mellifluous

mellifluous \muh-LIF-loo-us\, adjective:

Flowing as with honey; smooth; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.

The balladeer whose mellifluous voice serenaded two generations of lovers.
-- Margo Jefferson, "Unforgettable", New York Times, December 26, 1999

The tones were high-sounding, mellifluous, as if the speaker was reading from a book of old English verse while holding back any trace of sentiment or emotion.
-- Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

I picked up more mellifluous words when a family friend came over to teach me some Chilean music on my guitar.
-- Edward Hower, "No Frogs Allowed", New York Times, January 30, 2000

Mellifluous comes from Latin mellifluus, from mel,

bumptious

bumptious \BUMP-shuhs\, adjective:

Crudely, presumptuously, or loudly self-assertive.

The clown in the girl is bumptious as can be: bouncing about in the peaked cap and oversized coat of a boy she hasn't learned to love yet, pacing in lockstep behind a fellow-lodger for the sheer love of badgering him, blowing out her cheeks like a fussed walrus when crossed.
-- Walter Kerr, Anne Frank Shouldn't Be Anne's Play, New York Times, January 7, 1979

Still a tremendous singer and a man so confident of his own sex appeal that he could make the most outrageously bumptious behaviour seem not only engaging but also entirely natural.
-- David Sinclair, "Larger than life and twice as rocky", Times (London), March 13, 2000

Wells did not meet his father until he was an adult, by which time he had developed his own blunt, sometimes bumptious personality.
-- George Vecsey, "An Outsider Who Became an Insider", New York Times, October 7, 1998

Bumptious is perhaps a blend of bump and presumptuous.

eleemosynary

eleemosynary \el-uh-MOS-uh-ner-ee\, adjective:

1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, "an eleemosynary institution."
2. Given in charity; having the nature of alms; as, "eleemosynary assistance."
3. Supported by or dependent on charity; as, "the eleemosynary poor."

We also need to revive the great eleemosynary institutions through which compassionate people serve those in need with both greater flexibility and discipline than government agencies are capable.
-- Clifford F. Thies, "Bring back the bridewell", The World & I, September 1, 1995

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who keeps a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
-- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

Like Hilda's "eleemosynary doves," these birds depend upon the Author's charity, require mothering, just as Hilda finds solace in the Virgin--"a child, lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a Mother."
-- John Dolis, "Domesticating Hawthorne: Home Is for the Birds", Criticism, Winter 2001

The source of eleemosynary is Medieval Latin eleemosynarius, from Late Latin eleemosyna, "alms," from Greek eleemosyne, from eleemon, "pitiful," from eleos, "pity."

ken

ken \KEN\, noun:

1. Perception; understanding; knowledge.
2. The range of vision.
3. View; sight.

He was to make several important discoveries, the most significant being that infantile paralysis was caused not by germs, as cerebrospinal meningitis had been, but by a mysterious agent just then emerging into the ken of science.
-- James Thomas Flexner, Maverick's Progress

So we are predisposed -- if not preprogrammed -- to accept tales of animals who display human motives, understanding, reason, and intentions. It takes a far greater imagination to conceive the possibility that a dog's mental life may assume a form that is simply beyond our ken.
-- Stephen Budiansky, If a Lion Could Talk

Libussa, the youngest, particularly beautiful, unworldly and serious, was able to see what was hidden from other people's ken and to prophesy.
-- Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold

Ken is from Middle English kennen, from Old English cennan, "to declare, to make known."

somnolent

somnolent \SOM-nuh-luhnt\, adjective:

1. Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep.
2. Tending to cause sleepiness or drowsiness.

In his case, restrained ultimately meant boring, as the audience was lulled into a somnolent state.
-- Teresa Wiltz, "The Hip, the Flip, the Flop", Washington Post, March 3, 2000

Meanwhile, many a somnolent local authority has been stirred into action by Davidson's blunt approach.
-- John Lucas, "Memorials are made of these on the eve of Remembrance Sunday", Daily Telegraph, November 7, 1998

Back in the somnolent heat of Bangalore he wrote a revealing novel entitled Savrola.
-- David Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service

Somnolent is from Latin somnolentus, from somnus, "sleep." A related word is insomnia (in-, "not" + somnus).

imbroglio

imbroglio \im-BROHL-yoh\, noun:

1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things.
2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding.
3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.
4. A confused mass; a tangle.

The political imbroglio also appears to endanger the latest International Monetary Fund loan package for Russia, which is considered critical to avoid a default this year on the country's $17 billion in foreign debt.
-- David Hoffman, "Citing Economy, Yeltsin Fires Premier", Washington Post, May 13, 1999

Worse still, hearings and investigations into scandals -- from the imbroglio over Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination in 1991 to the charges of perjury against President Clinton in 1998 -- have overshadowed any consideration of the country's future.
-- John B. Judis, The Paradox of American Democracy

To the extent that Washington had a policy toward the subcontinent, its aim was to be evenhanded and not get drawn into the diplomatic imbroglio over Kashmir.
-- George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb

The imbroglio over the seemingly arcane currency issue threatens to plunge Indonesia -- and possibly its neighbors as well -- into a renewed bout of financial turmoil.
-- Paul Blustein, "Currency Dispute Threatens Indonesia's Bailout", Washington Post, February 14, 1998

Imbroglio derives from Italian, from Old Italian imbrogliare, "to tangle, to confuse," from in-, "in" + brogliare, "to mix, to stir." It is related to embroil, "to entangle in conflict or argument."

gainsay

gainsay \gayn-SAY; GAYN-say\, transitive verb:

1. To deny or dispute; to declare false or invalid.
2. To oppose; to contradict.

In our present, imperfectly postmodern world, where most information still takes the potentially embarrassing form of printed matter lurking in archives, liars still must position themselves so that the historical record may not easily gainsay them.
-- Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of

But, owing to government's cynical policy of inaction, suppression and hoping the problem would go away, there was nothing to gainsay it either.
-- Mary Riddell, "I don't mind about midsummer madness, but I'd rather not have it in my fridge or purring on the sofa", New Statesman, July 26, 1996

Gainsay comes from Middle English geinseien, from gein-, "against" (from Old English gegn-, gean-) + sayen, "to say," from Old English secgan.

paladin

paladin \PAL-uh-din\, noun:

1. A knight-errant; a distinguished champion of a medieval king or prince; as, the paladins of Charlemagne.
2. A champion of a cause.

Once in power, though, Clinton stumbled repeatedly over obstacles created by the schizoid campaign he had conducted, in which he had cast himself simultaneously as the champion of a more conservative Democratic credo and as a paladin of the party's traditional activism.
-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union

Even Columbia University economist Jagdisch Baghwati, the paladin of free trade, calls for controls on capital flow.
-- "Terrors in the Sun", The Nation, June 29, 1998

Matisse, paladin of modernism, is a long way from us now.
-- Robert Hughes, "The Color of Genius", Time, September 28, 1992

. . .the celebrated but distrusted paladin of imperialism and the romantic conception of life, the swashbuckling militarist, the vehement orator and journalist, the most public of public personalities in a world dedicated to the cultivation of private virtues, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Conservative Government then in power, Mr. Winston Churchill.
-- Isaiah Berlin, "Mr. Churchill", The Atlantic, September 1949

Paladin derives from Late Latin palatinus, "an officer of the palace," from Latin palatium, "royal residence, palace," from Palatium, one of the seven hills of Rome, on which Augustus had his residence.

invidious

invidious \in-VID-ee-uhs\, adjective:

1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.
2. Containing or implying a slight.
3. Envious.

But to the human hordes of Amorites -- Semitic nomads wandering the mountains and deserts just beyond the pale of Sumer -- the tiered and clustered cities, strung out along the green banks of the meandering Euphrates like a giant's necklace of polished stone, seemed shining things, each surmounted by a wondrous temple and ziggurat dedicated to the city's god-protector, each city noted for some specialty -- all invidious reminders of what the nomads did not possess.
-- Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews

In his experience people were seldom happier for having learned what they were missing, and all Europe had done for his wife was encourage her natural inclination toward bitter and invidious comparison.
-- Richard Russo, Empire Falls

The lover's obsessiveness may also take the form of invidious comparisons between himself, or herself, and the rival.
-- Ethel S. Person, "Love Triangles", The Atlantic, February 1988

For five decades, Indian liberals, and some from Europe and America, have been shaming the Western world with its commercialism, making invidious comparisons with Indian spirituality.
-- Leland Hazard, "Strong Medicine for India", The Atlantic, December 1965

Invidious is from Latin invidiosus, "envious, hateful, causing hate or ill-feeling," from invidia, "envy," from invidere, "to look upon with the evil eye, to look maliciously upon, to envy," from in-, "upon" + videre, "to look at, to see."

peccadillo

peccadillo \peck-uh-DIL-oh\, noun:

A slight offense; a petty fault.

No peccadillo is too trivial: we learn that the mogul once blew his top because his laundry came back starched (" 'Fluff and fold!' he screamed").
-- Eric P. Nash, "High Concept", New York Times, May 10, 1998

And besides "what do they say? 'Don't judge lest you be judged.' Everybody has their peccadilloes."
-- "Tyson has a friend in his corner", Irish Times, October 21, 1999

Child of a dominant mother, victim of a guilt-ridden conscience, [St. Augustine] wrote bewilderingly haunted 'Confessions,' in which infantile peccadilloes like stealing apples and adolescent fumblings with instinctive sexuality are bewailed with all the anguish of a frustrated perfectionist.
-- Geoffrey Parker, "True Believers", New York Times, June 29, 1997

Peccadillo comes from Spanish pecadillo, "little sin," diminutive of pecado, "sin," from Latin peccatum, from peccare, "to make a mistake, to err, to sin." It is related to impeccable, "without flaw or fault."

stormy petrel

stormy petrel \STOR-mee-PET-ruhl\, noun:

1. Any of various small sea birds of the family Hydrobatidae, having dark plumage with paler underparts; also called storm petrel.
2. One who brings discord or strife, or appears at the onset of trouble.

But far from a 'pet' of the Communist regime, Gorky, the "stormy petrel of the revolution," also condemned the revolution early on as a "cruel experiment" with the Russian people "doomed to failure."
-- Valentina Kolesnikova, "Maxim Gorky: Hostage of the Revolution", Russian Life, June 1, 1996

Of the unpredictable and constantly angry Paracelsus, for example, the stormy petrel who convulsed the staid medical establishment of the sixteenth century by demanding radical reforms in clinical thinking, he wrote: "This first great revolt against the slavish authority of the schools had little immediate effect, largely on account of the personal vagaries of the reformer--but it made men think."
-- Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Saint", New Republic, December 13, 1999

Lenin, the stormy petrel of the Social Democratic party, was facing more serious opposition than ever.
-- Michael Pearson, "Lenin's lieutenant", Guardian, September 29, 2001

. . .restless and indomitable, scouring like a stormy petrel the angry ocean of debate.
-- Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians

Stormy petrel is an alteration of earlier pitteral, probably so named in allusion to St. Peter's walking on the sea, from the fact that the bird flies close to the water in order to feed on surface-swimming organisms and ship's refuse; called stormy because in a storm the birds surround a ship to catch small organisms which rise to the surface of the rough seas; when the storm ceases they are no longer seen.

crepuscular

crepuscular \kri-PUS-kyuh-lur\, adjective:

1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim.
2. (Zoology) Appearing or active at twilight.

I've been through their checkout and noted its resemblance to Hades - the crepuscular gloom, the dungeon lighting, the mile-long shuffling queue, the glum, sickly faces, the trolleys piled high with flat-pack cardboard units.
-- John Walsh, "btw", Independent, February 12, 2005

In the crepuscular lobby, a broad circle of monitors laid on their backs on the floor blinked up at a laser show spiraling across a tentlike scrim stretched just below the building's blacked-out skylight.
-- David Joselit, "Planet Paik - Nam June Paik's works", Art in America, June, 2000

But Monet pursued the blood-red sun rather than the blanched moon, favouring the strangely crepuscular effects created by noxious London smogs during the day.
-- Richard Cork, "Relay race", New Statesman, February 28, 2005

Most communication systems in luminescent fireflies have been studied in nocturnal species; little is known concerning communication in crepuscular and diurnal species.
-- Nobuyoshi Ohba, "Flash Communication Systems of Japanese Fireflies", Integrative and Comparative Biology, June 2004

Crepuscular comes from Latin crepusculum, twilight, from creper, dark, obscure; ultimately of Sabine origin.

quiddity

quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, n.:

1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.

He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow
-- Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies", New York Times, October 30, 1998

She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination

It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn.
-- Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"

I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had promised to write and wondered how I would go about it -- his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students.
-- Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."

ephemeral

ephemeral \ih-FEM-er-ul\, adjective:

1. Beginning and ending in a day; existing only, or no longer than, a day; as, an ephemeral flower.
2. Short-lived; existing or continuing for a short time only.

Success is very ephemeral. You depend entirely on the desire of others, which makes it difficult to relax.
-- Eva Green

In "Mississippi Mermaid," the planter character played by Belmondo, a fellow who has sought a safe, permanent love, is liberated when he chooses to follow the ephemeral.
-- Vincent Canby, "Truffaut's Clear-Eyed Quest.", New York Times, September 14, 1975

Rather, we must separate what is ephemeral... from the things that are of lasting importance.
-- Patrick Smith, Japan: A Reinterpretation

Ephemeral derives from Greek ephemeros, from epi, upon + hemera, day.

etiolate

etiolate \EE-tee-uh-layt\, transitive verb:

1. (Botany) To bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight.
2. To make pale or sickly.
3. To make weak by stunting the growth or development of.
4. (Botany) To become bleached or whitened, as when grown without sunlight.

Under that etiolated sky all life seemed wrung out.
-- Colin Thubron, The Lost Heart of Asia

[They] had feverish eyes, pale faces and gaunt, etiolated bodies from spending all the hours of daylight shut up in cramped and often humid spaces.
-- Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse

Etiolate comes from French étioler, perhaps for s'éteuler, "to become like straw," from Old French esteule, "stubble or straw," from Latin stipula, "a stalk, straw."

outre

outré \oo-TRAY\, adjective:

Unconventional; eccentric; bizarre.

This seven-year-old house of outré culture is the kind of place you can shop for a sculpture made out of working flamethrowers, videocassettes of underground movies, computer-generated art or a cute robot
-- David Sturm, "Berlin's Green Man, Running for Life", Washington Post, June 14, 1998

The area is tamer than in its bohemian heyday, but the outré spirit survives.
-- Brian C. Mooney and Rosemary Lappin, "Galleries of the Gods", Boston Globe, August 25, 1996

McCarthy cast herself as the rule breaker, the outré intellectual woman who emerged from an eccentric and rebellious past.
-- Ann Hulbert, "Keeping Score", New York Times, October 26, 1997

Unless you head for Harajuku, the heart of hip, where being outré is a requirement. Harajuku is home to Raggedy Ann wannabes, Elvis impersonators and Japanese punks, all turned out to attract attention.
-- Stephanie Strom, "Tokyo", New York Times, September 26, 1999

Outré comes from French, from the past participle of outer, "to exaggerate, to go beyond," from Latin ultra, "beyond."

labile

labile \LAY-byl\, adjective:

1. Open to change; apt or likely to change; adaptable.
2. Constantly or readily undergoing chemical, physical, or biological change or breakdown; unstable.

They are too open to the rest of the world, too labile, too prone to foreign influence.
-- Robert Hughes, Goya

Mifflin may not have been much more labile than the people around him, but he was undoubtedly more aware of his volatility.
-- "Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio", Early American Literature, January 1, 1998

Faber's prose is an amazingly labile instrument, wry and funny, never pretentious, capable of rendering the muck of a London street and the delicate hummingbird flights of thought with equal ease.
-- Lev Grossman, "The Lady Is a Tramp", Time, September 16, 2002

They lock themselves in their studies and from the labile, rocking mass of thoughts and impressions they form books, which immediately become something final, irrevocable, as if frost had cut down the flowers.
-- Adam Zagajewski, "History's children", New Republic, December 2, 1991

Labile derives from Late Latin labilis, from Latin labi, "to slip."

susurrus

susurrus \su-SUHR-uhs\, noun:

A whispering or rustling sound; a murmur.

Still, the breeze is soothing, as is the susurrus of the branches.
-- Michael Finkel, "Tree Surfing and Other Lofty Pleasures", The Atlantic, March 1998

And there came, like the dry susurrus of wind before thunder peals and lightning, a great rustle of excitement.
-- Richard Whittington-Egan, "The Edwardian literary afternoon: part one", Contemporary Review, April 2000

He heard the susurrus of curtains luffed by the breeze.
-- Erik Larson, Isaac's Storm

Susurrus comes from the Latin susurrus, "a murmuring, a whispering, a humming."

pulchritude

pulchritude \PUL-kruh-tood; -tyood\, noun:

That quality of appearance which pleases the eye; beauty; comeliness; grace; loveliness.

No stranger aftermath developed after the war, Thorek recalled, "than the sudden hope, surging through feminine -- and sometimes masculine -- hearts, that where nature had been niggardly in her gifts of pulchritude, the knife of the surgeon could remedy the lack."
-- Elizabeth Haiken, Venus Envy

While other symbols of postwar pulchritude have gone into seclusion, become anti-vivisectionists or begun hawking designer eyeglasses, Gina Lollobrigida continues to tend her image with a fully sequined sense of responsibility to the legend.
-- Mitchell Owens, "A Body of Work That's Not Just a Body", New York Times, January 11, 1995

Where Linda has her infectious charm, Polly has only her empty pulchritude.
-- Hannah Betts, "Sixty years on, and it's still a gel thing", Times (London), February 3, 2001

Pulchritude comes from Latin pulchritudo, from pulcher, "beautiful." The adjective form is pulchritudinous.

portend

portend \por-TEND\, verb:

To indicate (events, misfortunes, etc.) as in future; to foreshadow; to bode.

Although no humans were there to witness the giant comet of 65 million years ago, in this case it really did portend disaster.
-- Walter Alvarez, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom

With mortal crisis doth portend
My days to appropinque an end.
-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras. Part i. Canto iii. Line 589

I see five separate moving clouds of dust; they portend some sort of magic.
-- Laurie Fox, My Sister from the Black Lagoon: A Novel of My Life

Many signs portended a dark and stormy day.
-- Macaulay

Portend comes from Latin portendere, to indicate, to predict, from por- (variant of pro-), before + tendere, to stretch out, to spread. Thus that which portends is that which stretches out before us into the future.

frisson

frisson \free-SOH^N\, noun:

A moment of intense excitement; a shudder; an emotional thrill.

When we think a story hasn't been invented, there's an extra frisson in reading it.
-- "Too true", Independent, April 12, 1998

As every parent knows, children have a love-hate relationship with stories about monsters. They love the frisson of hearing about such terrifying creatures as the Cyclops -- but hate to think about what they might do if they bumped into one.
-- "Strange but true: One in the eye for all those Homer-phobes", Daily Telegraph, June 21, 1998

When we stopped in traffic at the Plaza de la Cibeles on the Paseo del Prado, where a grandiose 18th-century statue of the goddess of fertility poised on a chariot seemed to be waiting for the light to change, a little frisson of pleasure jolted through me, because this part of Madrid reminded me of Paris.
-- "Counting Pesetas in Madrid", New York Times, March 17, 1996

Frisson comes from the French, from Old French friçon, "a trembling," ultimately from Latin frigere, "to be cold."

impugn

impugn \im-PYOON\, transitive verb:

To attack by words or arguments; to call in question; to make insinuations against; to oppose or challenge as false; to gainsay.

As might be expected of fanatical flag idolaters, the GAR did not accept refusals lightly, and in one instance in Illinois impugned the patriotic loyalty of recalcitrant local school administrators by spreading rumors that one of them was a foreign alien yet to be naturalized and the other a draft dodger who evaded Civil War service by fleeing to Canada.
-- Albert Boime, The Unveiling of the National Icons

After hearing that her brother had been impugned by his political rivals, she also wrote a verse defense of his honor, entitled "Lines on reading an attack upon the political career of the late Albert Baker Esqr."
-- Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child

Even though it is nowhere alleged that disclosures of sinful activity by priests impugn the integrity of the entire ministry, that nevertheless is the passing legacy of the current scandals.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., "The House of Disillusion", National Review, May 14, 2002

Impugn comes from Latin impugnare, "to assail," from in-, "against" + pugnare, "to fight."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for impugn

chimerical

chimerical \ky-MER-ih-kuhl; -MIR-; kih-\, adjective:

1. Merely imaginary; produced by or as if by a wildly fanciful imagination; fantastic; improbable or unrealistic.
2. Given to or indulging in unrealistic fantasies or fantastic schemes.

But those risks are real, not chimerical.
-- George J. Church, "Mission of Mercy", Time, April 29, 1991

It prophesies war in the service of a peace which can never arrive because the vision it pursues is chimerical.
-- Hywel Williams, "The danger of liberal imperialism", The Guardian, October 4, 2001

In the chimerical atmosphere of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, it is far from clear where fact ends and fiction begins--or vice versa.
-- Margaret Wertheim, "The Museum of Jurassic Technology", Omni, November 1, 1994

Her name is Dulcinea; her country El Toboso, a village in La Mancha; her degree at least that of Princess, for she is my Queen and mistress; her beauty superhuman, for in her are realized all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty which poets give to their ladies.
-- Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quixote

Chimerical is ultimately derived from Greek khimaira, "she-goat" or "chimera," which in Greek mythology was a monster having the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for chimerical

nescience

nescience \NESH-uhn(t)s; NESH-ee-uhn(t)s\, noun:

Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.

The ancients understood that too much knowledge could actually impede human functioning -- this at a time when the encroachments on global nescience were comparatively few.
-- Cullen Murphy, "DNA Fatigue", The Atlantic, November 1997

He fought on our behalf in the war that finally matters: against nescience, against inadvertence, against the supposition that anything is anything else.
-- Hugh Kenner, "On the Centenary of James Joyce", New York Times, January 31, 1982

The notion has taken hold that every barometric fluctuation must demonstrate climate change. This anecdotal case for global warming is mostly nonsense, driven by nescience of a basic point, from statistics and probability, that the weather is always weird somewhere.
-- Gregg Easterbrook, "Warming Up", The New Republic, November 8, 1999

Nescience is from Latin nescire, "not to know," from ne-, "not" + scire, "to know." It is related to science. Nescient is the adjective form.

aegis

aegis \EE-jis\, noun:

1. Protection; support.
2. Sponsorship; patronage.
3. Guidance, direction, or control.
4. A shield or protective armor; -- applied in mythology to the shield of Zeus.

It is this ideal of the human under the aegis of something higher which seems to me to provide the strongest counterpressure against the fragmentation and barbarization of our world.
-- Ted J. Smith III (Editor), In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963

A third round of talks is scheduled to begin on May 23rd in New York under the aegis of the United Nations.
-- "Denktash declared head after rival withdraws", Irish Times, April 21, 2000

In real life, Lang's father was commercially astute and fantastically hardworking, and under his aegis the construction business flourished.
-- Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Aegis derives from the Greek aigis, the shield of Zeus, from aix, aig-, "a goat," many primitive shields being goatskin-covered.

grandiloquent

grandiloquent \gran-DIL-uh-kwuhnt\, adjective:

Lofty in style; pompous; bombastic.

He became more than usually grandiloquent as if to make up for the years of silence with words of gold.
-- Peter Ackroyd, "Supreme man of letters", Times (London), November 22, 2000

The more grandiloquent and picturesque the language the greater the distance at which he keeps you.
-- Richard Eder, "Irish Memories, Irish Poetry", New York Times, September 19, 1976

A voracious reader with a passion for history and great men, he was a droll raconteur with a grandiloquent style.
-- Richard Siklos, Shades of Black

Grandiloquent comes from Latin grandiloquus, from grandis, "grand" + loqui, "to speak." The noun form is grandiloquence.

flummox

flummox \FLUM-uhks\, transitive verb:

To confuse; to perplex.

And when a poll's results happen to upset the conventional wisdom, orconfound the experts, or flummox the pundits, then that's a poll toremember.
-- Michael Kagay, "Unexpected Results Make for Memorable Polls", New York Times, March 23, 2000

The chronological order of the Stuart, Hanover, Lancaster and TudorBritish royal houses had me flummoxed.
-- Sara Ivry, "Game Show Wannabe: I Coulda Been a Millionaire", New York Times, February 27, 2000

Flummoxed by the surreality of history and the mind-bogglingchanges unleashed by the 60's, many writers in that era became minimalists,withdrawing, turtlelike, inside their own homes and heads.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "New Wave of Writers Reinvents Literature", New York Times, April 22, 2000

The origin of flummox is unknown.

longueur

longueur \long-GUR\, noun:

A dull and tedious passage in a book, play, musical composition, or the like.

One of the commentators compared my speech to one of Gladstone's which had lasted five hours. "It was not so long, but some of the speech's . . . longueurs made Gladstone seem the soul of brevity," he wrote.
-- Lord Lamont of Lerwick, "Been there, done that", Times (London), March 6, 2001

If this book of 400 pages had been devoted to her alone, it would have been filled with longueurs, but as the biography of a family it has the merit of originality.
-- Peter Ackroyd, review of Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections, by Frances Spalding, Times (London), June 27, 2001

This book . . . has its defects. Sometimes it loses focus (as in a longueur on Chechens living in Jordan).
-- Colin Thubron, "Birth of a Hundred Nations", New York Times, November 19, 2000

Longueur is from French (where it means "length"), ultimately deriving from Latin longus, "long," which is also the source of English long.

gambol

gambol \GAM-buhl\, intransitive verb:

1. To dance and skip about in play; to frolic.
2. A skipping or leaping about in frolic.

I've been told dolphins like to gambol in the waves in these waters, and that sighting them brings good luck.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Where the Map Stopped", New York Times, May 17, 1992

The bad news is that while most of us gambol in the sun, there will be much wringing of hands in environment-hugging circles about global warming and climate change.
-- Derek Brown, "Heatwaves", The Guardian, June 16, 2000

Then they joined hands (it was the stranger who began it by catching Martha and Matilda) and danced the table round, shaking their feet and tossing their arms, the glee ever more uproarious, -- danced until they were breathless, every one of them, save little Sammy, who was not asked to join the gambol, but sat still in his chair, and seemed to expect no invitation.
-- Norman Duncan, "Santa Claus At Lonely Cove", The Atlantic, December 1903

Gambol, earlier gambolde or gambalde, comes from Medieval French gambade, "a leaping or skipping," from Late Latin gamba, "hock (of a horse), leg," from Greek kampe, "a joint or bend."

jape

jape \JAYP\, noun, verb:

1. A joke or jest.
2. A trick or prank.
3. To joke; to jest.
4. To make fun of; to mock.

One elderly Englishman, complete with tweed suit and cane, japed to a passport control officer: "We're not all hooligans you know."
-- Mike Underwood, "Into the fire", Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough, England), October 13, 2003

He tried to defuse each petty crisis with a merry jape and spend each day with a life-affirming and reasonably up tempo alt. country song in his heart.
-- Chris Priestley, "Payne's grey", New Statesman, November 29, 2004

The shot was more of a jape than an assassination attempt, and was rightly treated as a laugh by the press and by the Prime Minister, who carried on as if nothing had happened.
-- Nick Cohen, "Daddy will stop at nothing to see you", New Statesman, November 15, 2004

Jape comes from Middle English, probably from Old French japer, "to yap, to chatter."