borborygmus

borborygmus \bawr-buh-RIG-muhs\, noun:

a rumbling or gurgling sound caused by the movement of gas in the intestines.

"The stertorous borborygmus of the dyspeptic Carlyle!" declaimed Willie Weaver, and beamed through his spectacles. The mot, he flattered himself, could hardly have been more exquisitely juste.
-- Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point, 1928

Then her stomach grumbled and spoiled the silence. Quickly, Patsy pressed her hand against her complaining belly, and hoped that Ray had not heard it. "Suffering from borborygmus, I hear," Ray dead-panned dryly.
-- Bonnie Gardner, Sergeant Darling, 2005

Borborygmus comes from the Greek word borborygmós which meant "intestinal rumbling."

gelt

gelt \gelt\, noun:

Slang. money.

All he wants is some U.S. gelt and a nice pair of elevator shoes.
-- James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover, 2009

Let alone he was always one for a bit of life, you could earn extra gelt in London, for there were always errands to be run, or notes to be delivered, and you got a shilling every time you were sent off to execute such commissions.
-- Georgette Heyer, The Unknown Ajax, 1959

Gelt entered English in the 1890s. It came from the Yiddish word which meant "money."

wroth

wroth \rawth, roth or, especially Brit., rohth\, adjective:

1. stormy; violent; turbulent: the wroth sea.
2. angry; wrathful (usually used predicatively): He was wroth to see the damage to his home.

You are wroth with me because I have used you; because I have offended against your innate right to be a useless cyst on the hindquarters of life.
-- Stephen Burst, Issola, 2002

The wroth sea's waves are edged / With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, / When in the solitary waste, strange groups / Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like…
-- Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 1835

Wroth is derived from the Old English wrāth which comes in turn from the Old Norse word reithr which meant "angry." It is related to the word writhe.

decant

decant \dih-KANt\, verb:

1. to pour (a liquid) from one container to another.
2. to pour (wine or other liquid) gently so as not to disturb the sediment.

One of Enzo's jobs was to decant the cloudy green-gold liquid into smaller vessels for use in the kitchen.
-- Nicky Pellegrino, The Villa Girls, 2011

They stood shivering in the narrow hallway, waiting for their turn to come forward and wash. Rosa would decant some of the cold water she had fetched from the well into a big tub.
-- Steve Sem-Sandberg, The Emperor of Lies, 2011

Decant originally comes from the Latin word canth meaning "spout, rim of a vessel." One of the many meanings of the prefix de- is "removal."

za-zen

za-zen \ZAH-ZEN\, noun:

meditation in a prescribed, cross-legged posture.

They told me that before he left he had paced the floor nervously for several days; that he had been doing za zen on his mat for about nine hours a day; that he'd gotten into a quarrel over religion with a Jehovah's Witness on his shift as a night watchman.
-- Shulamith Firestone, Airless Spaces, 1998

I stared at the glow of the cigarette as if in za-Zen, open-eyed meditation.
-- Michael Gurian, An American Mystic, 2000

Za-zen comes from the Japanese word za meaning "seat, seated" and zen, which originally comes from the Sanskrit word meaning "thought, meditation."

tenuity

tenuity \tuh-NOO-i-tee, -NYOO-, te-\, adjective:

1. thinness of consistency; rarefied condition.
2. the state of being tenuous.
3. slenderness.

The exceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly objects were plainly visible through it.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," 1839

There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was either pure oxygen or air, and capable therefore—unless its tenuitywas excessive—of supporting our alien life.
-- H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, 1901

Tenuity is derived from the Latin word tenuitās meaning "thinness."

protoplast

protoplast \PROH-tuh-plast\, noun:

1. Biology. a. the contents of a cell within the cell membrane, considered as a fundamental entity. b. the primordial living unit or cell.
2. a person or thing that is formed first; original; prototype.
3. the hypothetical first individual or one of the supposed first pair of a species or the like.

But whatever I am here, I am the protoplast—and that is a word you should mark well, little brother—the thing first formed by our parents as a copy to be followed afterwards.
-- Philip Baruth, The Brothers Boswell, 2013

You look like a direct descendant of our good old legendary protoplast Piast. But, just to make the picture complete, tell us something about your family
-- Stefan Korboński, Between the Hammer and the Anvil, 1981

Protoplast comes from the Late Latin word prōtoplastus which meant "the first man."

snarky

snarky \SNAHR-kee\, adjective:

testy or irritable; short.

"I am," I told her, trying not to sound snarky. "You told me just yesterday that you'd signed up for tap lessons."
-- Amy Bloom, Full of It, 2007

But I wanted to explore my attraction/repulsion to fame in a different way, and not just say snarky things about Cher or what have you.
-- Cintra Wilson, Colors Insulting to Nature, 2010

Snarky arose in the early 1900s from the verb snark which meant "to snort" and "to nag."

irredentist

irredentist \ir-i-DEN-tist\, noun:

1. a member of a party in any country advocating the acquisition of some region included in another country by reason of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties.
2. (usually initial capital letter) a member of an Italian association that became prominent in 1878, advocating the redemption, or the incorporation into Italy, of certain neighboring regions (Italia irredenta) having a primarily Italian population.

adjective:
1. pertaining to or supporting such a party or its doctrine.

Although the U.I.C. had popular support, its senior members included irredentists and Al Qaeda veterans, worrying Somalia's neighbors.
-- Xan Rice, "Now Serving," The New Yorker, Sept. 30, 2013

In Evelyn's face, I saw the travels of Marco Polo, the fall of Constantinople, the irredentist yearnings of Hungaro—Romanians.
-- Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories, 2007

Irredentist entered English in the late 1800s from the Italian word irredent which literally meant "unredeemed" but more importantly referred to an adherent of a specific political party.

国际离岸贸易操作疑难处理暨国内外资金的进出调度

《上海自贸区政策解析暨外向型企业自贸区业务如何运营》

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omnium-gatherum

omnium-gatherum \om-nee-uhm-GATH-er-uhm\, noun:

a miscellaneous collection.

...the man who performed this unkind office fancying that a dislike to the dishes could alone have given rise to such an omnium-gatherum.
-- James Fennimore Cooper, Home as Found, 1838

Foster's own room was a cramped omnium gatherum, cluttered with the paraphernalia of daily living.
-- Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope's Year, 1919

Omnium-gatherum comes from the Latin roots omnium meaning "of all" and the pseudo-Latin word gatherum meaning "a gathering."

commix

commix \kuh-MIKS\, verb:

to mix together; blend.

Was it necessary that the active gloom of such a tyrant of a father, should commix with such a passive sweetness of a will-less mother, to produce a constancy, an equanimity, a steadiness, in the daughter, which never woman before could boast of?
-- Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, 1748

This man will harass the civilized world with an insupportable despotism: he will confound and commix all things spiritual and temporal.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend, 1809

Commix is a backformation of commixt which was a combination of com- meaning "together" and the variant stem mix.

antitype

antitype \AN-ti-tahyp\, noun:

something that is foreshadowed by a type or symbol, as a New Testament event prefigured in the Old Testament.

These were but the foreshadowing of their great and glorious antitype, Christ and the gospel, which are the spiritual fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham.
-- J. W. Byers, Sanctification, 2009

The ship in danger is easily understood to be its old antitype, the Commonwealth.
-- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1704

Antitype comes from the Late Greek word antítypos which meant "the impression left by a die."

con amore

con amore \kon uh-MAWR-ee, -MAWR-ey, -MOHR-ee, -MOHR-ey, kohn; It. kawn ah-MAW-re\, adverb:

1. (italics) Italian. with love, tender enthusiasm, or zeal.
2. tenderly and lovingly (used as a musical direction).

He did not expect that he should really be preferred, con amore, to a young fellow like Adolphe.
-- Anthony Trollope, Tales of All Countries, 1861

Con amore, he went through the whole business of begging, praying, resisting excuses, explaining away difficulties, and at last succeeded in persuading Miss Harriet to allow herself to be led to the instrument.
-- Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849

Con amore entered English in the early 1700s directly from the Italian phrase of the same spelling.

maugre

maugre \MAW-ger\, preposition:

in spite of; notwithstanding.

But the angel in the dream did, and, maugre Plain Talk, put quite other notions into the candle-maker.
-- Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man, 1857

I protest, / Maugre thy strength, youth, place, and eminence, / Despite thy victor-sword and fire-new fortune, / Thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor / False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father, / Conspirant 'gainst this high illustrious prince, / And from th'extremest upward of thy head / To the descent and dust beneath thy feet, / A most toad-spotted traitor.
-- William Shakespeare, King Lear, 1623

Maugre comes from the Middle French word that literally meant "spite, ill-will."

commissure

commissure \KOM-uh-shoor, -shur\, noun:

1. a joint; seam; suture.
2. Botany. the joint or face by which one carpel coheres with another.
3. Anatomy, Zoology. a connecting band of nerve fiber, especially one joining the right and left sides of the brain or spinal cord.

See the thick middle commissure joining the two thalami, just as the corpus callosum and fornix join the hemispheres.
-- William James, "The Structure of the Brain," Writings, 1878-1899

By day the shepherd would have raised his pipe in vain, towards the long clear cut commissure of earth and sky.
-- Samuel Beckett, Molloy, 1955

Though his solution to the problem isn't the universal solvent he leads the reader to expect, his project is still a neat example of that modern commissure where Continental theory and analytic practice fuse.
-- David Foster Wallace, "Greatly Exaggerated," A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, 1997

Commissure stems from the Latin word committere meaning logically "to commit."

subjoin

subjoin \suhb-JOIN\, verb:

1. to add at the end, as of something said or written; append.
2. to place in sequence or juxtaposition to something else.

And will you give yourself the trouble of carrying similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin a list, according to his information?
-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813

We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication.
-- James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

Subjoin is derived from the Middle French word subjoindre which meant "to add at the end."

diathesis

diathesis \dahy-ATH-uh-sis\, noun:

Pathology. a constitutional predisposition or tendency, as to a particular disease or affection.

There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, Round the Red Lamp, 1894

The diathesis or mental constitution of the recipient, and the material operations which he performs on these images by virtue of thisdiathesis.
-- Edited by Robin Osborne and Jeremy Tanner, Art's Agency and Art History, 2007

Diathesis comes from the Greek word diáthesis meaning "arrangement, disposition."

roger

roger \ROJ-er\, interjection:

1. Informal. all right; O.K.
2. message received and understood (a response to radio communications).
3. (often initial capital letter) Jolly Roger.
4. (formerly used in communications to represent the letter R.)

I gave him a roger and climbed into the hatch, pushing Teddy up and out.
-- Larry Heinemann, Close Quarters, 2010

"Roger, standing by, Sandy." Not another minute passed before he heard the sound of a siren.
-- Tom Clancy, The Teeth of the Tiger, 2004

This sense of the word roger comes from the military alphabet in which the name Roger meant "received." The male given name came from the Germanic words meaning "fame" and "spear."

mufti

mufti \MUHF-tee\, noun:

1. civilian clothes, in contrast with military or other uniforms, or as worn by a person who usually wears a uniform.
2. a Muslim jurist expert in the religious law.
3. (in the Ottoman Empire) a deputy of the chief Muslim legal adviser to the Sultan.
4. (initial capital letter) Grand Mufti.

The men in mufti take the field in Goodbye Mexico, leaving behind the armed warriors and those who couldn't find where to getmufti.
-- Phillip Jennings, Goodbye Mexico, 2007

"Zdrastvuyte kak pozhivaete horosho spasibo" Entwistle rattled off in excellent imitation of Russian speech--and indeed he rather resembled a genial Tsarist colonel in mufti.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin, 1957

Mufti came into English in the late 1500s from the Arabic word of the same pronunciation. The word literally meant a person who delivers a judgment. The sense of "civilian clothing" arises from the legal adviser being a civil official who did not wear military garb.

en bloc

en bloc \ahn BLAWK; English. en BLOK\, adverb:

French. as a whole.

These houses had recently been bought en bloc by a property developer who was about to have them renovated.
-- Ruth Rendell, End in Tears, 2005

Mr Gates, after a pause, agreed to act as chairman temporarily, and Anton sat down, with a look of satisfaction which explained to Martha that she had under-estimated the danger of the entire body of respectable patrons resigning en bloc.
-- Doris Lessing, A Ripple From the Storm, 1958

En bloc entered English in the mid-1800s directly from the French phrase of the same spelling and meaning.

novitiate

novitiate \noh-VISH-ee-it, -eyt\, noun:

1. the state or period of being a beginner in anything.
2. the state or period of being a novice of a religious order or congregation.
3. the quarters occupied by religious novices during probation.
4. a novice.

Moreover, in carrier training the tests confronted the candidate, the eternal novitiate, in more rapid succession than in any other form of flying.
-- Tom Wolfe, The Purple Decades, 1982

She would study very hard in the Abbé's catechism class from now on, so that her confirmation would be perfect, and so that he would recommend her for the novitiate.
-- Angela Davis-Gardner, Felice, 2007

Novitiate comes from the Medieval Latin word meaning "novice."

clepe

clepe \kleep\, verb:

to call; name (now chiefly in the past participle as ycleped or yclept).

And, whiles I wrought, my master would leave me, and doff his raiment and don his rags, and other infirmities, and cozen the world, which he did clepe it "plucking of the goose"...
-- Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth, 2003

O, we have been advised that in Egypt lives a rare bird yclept Ibis which walks up to stroke the Crocodile with its feathers so the monster squats paralyzed.
-- Evan S. Connell, Alchymic Journals, 1991

Clepe is derived from the Old English word cleopian which is related to the Middle Low German word kleperen meaning "to rattle." The odd iteration of clepe is its past participle yclept which is its more common variant. The initial y is a vestige from Middle English.

adscititious

adscititious \ad-si-TISH-uhs\, adjective:

added or derived from an external source; additional.

These were significant appendages, to be sure; not altogether adscititious.
-- Ameen Rihani, The Book of Khalid, 2012

His delineations of character and action, if executed with ability, will have a raciness and freshness about them, which will attest their fidelity, the secret charm, which belongs to truth and nature, and with which even the finest genius cannot invest a system, ofadscititious and imaginary manners.
-- Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Clarence, 2011

Adscititious comes from the Latin word adscītus which meant "derived, assumed, foreign."

pol

pol \pol\, noun:

a politician, especially one experienced in making political deals, exchanging political favors, etc.

She said that Sexton, whose grandfather was the city's tax commissioner, ran the school like "the Brooklyn pol he was"…
-- Rachel Aviv, "The Imperial Presidency," The New Yorker, Sept. 9, 2013

That was one of his talents, that he didn't sound like a pol.
-- Jay McInerney, How It Ended, 2009

Pol arose in early 1900s in America as a shortening of politician.

skeigh

skeigh \skeekh\, adverb:

1. proudly.

adjective:
1. (of horses) spirited; inclined to shy.
2. (of women) proud; disdainful.

When thou an' I were young and skeigh, / An' stable-meals at fairs were dreigh...
-- Robert Burns, The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation, 1792

My mare is young and very skeigh…
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803

In the 1500s, skeigh originally referred to skittish behavior of horses, and it came from the Old English word scéoh meaning "shy." The sense of "proudly" arose in the 1700s.

vexatious

vexatious \vek-SEY-shuhs\, adjective:

1. causing vexation; troublesome; annoying: a vexatious situation.
2. Law. (of legal actions) instituted without sufficient grounds and serving only to cause annoyance to the defendant.
3. disorderly; confused; troubled.

The courts of law would never be so constantly crowded with petty, vexatious and disgraceful suits, were it not for the herds of pettifogging lawyers that infest them.
-- Washington Irving, A History of New York, 1809

Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or, The Whale, 1851

Vexatious entered English from the Latin word vexāre which meant "to shake, jolt, harass, annoy."

counterpoise

counterpoise \KOUN-ter-poiz\, verb:

1. to balance by an opposing weight; counteract by an opposing force.
2. to bring into equilibrium.
3. Archaic. to weigh (one thing) against something else; consider carefully.

noun:
1. a counterbalancing weight.
2. any equal and opposing power or force.
3. the state of being in equilibrium; balance.
4. Radio. a network of wires or other conductors connected to the base of an antenna, used as a substitute for the ground connection.

To be unfortunate in any respect was sufficient, if there was no demerit to counterpoise it, to turn the scale of that good man's pity, and to engage his friendship and his benefaction.
-- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749

I know what she means all right. But I know something she doesn't know. Money is a good counterpoise to beauty.
-- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, 1961

Counterpoise is from the Old French word countrepois which meant "to weigh against."

animalcule

animalcule \an-uh-MAL-kyool\, noun:

1. a minute or microscopic animal, nearly or quite invisible to the naked eye, as an infusorian or rotifer.
2. Archaic. a tiny animal, as a mouse or fly.

But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant.
-- Edward Buwler-Lytton, Zanoni, 1842

He has absolutely no idea of the prodigious personage that I am, and of the microscopic animalcule that he is in comparison.
-- Marcel Proust, translated by D. J. Enright, In Search of Lost Time, 1989, originally published in 1927

Animalcule comes directly from the Neo-Latin word animalculum meaning "a small animal."

phantasmagoric

phantasmagoric \fan-tax-muh-GAWR-ik, -GOR-\, adjective:

1. having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.
2. having the appearance of an optical illusion, especially one produced by a magic lantern.
3. changing or shifting, as a scene made up of many elements.

The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies—giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia," 1838

It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850

Phantasmagoric comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to shine." It came to English from the Old French in the 1800s