Word of the Day in Image and Prose

The challenge: photographs and words about the word of the day from dictionary.com. Can i handle it and be creative enough to illustrate simple words? Who knows. But at least I'll expand my vocabulary.

Friday, March 25, 2005

NOOOOOOOOO

Camera is officially broken. Kodak sucks at life. Apparently there is a two week minimum on the repair time.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Copacetic

Word of the Day for Thursday March 24, 2005

copacetic
\koh-puh-SET-ik\, adjective:
Very satisfactory; fine.

Although all will seem copacetic on the CBS broadcast from Madison Square Garden in New York, there will be a big black cloud hanging over the glitzy proceedings.
--Patrick MacDonald, "Major labels struggling with huge slump out of tune with listeners," Seattle Times, February 20, 2003

Everything seemed copacetic until a favorite store -- the anchor of the street -- closed suddenly.
--Heidi Benson, "Yes, We Want No Banana," San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2001

Terry Glenn will return to the Patriots on Monday, but don't think that everything is copacetic as far as the oft-troubled receiver is concerned.
--Michael Felger, "Glenn out to right wrongs; Ready to return to Pats, despite 'bad blood'," Boston Herald, October 3, 2001


The origin of copacetic is unknown.
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synonym: The Cat's Pajamas
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antonym-life not going your way
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satisfactory:
with each other
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with the boss
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at work:
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with my parents knowing what I like, and what I won't do:
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in life- Blender boy in the house....blender boy moves out and all is copacetic!

Before:
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After:
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Copacetic in my life

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Lumpen

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 23, 2005

lumpen
\LUHM-puhn; LUM-puhn\, adjective:
1. Of or relating to dispossessed and displaced individuals, especially those who have lost social status.
2. Common; vulgar.

noun; plural lumpen, also lumpens:
A member the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum.

. . . an academic sweatshop where underpaid lumpen intellectuals slave for a pittance.
--Ashlea Ebeling, "I got my degree through e-mail," Forbes, June 16, 1997

If traditionally cricket has been the game of the elite, and football strictly for the lumpen masses, all that's changed now.
--Louisa Buck, "Fever pitch," ArtForum, October 1996

Though I appreciate that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a self-made man, having made his billions by selling the voltage of his brainpower to behemoths such as CompuServe and Yahoo!, and though I also appreciate that he has maintained his ability to mingle with the lumpen, he still is a very, very rich man.
--Sean Deveney, "Mavs make their move, but at what cost?" Sporting News, March 4, 2002

The New Russians are depicted as lumpens who have left the countryside and never fully adjusted to city life.
--Emil Draitser, "The new Russians' jokelore: Genesis and sociological interpretations," Demokratizatsiya, Summer 2001


Lumpen is from German Lumpenproletariat, "degraded stratum of the proletariat," from Lump, "a contemptible person" (from Lumpen, "rags") + Proletariat, "proletariat," from French.
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The ordinary, the common, ending with the dispossessed
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Stygian

Word of the Day for Tuesday March 22, 2005

stygian
(also Stygian) \STIJ-ee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to the river Styx, the principal river of the underworld in Greek mythology; hence, hellish; infernal.
2. Dark and dismal.

Although accounts vary, that vision, both sublime and ominous, helped give birth to "Metropolis," a cinematic landmark set in a teeming, towering city of the future, an automated, urban sprawl where the wealthy live up in the heavens and the laborers toil in the steaming, Stygian depths.
--James Verniere, "Aye, robot," Boston Herald, August 23, 2002

This month NASA has selected two proposals for a mission to that tiny frozen world 3.5 billion miles away. There, the Sun is just a small stab of light in the Stygian blackness.
--Ian Brown, "The race is on to reveal Pluto's secrets," Independent, June 22, 2001

Light is funnelled into this stygian domain through the central oculus and a pair of saucer domes.
--Catherine Slessor, "Oxford ordonnance," The Architectural Review, October 1, 1994

The gleaming steel catches the sunlight, casting a play of sparkling reflections and shadows into the Stygian, subterranean depths.
--Catherine Slessor, "Bermondsey Beacon," The Architectural Review, June 1, 2000


Stygian is from Latin Stygius, from Greek Stygios, from Styx, Styg-, "Styx."
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Shaft
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Building
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Subway or river of styx in the tracks
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Monday, March 21, 2005

Furbelow

Word of the Day for Monday March 21, 2005

furbelow
\FUR-buh-low\, noun:
1. A pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment; a ruffle.
2. Something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy ornamentation.

In a season of ruffles, frills and furbelows, simple cuts in neutral shades stand out.
--"Designers Head for Neutral Territory," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1997

Gilt. Red velvet. Brocade. Flocked wallpaper. Swags, frills, furbelows and ornamentation beyond comprehension. We're talking rococo loco.
--Liz Braun, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," Ottawa Sun, April 3, 2000

It is a story that, for all its hyper-animatedness, all its flips and furbelows of style, is confusing and wearisome.
--Christine Stansell, "Details, Details," New Republic, December 10, 2001

Patience is required to get past some of the director's more baroque cinematic touches, decorating the story's dark center with visual furbelows . . . and aural gimmicks.
--Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Movies: The Evil That Men Do," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998


Furbelow is perhaps an alteration of Provençal farbella.
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I work in the garment district...wholesaling of fug and furbelow:
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Sunday, March 20, 2005

Spoonerism

Word of the Day for Sunday March 20, 2005

spoonerism
\SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:
The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:

* We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
* The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
* It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
* Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
* When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
* Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].


Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

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Spoonerisms biggest activist
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it crawls through the fax.....it falls through the cracks
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No tail.... toe nail
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Mad bunny....Bad Money
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Saturday, March 19, 2005

Postprandial

Word of the Day for Saturday March 19, 2005

postprandial
\post-PRAN-dee-uhl\, adjective:
Happening or done after a meal.

A gourmand who zealously avoids all exercise as "seriously damaging to one's health," he had caviar for breakfast and was now having oysters for lunch, whetted with wine, as he fueled himself for a postprandial reading at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn.
--Mel Gussow, "The Man Who Put Horace Rumpole on the Case," New York Times, April 12, 1995

[W]hen I wake up in the morning, I can have my usual breakfast -- a slightly bizarre concoction of three kinds of cold cereal topped with grapes and a cup of decaf -- and then stagger back to bed for a postprandial snooze.
--Sylvan Fox, "It's Less Hectic Staying Put In One Place," Newsday, April 3, 1994


Postprandial is from post- + prandial, from Latin prandium, "a late breakfast or lunch."
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after dinner drink
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after dinner activities- sleep, tv, strolling, and dishes!
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Friday, March 18, 2005

Pecuniary

Word of the Day for Friday March 18, 2005

pecuniary
\pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\, adjective:
1. Relating to money; monetary.
2. Consisting of money.
3. Requiring payment of money.

"He lacked the finer element of conscience which looks upon Art as a sacred calling," she remembered, and because of "pecuniary necessities" he "scattered his forces in many different and unworthy directions."
--James F. O'Gorman, Accomplished in All Departments of Art

The young man of the house was absorbed in his vegetable garden and the possibilities for pecuniary profit that it held.
--Samuel Chamberlain, Clementine in the Kitchen

He sees the great pecuniary rewards and how they are gained, and naturally is moved by an impulse to obtain the same for himself.
--David J. Brewer, "The Ideal Lawyer," The Atlantic, November 1906

Over the decades, Pitt built an impressive roster of similarly well-heeled clients who stood accused by the SEC of securities fraud, misstating their finances, other pecuniary offenses.
--Jonathan Chait, "Invested Interest," The New Republic, December 17, 2001


Pecuniary comes from Latin pecuniarius, "of money, pecuniary," from pecunia, "property in cattle, hence money," from pecu, "livestock, one's flocks and herds."
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Money and still requiring payment by me...until I'm 80
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The symbols of money-Wall Street and the stock exchange
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Thursday, March 17, 2005

Cabal

Word of the Day for Wednesday March 17, 2005

cabal
\kuh-BAHL; kuh-BAL\, noun:
1. A secret, conspiratorial association of plotters or intriguers whose purpose is usually to bring about an overturn especially in public affairs.
2. The schemes or plots of such an association.

intransitive verb:
To form a cabal; to conspire; to intrigue; to plot.

If you constantly disagreed with Winters, he wrote you out of his cabal, his conspiracy against the poetry establishment.
--Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs

My father always had been a collector. There were the stamps, National Geographics, scrapbooks filled with his favorite political cartoons, and booklets justifying his belief that the world was under the control of a global cabal of elites unified by such organizations as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Freemasons.
--Frederick Kempe, Father/Land

But the new world of toys is by no means simply the product of a profit-mad cabal of toy pushers discovering new ways of exploiting the child market.
--Gary Cross, Kids' Stuff

The Anti-Federalists were not simply concerned that Congress was too small relatively--too small to be truly representative of the great diversity of the nation. Congress was also too small absolutely--too small to be immune from cabal and intrigue.
--Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights


Cabal derives from Medieval Latin cabala, a transliteration of Hebrew qabbalah, "received," hence "traditional, lore," from qabal, "to receive." The evolution in sense is: "(secret) tradition, secret, secret plots or intrigues, secret meeting, secret meeters, a group of plotters or intriguers."
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Secret conspiracy of signs across manhattan
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Political plotting
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Plotting to take over EVERY store, there are actually two across from each other on the UWS
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