Word of the Day Thread

[ITS ME!]

remit \ ri-MIT \ , verb;
1.
To slacken or relax.

2.
To transmit money, a check, etc., as in payment.

3.
To abate for a time or at intervals, as a fever.

4.
To refrain from exacting, as a payment or service.

5.
To pardon or forgive a sin, offense, etc.



Quotes:
It matters not that we remit our attention, at times, to the pain or the pleasure; these are always in the background; and the strength of the appetite is their strength.
-- Alexander Bain, Practical Essays

If I were satisfied that you were not intending to make an exhibition of yourself I might be prepared to remit the fines.
-- Henry Cecil, Independent Witness



Origin:
Remit is derived from the Latin roots re- meaning "back" and mit meaning "send," so it literally meant "to send back."

[ITS ME!]

astringent \ uh-STRIN-juhnt \ , adjective;
1.
Sharply incisive; pungent.

2.
Medicine/Medical. Contracting; constrictive; styptic.

3.
Harshly biting; caustic: his astringent criticism.

4.
Stern or severe; austere.

noun: 1.
Medicine/Medical. A substance that contracts the tissues or canals of the body, thereby diminishing discharges, as of mucus or blood.

2.
A cosmetic that cleans the skin and constricts the pores.





Quotes:
One endeavors to correct, flushing out error and misconception with the astringent power of historical detail; the other treats the myth as meaningful cultural phenomenon in its own right, accounting for its emergence and tracing its development across time.
-- Beth Newman, Emily Brontë, "Introduction," Wuthering Heights

But here too she was thinner, and going unripe, astringent.

[ITS ME!]

dowager \ DOU-uh-jer \ , noun;

1.
An elderly woman of stately dignity, especially one of elevated social position.

2.
A woman who holds some title or property from her deceased husband, especially the widow of a king, duke, etc.

adjective: 1.
Noting, pertaining to, or characteristic of a dowager:



Quotes:
Deeda Blair rhapsodized about the exquisite atmosphere of La Grenouille and La Caravelle, two of the leading temples of fine French cuisine, where she’d lunch with the dowager philanthropist Mary Lasker or the ubiquitous Nan Kempner in the early 1960s, when her husband, William McCormick Blair Jr., was J.F.K.’s ambassador to Denmark and they’d stop in New York on their way home to Washington.
-- Bob Colacello, "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunched!," Vanity Fair , Feb. 2012

She trusted the dowager , and respected her deeply. But that wasn't the issue. Which world was she living in? For the time being, that was the point.
-- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84



Origin:
Dowager stems from the Latin word dotare meaning "to endow." In the middle French, it came to mean "pertaining to a dower," or the gift/payment that a wife's family gives her husband when they are married.

[ITS ME!]

iniquitous \ ih-NIK-wi-tuhs \ , adjective;
1.
Characterized by injustice or wickedness; wicked; sinful.



Quotes:
The commission was charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
-- Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

Anything else would be iniquitous - iniquitous is the only word. You know as well as I do that there is not the remotest chance of her ever being able to earn any money for herself out here.
-- Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark



Origin:
Iniquitous literally meant "unfair" in Latin, as its clear roots betray.

[sohail]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...............

[ITS ME!]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...............
? ..........:post_whore: lol

[tp2503]

That avatar is iniquitous, lol.
There is insertion at the end, pardon the pun lol.

[ITS ME!]

gasser \ GAS-er \ , noun;
1.
Something that is extraordinarily pleasing or successful, especially a very funny joke.

2.
A person or thing that gasses.



Quotes:
“You're gonna whiff like Reggie Jackson today, pal,” I said. By the third hole, Blind Bob led by seventeen shots. It was a laugher, a gasser. If it were a fight, Big Al would've been counted out, taken to the hospital, and killed by Clint Eastwood by now.
-- Rick Reilly, Shanks for Nothing

This was very funny indeed, the gasser of all time. When Max announced the name at the briss those thirty-seven years ago, perhaps all the guests, including Dave Raskin, had split a gut or two laughing.
-- Ed McBain, The Heckler



Origin:
Gasser is an Americanism that arose in the late 1800s.

[ITS ME!]

selcouth \ SEL-kooth \ , adjective;
1.
Strange; uncommon.



Quotes:
Its English is not more quaint than that of De Brunne himself; it contains no names more selcouth than he himself is in the custom of introducing…
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott

To whom there's hardly any selcouth thing, but seems a juggling trick, that would delude their fancies with an empty wondering; therefore against it they with thundering words do ring.
-- George Starkey, An Exposition Upon the Preface of Sir George Ripley



Origin:
Selcouth has odd Old English roots. It is related to the word seldom and the Old English word couth meaning "to know."

[ITS ME!]

brisance \ bri-ZAHNS \ , noun;
1.
The shattering effect of a high explosive.



Quotes:
The 'There' turned out to be crucial for the sense of brisance and closure and resolving issues of impotent rage and powerless fear that like accrued in Lenz all day being trapped in the northeastern portions of a squalid halfway house all day fearing for his life, Lenz felt.
-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

But this was sustained explosion, reaching now and then a quite unendurable brisance . Yet he endured it, not so much because it was her will as, unbelievably, what had become her need.
-- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day



Origin:
Brisance is a relatively new English word. It started being used commonly in the 1910s, but it can be traced to the Celtic word brissim meaning "to break."

[ITS ME!]

carp \ kahrp \ , verb, noun;

1.
To find fault or complain querulously or unreasonably.

noun: 1.
A peevish complaint.





Quotes:
She'd been carping about money lately – or not carping , but she'd inserted a few pointed remarks about pulling your own weight into the prolonged and intent silences that were her specialty – so he thought she'd be pleased.
-- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

And knowing he could not touch her by persuasion, he carped at her and teased her like a schoolboy.
-- Anton Chekhov, "Excellent People," Chekhov's Doctors: A Collection of Chekhov's Medical Tales



Origin:
Carp comes from the Old Norse word karpa which meant "to brag or haggle."

[tp2503]

Carp-

A fish commonly found in water......

lol

[ITS ME!]

vernal \ VUR-nl \ , adjective;

1.
Appearing or occurring in spring.

2.
Of or pertaining to spring.

3.
Appropriate to or suggesting spring; springlike.

4.
Belonging to or characteristic of youth.



Quotes:
By and by a bird piped in the garden; the shriek of a swallow made itself heard from a distance; the vernal day was beginning to stir from the light…
-- William Dean Howells, A Foregone Conclusion

Where are you trampling vernal blooms?
-- Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin



Origin:
Vernal stems from the Latin word vernus meaning "pertaining to spring." It is related to the word "verdant."

[ITS ME!]

conniption \ kuh-NIP-shuhn \ , noun;
1.
A fit of hysterical excitement or anger.





Quotes:
"Wah!" says Stella-Rondo. I knew she'd cry. She had a conniption fit right there in the kitchen.
-- Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O." The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

When they came home, everybody was having a conniption about a big giant fight in the village over who got whose share of their horrid meat.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption.
-- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love: A Novel



Origin:
Conniption is actually an invented word. It first appeared in America in 1833 and may be related to the word corruption which was use in the sense of "anger" in the early 1800s.

[ITS ME!]

moschate \ MOS-keyt \ , adjective;
1.
Having a musky smell.



Quotes:
Her familiar perfume and moschate odor was overwhelming within the confines of the car, especially with the windows rolled up.
-- Charles Ray Willeford, New Hope for the Dead

The plant of the Rio Grande is said by Mr. Schott to exhale a moschate odor.
-- William Hemsley Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, Volume 2, Part 1



Origin:
Though moschate has Latin roots, it was not used widely in English until the early 1800s. The word mosch meant "musky" in Latin and was used to describe the wine commonly known today at "muscat."

[ITS ME!]

ruck \ ruhk \ , noun;
1.

A large number or quantity; mass.

2.
The great mass of undistinguished or inferior persons or things.



Quotes:
Innis steered Jessica through a ruck of large, bearded men in dungarees and greasy sweaters who looked at her like she might be the floor show.
-- Paul Bryers, The Prayer of the Bone

A ruck of charts, clipboards, cuttlefish-flavored peanut snacks, containers of the barley water and orange pop the enlisted brought on watch, binoculars, and struggling men stirred at the base of the cliff.
-- David Poyer, Korea Strait

The ruck of the men were lower down than our two heroes, and there were others far away to the left, and others, again, who had been at the end of the gorse, and were now behind.
-- Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn



Origin:
Ruck comes from an early Icelandic word ruka or ruke which meant "a heap or a stack."

[ITS ME!]

adroit \ uh-DROIT \ , adjective;

1.
Cleverly skillful, resourceful, or ingenious.

2.
Expert or nimble in the use of the hands or body.



Quotes:
He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit . Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending.
-- V.C. Andrews, If There Be Thorns

It requires finesse. She was very adroit — oh, very adroit — but Hercule Poirot, my good George, is of a cleverness quite exceptional.
-- Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding



Origin:
Adroit is from the Old French meaning "elegant, skillful" from the roots a- meaning "increase" and droit meaning "correct."

[ITS ME!]

Tellurian \ te-LOOR-ee-uhn \ , adjective, noun;
1.
Of or characteristic of the earth or its inhabitants.

noun: 1.
An inhabitant of the earth.



Quotes:
We must keep in mind that we are, or should I say have become, hybrid personae, part tellurian , and part extraterrestrial.
-- Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, Universe 3

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations…
-- James Joyce, Ulysses




Origin:
Tellurian was first used by Thomas DeQuincy in 1846, even though it has classical Latin roots literally meaning "one of the earth."

[ITS ME!]

catechize

\ KAT-i-kahyz \ , verb;
1.
To question closely.

2.
To instruct orally by means of questions and answers, especially in Christian doctrine.

3.
To question with reference to belief.



Quotes:
He sent her off when the dial made it five o'clock every fourth Sunday—for we had service only once a month, the parson having a church at Brampton, where he lived, and another as well, which made it the more wicked of us to play truant—but whether she got there early or late, or got there at all, he'd never ask, let alone catechize her about the sermon.
-- Mary Webb, Precious Bane

Aunt Bessie tried to catechize her about Erik's disappearance, and it was Kennicott who silenced the woman…
-- Sinclair Lewis, Main Street



Origin:
Catechize stems from the Greek word katēchÃ*zein meaning "to teach orally." It was first used in the sense of "to question" by Shakespeare in Othello .

[ITS ME!]

chelonian \ ki-LOH-nee-uhn \ , adjective;

1.
Belonging or pertaining to the order Chelonia, comprising the turtles.

noun: 1.
A turtle.



Quotes:
At the truly chelonian pace of somewhat under two miles per hour, the passengers and crew onboard would cover the twenty-seven hundred miles in just over two months.
-- Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers

The study door crashed back and a seventy-year-old politician stood there, top hat firmly on his head, collar awry around his scrawny, chelonian neck.
-- M. J. Trow, Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

What pair of messiahs could differ more harshly than Hiram and Magnus, the one a pedantic little fellow with a chelonian paunch and gold eye-glasses and the other a rough, shaggy, carnivorous revivalist from the dreadful steppes?
-- H. L. Mencken, "Editorial," American Mercury Magazine , Jan. to Apr. 1924



Origin:
Chelonian comes from the Greek word for turtle, chelṓn .