Word Of The Day

[Hunny]

cogitate

\KOJ-uh-tayt\ , intransitive verb:

1. To think deeply or intently; to ponder; to meditate.

2. To think about; to ponder on; to plan or plot.

As she waited in the prison anteroom to be admitted, Bitsey read
background file clippings from NEWS Magazine's morgue and cogitated
on the idea of knowing one's exact date of death beforehand.

Doc Leach shifted his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the
other and blinked a couple of times. That meant he was cogitating.

[sadie1263]

Sounds more like what my washing machine does!

[Hunny]

truncate

\TRUHNG-keyt\ , verb:

1. To shorten by cutting off a part; cut short: Truncate detailed explanations.

2. Mathematics, Computers. To shorten (a number) by dropping a digit
or digits: The numbers 1.4142 and 1.4987 can both be truncated to 1.4.


He pointed out that it was relatively easy to pronounce, though there was the
danger that Americans, obsessed with abbreviation, would truncate it to Nick.

[sadie1263]

Hmmm....don't see myself working that one into a sentence anytime soon.....

Do you know what a Dybbuk is?

[Hunny]

Sept 1, 2012 22:14:01 GMT sadie1263 said:

Hmmm....don't see myself working that one into a sentence anytime soon.....

Do you know what a Dybbuk is?

No, I had to look that up. (as I've had to look all these words up)
I think I've had one of those before, though.
My evil brother (oh yes, I have one of those) (he thinks he's a witch)
I think someone should truncate his, uh...well, you know ;D

[Hunny]

deign

\DAYN\ , intransitive verb:

1. Do something that one considers to be beneath one's dignity.

2. To condescend reluctantly and with a strong sense of the affront
to one's superiority that is involved. : stoop

"...would not even deign to talk to him."

"Not until I pour vodka on his shirt does he deign to acknowledge my existence."

"So it is here: the question is one of fact, and the answer depends on
what evidence the jurors deign to credit."

"Maybe the President does not deign to read op-ed pages, but his speechwriters surely do."

[sadie1263]

I watched an episode of Paranormal Witness that had to do with a dybbuk box...and then of course a haunting........and it seems that new scary movie Possession has to do with a dybbuk.........

[Hunny]

Oh, lol, I thought I found a Dybbuk box on ebay,....but it was just a book by that name. Hmm..perhaps I should get an old looking wooden box and advertise it on there! ;D (Oh I bet ya anything I'd get some bidders! Heck, we had a movie about mermaids not too long ago and our government had to make an official announcement that there are no mermaids! So a box with a malevolent spirit in it...piece of cake! yea, I think bidding should start at $500...



And I read it's a Jewish spirit, a dybbuk? So here's what I'll do, I'll put a little voice recording in the box, so when they open the lid an old man's voice says "Oy!" "I shouldn't have eaten that Gefilte Fish!" "Oy vey!"

*sigh* If I was younger I might actually do that!

[sadie1263]

This Paranormal Witness episode....it was an old wooden box....looked like a tiny wardrobe box....the two swinging doors and a little drawer underneath....it had an old tiny goblet looking thing...a couple of clippings of what looked like old hair...and some stones in it......(so gather up those type of things)....the first guy with it all the lights in his business would suddenly burst...his employee quit because she was terrified of things moving around that she couldn't see....his mother opened the box and had a stroke......so he put it on ebay...said it was a haunted/cursed box...and sold it to college kids for $140.....they started having the same problem with lights/computers crashing, bad dreams, blood vessels bursting in the eyes and hair falling out....again it goes on ebay and a college professor buys it for $280......same stuff starts happening....but he went to a jewish temple and they performed some type of ritual....and it's now hidden somewhere.......but it was like as the stories got worse....the bidding went higher......could be a money making deal.......maybe make them pay to bring it back to you........throw in an extra charge for house cleansing rituals...and you've got a whole system!!

[Hunny]

indefatigable

\in-dih-FAT-ih-guh-bul\ , adjective:

Incapable of being fatigued; not readily exhausted; untiring; not yielding to fatigue.

She was always seeking to add to her collection and was
an indefatigable first-nighter at Broadway shows.

For the next thirteen years, with indefatigable zeal he rummages the
libraries for charts and details of the spice trade and Pacific voyages.

Ernest Hemingway was, luckily, an indefatigable letter-writer.

[Hunny]

subterfuge

\SUB-tur-fyooj\ , noun:

A deceptive device or stratagem.

In the end, however, all the stealth and subterfuge were for naught,
as the young publicity agent couldn't keep the secret.

She has also complained . . . that the reporter used subterfuge
to interview her, pretending to be the mother of an inmate.

He is adept at subterfuge, at gaining entry to factories by
masquerading as a laborer, a wholesaler, an exporter.

[Hunny]

harangue

\huh-RANG\

(noun) A noisy or pompous speech; a rant.

(verb) To deliver a harangue.

Wont to harangue the citizenry in public speeches with such lines as
"Remember! My father gave you freedom!" Mrs. Gandhi did not take
lightly to government officers with an independent turn of mind.


He seemed to typify the punchy, touchy national mood when
he lost control recently in front of television cameras and
harangued a local businessman with bleeped-out expletives.


She was hardly anyone's idea of a good time, but at least she
kept her hands to herself and showed him considerable amounts
of affection, enough warmth of heart to counterbalance the periods
when she nagged him and harangued him and got on his nerves.

[sadie1263]

Oh...I do that a lot!!!!

[Hunny]

denizen

\DEN-uh-zuhn\ , noun:

1. A dweller; an inhabitant.

2. One that frequents a particular place.

3. [Chiefly British] An alien granted certain rights of citizenship.

4. An animal, plant, etc. that has become naturalized.

Goethe, who visited Berlin only once, found the "wit and irony"
of its denizens quite remarkable.

But he will know one thing about what it means to be an American, because
he has known the raw continent, and not as tourist but as denizen.

So Charlie McCreevy is a regular denizen of the "Dáil bar."

[Hunny]

obsequious

\ob-SEE-kwee-us\ , adjective:

Servilely attentive; compliant to excess; fawning.

His wealth nevertheless turns the townspeople into groveling, obsequious sycophants.

Politicians these days have to pretend to like football, and
I am tired of their obsequious, crowd-pleasing football jokes.

This is a brazenly stylish restaurant where the staff are
razor-sharp and not remotely obsequious.

[Hunny]

flummox

\FLUM-uhks\ , transitive verb:

To confuse; to perplex.

And when a poll's results happen to upset the conventional wisdom, or
confound the experts, or flummox the pundits, then that's a poll to remember.

Flummoxed by the surreality of history and the mind-boggling changes
unleashed by the 60's, many writers in that era became minimalists,
withdrawing, turtlelike, inside their own homes and heads.

[Hunny]

spleenful

\ SPLEEN-fuhl \ , adjective;

1. Ill-humored; irritable or peevish; spiteful; splenetic.

2 .Full of or displaying spleen.

For a blink, Ratcliffe himself, who hated almost beyond telling this spleenful fellowman
now well handcuffed and clamped at the ankles with cold stout bilboes, did
believe in his intentions, and would have resigned all proceedings if he could.

Their attention was focused on Guy Fowler, a surly, spleenful man.

ORIGIN: The spleen was regarded as the seat of morose feelings and bad tempers in Medieval
physiology. The adjective spleenful arose from this association in the late 1500s.

[sadie1263]

I need to work on using the word plethora into something I'm writing......I've wanted to use that ever since I saw The Three Amigos.

[Hunny]

I always mix that word up with 'patina', which is kind of the opposite. Hmm..plethora..

plethora

[pleth-er-uh] noun

1. overabundance; excess:

2. Pathology Archaic . a morbid condition due to excess of red
corpuscles in the blood or increase in the quantity of blood.

[ooh, here's an interesting phrase:] "a plethora of advice and a paucity of assistance".

"The plethora of upcoming polls shows how routine democracy
has become in this once dictatorship-ridden region."

"But the plethora of rumors regarding his whereabouts suggests
that his pursuers have few concrete clues."

"But the idea took off and is now offered by a plethora of
middlemen, and embraced by all manner of creative types."

[Hunny]

miasma

\my-AZ-muh; mee-\ , noun:

1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought
to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.

2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence;
also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog.

The critics, he says, "will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a miasma of
toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette."

He spends whatever money he has on hash and eventually heroin
. . . and proceeds to sink into a miasma of anger and alienation.

Girls of my generation stumbled through much of
our early adolescence in a dense miasma of longing.

[Hunny]

redoubtable

\rih-DOW-tuh-buhl\ , adjective:

1. Arousing fear or alarm; formidable.

2. Illustrious; eminent; worthy of respect or honor.

The prospect was daunting, not least because Evelyn was still a redoubtable figure
on campus whom I saw almost every day and to whom I went for advice almost as regularly.

At the head of the table, as committee chair, sat the redoubtable Howard
Mumford Jones—a teacher famed even at Harvard for his fierce authority,
his wide-ranging erudition, and his intolerant exacting preciseness.

[Hunny]

salubrious

\suh-LOO-bree-us\ , adjective:

Favorable to health; promoting health; healthful.

A physician warned him his health was precarious, so Montague returned to the United States,
shelved his legal ambitions and searched for a salubrious climate where he might try farming.


For years, her mother has maintained that the sea air has
a salubrious effect on both her spirits and her vocal cords.


Uptown, however, the tanners' less salubrious quarter is notorious for its stench.

[Hunny]

pugnacious

\puhg-NAY-shuhs\ , adjective:

Inclined to fight; combative; quarrelsome.

Roberto's pugnacious grandmother lived across the meadow
and would yell threats and curses helplessly from her balcony.

The idea that he was truculent or pugnacious, that he went
about with a chip on his shoulder, that he loved fighting for
the sake of fighting, was, however, a mistake.

Who? Russel Crowe? ;D

[/color][/right]

[Hunny]

capricious

\kuh-PRISH-us; -PREE-shus\ , adjective:

Apt to change suddenly; whimsical; changeable.


Molly was a capricious woman. Her moods were unpredictable, her anger petty and vicious.


He knew that the Board would rule against him; he knew that the key to the dark,
capricious mystery of the Board's contradictory decisions was the secret power of pull.


Mathematics is logical; people are erratic, capricious, and barely comprehensible.

[Hunny]

nascent

\NAS-uhnt; NAY-suhnt\ , adjective:

Beginning to exist or having recently come into existence; coming into being.

But there are other nascent technologies that are widely predicted to play a major
part in moving the world from a dependence on oil, nuclear energy and coal.


By the time that John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839, Richford was acquiring the amenities
of a small town. It had some nascent industries . . . plus a schoolhouse and a church.


This surprising success prompted several other companies to enter this nascent market.