zephyrean

zephyrean \zef-uh-REE-uhn\, adjective:

of, pertaining to, or like a zephyr; full of or containing light breezes.

Now, walking toward them, a gauzy, lavender shawl fluttering in her wake and her long, tight, burgundy curls flying every which way, she exuded zephyrean lightness.

-- Hyatt Bass, The Embers

Oh and her name; her name was softer than a rose petal at dawn, more yielding than the last rays of a dying sun, a zephyrean music that invoked heaven's envy.

-- Massud Alemi, Interruptions

Zephyrean first appeared in print in the 1830s, from the Greek word zéphyros referring to the west wind.

zakuska

zakuska \zuh-KOOS-kuh\, noun:

an hors d'oeuvre.

"Do you have anything for zakuska, Tractvanna?" Oleg took stock of the table: boiled potatoes, bread, canned peas and sardines, a clove of garlic.

-- Marina Sonkina, "Tractorina's Travels," Lucia's Eyes and Other Stories

I drink a shot, take a bite of marinated mushrooms in sour cream. Humankind has yet to invent any betterzakuska. Even Nanny's half-sour pickles can't hold a candle to this.

-- Vladimir Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik

This Russian word for a snack, zakuska, entered the lexicon in the mid 1880s as a derivative of kusát meaning "to bite."

yare

yare \yair\, adjective:

1. quick; agile; lively.
2. (of a ship) quick to the helm; easily handled or maneuvered.
3. Archaic. a. ready; prepared. b. nimble; quick.

I reckon I was hopin' it would take us to the landin'. She looks yare to me.

-- Jo Goodman, Crystal Passion

Faith, then, up foot! be yare, or, by the mass, I may forget that I am in some sort your captain and in some your debtor! Go!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow

Yare was used in Middle English before the year 900, but its Old English progenitor gearu meant "ready" or "prepared."

xeric

xeric \ZEER-ik\, adjective:

of, pertaining to, or adapted to a dry environment.

Tegene pointed out the subtle contouring that gradually ascended toward xeric slopes, where Lynden's army planted many surprises amidst the dry vegetation.

-- Robert Luis Rabello, The Long Journey

The range of plants selected tolerate this xeric, or very dry, regimen quite well.

-- Steven L. Cantor, Green Roofs in Sustainable Landscape Design

Xeric, a relatively young word, was coined by ecologists W.S. Cooper and A.O. Weese in 1926 to replace the word xerophytic for a lack of moisture in both plants and animals.

whipsaw

whipsaw \HWIP-saw\, verb:

1. to subject to two opposing forces at the same time: The real-estate market has been whipsawed by high interest rates and unemployment.
2. to cut with a whipsaw.
3. to win two bets from (a person) at one turn or play, as at faro.
4. (of a trailer, railroad car, etc.) to swing suddenly to the right or left, as in rounding a sharp curve at high speed.

noun:
1. a saw for two persons, as a pitsaw, used to divide timbers lengthwise.

The hour was past midnight; rumor and slander continued to whipsaw the throng.

-- Steven Pressfield, Last of the Amazons

Carter's human rights policies were thus whipsawed between moral and strategic considerations, as well as between different parts of the bureaucracy.

-- Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions

They fill the farmer full of hot air and get him to raise a big crop for them to whipsaw on the market, to trim the suckers with.

-- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

Whipsaw entered into wide usage in the 1530s from a portmanteau combination of "whip" and "saw." "Whip" is derived from the Proto Germanic wippen meaning "to flap violently." "Saw" is derived from the Old English sagureferring to a cutting tool.

varia

varia \VAIR-ee-uh\, noun:

miscellaneous items, especially a miscellany of literary works.

This volume of Children's Literature differs from others in that its articles, varia, and many of its reviews were selected to illustrate a single theme...

-- Edited by Francelia Butler, Children's Literature, Vol. 15

There go the women, off to dig up tubers or gather other varia, the chores getting done by groups that seemed to agglutinate differently each time you watched.

-- Norman Rush, Mating

Varia is the neuter or non-gendered plural of varius, a word transcribed directly from the Latin meaning "varied, different" and originally "spotted."

umber

umber \UHM-ber\, noun:

1. North England Dialect. shade; shadow.
2. an earth consisting chiefly of a hydrated oxide of iron and some oxide of manganese, used in its natural state as a brown pigment (raw umber) or, after heating, as a reddish-brown pigment (burnt umber).
3. the color of such a pigment; dark dusky brown or dark reddish brown.
4. Ichthyology. the European grayling, Thymallus thymallus.

adjective:
1. of the color umber.

verb:
1. to color with or as if with umber.

"Sir," said Gouvernail, "see ye him not? I weened that ye had seen him, for yonder he hoveth under theumber of his ships, on horseback with his spear in his hand and his shield upon his shoulder."

-- Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d'Arthur

Yet despite the scorn that often issued from Lawrence's mouth, it was in the nature of that particular shade of umber that his eyes could express a limited set of emotions: tenderness, gratitude, injury, and need.

-- Lionel Shriver, The Post-Birthday World

Beside the sense of "shade," umber more commonly describes a brown earthy pigment popular in the 1560s. The word has come full circle because the Latin root umbra refers to a "shadow" or "shade."