wellaway \WEL-uh-WEY\, interjection:
(Used to express sorrow.)
She entered under the dome weeping and wailing, "Wellaway!"
-- edited by Leonard Charles Smither, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
"Wellaway. My little son so dear!" So sad he was that no one could cheer up at all…
-- Marijane Osborn, Romancing the Goddess
Wellaway is related to the contemporary word woe. It came from the Old English phrase wā lā wā meaning "woe! lo! woe!"
plotz \plots\, verb:
To collapse or faint, as from surprise, excitement, or exhaustion.
And there would be no way to hide the official tail on her parents' manicured, sweeping drive. "God, Mother would plotz."
-- Elizabeth Lowell, Die in Plain Sight
I mean, the consul would have plotzed, since it would have made him directly involved.
-- Avner Mandelman, Talking to the Enemy
Plotz is an Americanism that first arose in the 1940s. It comes from the Yiddish word platsn which meant "to crack, split, burst." That word in turn originated in the German word blatzen or platzen.
word-hoard \WURD-hawrd\, noun:
A person's vocabulary.
It held what our Saxon forebears would have called his word-hoard. Prisk dipped into his invisible bag, drew out a word apparently at random, fingered it jealously for some minutes, returned it, and brought out another word.
-- Michael Innes, The Weight Of The Evidence
This audience, more than anything, perhaps, gave William the energy to once again unload his word hoard. And what a word hoard it was.
-- Victor Bockris, With William Burroughs
When Inman spoke to them they neither answered nor flickered an eye in his direction to even acknowledge the sound of his voice, and he began to assume that what the boy had spoken at the fire comprised their collective word hoard.
-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
We need a well stocked word-hoard and should be avid to add to it.
-- Paul Edwards, The Practical Preacher
Word-hoard first occurred in modern English in the 1890s. It was a literal translation of the Old English word wordhord which meant "a store of words."
intemerate \in-TEM-er-it\, adjective:
Inviolate; undefiled; unsullied; pure.
The rain smelled cool and earthy, and with her eyes closed it sounded louder and nearer; it seemed to be in the room, falling small and touchless upon her; it was clear, intemerate as the sky.
-- Fred Chappell, The Inkling
Did you know, sir, that I can trace my intemerate ancestry to Adam through the paternal line, and to Eve through the maternal line?
-- Andrew Drummond, Handbook of Volapük
Intemerate comes from the Latin root emerā which meant "to violate, desecrate." The prefix in- means "not" as in the words indefensible and inexpensive.
antipathetic \an-ti-puh-THET-ik\, adjective:
1. Opposed, averse, or contrary; having or showing antipathy: They were antipathetic to many of the proposed changes .
2. Causing or likely to cause antipathy: The new management was antipathetic to all of us.
The Psalms are really antipathetic to the modern mind, because the modern mind is so abstracted and logical, it cannot bear the non-logical imagery of the Hebrew hymns, the sort of confusion, the never going straight ahead.
-- D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation
Collingswood's teachers had either been indifferent or mildly antipathetic to her. One man, her biology teacher, had more actively disliked her.
-- China Miéville, Kraken
Antipathetic stems from the Greek root pathos which meant "suffering, sensation." The Greek word antipathḗs meant "opposed in feeling."
brabble \BRAB-uhl\, verb:
1. To argue stubbornly about trifles; wrangle.
noun:
1. Noisy, quarrelsome chatter.
But even in the monkish idleness of Cambridge where there was more time to brabble in than ever I knew before or since, for we were fed by others, and taught by others, and kept as safe as the ancient monks from the perils of the world's hunger and homelessness and pain, we saw ourselves as the swords of change.
-- Mary Lee Settle, I, Roger Williams
Braver hearts never beat in English breasts, yet do but mark how they brabble and clamour like clowns on a Saturday night.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke
Brabble comes from the Dutch word brabbelen which meant "to quarrel, jabber."
kibitzer \KIB-it-ser\, noun:
1. A giver of uninvited or unwanted advice.
2. A spectator at a card game who looks at the players' cards over their shoulders, especially one who gives unsolicited advice.
3. A person who jokes, chitchats, or makes wisecracks, especially while others are trying to work or to discuss something seriously.
Your mother's heart, dear, will mend with the advent of children, and her father's father, a wobbly kibitzer pointing to Kat's mom and muttering, A beautiful strawberry girl, why all the fuss, why all the disunion over a strawberry girl?
-- Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love
Bronzini looked on, sitting in when someone left but otherwise a kibitzer, unmeddlesome, content to savor the company and try the wine, sometimes good, sometimes overfermented, better used to spike a salad.
-- Richard Russo, Underworld
Kibitzer entered English first in America in the 1920s. It comes from the Yiddish word kibetsn (equivalent to German kiebitzen) meaning "to look on at cards."
en règle \ahn RE-gluh\, adjective:
In order; according to the rules; correct.
This was all done en règle, and in our work we shall be en règle too. We shall not go so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange.
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula
I told her it was not quite en règle to bring one so far out of our own set; but she said, 'Genius itself is not en règle; it comes into the world to make new rules.'
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
En règle snuck into the English language in the 1810s. It came directly from the French phrase of the same spelling which meant literally "in rule."
gorgonize \GAWR-guh-nahyz\, verb:
To affect as a Gorgon; hypnotize; petrify.
Shorten it, then, to what is functional, direct and bluntly, derogatorily descriptive. Of his awful power to horrify, to gorgonize, to chill.
-- Christopher Rush, Last Lesson of the Afternoon
Mortimo Planno could gorgonize foes with a stony stare, but his deep baritone voice was seductive and unexpectedly disarming.
-- Colin Grant, The Natural Mystics
Gorgonize is the verbification of an ancient Greek mythological figure. The Gorgons were three sister monsters commonly represented as having snakes for hair, wings, and brazen claws. Their eyes turned anyone looking into them to stone. Thus to gorgonize someone is to turn them into stone.
allocution \al-uh-KYOO-shuhn\, noun:
1. A formal speech, especially one of an incontrovertible or hortatory nature.
2. A pronouncement delivered by the pope to a secret consistory, especially on a matter of policy or of general importance.
The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and hootings, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby's vigorous allocution, and retreated before her…
-- William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis
Towards midday, the abbé Pirard took leave of his pupils, not without first delivering a severe allocution.
-- Stendhal, The Red and the Black
Allocution stems from the Latin root alloquī which meant to "to speak, address." The suffix -ion forms nouns from stems, as in the words communion and opinion.
jubilarian \joo-buh-LAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:
A person who celebrates or has celebrated a jubilee, as a nun observing 25 or more years of religious life.
To enable the school to open in 1916, Sisters Agnes Geraghty and Corona Hargrafen, golden jubilarians, had come out of retirement, and Sister Juliana Kritenbrink, another golden jubilarian, joined them the next year.
-- O. P. Dolores Enderle, Suzanne Noffke, The Dominicans of Racine, Wisconsin
The crowd was so great that when the doors were closed at a late hour to relieve the strain on the seventy-two-year-old jubilarian, a line of people still reached around the south and west sides of the Square.
-- Patrick Ryan, Archbishop Patrick John Ryan His Life and Times
In Biblical tradition, the jubilee is a yearlong celebration which occurs every 50 years. All debts are forgiven and lands returned to their original owners. Today jubilees are often celebrations of significant anniversaries, particularly every 25, 50, 60 or 75 years. Jubliarian refers to anyone who has or is celebrating a significant 25-year milestone.
shindy \SHIN-dee\, noun:
1. A row; rumpus.
2. A shindig.
"If the thing goes wrong," said a man by my side, "we shall see a shindy."
-- Maurice Leblanc, The Three Eyes
"Say," he said, "there's an awful shindy in the house. The dressmaker is pitching into papa for all she is worth, and there are some other folks, but she's goin' it loudest; but they are all going it! Cracky! Hear 'em!"
-- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, The Debtor
Shindy is a peculiar Americanism that arose in the 1810s. It referred originally to shinny, a now-obsolete game resembling field hockey. The word came to be applied not just to sport but also to raucous events.
Camelot \KAM-uh-lot\, noun:
1. Any idyllic place or period, especially one of great happiness.
2. The legendary site of King Arthur's palace and court, possibly near Exeter, England.
3. The glamorous ambience of Washington, D.C., during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, 1961–63.
A tiny house next to it had been the girl's home for all the summers of her short life. It was her castle, her retreat, her hideaway, her Camelot.
-- Matina Psyhogeos, Reaching for the Sky
His father's voice brought him out of his Camelot reverie. Probably the old man was reading his mind and that would account for his sardonic smile under the raised eyebrows.
-- Ward S. Just, Forgetfulness
Camelot may or may not have ever been a real place. Some have claimed that it corresponds to Camuladonum, the Roman forerunner of Colchester, which was an impressive palace in the Middle Ages, but Elizabethans tended to see it as Cadbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort near Glastonbury. Regardless, it has been associated with a place of wealth and beauty since the 1100s.
hypnopompic \hip-nuh-POM-pik\, adjective:
Of or pertaining to the semiconscious state prior to complete wakefulness.
He shudders, snaps himself out of it; as one can, with effort, do, to escape from a bad dream, working one's way in stages, toward hypnopompic state until finally, fully awake.
-- Mary Caponegro, The Star Cafe
He woke fitfully, from a dream where his work had gone terribly wrong. He was still hypnopompic.
-- Richard Powers, The Echo Maker
Hypnopompic literally means "sending away sleep" in Greek. It was coined in English in the early 1900s from the roots hypno- meaning "sleep" and pomp meaning "sending away."
preconcert \pree-kuhn-SURT\, verb:
1. To arrange in advance or beforehand, as by a previous agreement.
adjective:
1. Preceding a concert: a preconcert reception for sponsors.
Indeed she did not really suspect the visitor, who was one too ingenuous in his nature to preconcert so subtle and so wicked a scheme.
-- Anthony Trollope, Dr. Wortle's School
If personal accidents, and accidents so trivial, could, to any serious extent, be amongst the causes of war, then it would become a hopeful duty to preconcert personal combinations that should take an opposite direction.
-- Thomas De Quincey, The Works of Thomas De Quincey
Though today concert is most often a noun, it was usually used as a verb in the 1700s typically in the sense of "to bring together" or "to arrange." Preconcert thus meant "to arrange beforehand."
vertex \VUR-teks\, noun:
1. The highest point of something; apex; summit; top: the vertex of a mountain.
2. Anatomy, Zoology. The crown or top of the head.
3. Craniometry. The highest point on the midsagittal plane of the skull or head viewed from the left side when the skull or head is in the Frankfurt horizontal.
4. Astronomy. A point in the celestial sphere toward which or from which the common motion of a group of stars is directed.
5. Geometry. A. The point farthest from the base: the vertex of a cone or of a pyramid. B. A point in a geometrical solid common to three or more sides. C. The intersection of two sides of a plane figure.
When the six-pointed star was laid perfectly over the Great Seal of the United States, the star's top vertex fit perfectly over the Masonic all-seeing eye…
-- Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
Some way off from its near vertex (which happened to be between terrible Dino and Pemphredo the stinger), I hid behind a shrub of briar to reconnoiter…
-- John Barth, Chimera
Vertex stems from the Latin word of the same spelling which meant "a whirl" or "top (of the head)." It comes from the same stem as the word vortex, vert meaning "to turn." The sense of "the highest point" arose in the 1640s.
also-ran \AWL-soh-ran\, noun:
1. Informal. A person who loses a contest, election, or other competition.
2. Sports. A. (In a race) a contestant who fails to win or to place among the first three finishers. B. An athlete or team whose performance in competition is rarely, if ever, a winning or near-winning one.
3. Informal. A person who attains little or no success: For every great artist there are a thousand also-rans.
Nah! They wouldn't want an also-ran, and Edsel will always be an also-ran. They want a contender, and that's you.
-- Emily Carmichael, A New Leash on Life
The Republicans' allowing Clint Eastwood to improvise like an also-ran at a talent show, on their Convention's most important night, only heightened the contrast.
-- Steve Coll, "Conventional Wisdom," The New Yorker, Sept. 17, 2012
Also-ran was first used in the late 1800s to refer to the losing horse in a horse race. The term was applied more broadly to the loser of any contest shortly thereafter.
eurhythmic \yoo-RITH-mik\, adjective:
1. Characterized by a pleasing rhythm; harmoniously ordered or proportioned.
2. Of or pertaining to eurhythmics.
They were eurhythmic athletes, proud as archers, discus or javelin throwers embraced by the strong sun of the archipelago.
-- Severo Sarduy, Beach Birds
A melody in the air was eurhythmic, and this expanse of resplendent light encompassed me, even though I was deep into nervous overload.
-- Robert P. Covelli, Tom Fool & Three More
Eurhythmic came from the Greek word eurythmía which meant "good proportion, gracefulness."
filch \filch\, verb:
To steal (especially something of small value); pilfer: to filch ashtrays from fancy restaurants.
…but any way they resemble the buffoons at the fair, who beg, grab and filch material, here and there and everywhere, in order later to deal it out in a small folio…
-- Nikolai Gogol, The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Still, gobbling real food after days of clean garbage and public filch, she had let her antennae droop.
-- Toni Morrison, Love
Filch is of unknown origin. It may be related to the name for a kind of hook that could be used to steal small items from kitchen windows. It also may have come from the Middle English word filchen meaning "to attack (in a body), take as booty."
pseudepigraphy \soo-duh-PIG-ruh-fee\, noun:
The false ascription of a piece of writing to an author.
But the apocalyptic seers were usually not content with mere anonymity; they generally practiced pseudepigraphy.
-- Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
Even this gimmick exactly parallels the ancient scriptural practice of pseudepigraphy whereby a later, undistinguished writer, would hide behind the name of a greater figure of the past, claiming venerable authority for his own innovations.
-- R. M. Price, C. A. Smith, The Book of Eibon
Pseudopigraphy was first used in the 1830s, but a related word pseudepigrapha dates back to the 1600s. In Greek, the word epigraph meant "title, ascription to an author." With the prefix pseud, it literally means "false ascription to an author."
pseudoclassic \soo-doh-KLAS-ik\, adjective:
1. Falsely or spuriously classic.
2. Imitating the classic: the pseudoclassic style of some modern authors.
He also points out that any comment on this pseudoclassic literature "should not fail to distinguish the truly Augustan circle of Butler and Johnson and Reynolds and Goldsmith and Burke, whose humanism, like that of Horace, contained, not so much explicitly as in solution, the higher insight which the philosophy of their age was busily hiding away."
-- Stephen L. Tanner, Paul Elmer More: Literary Criticism As the History of Ideas
She hurried along till she came to what, from the pseudoclassic appearance of the structure, seemed a place of dissenting worship.
-- Horace W.C. Newte, Sparrows
He was tired, he said, of the tirades and the beaux vers of the Classic and pseudo-Classic authors: "I ask for Shakespeare," he cried pathetically, "and they give me Ducis."
-- Arthur Fitzwilliam Davidson, Victor Hugo: His Life and Work
Pseudoclassic originated in the 1830s and was applied mainly to art, architecture and literature which mimicked the classic styles.
pseudomorph \SOO-duh-mawrf\, noun:
1. An irregular or unclassifiable form.
2. A mineral having the outward appearance of another mineral that it has replaced by chemical action.
It is clearly not maturation but a pseudomorph, yet it is a pseudomorph that claims a proximate relation to maturation by the intrinsic precariousness of maturation itself.
-- David L. Norton, Personal Destinies
He blamed the sciences for reestablishing the mirage of truth, and still more the pseudomorph subjects like anthropology and economics whose adepts substituted inapplicable statistics for the ineptness of their insights.
-- Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue
Pseudomorph originally applied to minerals which looked like one type of mineral but were actually composed of another. Though from Greek roots, pseudomorph was used in German before entering English in the 1830s.
pseudology \soo-DOL-uh-jee\, noun:
Lying considered as an art.
For example, listening to the life history account of András Albert, a Transylvanian lumberman, the outsider may wonder how to distinguish fact from fiction, poetry from lie, and how to regard the relationship between pseudology and storytelling.
-- Linda Dégh, Narratives in Society
So many people would love to get their hands on a machine that can inhibit pseudology, mendacity and falsehood. The police, Intelligence services, all sorts and conditions of interested agencies and institutions.
-- Stephen Fry, The Liar
Pseudology comes from two Greek roots, pseudo- meaning "false" and -logy meaning "study of." The word does not literally mean "the study of lying" but has come to embody the sense of "the art of lying."
pseudonymous \soo-DON-uh-muhs\, adjective:
1. Bearing a false or fictitious name.
2. Writing or written under a fictitious name.
I did a lot of pseudonymous writing during this period.
-- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Unless Ollivier was playing a doubly pseudonymous game, the cipher was no good.
-- Paul La Farge, Haussmann, or the Distinction
Pseudonymous actually predates the more common word pseudonym which was coined in the early 1800s. The longer adjectival form of the word arose in the 1700s directly from the Latin word pseudonymus meaning "falsely named."
birl \burl\, verb:
1. To spin or cause to rotate.
2. Chiefly Northern U.S. Lumbering. To cause (a floating log) to rotate rapidly by treading upon it.
3. British. A. To move or rotate rapidly. B. Informal. To spend money freely. C. Informal. To gamble.
noun:
1. British Informal. An attempt; a gamble.
I feel a bit light, then it's like my brain starts to birl in my head sending my thoughts and emotions cascading around.
-- Irvine Welsh, Filth
To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandumir as usual, till the fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow…
-- George Douglas Brown, The House With The Green Shutters
Birl arose in the 1700s from an unknown origin. It may have been a combination of birr (meaning "force") and whirl.
aumildar \aw-mil-DAHR\, noun:
1. A manager or agent.
2. A collector of revenue.
The culprit, on suspicion, is hurried away before the aumildar, and after a few loose questions regarding his criminality…
-- Ya Ding, The Earth Sings
The Aumildar paid me a visit for the express purpose of requesting me to do what I could towards the destruction of an enormous buffalo, which had been the terror of the neighbourhood for the last three or four years.
-- E.N. Richards, "Sport in the Cummermail Jungles," The Sporting Magazine
Aumildar comes from the Hindi word amaldār, a combination of the Persian word ʿamal meaning "work" and the suffix -dar meaning "agent."
couthie \KOO-thee\, adjective:
Agreeable; genial; kindly.
Occasionally he'd stab one of the buttons, never managing to stop the machines' couthie chatter of grunts and whistles.
-- James Meek, The Heart Broke In
… That her coming away from home was no small loss to England, not but that England, as we all knew, had many ladies, yet could not have many so couthie, and kind, and willing to help, as Mrs. Doctor More.
-- William Tait, "The Roads Through the World," Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 24
Couthie stems from the Old English word cūth, originally meaning "to know." It arose in the 1700s in Scotland in the sense of "agreeable."
violescent \vahy-uh-LES-uhnt\, adjective:
Tending to a violet color: a violescent twilight sky.
Scriabin's prelude is dark in color, violescent, like moiré unfurling in the evening wind.
-- Gabriele D'Annunzio, Notturno
The portrait was vile, a dirty grey colour with large violescent patches.
-- Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin
Violescent is clearly related to the more common word violet. The suffix -escent means "beginning to show" as in the word luminescent.
advert \ad-VURT\, verb:
1. To remark or comment; refer (usually followed by to): He adverted briefly to the news of the day.
2. To turn the attention (usually followed by to): The committee adverted to the business at hand.
To understand the nature of those commotions, and the part which Baxter took in them, it will be necessary to advert to the state of religion in the country at large.
-- Richard Baxter, William Orme, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter
He had not the tact, or the art, to effect such a purpose by skillfully drawing out my sentiments or ideas through the real or apparent statement of his own, or leading the conversation by imperceptible gradations to such topics as he wished to advert to: but such gentle abruptness, and such single-minded straightforwardness, could not possibly offend me.
-- Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey
Advert comes from the Latin word advertere meaning "to pay attention."
exordium \ig-ZAWR-dee-uhm\, noun:
1. The beginning of anything.
2. The introductory part of an oration, treatise, etc.
As for your beginning and exordium, I no longer remember it, nor consequently the middle; and as for your conclusion, I will do nothing of the sort.
-- Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children," Essays
In commencing, with the New Year, a New Volume, we shall be permitted to say a very few words by way of exordium to our usual chapter of Reviews, or, as we should prefer calling them, of Critical Notices.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "Literary Criticism," The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 11
Exordium stems from the Latin root ōrd meaning "to begin." The prefix ex- in this case means "utterly," and the suffix -ium which is often found on nouns borrowed from Latin, such as delirium and tedium.
compotation \kom-puh-TEY-shuhn\, noun:
An act or instance of drinking or tippling together.
I may here mention, that the fashion of compotation described in the text, was still occasionally practiced in Scotland, in the author's youth. A company, after having taken leave of their host, often went to finish the evening at the clachan or village, in "womb of tavern." The entertainer always accompanied them to take the stirrup-cup, which often occasioned a long and late revel.
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Waverley Novels
Wouldn't you be too old to bring me my whey in the morning soon as I'd awake, perhaps with a severe headache, after the plenary indulgence of a clerical compotation.
-- William Carleton, Denis O'Shaughnessy Going To Maynooth
This lively term is derived from a Latin translation compōtātiō of the Greek word symposium or "a convivial meeting for drinking and intellectual conversation."
