Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day
Words that I do not know
Pronounced: dih-TUHRG, verb
Notes: You probably know this word, but I didn’t know it existed
The word pilose means “covered with soft hairs or fur”
This word came into English in the mid-1700s
As I wrote yesterday, our word rings a faint bell, so I think I’ve run across it in reading, but I don’t recall any of the circumstances. Our word comes from the Latin word pilōsus (shaggy).
Pronounced: PIE-lohss, adj
Notes: After reading the meaning, I think I’ve run across this word somewhere, but I wasn’t able to recall the meaning – do you know it?
The word trangam means “a trinket, puzzle, or odd gadget”
This word goes back a long way; it came into English in the mid-1600s
As I noted yesterday, I have a few things that could be described as trangams in my house. The origin of this word is not known.
Pronounced: TRANG-uhm, noun
Notes: I have several of these at home (you may, too), but I didn’t know this word
The word sectile means “capable of being cut smoothly with a knife”
Our word came into English in the early 1700s
As I noted yesterday, this word is useful. Our word comes from the Latin word sectilis (cuttable).
Pronounced: SEK-till, adj
Notes: Another useful word, but I was unaware of it
The word parergon means
Our word goes back a long way to the early 1600s
In the software world, sometimes software engineers, wanting to be helpful, would create useful tools. This is a good example of a parergon. The drawback to this practice is that these hastily-written tools would get added to the official repertoire of software and have to be maintained as well. Our word comes from the Greek words para- (beside) and ergon (work).
Notes: I didn’t know this word, but it is useful
Pronounced: pa-RUHR-gahn, noun
The word boondoggle means
This word came into English in the 1930s
It is known that this is an Americanism, but the exact origin is unclear: something that is a “boon” is a favor that is sought or a benefit.
Pronounced: BOON-dog-uhl (alt: BOON-daw-guhl), noun
Notes: While I’ve heard this word used, I wasn’t sure of the precise definition
The word spread-eagle means, as a noun, “an emblematic representation of an eagle with outspread wings”. As a verb, it means
As an adjective, it means
The word came into English in the mid-1500s
It is clear that the image of an eagle with its wings spread out was became spread-eagle (in the various forms). The coat of arms of the United States of America has a spread-eagle. The boastful meaning is less clear; presumably, since the spread-eagle was a popular emblem used in heraldry, boastful or bombastic people associated certain countries using the emblem came to be called by this term.
Pronounced: [like it looks], noun/verb/adj
Notes: I knew some of the definitions, but not all of them, so it’s here
The word Parnassian means
This word came into English in the mid-1600s
Parnassus (Mount Parnassus) is a mountains range in central Greek. Our word comes from the Latin word for it: Parnassius. I’m not sure how the word came to refer to poetry.
Pronounced: par-NAS-ee-uhn, adj
Notes: This word has an interesting meaning
The word blackbird, besides the noun meaning a bird with black plumage, means (as a noun) “an indentured laborer or slave kidnapped from the South Pacific”. As a verb, it means “to engage in slave trade” or “to kidnap a person to work as an indentured laborer or slave”
Our word goes back to the mid-1300s for the bird-related definition; the other definitions came into usage in the mid-1800s.
The meaning related to birds just came from birds that were black, and thus “black bird” became “blackbird”. Apparently, the indentured laborer or slave meaning arose because the term blackbird was used for someone from the South Pacific islands. In the second half of the 1800s, these people were kidnapped to work in Peru, Australia, Fiji, and other places, and thus those meanings arose. I didn’t know any of this background, so I though I’d pass it along.
Pronounced: just like it looks, noun/verb
Notes: I think most of us know the bird called a blackbird, but there is another definition as a noun. In addition, did you know that this word was a verb?
The word tumescent means “pompous and pretentious, especially in one’s speech; filled with ideas; teeming”
Our word came into English in the late 1800s.
I don’t like the first part of the definition; pompous and pretentious are good things to ignore, but “filled with ideas” and “teeming” seem quite positive. In fact, some dictionaries have the negative and positive aspects as separate definitions. As you might guess, our word comes from Latin – specifically from the word tumēscent, a stem of tumēscēns, the present participle of tumēscere (to begin to swell)
Pronounced: too-MESS-uhnt (alt: tyoo-MESS-uhnt), adj
Notes: An interesting, useful word
The phrase chicken hawk not only refers to various hawks that are believed to prey upon chickens, but also is “a person who favors military action, yet has avoided military service”
Our phrase came into being the the mid-1800s
I have heard of a chicken hawk from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons; there were some of these cartoons (I don’t know how many) in which Foghorn was matched with a much smaller chicken hawk. I though the term referred to a specific species, but apparently not. The other definition was completely unknown to me. It comes from two slang words put together: chicken (someone who is a coward) and hawk (someone who pursues an aggressive policy). The hawk slang is usually heard in American political history when Congress was divided into “hawks” (those for war) and “doves” (those against the war).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day