I haven’t done one of these words of the week for awhile, but the popularity of the movie 300 reminded me that I never included one of my favorite entries from the book 1000 Most Challenging Words: Laconism (LAK uh niz um) noun Or laconicism (luh KON uh siz um) We are more familiar with [...]
Billingsgate (BIL ingz gate) noun Billingsgate is foul and abusive language, coarse invective. The word comes from Billingsgate, London, for hundreds of years the site and name of a fish market where fish sellers and porters were notorious for their foul, coarse language. The market was near a gate in the old city wall named [...]
Abjure (ab JOOHR) verb To abjure something is to renounce it, retract, repudiate, forswear it. Abjure comes from the Latin verb abjurare (to deny under oath); abjuration from Late Latin abjuratio (recantation); both are based on ab- (away) plus jurare (to swear). Reformed sinners abjure the errors of their ways. A number of American communists [...]
Verjuice (VUR joos) noun Verjuice, literally, is the sour juice of unripe fruits, especially crabapples and grapes. Figuratively, verjuice is sourness of temperament, disposition, or expression. It is the hallmark of a curmudgeon, itself an interesting word, generally described in dictionaries as of unknown origin though Samuel Johnson (the English lexicographer, 1709-1784) says in his [...]
Ukase (YOOH kase, yooh KAZE) noun Originally, in imperial Russia, a ukase was an order or edict handed down by the Czar, which automatically acquired the force of law, but the term has now come to denote any preemptory proclamation issued by an absolute or arbitrary authority without right of appeal. The use of the [...]
Traduce (truh DOOHS, -DYOOHS) verb To traduce someone is to slander him, vilify him, malign, defame, and calumniate him, speak falsely and with malice toward him or his character; from Latin traducere (to disgrace), a variant of transducere (literally, to carry over; figuratively, to expose, “show up”). In Shakespeare’s Othello (Act V, Scene 2), Othello [...]
Salmagundi (sal muh GUN dee) noun This peculiar word describes, in its narrow sense, a dish, usually served as a salad, consisting of a mixture of chopped cooked meat, onions, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, pickled vegetables, radishes, olives, watercress and other ingredients, with salad dressing, sometimes arranged in rows to form a color pattern. The term, [...]
Revanchism (rih VAN shiz um) noun Revanche, French for “revenge” has given rise to the noun revanchism, the policy of a nation seeking to regain territory lost to another nation, such as France’s attitude and policy towards Alsace and Lorraine, lost to Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The adjective describing the policy is [...]
Quotidian (kwoh TID ee un) adjective Quotidian means “daily,” i.e., recurring every day, as in a quotidian report, and in that sense is synonymous with diurnal but only in the first meaning given under that entry, i.e., “daily,” as opposed to “daytime” used attributively. By extension, quotidian has acquired the second meaning of “everyday” in [...]
Pismire (PIS mire, PIZ-) noun A pismire is an ant, but the term has been applied contemptuously to a despicable individual. Robert Penn Warren, the American poet and novelist (b. 1905), used it that way, “What do you think I’d do with a young pismire like you?” Shakespeare knew the word. In Henry IV, Part [...]
