Category Archives: Challenging Words of the Week

Challenging Word of the Week: pecksniffian

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Pecksniffian

(pek SNIF ee un) adjective



This wonderfully expressive word is applicable to any hypocrite endeavoring to impress upon his fellows that he is a person of great benevolence or high moral standards. It comes from a character named Seth Pecksniff, in Martin Chuzzlewit (another great name) by English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who described Pecksniff as having “…affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.” The American writer and critic H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), in The American Language, called Philadelphia “the most pecksniffian of cities.” He was quite the inventor of words; for example, bibliobibulus, menaing “one who gets drunk on books” (biblio-, as in bibliophile, plus bibulous, addicted to drik): “There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men who are drunk on whiskey or religion.” This passage is from his Mencken Chrestomathy.





From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



My example: The candidate’s call for impeachment was a blatantly pecksniffian move to energize potential supporters.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the WeeK: demit

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Demit
(dih MIT) verb

This verb is used both transitively and intransitively and is found most commonly in Scotland, but used elsewhere as well. To demit a position is to resign it, to give it up or relinquish it, and it often refers to public office. Intransitively, to demit is simply to resign. It comes from Latin demittare (to send down), based on the prefix di-, a variant of dis (away, apart) plus mittere (to send). Because of his need for “the woman I love,” Edward VIII of England (1894-1972) demitted his throne in 1936 — i.e., he abdicted.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: Many are calling for Minnesota DFLer Dean Johnson to demit his position as Senate Majority Leader after either lying outright about conversations he claims to have had with Minnesota Supreme Court justices or, alternatively, casting aspersions on the impartiality of the Court. He may be able to withstand Republican ballyragging on the issue, but if the situation becomes too hot he could be defenestrated by his own party (which so far seems more interested in jugulating the person who leaked the recording than holding the Speaker to account).

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the Week: cavil

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Cavil
(KAV uhl) noun, verb

To cavil is to carp or quibble, to raise picayune, inconsequential, and usually irritating objections, to offer gratuitious criticisms, to find fault for the sake of finding fault. As a noun, a cavil is that sort of annoying trivial objection, a bit of pointless carping, that adds nothing but irritation. In Latin, cavillari means to “scoff” or “jeer,” the nouns cavilla and cavillatio mean “raillery” and a cavillator is a quibbler; cavilla gratia cavillae (like ars gratia artis, as it were). In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 (Act III, Scene 1) there is a furious argument between Hotspur and Owen Glendower about the division of some land, and Hotspur cries:

I do not care: I’ll give thrice so much land
to any well-deserving friend:
But in way of a bargain, mark ye me,
I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

Note cavil on; nowadays it’s cavil at or cavil about. The Irish statesman and writer Edmund Burke (1729-1797) condemned “cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders.” Lawyers are known to cavil tirelessly and endlessly at the terms of an agreement.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: In today’s White House, the press corps and Howard Dean cavil while the world burns. In being married to Hillary, former president Clinton was also known to have received cavillatio while in office.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Challenging Word of the Week: ballyrag

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Ballyrag (or Bullyrag)
(BAL ee rag) (BOOL ee rag) verb

To ballyrag or bullyrag someone is to harass or abuse him, in the more violent sense of the word, or less dramatically, to tease him. Fowler says that the derivation is unknown, and that ballyrag is the far more common and preferable form, but other dictionaries give bullyrag as the first choice. To rag someone is to tease him, in American usage, but in British usage, to do rather more than that: to persecute him with crude practical jokes, with rag also a noun denoting that kind of tormenting behavior. The bullyrag form probably has some connection with bully, embellished by rag. In any case, bally– or bullyragging is reprehensible abusive horseplay and badgering, the kind employed, for example, in the sort of fraternity hazing that is a practice now mercifully fading from the scene.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: Scott McClellan is a better man than I to daily subject himself to the ballyragging of the White House Press Corps.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Update:

Leo has a new ballyragious header over at Psycmeistr’s Ice Palace!

Challenging Word of the Week: atticism

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Atticism
(AT ih siz um) noun

Atticism (often with a lowercase a) is concise, superior, polished discourse and diction. The adjective attic describes elegant, subtle, incisive expression and articulation, with a strong admixture of subtle wit. The English poet John Milton (1608 – 1674) wrote:

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, of Attic taste…

Attica was the name of a region in the southeasterly part of ancient Greece. It was under the rule and influence of Athens, whose culture reached its height around the middle of the fifth century B.C. — the age of Pericles, the great poets, dramatists, sculptors and architects. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23-79) wrote of “sal atticum” (Attic wit — literally, Attic salt; sal (salt) was used figuratively by the Romans to mean “wit”). Attic wit is dry, delicate, subtle wit. The Romans had a verb atticisare (“atticise”) to describe the imitation of Athenian diction and expression. Atticism, then, is the art of the elegant, well-timed expression, refined simplicity laced with sophistication and wit. In more modern times, the distinction between these two styles has been described in a learned article by Bryan A. Garne in Volume X, No. 3 of Verbatim, the Language Quarterly, which includes this passage:

English inherited two strains of literary exression, both deriving ultimately from Ciceronian Latin. One the one hand is the plain style now in vogue, characterized by unadorned vocabulary, directness, unelaborate syntax, and earthiness. (This syle is known to scholars as Atticism). On the other hand we have the grand style, which exemplifies floridity, allusivenss, formal sometimes abstruse diction, and rhetorical ornament. Proponents of this verbally richer style (called Asiaticism) proudly claim that the nuances available in the “oriental profusion” of English synonyms make the language an ideal putty for the skilled linguistic craftsman to mold and shape precisely in accordance with his conceptions.

Well may you ask, what has this to do with the attic of a house, the room or story just under thre roof? Here is the answer: In the residences of the rich in old Attica, there was often a small row of columns or pilasters placed on the roof, as a decorative feature. Neo-Grecian architecture became fashionable in England in the 17th century. In error, the top floor of a building fashioned in the Attic style was called the “Attic storey” (story meaning, “floor of a house,” has an e before the y in British English). Error, because the Attic feature was a facade, whereas the English imitation was an eclosed floor. In time, the upper case A became a small a, the “storey” was dropped, and we wond up with, simply, attic.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: There’s no better place in the MOB to find atticism practiced than at The Attic which regularly features superior, polished discourse in its more direct and concise form as demonstrated by drjonz or by the more florid and rhetorically ornamental Joey.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Challenging Word of the Week: petard

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Petard

(pi TARD) n.



A petard was a heavy explosive engine of war, filled with gunpowder and fastened to gates to blow them in or to walls, barricades, etc., to smash them and form a breach. The soldier whose job it was to fire the device was always in danger of blowing himself up as well, in which case he would wind up hoist with his own petard. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act III, scene 4) the prince says to the queen:



…’tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petar…

But I will delve one yard below their mines,

And blow them at the moon.



(Shakespeare spelt it petar, possibly influenced by the French pronunciation of petard in which the -d is silent.) Hamlet was speaking of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, commissioned by King Claudius to escort him to England and see to his death; but as the play develops, it is they who will be done in, and thus hoist with their own petard. To be thus hoist is to be caught in the trap laid for someone else. This was indeed the fate of certain inventors of torture devices and dreadful places of imprisonment, like the Bastille built by Hugh Aubriot, Provost of Paris c. 1360, where he was the first to be imprisoned. In the Book of Esther 7:9 Haman was hanged on the high gallow he had devised for the hanging of Mordecai, and the witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins, tried for witchcraft under the rules he had set up, was himself executed as a wizard in 1647. Petard has an amusing derivation: via Middle French petard, related to peter (to fart), from the Latin peditum (breaking wind), neuter form of peditus, past participle of pedere (to fart). In this age of jet propulsion, doesn’t that derivation give hoist with one’s own petard a new twist?



From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



My example: The Democrats may have been hoist with their own petard in 2004 when they turned the Wellstone funeral into a campaign rally.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Challenging Word of the Week: umbrageous

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Umbrageous

(um BRAY just) adj.



Umbrageous has two entirely distinct meanings. Its principal meaning is “shady,” in the sense of creating or providing shade, like the famus “…spreading chestnut tree…” (in the poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882) under which “…the village smithy stands…” An umbrageous tree, then, is a shade tree. But an umbrageous person (umbrageous here refers back to the word umbrage, a feeling of offense, resentment, and annoyance, usually found in the expression to take umbrage) is one quick to take offense. When umbrageousness reaches the point of mental disorder, it becomes paranoia. Umbrageous is from Latin umbratus, past participle of umbrare (to shade or overshadow), and it may be the feeling of being overshadowed that creates the umbrage. Umbrageous trees provide shade; umbrageous people feel overshadowed.



From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



My example:People with umbrageous tendencies should avoid reading editorial cartoons.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Challenging Word of the Week: numinous

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Numinous

(NOOH muh nus, NYOOH-) n. adj.



Anything described as numinous is spiritual, has a sacred quality, is mysterious and awe-inspiring. Numen (NOOH mun) is literally, “nod” in Latin, related to the verb nutare (to nod, or keep nodding), and by extension came to mean “divine will” (as indicated by the nod of a god). Numen was taken over intact, to mean “divine power” or “spirit,” and gave rise to the adjective numinous, which denotes a quality that is divine, especially in the sense that it is beyond human understanding. There is something numinous in the late quartets of Beethoven. Dark forests have a numinous quality that inspires reverence and awe. The Roman satirist Juvenal (60-c. 130) wrote that if people had foresight, Fortuna wouldn’t be a goddess — she would have no numen.



This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



My example: Violent Islamists claim to be acting upon a numinous mandate. One has to wonder, however, how much numen their god possesses if he needs their intervention to settle his scores.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Challenging Word of the Week: foofaraw

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Foofaraw
(FOOH fuh raw) n.

This bit of informal American, as well as its variant fofarraw (FOH fuh raw), has two distinct meanings; a big fuss about very little, i.e., much ado about nothing; or flashy finery, too many frills. Literary policeman’s question: “What’s going on here? What’s all the foofaraw about?” Or, in the second sense, from a lady wearing a lorgnette (if you can find one): “She could certainly dispense with all the foofaraw!” A lovely-sounding word and, say the authorities, origin unknown; but in the first sense, could it be a corruption of free-for-all (in baby-talk)? The British appear not to use this word, but, in the to-do sense, have a nice equivalent: gefuffle, also spelt kerfuffle and cufuffle, all loosely used as synonyms for their word shemozzle, which is also spelt shemozzl, chimozzle, and at least half-a-dozen other ways — you takes your choice.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: The calls by Senators Kennedy and Kerry for a filibuster on Justice Alito’s confirmation seem certain to lead to a self-inflicted and embarrassing foofaraw.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Update:

Jeff at Peace Like a River is a quick study, describing the foofaraw over the Colleen Rowley gaff. (And somewhere, Blois Olson is smiling).

Challenging Word of the Week: defenestration

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Defenestration

(dee fen ih STRAY shun) n.



Defenestration is the act of throwing someone (yes, someone!) or something out of a window. To defenestrate a person or a thing is to engage in that activity — a strange one indeed, since these words are more commonly applied to situations where what is thrown out of the window is a person, rather than a thing. It is surprising, in view of what must be the infrequency of this type of activity, that there exists a word for it, but then, there exists a word for just about everything. There is a famous incident in history when an act of defenestration of people was committed: the Defenestration of Prague. It seems that, just before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618, the two principal Roman Catholic members of the Bohemian National Council were thrown out of a window of the castle at Prague by the Protestant members — one way to settle an argument. They weren’t killed. The castle had a moat in which the defenestrated twain were lucky enough to land, with only minor injuries. Strangely enough, it is once more to Prague that we have to travel to find a more recent (and this time fatal) instance of what might been defenestration. Jan Masaryk (1886-1948, son of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, first president of Czechoslovakia) was foreign minister of the Czech government-in-exile in London during World War II. He returned to Prague, retaining that post, when that war ended. A short time after the communist coup in 1948, he fell to his death from a window. Despite the official explanation of suicide, the circumstances have never eliminated the possibility of dastardly defenestration. In A Time of Gifts (John Murray, London, 1977), the English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor (b. 1915) tells us of the martyrdom of St. Johannes Nepomuk in 1393 by the henchman of King Wenceslas IV. They hurled Johannes into the River Vltava (also known as the Moldau) from a bridge in Prague. Mr. Fermor adds in a footnote: “there are several instances of defenestration in Czech history, and it has continued into modern times [referring, no doubt, to poor Masaryk]. The martyrdom of St. Johannes is the only case of depontification, but it must be part of the same Tarpeian tendency.” Mr. Fermor is referring to the Tarpeian Rock — the Mons Tarpeius — on the Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome, from which criminals and traitors were hurled to their death.



This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.