Word of the Day in Image and Prose: February 2005

Incipient

Word of the Day for Monday February 28, 2005

incipient \in-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:
Beginning to exist or appear.
Main Entry: in·cip·i·ent
Pronunciation: -&nt
Function: adjective
: beginning to come into being or to become apparen

Also, improved diagnostic techniques can alert individuals to incipient illnesses.
--James Flanigan, "Patients' Rights and Health-Care Costs Are Expanding Together," Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1999

Shiv gradually became aware that he was onto something big, bigger than anything he had ever done before. He was nudged by an incipient awareness that perhaps it was even too big for him.
--Ken Kalfus, Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies

She sighed for him; so young, and yet so passé, and with an incipient beer belly.
--Shena MacKay, The Artist's Widow

Sir George devoted much of his energies to worrying about money and was preoccupied by thoughts of his incipient pauperdom.
--Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell

Incipient is derived from Latin incipere, "to undertake, to begin" (literally "to take in"), from in-, "in" + capere, "to take." It is related to inception, "beginning, commencement."
===============================================

incipient blizzard!

Paean

Word of the Day for Sunday February 27, 2005

paean \PEE-uhn\, noun:
1. A joyous song of praise, triumph, or thanksgiving.
2. An expression of praise or joy.

Bud Guthrie had written a paean to the grizzly, calling it the "living, snorting incarnation of the wildness and grandeur of America."
--David Whitman, "The Return of the Grizzly," The Atlantic, September 2000

If you look at what British writers were saying about England before and after the war, you read for the most part a seamless paean to the virtues of the nation's strength and identity.
--Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot

Paean comes from Latin paean, "a hymn of thanksgiving, often addressed to god Apollo," from Greek paian, from Paia, a title of Apollo.

From wikipedia:
Such songs were originally addressed to Apollo, and afterwards to other gods, Dionysus, Helios, Asclepius. About the 4th century the paean became merely a formula of adulation; its object was either to implore protection against disease and misfortune, or to offer thanks after such protection had been rendered. Its connection with Apollo as the slayer of the Python led to its association with battle and victory; hence it became the custom for a paean to be sung by an army on the march and before entering into battle, when a fleet left the harbour, and also after a victory had been won.
====================================================
Pronounciation- the dog is Pee-uhn

Ancient battle song:

Spelled out:

From TV-an example:

Mulct

Word of the Day for Saturday February 26, 2005

mulct \MULKT\, noun:
A fine or penalty.
transitive verb:
1. To punish for an offense or misdemeanor by imposing a fine or demanding a forfeiture.
2. To obtain by fraud or deception.
3. To defraud; to swindle.

Officials repaid such loans by mulcting the public in a variety of legal and extra-legal ways.
--William H. McNeill, A World History

The fact that major corporations don't have to pay their own way, and instead are able to enlist legislators to mulct common citizens -- and businesses with more modest Washington connections -- deforms the entire political system.
--Doug Bandow, "The Bipartisan Scandal of U.S. Corporate Welfare"

State lawmakers and state courts . . . [have] ditched old common law rules so as to charge deep-pocket defendants with harms that were once considered other people's fault, thus making it thinkable to mulct automakers for the costs of drunk drivers' crashes
--Walter Olson, "Firing Squad," Reason, May 1999

Mulct comes from Latin multa, "a fine."

n : money extracted as a penalty [syn: fine, amercement] v 1: deprive of by deceit; "He swindled me out of my inheritance"; "She defrauded the customers who trusted her"; "the cashier gypped me when he gave me too little change" [syn: victimize, swindle, rook, goldbrick, nobble, diddle, bunco, defraud, scam, gyp, con] 2: impose a fine on; "he was fined for littering"
=============================================
Fine/Punish:

To defraud/swindle:

(what is charged over what is paid....defraud by unfair markup)

Blackguard

Word of the Day for Friday February 25, 2005

blackguard \BLAG-uhrd\, noun:
1. A rude or unscrupulous person; a scoundrel.
2. A person who uses foul or abusive language.

adjective:
Scurrilous; abusive; low; worthless; vicious; as, "blackguard language."

transitive verb:
To revile or abuse in scurrilous language.

Douglas was not a saint, though, so his behaviour and attitude were, as he wrote, 'neither better nor worse than my contemporaries -- that is to say, [I became] a finished young blackguard, ripe for any kind of wickedness'.
--Douglas Murray, Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas

The years, as time went on, imparted to him that peculiar majesty that white-haired blackguards, successful (and unpunished) criminals, seem generally to possess.
--Saul David, Prince of Pleasure

Monroe wondered, but did not ask, what could have driven a young lady of such fine bearing and aristocratic attraction to leave home at a tender age and follow the fortunes of a blackguard like Reynolds.
--William Safire, Scandalmonger

When we want to talk friendly with him, he will not listen to us, and from beginning to end his talk is blackguard.
--Tecumseh, quoted in Tecumseh: A Life, by John Sugden

Blackguard is from black + guard. The term originally referred to the lowest kitchen servants of a court or of a nobleman's household. They had charge of pots and pans and kitchen other utensils, and rode in wagons conveying these during journeys from one residence to another. Being dirtied by this task, they were jocularly called the "black guard."
=======================================================
Pronounciation:

Origin:

Prone to bad language:

adjective:

=====================================================
Although most cartoons pass through history without note, a blackguard like Southpark: Bigger, Longer, Uncut gets noted into the annals of the Guiness Book of World Records with: Most Swearing In An Animated Movie (81 minutes, contains 399 swear words and 128 offensive gestures).

Personified in song:
http://www.lyricsdir.com/n/nwa/id-rather-fuck-you.php

Eschew

Word of the Day for Thursday February 24, 2005

eschew \es-CHOO\, transitive verb:
To shun; to avoid (as something wrong or distasteful).

In high school and college the Vassar women had enjoyed that lifestyle, but afterward they had eschewed it as shallow.
--Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman

While teaching in Beijing, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang in the late 1920s, he helped launch what became known as the "new poetry" movement, which eschewed traditional forms and encouraged topics based on everyday life.
--Bruce Gilley, Tiger on the Brink

Finally, the first American diplomats . . . made a point of eschewing fancy dress, titles, entertainments, and all manner of protocol, so as to be walking, talking symbols of republican piety.
--Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State

Eschew comes from Old French eschiver, ultimately of Germanic origin.
===========================================================

I'm eschewing my responsibilities to this project today, due to my being cursed with the thing called a "flu."

Mellifluous

Word of the Day for Wednesday February 23, 2005

mellifluous \muh-LIF-loo-us\, adjective:
Flowing as with honey; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.

The balladeer whose mellifluous voice serenaded two generations of lovers.
--Margo Jefferson, "Unforgettable," New York Times, December 26, 1999

The tones were high-sounding, mellifluous, as if the speaker was reading from a book of old English verse while holding back any trace of sentiment or emotion.
--Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

I picked up more mellifluous words when a family friend came over to teach me some Chilean music on my guitar.
--Edward Hower, "No Frogs Allowed," New York Times, January 30, 2000

Mellifluous comes from Latin mellifluus, from mel, "honey" + fluus, "flowing," from fluere, "to flow."

Synonyms: canorous, dulcet, melodious, sweet.
============================================================

=============================================================

Perforce

Word of the Day for Tuesday February 22, 2005

perforce \pur-FORS\, adverb:
By necessity; by force of circumstance.

It will be an astonishing sight, should it come to pass, and even those of us who have followed every twist and turn of this process will perforce rub our eyes.
--"Unionists sit tight as the poker game nears its climax," Irish Times, July 10, 1999

. . . the error of supposing that, because everything indeed is not right with the world, everything must accordingly be wrong with the world; the error of supposing that, because we are plainly not a race of angels, we must perforce be a race of beasts.
--James Gardner, "Infinite Jest (book reviews)," National Review, June 17, 1996

Perforce comes from French par force, "by force."
=======================================================

=======================================================
With the ending of social security, the i generation perforce have other means of support for retirement.

Caffeine addiction perforce created a demand for any quick fix. Hence the triple venti no whip skim mocha has become an accepted drink of choice, and propogates the expansion of the Starbucks empire.

Faineant

Word of the Day for Monday February 21, 2005

faineant \fay-nay-AWN\, adjective:
Doing nothing or given to doing nothing; idle; lazy.

noun:
A do-nothing; an idle fellow; a sluggard.

Yet if nonhunters ever knew how many properly dressed, entirely palatable big-game carcasses wind up in dumpsters because someone was simply too faineant to butcher and cook and eat an animal he could find the time and energy to shoot and kill, hunting would be in even greater jeopardy than it is today.
--Thomas McIntyre, "The meaning of meat," Sports Afield, August 1, 1997

According to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Charles II was no faineant half-wit but a conscientious and reflective king.
--David Gilmour, "The falsity of 'true Spain,'" The Spectator, July 22, 2000

A faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
--Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

Faineant is from French, from Middle French fait, "does" + néant, "nothing."
--------------------------------------

-------------------------------------
Without goals, without a reason to wake, a faineant lifestyle is born.

Cavalcade

Word: Cavalcade
3 entries found for cavalcade.
cav·al·cade
Pronunciation Key (kvl-kd, kvl-kd)
n.

1. A procession of riders or horse-drawn carriages.
2. A ceremonial procession or display.
3. A succession or series: starred in a cavalcade of Broadway hits.

[French, from Old French, from Old Italian cavalcata, from cavalcare, to ride on horseback, from Medieval Latin caballicre, from Latin caballus, horse.]
------------------------------------------------------------
Cavalcade of toys

-------------------------------------------------------------
Bad Poetry example of Cavalcade:

As the dark surrounded her, penetrating
and the emptiness grew
annihiliting life to build a void
a cavalcade of thoughts bloomed, pushing,
consuming
emptying.
Oh to stop that hurt within
to step out of the shadows
and make the rain stop
and at long last, the spring begin.

Cavalcade of sentences
The recent cavalcade of press on podcasts has made the medium flourish and become the new soundtrack for hipsters and technonerds.

As the celebration filled the streets and the victorious soldiers marched through town, his parents turned their backs to the cavalcade beginning, missing their son who was not to return home.

As each instrument chimed in, a cavalcade of sound filled the chamber creating a symphony.