What's Your Word for the Day? Showing 901-950 of 3,049

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

I know it well!! Just never heard that word for it before!!!

[Savvy]

It was new to me too Bunny! I was listening to NPR in the car and heard it used.

Good on you Debbie!!! :-)

[David]

My word for the day is "faineant," meaning futile or ineffective. From the French "fait néant," or "do nothing."

Close to "feckless," but no cigar.

[Jeannette]

Prevaricate. Not that the encroaching election is reminding me of anything.....

[David]

Are those "Jesuitical" prevarications, or otherwise?

[Jeannette]

Dunno. Explain, please. Am heading this weekend to visit The University of Scranton, A Jesuit University, so I'm even more interested!

[David]

It's more or less giving an answer that, while not false, creates a false impression. When Catholicism was banned in England, it was a means of remaining unrecognized without actually lying.

"I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."
"That depends what 'is' is."

[Ken, Moderator]

U of Scranton, hometown of Joe "Pre and Post-varicating" Biden His Time. Can it all end soon enough? No! Make it go away. This election has gone on TOO long...

[Jeannette]

Deep breath, NE. It'll all be over soon. Then merrily on to the next thing...

p.s. Just saw Secret Life of Bees. Won't even try to compare it to the book - like apples to oranges, I always think - but it was very enjoyable if you like a heart-tugging tear-jerker, which I do, on occasion.

[Ken, Moderator]

Neither book nor movie appeals to me, sad to say. Still, always happy to hear the buzzzzzz.

[David]

I think I'd probably prefer the buzzing in "O Brother Where Art Thou":

"The buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees
The soda-water fountain
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain."

And there's a "lake of stew, and of whiskey too . . . "

[Peter]

I´m still here.
"Breathtaking" is a a nice description- takes your breath away...
Where am I?
Struggling for Infinity, yep.
Word:
Discontiunity.
We are.

[David]

Remember the "mohole"?

It was a boring toward the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, a geological phenomenon, the boundary between the earth's crust and its mantle. Never got there, though.

There's a hacek and an accent on the c's in Mohorovicic, btw.

[David]

haček

To make the c-haček, type ampersand-"pound"-269-semicolon.

She used to be a haček girl in Prague; now she's a Duchess.

[David]

c with acute accent ć

ampersand-pound-263-semicolon

Hence, Mohorovičić--the rubes call him "Moho." No puns or anagrams, please.

[David]

If you have a mac, you can go option e, then e again.

Or you can use Unicode. You have to look that up.

[Savvy]

Unicode-Arabic 'cut and paste'...no idea what it says!

ﻏﹷﺰﹶﻝ

ﺷﺎﻡﹺ ﻏﹷﻢ ﻛﮯ ﺍﺳﹻﻴﺮ ﮨﹷﻴﮟ ﮨﹷﻢ ﻟﻮﮒ
ﺳﹹﺒﺢﹺ ﻧﹷﻮ ﻛﮯ ﺳﹷﻔﹻﻴﺮ ﮨﹷﻴﮟ ﮨﹷﻢ ﻟﻮﮒ

[Ken, Moderator]

It says:

I have no idea what I'm writing here, but I'm not about to let THAT stop me.

[Peter]

Ha, David!
Lots of thanks!!! Indeed ;-) That´s the first explanation and definition I ever heard. Moholes, my, of course I cought the drift when reading Kim Stanley Robinson´s Mars-trilogy, but never found an explanation regarding the term.
Chapeau!

TLF

[Boreal Elizabeth]

tips his hat
your
mots
are
so
interestingly arranged
i find myself analysing usage
based on esl standards
you seem to defie them bilingually

[Ken, Moderator]

Knowledge of the study of knowledge. I've got my mnemonic device already.

Q: Did you enjoy reading the Epistles in the Bible?
A: Know!

[Boreal Elizabeth]

praxis
i love praxis

[David]

SDS used to have a "Praxis Axis" and an "Action Faction."

Pinko trivia.

[Ruth]

Which reminds me, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," as my mother, the zoologist, used to say.

[David]

Epistomology, ontology.

Episiotomy, otolaryngology.

Ecclesiology, obloquy.

My, how I rattle on!

My word for the day, though, is "omophorion," a bishop's scarf-like garment, and by metonnymy, his ecclesastical authority.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Obbly wobbly gobbly pisty geek!!

[David]

Oobla-dee, oobla-dah.

[Ruth]

scooby doo

[Savvy]

geeezzzzzz....everybody's gone a bit daft and taken to mumblings and such.

Was it too much SNL?

[David]

They're all daft, except thee and me, and I'm not too sure about thee.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

David started it!!

[Ken, Moderator]

Speaking of edu-talk, there's always metacognition (which sounds like a term for the key getting stuck in your car's ignition).

[David]

I met a cog once. He had a toothy grin. He went around in circles quite a lot, but he did fit in quite well.

[Tyler]

What's the difference between metacognition and ordinary cognition? It sounds like an epistemological hair-splitting, but I want to be more than a cog in the ontological matrix, so I really want to know.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

Hahahahaha....groan! (David)

Does this help Tyler?
Metacognition vs. cognition
Metacognition is defined as "thinking about thinking" and therefore not the same as an ordinary cognitive strategy or learning strategy, even if it is not always easy to separate them conceptually.

“ Cognitive strategies are used to help an individual achieve a particular goal (e.g., understanding a text) while metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that the goal has been reached (e.g., quizzing oneself to evaluate one's understanding of that text). Metacognitive experiences usually precede or follow a cognitive activity. They often occur when cognitions fail, such as the recognition that one did not understand what one just read.” (Livingston, 1977).

Here is the link to the whole article if you want more....

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Metaco...

[Ruth]

I just glazed out.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

That might make a a good humourous poem Ruth!

[Ruth]

Aha! A found poem! I've snatched it.

[Tyler]

Thanks, Debbie. I've thought of that as "critical" thinking, but I see the terminology changes depending on one's profession. I'm starting a book now that even calls it "negative" thinking ("positive" thinking being "concrete").

Sometimes it's said that philosophy is the process of thinking about thought itself, so I wonder if metacognition is a rubric of the philosophy of education.

[Boreal Elizabeth]

metacognition is not critical
it's more general
critical thinking involves analysis
metacognition doesn't
it's more knowing you are thinking rather than judging or coming to conclusions or directing the thinking
at least that's my understanding of the terms
i think it originated in the field of psychology and brain studies

[Tyler]

Ah, so there is a difference between the two concepts.

[Boreal Elizabeth]

nice bun wat

[Ken, Moderator]

Many words are pleasant to the ear (like ensemble). Usually they are from the Romance languages (which are often caught making out in the stairwell during school hours).

rapprochement (noun) -- establishment or state (bordering Rhode Island) of cordial relations

[Ken, Moderator]

Random look-up WOTD:

Tacit -- implied, understood, unspoken, undeclared. A tacit agreement.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

WOTD in my class today (picked by a pupil who just liked the sound of it)....luminous.

[Ken, Moderator]

It's such a... moony word. "Class today" sounds so odd on a Sunday night. But then, you Kiwis are ahead of us in so many ways.

[Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness]

;0)

[David]

Try "numinous"--having a spiritual or mystical quality.

[Ken, Moderator]

I'm feeling numinous myself today. There's something spiritual about Mondays, don't you think?

[David]

I feel like the guy who was run over by a steamroller. When the cops knocked on the door to tell his wife, she said, "Csn you slip him under the door? I just got out of the shower."

Numinous? Not hardly. Planar, perhaps.