stamatia]

Mine's GREGARIOUS

[Terence]

My word for the day is "longanimity."

I came across its definition in Peter Bowler's The Superior Person's Second Book of Weird & Wondrous Words and fell in love with it.

It's a staple in all my conversations :-)

"Suffering in silence over a period of time, while brooding on revenge: `That's O.K., Mom; I accept your decision with complete longanimity.'"

[Tyler]

The perfect opposite of "equanimity."

[Tyler]

Today's word: fillip

I usually like a word for its abstract or metaphorical meaning, here "to stimulate or arouse" (vt). But in this instance, it's the concrete meaning, a thump involving the thumb and the nail of any finger, that gives the word its edge.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I always thought it was a noun....as in something that adds an element of danger or excitement...the online dictionary says this - "An embellishment that excites or stimulates: "Spritely tabasco onions, just a little crunch for the top, were an added fillip" Alison Arnett.
I never knew that flicking thumb and finger nails together even had a name...let alone that it was a fillip!!!

[Tyler]

I credit Ulysses for the insight. Really, who would've thought it?

[Ken, Moderator]

James Joyce, apparently? And don't tell me you've entered that cave called Ulysses and come out the other end. Show off.

Anyway, there were plenty of King Fillips over the years. In New England, there was even King Fillip's War (as we now know: a real nail-biter).

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Groooooaaaaaannnn!!!

[Ruth]

I actually made it through Ulysses about 45 years ago. Long before I knew it was supposed to be difficult. Just dove in and did it because I wanted to see what the scandal was all about.

I tried again about 5 years ago, and only made it thru about 100 pages.

[Ken, Moderator]

Apparently youth brings more reading strength. Or, conversely, age brings wisdom about when to say when.

sophistry (deceptively subtle reasoning)

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I had a look at his profile...he is currently reading Ulysses...has not yet come out the other side! But would probably not now give up for anything!!!!

[Stamatia]

NE is it deceptively subtle or subtly deceptive?
In greek we use the word to describe an argument that, though it has all the trappings of logic, leads you to a false conclusion.

[Stamatia]

There's always room for improvement, or there would be no research.

[Ken, Moderator]

What does Merriam know? Or Webster for that matter? I love interchangeable words. So, it's subtly deceptive or deceptively subtle, according to the Webster-Merriam Dictionary. (Let's not forget that Daniel Webster had his day with the Devil. There's a story to prove it.)

[Terena]

I slogged through War and Peace one summer in my twenties and loved it. Did it mainly on a dare.

[Stamatia]

No surprise there. Tolstoy has a way with words. I even liked Anna Karenina and I usually hate adultery stories.

[Tyler]

Actually, I just have finished the last page of Ulysses, at times an exercise in linguistic sophistry. So I have finally come out on the other side, but I can't figure out just how to rate it or descibe it yet. Ruth's rating is close to what I think I'll give it, too.

I wasn't showing off, NE, and New England has never had a king as far as I know, either, so how y'all could have had a war in honor of one I'll never know. I took on the epic project because I had an adequate block of time available. But now ... now I have an arrogant little reliquary of Words For The Day to irritate this thread with for weeks to come. Oh yeah, baby!

Terena, War and Peace is on my Absolutely Must Read list because I love Russian literature. But I want to read the new translation with the extra pages in it, and I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback. I hope to get to it within months. Stamatia, I've got Anna Karenina on my shelf right now, but I don't know whether or not to read it first before W&P.

One tidbit I recently picked up about the Sophists is that they believed in acting only in a kind of ad hoc self-interest, without regard for appeals to any broader moral authority. In that respect, we moderns are quite sophisticated.

[Ken, Moderator]

Tyler too, we could pull reliquary from your post and use it as the Word for the Day. I like it, being a cousin to relic (which in turn is cousin to me).

I am a Russophile and read a ton of Russian Lit. in my 20s and continue to read it today (like the country, there's enough to go around). I read Anna Karenina before War & Peace, and though I love them both, hold a special place in my heart for AK.

Funny thing is, it contains parallel plots, one based on the fatal protagonist/adulteress, and the other on Levin, based on LT himself. It's the Levin plot that kidnapped me. Anna's plight paled in comparison.

Word on the street is that Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky are the go-to translators for Russian Lit now. I just finished Dead Souls and liked what they did with the Gogol. I don't know if they've done Tolstoy, though I see they've done a bunch of Dostoevsky (my least favorite Russky from the Golden Age).

And now I'm just starting Nabokov's memoir, Speak, Memory, translated by Nabokov (or maybe he wrote it in English originally, considering it appeared in The New Yorker, or at least much of it did).

OK, time to get off the Russians before Deb crashes the gates asking for a Black one. Congrats, Relyt, on the Herculean feat, and Terena, on the W&P feat, and Stamatia, for your usual good taste.

[Ken, Moderator]

Oh. And King Phillip (Metacomet, I think, was his real name) was so-sobriquet-ed by the colonists. This spring, because my morning paper was always late and thus not ready to be read with my cereal, I took to reading Lies My Teacher Told Me and there's a solid chapter in it called "Red Eyes" about American history books and their approach to the native Indians. It's an eye-opener!

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Woohoo!!!! I knew there was a reason I am addicted to this site! Where shall I start!!
Of course New England had a King....George the 3rd I believe he was called! And I assume the War of Independence in order to ditch him touched New England in some way? (My American history is a bit sketchy).
I am with Stamatia and Donna on the sophistry definition....I always took it to mean an argument that seems plausible but is misleading (ie shallow)...I believe that is where the word sophisticated comes from...my Collins defines that as pretentiously or superficially wise.
I LOVE Russians....and not just Black ones NE! I read War and Peace at 16 from cover to cover and loved it.... and I still want to visit St Petersburg, the cradle of Russian Ballet. Something about the country, the culture and the literature has always appealed to me.
Relyt....I just love your phraseology...arrogant little reliquary!! Bring it on!!!

[Ken, Moderator]

I was in St. Petersburg when it was Leningrad. And Moscow, too. 1975. Little did the Russians know....

[Stamatia]

Goodness NE Leningrad in 1975? In retrospect the journey takes monumental proportions. Wasn't it hard for an american to take such a journey at the time?
Relyt if I were you I would start with W&P but then I'm biased. What actually hooked me to Tolstoy was a little gem named The Kossacs (sp?) that I snagged from my mother's TBR pile when I was 14. She was going through the Russians at the time. Happy reading anyway!

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I am intrigued too NE...Russia in 1975.....taking part in a ballet competition perhaps???
PS.. Stamatia...Cossacks :-)

[Ken, Moderator]

Right. I am to ballet what bulls are to China shops (or Russia shops, if you want the right Commies in honor of '75). No, it was simply a tourist trip, with all manner of rules: no jeans, no Bibles, no black market goodies of any kind. The little kids ran up to you saying, "Chewing gum, yes?" and offering little pins (I still have a few). I talked up the movie Dr. Zhivago with the tour guides. One was intrigued and asked a few questions furtively. Another looked frightened and worked her way away from me (a reaction I was used to when it came to girls).

I got yelled at by one guard for stepping on grass in Moscow. I refused to wait in a long line to view the waxy embalmed body of Vlad the Glad Lenin in his glass tomb. I loved the Moscow Subway system with its gorgeous tiled artwork at each station. Another tourist from some European country asked if I was from "Dutchland" (home of the Dutch, or so I thought). I said "America... United States," and it was a conversation ender as he wrinkled his nose a bit (I see in retrospect he said "Deutschland," perhaps because I looked so Aryan with the blond hair and blue eyes).

Leningrad wasn't as colorful as Moscow, but the museums were impressive. I went to the Bolshoi Ballet, Debbie, so I'm one up on you on every ballet fan's Bucket List! All I remember was being bored in Russian. Surely it was wasted on me.

As for Tolstoy, his short stories are accessible, many of them in a collection called Sevastapol Tales. I agree that "The Cossacks" is a good one. I even read Tolstoy's Diary once. Talk about getting in a guy's head. All self-loathing for gambling, overeating, wenching, etc. At least he had fun while he was working on becoming holy (and was wise enough to find God when his body wasn't up to the blood sport anymore...).

The word for the day is meandering, as in this post.

[Ruth]

I meandered to the USSR about 10 years later. We were with a "study tour" set up for doctors. Went to Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. I forget the exact year, but Reagan was President, and glasnost was the word of the year.

Contrary to your experience, NE, I found the poeple dying to talk to Americans, and I was impressed by how many of them spoke English. Which was a good thing, as my Russian was pretty spare.

I liked Leningrad for the openness of the city and the Museums. I loved Samarkand for the beauty of the blue & white Islamic tilework which is everywhere, and the warm and friendly people.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I am so envious of you both! I have seen the Bolshoi (in Sydney) and I have been to Covent Garden but neither would be on my bucket list....the Kirov at The Maryinsky in St Petersburg would be lovely. And a weekend in a little dacha in a birch wood would be heaven.....

[Ken, Moderator]

Yeah, I didn't get to any of the countryside (alas), but we only had a week so it was, "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be the Hermitage." I'd especially like to have seen Yasnaya Polyana (Tolstoy's country estate) and Spasskoye (Turgenev's). But no.

And I didn't mean to imply that the Russian people were unfriendly. The uniformed ones were gruff and only one tour guide was fearful of my Hollywood talk (what they did to Pasternak's novel). I think Pasternak was still verboten at the time, which is why the other one (obviously a reader and lover of literature) pumped me with questions about the movie.

But the people themselves were very friendly and one might say fascinated with us. Of course I was but a teen at the time, so I probably didn't try as much interaction as I should have. I remember on the crowded Moscow subway that we were packed in and standing (my classmates and myself) and these Russian teens next to us stopped talking to listen to us jabber in English (no clue if they understood but they smiled and nodded at us like they wished they could join in).

And did I say the little kids were VERY FRIENDLY. Oh yeah. I said. Chewing gum was their golden calf of worship (even though religion was banned).

Also memorable: we were forewarned to bring our own tp. The Russians version was like sandpaper. And I bought an orange that cost around 6 dollars. I was that desperate. Seems all I consumed was bread that week. Everything else was undercooked eggs and such disgusting fare as calf tongue. Or someone's tongue. Forget the animal. Horrible food.

And vodka. Lots of vodka. They didn't seem to care about our age. On Aeroflot flights, it came in handy. That and a prayer....

[Ruth]

I agree with you on Aeroflot. Hair-raising.

Often the drink served on Aeroflot was plain water. Once, very thirsty, I picked it up and tossed it down. Only to discover that that time it was vodka! THAT was an eye opener!

We were warned to bring cigarettes for gifts and tips. Non-smokers, we weren't comfortable with doing that. But we should have. That's what people wanted everywhere.

The food we got was excellent, especially the bread and the soups. Altho I must admit I got a little tired of Chicken Kiev. The standard appetizer was a half a hard-boiled egg piled with caviar. Most of our group didn't seem to have very adventurous taste, and I got to eat theirs, too. Yum.

R

[Terence]

I love the English language. Its versatility; its creativity. But when I came across the word below in a press release I edited for an outdoor entertainment company I was once again struck by the rule that 90% of any creative effort is "crap." (How many "Mona Abigails" and "Donnybrooks and Peace" littered the respective artists' homes before the final product came out?)

I'm hope you're all sitting down: STAYCATION (the alternative to the "vacation")

Please tell me I'm not alone in hoping that this one will be buried and forgotten!

[Ruth]

And axed well before it's buried.

[Tyler]

I was sitting down. And I needed to be.

[Laura]

My word for the day is "gutty wuts". Anyone else have a favorite Nadsat word or phrase?

[Ruth]

Nadsat???

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Gutty wuts???

[Ken, Moderator]

I've heard tell of "gonads" and of "SATs," but never "Nadsat." Sounds like it should be orbiting the Earth (let's not forget Skylab... certainly the Aussies never will).

[Ruth]

Gutty wuts are cojones???

[Ruth]

I read the whole of Clockwork Orange before I discovered the glossary in the back!

[Ken, Moderator]

I saw the movie. I was underwhelmed. It was like reading poetry about chickens.

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

Something there is
about a white nadsat
next to a red poet laureate.

[Ruth]

What can you be thinking, NE? CO is one of my alltime favorite movies.

[Ken, Moderator]

Sorry. My comment was about the movie only. No judgment on the book.

And Ruth, you know by now that I am the ultimate unreliable narrator when it comes to movies. I just don't like the art form so much. More often than not, I'm rolling my eyes (or closing them). Glad you liked it, though! Is it your favorite Burgess? I think I read a book of his about Shakespeare (or was it Marlowe)?

[Ruth]

Don't recall if I've read another book by Burgess, NE.

And I don't like run of the mill Hollyweird movies.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I still don't know what gutty wuts are.....

[Ruth]

If it's from Clockwork Orange, I'd say it's guts.
The hub and I refer to our morning henfruit as "eggy weggs" from the same source.

[David]

Aneurysm. Strange spelling, strange pronunciation for the spelling.

[Ruth]

Yikes!

[Stamatia]

David, the spelling comes from the etymology of the word αν which is negative and ευρυς which means wide will give you the word ανευρυσμα which means a tightening of a blood vessel and whose "translation" is the word aneurysm . The y stands for the vowel ypsilon. It's not an -ism which means the mode. Ypsilon by the way is pronounced ee in Greek