columbine

columbine \KOL-uhm-bahyn, -bin\, adjective:

1. dovelike; dove-colored.
2. of a dove.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil …
-- Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605

Com forth now with thyne eyen columbyn. / How fairer been thy brestes than is wyn.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale,” The Canterbury Tales, 1387–1400

Columbine is derived from the Latin columba meaning "dove." The columbine flower was so named because of its resemblance to a cluster of doves.

razz

razz \raz\, verb:

1. Slang. to deride; make fun of; tease.

noun:
1. raspberry; any sign or expression of dislike or derision.

They razz each other over every play, throw stuff across the room, and laugh deep belly laughs over cutting remarks.
-- Elsa Kok Colopy, 99 Ways to Fight Worry and Stress, 2009

He wouldn't have razzed just me. He would have razzed my Abstract Expressionist pals, too, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Terry Kitchen and so on …
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard: A Novel, 1987

Razz is a shortened variant of raspberry, a colloquialism for a rude sound used to express mockery or contempt. It entered English in the early to mid-1900s.

toothsome

toothsome \TOOTH-suhm\, adjective:

1. pleasing to the taste; palatable: a toothsome dish.
2. pleasing or desirable, as fame or power.
3. voluptuous; sexually alluring: a toothsome blonde.

It was filled with friandises, with luscious and toothsome bits--the finest of fruits, pates, a rare bottle or two, delicious syrups, and bonbons in abundance.
-- Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899

Strictly judged, most modern poems are but larger or smaller lumps of sugar, or slices of toothsome sweet cake—even the banqueters dwelling on those glucose flavors as a main part of the dish.
-- Walt Whitman, "An Old Man's Rejoinder," 1890

Toothsome entered English in the 1560, joining the word tooth, denoting "sense, liking," with the adjective-forming suffix –some.

Salchow

Salchow \SAL-kou\, noun:

Ice Skating. a jump in which the skater leaps from the back inside edge of one skate, making one full rotation of the body in the air, and lands on the back outside edge of the other skate.

When she cinches the double salchow, the crowd cheers even louder than before.
-- Carlin Flora, "Call of the Ice," Psychology Today, 2006

Landing a difficult quadruple salchow-triple toe loop combination and attempting two additional quads, Goebel showed enough improved artistry from a year ago to win his first national title.
-- Jere Longman, "Figure Skating: Kwan and Goebel Surmount Stumbles," The New York Times, 2001

Salchow entered English courtesy of Swedish figure skater Ulrich Salchow, who invented the jump and first performed it in 1909.

moiety

moiety \MOI-i-tee\, noun:

1. a half.
2. an indefinite portion, part, or share.
3. Anthropology. one of two units into which a tribe or community is divided on the basis of unilineal descent.

Tom divided the cake and Becky ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety.
-- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876

Poor Federigo, although his necessity was extreme and his grief great, remembering his former inordinate expenses, a moietywhereof would now have stood him in some stead, yet he had a heart as free and forward as ever, not a jot dejected in his mind, though utterly overthrown by fortune.
-- Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), "The Falcon," Little Masterpieces of Fiction, 1905

Moiety comes from Old French meitiet, from Late Latin medietas, from Latin medius, "middle."

bestiary

bestiary \BES-chee-er-ee, BEES-\, noun:

a collection of moralized fables, especially as written in the Middle Ages, about actual or mythical animals.

It was pieced together into no named pattern native to this country, not star flower or flying bird of churn dasher or poplar leaf, but was some entirely made-up bestiary or zodiac of half-visionary creatures.
-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, 1997

An inexperienced heraldist resembles a medieval traveler who brings back from the East the faunal fantasies influenced by the domestic bestiary he possessed all along rather than by the results of direct zoological exploration.
-- Vladamir Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 1951

Bestiary is from the Latin bestiaries meaning "a fighter against beasts in the public entertainments." It entered English in the 1620s.

august

august \aw-GUHST\, adjective:

1. venerable; eminent: an august personage.
2. inspiring reverence or admiration; of supreme dignity or grandeur; majestic: an august performance of a religious drama.

Lafayette spoke, and bade farewell to Lamarque: it was a touching and august moment,--all heads were uncovered, and all hearts beat.
-- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (in translation), 1862

Now, deserted by his monarch, far from home, trapped in the Poder Tower laboratory as the chief alchemist involved in the longevity elixir, this august gentleman had to use all his ingenuity and cunning to simply save his own life.
-- Frances Sherwood, The Book of Splendor, 2003

August comes from the Latin augustus meaning "venerable, noble." It entered English in the 1660s.

chirk

chirk \churk\, verb:

1. Informal. to cheer (usually followed by up).
2. to make a shrill, chirping noise.

"Well, I think," said Mis' Jane Moran, "that we've hit on the only way we could have hit on to chirk each other up over a hard time."
-- Zona Gale, "Christmas: A Story", 1912

Ef there's a mortal thing I can do to help ye, or chirk ye up, I want to do it right off.
-- Rose Terry Cooke, Happy Dodd; or, She Hath Done What She Could, 1878

Chirk can be traced to the Old English cearcian meaning "to creak, gnash." It shares this root with chirp, which became the prevailing word for the noise birds make.

ailurophilia

ailurophilia \ahy-loor-uh-FIL-ee-uh, ey-loor-\, noun:

a liking for cats, as by cat fanciers.

During the past half-dozen years, a time when ailurophilia has been rampant in the land, the bookshelves have become crowded with volumes in which cartoonists, painters, writers and poets pay their respects to that most independent, most enigmatic creature,Felis domestica.
-- The New York Times Book Review, 1981

The renowned American poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) expressed his form of ailurophilia in the Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
-- Bruce Fogle, Cats, 2006

Ailurophilia combines the Greek aílouro meaning "cat" with -philia meaning "affection, affinity." In modern usage, -philia is most often used in the formation of compound words that have a general sense "unnatural attraction" or "tendency."

schatzi

schatzi \SHAHT-see\, noun:

Slang. sweetheart, darling.

He and his schatzi returned to Vienna ten days later with the complete wave equations, though the name of his muse is lost in the mists of the mountains.
-- Russell Targ, Do You See What I See?: Memoirs of a Blind Biker, 2008

Oh, Schatzie, I stopped wanting many years ago. Now I just accept.
-- Lawrence Sanders, The Anderson Tapes, 1970

Schatzi is derived from the German word for "treasure," schatz, which entered English as a term of endearment for a woman in the early 1900s.

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pluvial

pluvial \PLOO-vee-uhl\, adjective:

1. of or pertaining to rain; rainy.
2. Geology. occurring through the action of rain.

noun:
1. Geology. a rainy period formerly regarded as coeval with a glacial age, but now recognized as episodic and, in the tropics, as characteristic of interglacial ages.

Swimming in the pluvial waters, or inert and caked over by the torrid mud, he would have discovered what he would certainly have regarded as lowly, specially-modified, and degenerate relations of the active denizens of the ocean—the Dipnoi, or mud-fish.
-- H.G. Wells, “Zoological Retrogression”, 1891

Nothing enters her tomb save a little moisture, pluvial in origin, and, it may be, certain mysterious effluvia of which we do not yet know the nature.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), translated by Bernard Miall, The Life of the Ant, 2001

Pluvial is from the Latin pluvia meaning "rain, water." It shares the Proto-Indo-European root pleu meaning "to flow, to swim" with Pluto, the name of God of the underworld in classical mythology.

albumen

albumen \al-BYOO-muhn\, noun:

1. the white of an egg.
2. Botany. the nutritive matter around the embryo in a seed.

Tannic acid hardens albumen into a leathery substance of which the most courageous stomach is rightfully suspicious…
-- Myrtle Reed, The Myrtle Reed Cookbook, 1916

Don't overbeat the eggs, as an overbeaten albumen results in a less-than-perfect texture.
-- Craig Boreth, The Hemingway Cookbook, 1998

Albumen comes from the Latin word for "white," albus. It entered English around 1600.

sooth

sooth \sooth\, noun:

1. truth, reality, or fact.

adjective:
1. true or real.

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1600

But in the young man's heart there was no answering gladness, though in very sooth she was an exceeding handsome maid.
-- Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story, 1895

Sooth derives from the Old English soð meaning "truth, justice; reality." It shares this root with the word soothe, as reflected in soothe's earliest sense, "to verify."

blatherskite

blatherskite \BLATH-er-skahyt\, noun:

1. a person given to voluble, empty talk.
2. nonsense; blather.

It seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful to him …
-- Mark Twain, "A Cure for the Blues," 1893

That bubbling, breezy blatherskite, the boisterous bobolink/ Is such a deep philosopher he's far too wise to think.
-- Sam Walter Foss, "Bobolink Philosophy," Back Country Poems, 1892

Blatherskite was a popular colloquialism in the U.S. in the early 1800s, thanks in part to a Scottish song called "Maggie Lauder," which featured the word (spelled bletherskate) and was popular among soldiers during the American Revolutionary War.

maw

maw \maw\, noun:

1. the symbolic or theoretical center of a voracious hunger or appetite of any kind: the ravenous maw of Death.
2. the mouth, throat, or gullet of an animal, especially a carnivorous mammal.
3. a cavernous opening that resembles the open jaws of an animal: the gaping maw of hell.

I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.
-- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

The team of seven had been created to browse and graze through all existing writings, and to make a catalog of all that was swept into the team's collective maw.
-- Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman, 1998

Maw comes to us from the Old English maga meaning "stomach." Its figurative use first appeared in the late 1300s.

schuss

schuss \shoos\, verb:

1. Skiing. to execute a schuss.

noun:
1. a straight downhill run at high speed.

When he schussed down the shallower pistes, his skis were closely parallel and his knees were barely flexed as he rode the moguls.
-- Nigel Slater, Falcon, 1979

That farfetched combination has produced some equally far-out fashions: wait until you see that glittering sequined spacesuitschussing down the slopes.
-- Jennet Conant, Newsweek, 1985

Schuss comes to us from German word of the same spelling meaning "shot." It entered English in the 1930s.

neologize

neologize \nee-OL-uh-jahyz\, verb:

1. to make or use new words or create new meanings for existing words.
2. to devise or accept new religious doctrines.

Scientists at Northwestern University, inspired by the faux pundit’s ability to neologize, created a set of nouns for “Colbertian,” which they could use to test the effects of bilingualism.
-- Amina Khan, “Bilingualism: Stephen Colbert's 'truthiness' inspires a language,” The Los Angeles Times, 2012

In the meanwhile, necessity obliges us to neologize.
-- Thomas Jefferson, “To John Waldo,” 1813, Jefferson: Political Writings, 1999

Neologize joins the Greek neo meaning "new" with a variant on –logy, a combining form derived from the Greek logos meaning "word, speech, discourse, reason." This verb entered English in the early 1800s.

farceur

farceur \fahr-SUR\, noun:

1. a joker; wag.
2. a writer or director of or actor in farce.

A man may be happy at repartee, a merrymaker, a farceur, a jester, and yet not be a wit, although he may be esteemed one for his lively conversation, drollery, aptitude in rejoinder and equivoque.
-- John Duke Coleridge (1820 – 1894), Great Thoughts from Master Minds Vol. V, 1908

The life of a professional farceur isn't all a farce, by a long shot. This is especially true if you happen to be Collie of the Lambs Club.
-- William Collier, “When Life Is Not All a Farce,” New York Times, 1907

Farceur comes from the French word of the same spelling, which in turn is rooted in the Latin word farcire meaning "to stuff, cram."

inglenook

inglenook \ING-guhl-nook\, noun:

a corner or nook near a fireplace.

I seized his sleeve and drew him off a little into an inglenook where we could be less readily observed.
-- Sara Poole, The Borgia Betrayal, 2011

From the pile of wood, stacked at one side of the inglenook, he drew out a pair of bellows and began to blow new life into the ashes.
-- Marcia Willett, A Week in Winter, 2002

His kingdom is/ His inglenook-/ All this is his/ Who hath a book.
-- Wilbur D. Nesbit, A Book of Poems, 1906

Inglenook is of obscure origin, though etymologists associate ingle with the Gaelic aingel meaning "fire." It entered English in the 1770s.

posy

posy \POH-zee\, noun:

1. a flower, nosegay, or bouquet.
2. Archaic. a brief motto or the like, as one inscribed within a ring.

HAMLET: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA: ’Tis brief, my lord.
HAMLET: As woman’s love.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1603

This time I have to bring her in an hour a posy of the rarest flowers, and where am I to find them?
-- Andrew Lang, The Orange Fairy Book, 1906

Posy is a variant of the word poesy, meaning "poem, poetry." Sometimes called nosegays or tussie-mussies, posies were popular accessories among fashionable women in Victorian England, and, harkening the word's literary origin, became vehicles for the floral "language of love."

slake

slake \sleyk\, verb:

1. to allay (thirst, desire, wrath, etc.) by satisfying.
2. to make less active, vigorous, intense, etc.: His calm manner slaked their enthusiasm.
3. to cause disintegration of (lime) by treatment with water.

My companions never drink pure water and the manioc beer serves as much to slake their thirst as to fill their stomachs and lubricate conversation.
-- Philippe Descola, The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle, 1996

She had the money he gave her (never enough to slake her anxieties).
-- Nuala O'Faolain, Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman, 1996

Slake comes from Middle English slaken, "to become or render slack," hence "to abate," from Old English slacian, from slæc, "slack."

galligaskins

galligaskins \gal-i-GAS-kinz\, noun:

1. leggings or gaiters, usually of leather.
2. loose hose or breeches worn in the 16th and 17th centuries.

He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
-- Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle, 1819

In galligaskins and filthy leather, his hat lost, his hair all elf-locks, he staggered toward WS.
-- Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life, 1964

Galligaskins is of obscure origin, though it's often associated with the now-obsolete French word garguesques. It entered English in the 1570s.

boffin

boffin \BOF-in\, noun:

a scientist or technical expert.

A brilliant boffin — well, everyone attached to Tea Clipper was brilliant in one way or another.
-- Tom Clancy, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, 1988

Two years thinking of nothing else. Nobel laureate, balding boffin, government appointee, in the dock, fighting to stay out of jail.
-- Ian McEwan, Solar, 2010

Boffin arose in the early 1940s. Though there are many hypotheses about its etymology, its origin remains unknown.

sessile

sessile \SES-il, -ahyl\, adjective:

1. Zoology. permanently attached; not freely moving.
2. Botany. attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing directly from the stem.

And I was afraid of being grounded, sessile—stuck in one spot for eighteen years of oboe lessons and math homework that I couldn’t finish the first time around.
-- Ariel Levy, "Thanksgiving in Mongolia," The New Yorker, Nov. 18, 2013

Alfred was stretched out his full length in the sword of sun that shone through the thick branches of the sessile oak trees.
-- Catherine Coulter, Rosehaven, 1997

Sessile stems from the Latin word sessilis which had a range of meanings including "fit for sitting on, low enough to sit on, and dwarfish (when referring to plants)." It entered English in the early 1700s.