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What's Your Word for the Day?
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Debbie, sardonic princess of cheerfulness
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Jan 27, 2010 01:11AM
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"posso dicere" ----possible to tell....no possoms here!
She's marrying an Irishman.Oh, really?
No, O'Reilly.
He bought her a fur coat.
Oh, really?
No, opossum.
That guy looks like the President.
Oh, really?
No, Obama.
Words to Describe The Taste of Food. Words such as scrumptious, succulent, oily, umami, esculent, and delish, gritty, stringy, creamy, rich, decadent, herbaceous....etc.
Do you have some faves???
au·to·di·dact (ôt-ddkt)n.
A self-taught person.
[From Greek autodidaktos, self-taught : auto-, auto- + didaktos, taught; see didactic.]
I suppose you could say this describes me.
No a Plymouth Barracuda. You know I had my first car for 23 years before I got rid of it. I sold it to a young man in Huntington Beach who thought he was getting a treasure. Now I find out he did. I still see it every now and then.
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Gabi...a great force to be reckoned with!
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"i" before ni"e"ce except after c-ya at her 21st.
Ah the memories of being 21. So young so foolish was I.
I thought the world was at my feet
Then I discovered it was a beaten path.
Upon which wiser ones than I
Had once traversed.
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Youth, it's wasted on the young. My doctor (Heidegger) told me as much.
Me!! Use a cliche(gasp)as old as that.(or as old as me).
Ve get too soon oult und too late schmart.
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clang-tintnoun, the timbre or quality of a compound musical tone, due to the relative number and intensity of the harmonics present in it; acoustic color.
A calque of German 'klang-farbe,' literally sound-color.
Examples
“Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things. It may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word cellar-door is musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of everyday.”
BODACIOUS ...... (I like this word!)Definitions
adjective, remarkable; prodigious.
adjective, audacious; gutsy.
adverb, completely; extremely.
adverb, audaciously; boldly.
Popularized in the comic strip 'Snuffy Smith,' bodacious is probably a blend of the words 'bold' and 'audacious,' whose combined senses are evident in the following description of Sevier County, Tennessee, as 'the most bodacious display of tourism this side of Anaheim.'
Examples
“If they show a hankering for more bodacious playthings, call 'em tomboy, humor 'em for a few years and then slip 'em the bad news.”
“Man oh man, it'll be a bodacious blow to authority.”
CACHINNATIONPronunciation: [kak-uh-`ney-shuhn:]
Definition: Convulsive, hysterical, or immoderate laughter.
Usage: A cachinnation may best be described as “crazy” laughter, the kind that makes a person seem just slightly off-kilter. Indeed, the word is described in early dictionaries as being indicative of hysteria or mania. Many medical dictionaries list cachinnations as being “without apparent cause,” suggesting that the compulsive qualities observed when the word was first defined in English have not died out completely. A cachinnation, of course, need not indicate the presence of mental illness, as the word may now be used to mean any immoderate amount of laughter.
Suggested Usage: Cachinnations are perhaps best exemplified by the Joker in The Dark Knight. His laughter is unsettling at best, and it demonstrates that he might not be “all there” upstairs.
Etymology: Like many words in the English language, cachinnation is from the Latin cachinnationem, which is an action noun of the word cachinnare, to laugh aloud. The word is onomatopoetic, meaning the sound of the word was meant to imitate the sound of the action—similarly to the way a “cackle” imitates the laugh of a witch.
I did it first on L&G....whoop do dooo....
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Great word because there's so much to apply it to in life.
So one could crassly cachinnate.Good one to use in a novel..."as she crassly cachinnated across the crowded room....." paints a picture. :-)
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I caught someone cachinnating once, but I looked the other way!
I look away only if rolling on the floor,while cachinnating.
Muskellunge a large pike-like fish of N. America
If that word were derived from German, it would mean "muscle lung". However, Merriam Webster tells us it's a North American native term which entered the English language via Canadian french.
Try another dictionary. It could still be derived from German via French.
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Yep, even German Wikipedia tells us the same story. The Indians called the fish maashkinoozh, which means ugly pike,; this was transformed into masque allongée and then into Muskellunge. From ugly fish to drawn-out mask to muscle lung, interesting.
That feller was one big maashkinoozh. hmmmm
CACOETHESPronunciation: [kak-oh-'ee-theez:]
Definition: Compulsion, mania.
Usage: When it first appears in many dictionaries, the word cacoethes is defined as “a bad custom or habit.” Though it is relatively uncommon, the word has been around in English since at least the mid-1600s, with meanings ranging from compulsion or irresistible urge to a persistent or incurable ulcer of the stomach. Cacoethes is perhaps best defined today as a “mania,” almost an unhealthy obsession to act in a certain (often socially unacceptable) way. Less commonly, it may be used as a synonym for an overwhelming passion.
Suggested Usage: “I’ve got the need… for speed!” a friend will say as he revs up his car and speeds down the highway. You might want to explain to him that driving so fast is dangerous and against the law; therefore, his need is perhaps a cacoethes. If a compulsion to do something is without regard for the rules of safety or acceptability, chances are it may be described as a cacoethes, which is a very funny-sounding way of explaining to someone that they really, really need help.
Etymology: It is relatively obvious that cacoethes, a word which originally meant “an itch for doing something,” was originally a Greek term. Our spelling and usage comes from the Latin form of the Greek word kakoethes, a bad or sick habit. It is further derived from the Greek terms kakos, meaning bad, and ethe, character or disposition.
So now, we could see a crassly cachinnated fella with a cacoethes to boot!
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hmn..more like one from the chorus of Euripides production!
It reminded me of cacahuètes, the French word for peanuts.
Here is another word that has travelled a long way:PORCELAIN
It comes from 'porcella', which is 'little pig' in Italian dialect. The word was then used for 'vagina' for obvious reasons, and then for 'shell' because of similarity in shape. Then, people obviously must have thought that when the first china was imported to Europe, it was made from shell powder, so they named it 'porcellana', which was adopted by the french and turned into 'porcelaine' to finally become the English 'porcelain.'
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quell -- to put down, as a riot; to pacify or soothe. What's interesting is that it comes from the Anglo-Saxon cwellan, "to kill." Such a nice word, too. Talk about "killing me softly"!
AMPHIGORYPronunciation: ['am-fi-gawr-ee:]
Definition: A parodic piece of nonsense writing.
Usage: Amphigory is a word that may refer to any piece of writing, including verse, song, or prose, that doesn’t make sense. An amphigory is very often a parody of some other, more familiar piece of writing or song. The burlesque connotations of the word amphigory (spelled originally “amphigouri”) have been attested since the 1800s, as amphigory exemplifies the gross exaggeration and social commentary of burlesque theater. Webster’s Revised 1913 Dictionary explains that, upon further reflection or attention, amphigory “proves to be meaningless.”
Suggested Usage: Use amphigory as an antidote to the boring parody and satire everyone else seems so captivated by. See, modern parody is often very banal and boring, and the sharp commentary rarely skewers its target. We suggest you start with a staged political parody involving two lizards running for president of the aquarium. Civil unrest quickly turns into a bloodbath; hence, an amphi-gory! (Get it?)
Etymology: While various ideas have been proposed as to the actual etymology of the word amphigory, the origin of the word remains uncertain. The French word amphigouri might come from a Greek term meaning “to circle on both sides,” although others have suggested that the Greek suffix –agoria, speech, might account for part of the meaning. As amphigory certainly conveys the idea of “circular speech,” this etymology is commonly cited.
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