vocabulary

Words of the Day

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I found these words on an index card while cleaning this past weekend. I finally looked them up and I’ve posted both the words and their meanings:

Perspicacity: Acuteness of perception, discernment, or understanding.

Occidentals: Natives or inhabitants of an Occidental country; a westerner.

Syllogism: A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.; reasoning from the general to the specific

Engender: To bring into existence; give rise to: “Every cloud engenders not a storm” (Shakespeare); to procreate; propagate.

vocabulary

Word of the Day

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Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

Example: When I [Lloyd Grove of the NY Daily News] suggested to Franken that I didn’t believe him [regarding that he had “no comment” about O’Reilly’s recent legal woes] and that he must be having his own little schadenfreude festival he conceded: “Well, if this is true, there’ll be enough schadenfreude to fuel … uh, no comment, no comment!”

vocabulary

Words of the Day courtesy of the NY Times Circuits Section

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ADMIRONISHMENT: “No one does weird quite as well as Japanese game designers and animators, who come up with concepts so bizarre that one feels a mix of admiration and astonishment, best expressed as admironishment.” – Charles Herold, author of the Game Theory article “Touches of Weird, Done Best in Japan”

SPOOFPROOF: “Nothing is spoofproof,” said Timothy L. Murray, the chief operating officer of Cross Match Technologies, which has supplied scanners used at 115 airports and 15 seaports. “So there’s a market niche that cares an awful lot about whether the thing on the reader is alive.” – Ian Austin, author of the What’s Next article “Is It Really You? A Scanner Delves Beneath Fingerprints”

ramblings

Scrabble is a Religion

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I watched an interesting flash movie just now. I found a link to it in a post at Screenhead, the latest Nick Denton micropublishing vehicle. This post was about a newly launched web site called Vid Lit which “offers a different kind of Flash, with the emphasis on storytelling, and images as more of an incidental device. Feels like This American Life, but with pictures. Entry ‘Craziest’ by Liz Dubelman offers up the idea of the word game Scrabble as a religion. Like the Da Vinci Code, only mildly less insane.”

After watching the flash video, I checked my Amazon Wish List and unfortunately, although I added Word Freak:Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players a while ago, it is still on it. I really want to read it though so if you want to buy it for me, I’ll promise to write a book review.

This post goes out to Jay, Keri, Eric, Michelle and Erik – scrabble nuts, every last one.

ramblings

More Word Play

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My friend Michele knows how much I love vocabulary and sent me the list below:

a. Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
b. A backward poet writes inverse.
c. A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
d. Dijon vu – the same mustard as before.
e. Practice safe eating – always use condiments.
f. Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
g. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
h. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
i. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
j. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
k. Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.
l. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
m. When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.
n. A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two tired.
o. What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead giveaway.)
p. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
q. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
r. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.
s. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
t. If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.
u. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
v. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
w. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
x. You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
y. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
z. He often broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.
aa. Every calendar’s days are numbered.
ab. A lot of money is tainted – ‘taint yours and ‘taint mine.
ac. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
ad. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
ae. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
af. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.
ag. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
ah. Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
ai. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
aj. Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
ak. Acupuncture is a jab well done.

vocabulary

Wordplay

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Each year the Washington Post’s Style Invitational asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing only one letter and supply a new definition. Here are the 2002 winners:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Giraffiti: Vandalism painted very, very high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit).

Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. And, the overall winner of the Washington Post’s Style Invitational:

Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole

ramblings

Language Again

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My misuse of promises has lengthened that word’s character count in my vocabulary. It is a long word, heavy. It is now false-promises; chic with a stylish hyphen in the middle. Each day is perpetual fall; my how the leaves twist and dance on the slow way down…

vocabulary

Language

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An image transmits a tremendous amount of data to the individual. Language parses that data out into a coherent stream. Language is the program that crunches and churns away generating reports in the middle of the night. Language creates art with a viewpoint; it is an act of sub-creation by its mere existence.