Word Of The Day

[Hunny]

fallow

1. (adjective): Not in use; inactive: My creative energies have lain fallow this year.


2. (noun): Land plowed and left unseeded for a season or more; uncultivated.


OR (verb):To make land fallow for agricultural purposes.

[Hunny]

nadir

\NAY-dir; nay-DIR\ , noun:

1. [Astronomy]. The point of the celestial sphere directly opposite the zenith and directly below the observer.

2. The lowest point; the time of greatest depression or adversity.

Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were
implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor.
-- Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full

At the nadir of every recession, business pages fill up with stories of
belt-tightening families who move to Vermont and buy their food in bulk.
-- Peter T. Kilborn, "Splurge", New York Times, June 21, 1998

[Hunny]

portend


To indicate in advance (events, misfortunes, etc.); to foreshadow or presage as an omen does; to bode.


The street incident may portend a general uprising.

I see five separate moving clouds of dust; they portend some sort of magic.

[sadie1263]

Wow...Nadir got me completely.......have a doctor here in town with that last name but had no idea it was a word........

[Hunny]

unctuous

\UNGK-choo-us\ , adjective:

1. Of the nature or quality of an ointment; fatty; oily; greasy.

2. Having a smooth, greasy feel, as certain minerals.

3. Insincerely or excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech;
marked by a false or smug earnestness or agreeableness.

A warmed, crusty French roll arrives split, lightly smeared with unctuous chopped liver.

She recalled being offended by the "phoniness" that stemmed from the contradiction
between her mother's charming, even unctuous public manner and her anger in private.

He approached Sean wearing a smile so unctuous it seemed about to slide right off his face.

[chips]

New Word

Exhaustipated



Here is a new word to add to your vocabulary.
It will be especially useful to us senior folks!

Exhaustipated: Just too tired to give a sh*t.

sorry hunny - the made me do it.

[Hunny]

rebarbative

\ree-BAR-buh-tiv\ , adjective:

Serving or tending to irritate or repel.


"I can't help regret the irretrievable hours lavished on so much rebarbative
critical prose, convinced that the nearly impenetrable must be profound."

"There are aspects of that writer's personality that any reasonable person would
regard as rebarbative, but we're just reading his novels—not marrying him."

"Over the past couple of hours a lot of rebarbative, ulcerated and embittered people have been
working hard at bedding their resentments down in sensory-deprivation tanks full of alcohol."

[Hunny]

Aug 17, 2012 1:23:16 GMT chips said:

New Word

Exhaustipated



Here is a new word to add to your vocabulary.
It will be especially useful to us senior folks!

Exhaustipated: Just too tired to give a sh*t.

sorry hunny - the made me do it.

I get that way at least once a day.

[Hunny]

compunction

\kuhm-PUHNK-shuhn\ , noun:

1. Anxiety or deep unease proceeding from a sense of guilt or consciousness of causing pain.

2. A sting of conscience or a twinge of uneasiness; a qualm; a scruple.

Not only were tears one means of prayer, according to Benedict,
they were the only pure form: "We must know that God regards
our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words."
-- Tom Lutz, Crying

Yet, while Louise and Ruth and I and all our ilk are consumed by
self-reproach, these two can recall not an ounce of compunction.
-- Rose Shepherd, "Fatal egg by pleasure laid", Independent, September 3, 1996

If they succeeded, however, Sicily would simply come under the authority
of the new revolutionary government in Naples, a government that would
feel no compunctions whatsoever about saddling the island with even
more "stamp duties, official papers, and forced labor" than before.
-- James Fentress, Rebels and Mafiosi

[Hunny]

vicissitude

\vih-SIS-ih-tood; -tyood\ , noun:

1a- a favorable or unfavorable event or situation that occurs by chance :
a fluctuation of state or condition <the vicissitudes of daily life>

1b- a difficulty or hardship attendant on a way of life, a career,
or a course of action

2. Alternation between opposite or contrasting things: "the vicissitude of the seasons".

3. the quality or state of being changeable : mutability



This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty.


Max had rescued his father's gold watch through every vicissitude,
but as it didn't go I took it to a watchmaker.

[sadie1263]

Tough words to work into sentences.......

[Hunny]

Aug 19, 2012 13:00:45 GMT sadie1263 said:

Tough words to work into sentences.......

Well, yea, but you can run into these when reading..so it's good to know what they mean.

[Hunny]

logorrhea

\law-guh-REE-uh\ , noun:

1. Pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.

2. Incessant or compulsive talkativeness.

By his own measure, he is a man of many contradictions, beginning with the
fact that he is famous as a listener but suffers from "a touch of logorrhea."
He is so voluble that one wonders how his subjects get a word in edgewise.

Mr. King, who possesses an enviable superabundance of imagination,
suffers from a less enviable logorrhea.

[sadie1263]

That sounds like something that needs penicillin.

[Hunny]

Aug 20, 2012 14:48:01 GMT sadie1263 said:

That sounds like something that needs penicillin.

lol, or imodium ;D

[Hunny]

Here's a tough one. It has four distinctly different meanings.


hieratic

\ hahy-uh-RAT-ik \ , adjective;

1. Highly restrained or severe in emotional import: Some of the
more hieratic sculptures leave the viewer curiously unmoved.

2. Also, hi·er·at·i·cal. of or pertaining to
priests or the priesthood; sacerdotal; priestly.

3. Noting or pertaining to a form of ancient Egyptian writing consisting of
abridged forms of hieroglyphics, used by the priests in their records.

4. Noting or pertaining to certain styles in art in which the
representations or methods are fixed by or as if by religious tradition.

[Hunny]

velleity

\vuh-LEE-i-tee\ , noun:

1. A mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it.

2. Volition in its weakest form.

Fortunately it did no more than stress, the better to mock if you like, an innate velleity.

My guess is that instead of being men of decision we are in reality men of velleity.

[Hunny]

ebullient

<ih-BUHL-yuhnt> adjective

1. overflowing with fervor, enthusiasm, or excitement; high-spirited:
The award winner was in an ebullient mood at the dinner in her honor.

2. bubbling up like a boiling liquid.

[sadie1263]

Ok....ebullient.....definitely knew that one.....the other two I'm not even sure I can say them........why does velleity sound like a fabric???

[Hunny]

antic

Of course we all know this word as a noun...

(Usually, 'antics'):
~an attention-drawing often wildly playful or funny act or action
~A grotesque, fantastic, or ludicrous gesture, act, or posture.
~A playful trick or prank; caper.

But it can also be used as an adjective, to mean...

1. Ludicrous; funny.
2. Fantastic; odd; grotesque: an antic disposition.

"This was immediately granted, and we all three entered the gate of the palace between
two rows of guards, armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something
in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express."
-Gulliver's Travels

"I gritted my teeth at him, danced up and down,
screaming an incoherent mockery and making antic faces."

"He found him so elevated with his success, so enamored with his daughter,
and so satisfied with her reception of him, that the old gentleman began to
caper and dance about his hall, and by many other antic actions to
express the extravagance of his joy; for he had not the least command
over any of his passions; and that which had at any time the ascendant
in his mind hurried him to the wildest excesses."

[Hunny]

fabulist

\ FAB-yuh-list \ , noun;

1. A liar.

2. A person who invents or relates fables.

"But at the same time, for fear of disruption and uncertainty, we
attempt to relegate the maker's role to that of fabulist , equating
fiction with lies and opposing art to political reality..."
-- Alberto Manguel, The Voice of Cassandra

"Nothing is off limits to this free-range fabulist. He can fold a dusty Persian carpet
into the contours of the world itself and wring delight from every lustrous thread."
-- Clive Barker, The Essential Clive Barker


ORIGIN: Fabulist is derived from the Middle French word fabuliste which referred to someone who told fables.

[Hunny]

venal

\VEE-nuhl\ , adjective:

1. Capable of being bought or obtained for money or other
valuable consideration; held for sale; salable; purchasable.

2. Capable of being corrupted.

3. Marked by or associated with bribery and corrupt dealings.


The news items accumulate to project an image of French politics as venal,
power-mongering, and posing a crazy threat to all those values of humanity
and civilization that Picasso's work had always embraced.
-- Rosalind E. Krauss, The Picasso Papers

While the enemy in Vietnam was mysterious and, to some Americans, heroic,
America's allies in Saigon seemed venal and corrupt, more interested in graft
than in combat and unable to rally their people behind a common cause or to
create an effective military force.
-- Charles E. Neu, After Vietnam

Magistrates were expected to supplement their modest incomes, in
theory from personal fortunes, in reality from a variety of venal practices.
-- Michelle De Kretser, The Rose Grower

[Hunny]

indomitable

\in-DOM-ih-tuh-buhl\ , adjective:

Incapable of being subdued or overcome; unconquerable.

"Now, late in his career, when he could no longer pull off all of the individual
moves that had once set him apart, it had become increasingly obvious that
what had distinguished him was his indomitable will, his refusal to let
either opposing players or the passage of time affect his need to win."

"Because of his strength and toughness as well as his constant attention
to the welfare of his army, his soldiers affectionately called him Old
Hickory. Hickory was as tough a substance as they knew, and General
Andrew Jackson was, in their minds, indomitable."

[Hunny]

vitiate

\VISH-ee-ayt\ , transitive verb

1. To make faulty or imperfect; to render defective;
to impair; as, "exaggeration vitiates a style of writing."

2. To corrupt morally; to debase.

3. To render ineffective; as, "fraud vitiates a contract."

MacNelly is one of the few contemporary political cartoonists
who can use humor to accentuate, not vitiate, his points.

It seems churlish to say of a book that is beautifully written, richly
allusive, learned, elegant, Proustian in tone and mode, that precisely
these qualities vitiate its ostensible purpose, distracting attention
from the subject and focusing it upon the very gifted author.

..the comic impact is vitiated by obvious haste.

..a mind vitiated by prejudice.

..the impact of the film vitiated by poor acting.

[Hunny]

arcane

\ar-KAYN\ , adjective:

Understood or known by only a few.

"There are other arcane traditions that seem like superstitions to us,
or, perhaps, are simply lost in translation. Some cyclists, for instance,
believe that riders should shower instead of bathe because in some
way water weight from baths is absorbed."

"While addressing a problem in the arcane field of mathematical
logic, he imagined a machine that could mimic human reasoning."