What's Your Word for the Day? Showing 551-600 of 3,049

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

The streams at my high school were alpha, beta, gamma, delta and epsilon.

[David]

Ostracized--comes from the οστρακον (ostrakron), or potsher, with which the vote to exile one was cast.

No hanging chads in Greece.

[David]

My word for today is "chum." Not as in "Come to the cabaret, old chum," or "Nothing queer about
Cholmondely." Rather, pieces of dead fish cast overboard to attrace live fish.

[David]

Good sleepy word is morphetic.

[Tyler]

I've read the word "chum" and have never stopped to think just what it means until now.

Is morphetic akin to soporific?

[Ruth]

David! Welcome, neighbor, to this small corner of the universe of words. Looks like you're going to fit right in. Wanna introduce yourself above?

Buns, me love, would you know if David made a typo in οστρακον?

[Stamatia]

He didn't, unless you count the lack of τόνος which is the little sign on top of a vowel to specify where the word should be stressed. So it should be όστρακον but then my keyboard is custom made to support these signs where David's probably isn't. Even so I forget to use them half of the time to my kids' (who had to learn them in first grade) unending amusement.*blush*

[Ruth]

Ocassion, occasion is what does me in.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I see what you mean Donna.....colour is difficult for most people on your continent to spell correctly :-)
,,,,and sergeant has always been my particular bete noir.

[Stamatia]

Oh, I always go with the british version. I figure what the heck it's better to have a superfluous letter than to be one short!

[Ken, Moderator]

Superfluous itself has a superfluous letter (I mean, do we really need two "u's" -- or, for that matter, to me's?).

Welcome (be it for good or via drive-by), David. Good to see your keyboard speaks foreign languages. Or I suppose you could call English "foreign," too. Seems to be for most of my students (and even me, at times).

Last time I went deep-sea fishing (OK, first AND last time), I was chumming myself -- over the gunwales as I ralphed my last 21 days' worth of meals. Whether the fish found said cuisine chummy, I can't say. The fishermen found it satisfying, however.

[Stamatia]

I think the fish did, NE. Living practically by the sea almost everybody and his brother has a little boat. We have a friend though that is a landlubber and has zero tolerance for the boat's rocking. Another friend insists that he is invaluable as a fishing companion since his chum attracs fish for the rest of the company to catch.

[Ken, Moderator]

Where are the discriminating fish when you need them? Aren't there any proper School for (as opposed to "of") Fish out there?

[Stamatia]

I honestly don't believe that fish are amenable to education but they are open to bribery.
Loquatious is my word

[Ruth]

I know I couldn't spell loquacious in Greek, so I should just shut up.

[Ken, Moderator]

If you're loquacious, you CAN'T shut up. Not your fault and nothing fishy about it.

GARRULOUS

[Stamatia]

Aren't the two words synonymous?There that's my word for the day(and it's greek too, the two former being latin in origin)

[Stamatia]

Oh and also melifluous also popped up. Also having to do with speech

[Stamatia]

I think you just defined the difference Bunny. That is the sense of the words that I get too.

[Tyler]

Yes, English synonyms can often be distinguished by the sense in which they're used.

Other languages are held against ours because their grammars allow them to shade meanings precisely. We don't have that power, but we do have a prodigious palette of synonyms to shade meanings by using the words themselves.

We even invent words as we need them, as A Clockwork Orange shows. Another English writer who spun off neologisms was George Orwell, to whom I credit today's WFTD:

Crimethink

You don't see this one often, but when you do it's always in a dandy of a sentence.

[Ken, Moderator]

Such as...?

[David]

My word for the day is "fugleman."

[Lasairfiona]

relyt: A Clockwork Orange didn't have any new words that I remember. All of that slang was russian (which really made me angry when I found out. I really wanted them to be new words).

[Ruth]

And that's what, David? A kind of Eastern European pastry?

[Ken, Moderator]

Fugleman is the tin soldier who stands in front of all the other tin soldiers serving as lead performer (atten-SHUN!) on how to eat Eastern European pastry.

Eggy weggs is Estonian, not Russian, though they can be made in a hurry (much faster than in a George Foreman).

The word for the day is syzygy. You may not like it but I find it heavenly.

[Ruth]

Syzygy? God bless you. Want a hankie?

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Eggy weggs are smashed up boiled eggs....that is what my mother always said.."Debbie! Eat your eggy weggs". No wonder I had what equated to an infantile nervous breakdown at 2 years!!!!!

[Ken, Moderator]

Toddlers can breakdown? Mine never did (God knows)...

JEJEUNE is the new (Frenchie-sounding) WFTD.

[Stamatia]

NE did you know that the word σύζυγος means husband or wife? Literally translated it means the person under the same yokel as you.
Now I would really like an explanation of jejeune, please.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Does that mean that the couple who play together under the same yokel, stay together?!!!

[Ken, Moderator]

Maybe I misspelled the word for the day while Stamatia conveniently distracted the crowd with her oxen and yokel. Jejune, maybe? Meaning "puerile" or childish or lacking maturity (like me).

It's one of those words you know but never use or even much see in print (spare in this thread of oddities... no aspersions meant). It just sounds pretentious, I guess. From the Latin jejunus.

[David]

"Noisome," which means "stinky" not "grating on the ears."

Go figure.

[Ken, Moderator]

We only go figure in the math thread, David. (And this is post #666 -- the Devil is in the Details... even if some folks say the Details are in the Devil).

[Stamatia]

Puerile is of itself a word worthy to be assigned as word for the day

[Tyler]

I wouldn't have expected "noisome" to mean that.

[Ken, Moderator]

It also can mean NOXIOUS or UNWHOLESOME, which gives considerable leeway from the MALODOUROUS definition. Stinky should be "smellsome," not "noisome."

[Stamatia]

Wow Bunny where do you get all this?

[Ken, Moderator]

Down the rabbit hole...

[Peter]

Word of the Day:
I see it often in Lovecraft, but quite nowhere else...

"eldritch"

Even my Webster´s doesn´t contain it, how embarrassing. It means something like "fey", outlandish, not to comprehend. I´d like to hear a definite definition, for I won´t buy another dictionary just for that one word, ahem ;-)

Currently reading: "Ringworld" by Larry Niven,
"The Guns of The South" by Harry Turtledove,
"Titan" by Stephen Baxter

Best,
TheLurkingFear,
Peter

[Tyler]

noisome -- annoy: a good way to remember it.


Peter --

Eldritch, adj., from OE el (strange) + rice (realm): eerie, spooky, suggestive of the supernatural, as in "an eldritch screech." It's a new word to me, seems usually to apply to noise or laughter.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

G'day Peter! Why 'TheLurkingFear'? Are you a fearful lurker....or....... a fearsome lurker? I had heard eldritch before and always took it to mean fey, not quite of this world. Never saw a definition, just assumed it because of contextual use and it's similarity to 'elvish'. Thanks for the etymology Relyt; useful to know where some of these more evocative words come from.

[Savvy]

SYZYGY is one of my faves!

Another is AUXESIS (kind of a hyperbole)

Susanne

[Ruth]

Or ZYZZYVA, the name of a West Coast poetry journal, and a beetle, the last word (I've heard) in the Amer Coll Dict.

[Ken, Moderator]

FEY means not quite of this world? I always thought FEY meant girly. As in: that guy acts a little fey. Maybe I'm confusing it with another word, then.

Auxesis sounds like one of the Titans. Atlas's second cousin twice removed (by Zeus), perhaps.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

From an online dictionary:
fey (f)
adj.
1.
a. Having or displaying an otherworldly, magical, or fairylike aspect or quality: "She's got that fey look as though she's had breakfast with a leprechaun" Dorothy Burnham.
b. Having visionary power; clairvoyant.
c. Appearing touched or crazy, as if under a spell.
2. Scots
a. Fated to die soon.
b. Full of the sense of approaching death.

....and I think you guys must have made up all those words full of z's and y's!!!!

[Ken, Moderator]

Ah! Debbie's definition #1 includes "fairylike aspect." Thus, "fey's" usage as in slightly "gay." It should be noted that kids (these days) have also appropriated "gay" to mean anything that's beneath them, or queer and stupid. "That's so gay," they'll say about something they don't like and are summarily dismissing.

Of course, that expression may be out of style by now. I'm usually 5 years behind the times (as opposed to curve or 8-ball or whatever else people get behind).

Thanks, Marco Polo, for the smart link!

[Peter]

Hi Debbie!
"TheLurkingFear" actually is the title of a Lovecraft-tale... for my alter-ego I sought something lovecraftian, but on yahoo! all those I originally favored were already taken. So, I ended up with TheLurkingFear, a title which retrospectively proved rather adequate. On the hardsf and StephenBaxter-groups I lurk, be welcome to have a look.
A good day- I´ll just lurk behind yonder trees ;-)
Peter

[Savvy]

Debbie,

ZOOKS! I think I have a zymosan in my zygoma!

:-) Susanne

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Heeheeheehee!!

[Savvy]

PUPKUS (pup' kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.