greenth
n. green vegetation; the state or quality of being green
Search Results for: in a word
In a Word
chevelure
n. a head of hair
abditive
adj. hidden
protreptic
n. a writing intended to exhort or instruct
revolute
v. to imbue with revolutionary spirit
For Histiaeus, when he was anxious to give Aristagoras orders to revolt, could find but one safe way, as the roads were guarded, of making his wishes known; which was by taking the trustiest of his slaves, shaving all the hair from off his head, and then pricking letters upon the skin, and waiting till the hair grew again. Thus accordingly he did; and as soon as ever the hair was grown, he despatched the man to Miletus, giving him no other message than this — ‘When thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, and look thereon.’ Now the marks on the head, as I have already mentioned, were a command to revolt.
— Herodotus, Terpsichore
In a Word
advigilate
v. to watch carefully; to keep vigil
cunctation
n. lateness; delay
vagarious
adj. roving; wandering; characterized by vagaries
mundivagant
adj. that roams around the world
Letter to the Times, Aug. 24, 2001:
Sir, Some years ago when I lived in Livingstone, Zambia, I received a letter from Lusaka, the capital, correctly addressed but weeks late.
Among the numerous back stamps the envelope had collected in its travels the last was Livingstone, Canada, with an inscription ‘Try Livingstone, Zambia’.
The letter had also visited Scotland and New Zealand.
Yours truly,
David H. Walton
Crowland, Peterborough
In a Word
forgettery
n. a faculty or facility for forgetting; faulty memory
ascesis
n. the practice of self-discipline
retrospection
n. the action, process, or faculty of looking back on things past
evanid
adj. liable to vanish
“King Darius, so as not to forget the harm he had received from the Athenians, had a page come every time he sat down to table and sing three times in his ear: ‘Sire, remember the Athenians.'” — Montaigne
Cato the Elder ended each speech with the phrase Carthago delenda est, “Carthage must be destroyed.”
Tertullian observed that a slave was stationed in the chariot of a triumphant Roman general to whisper in his ear, “Remember that you are human.”
A nomenclator was “a slave with a good memory who accompanied a public figure when he went out and whispered in his ear the name of anyone important he was about to meet.” (Anthony Everitt, Cicero)
Much later, Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James Farley, would keep a file on everyone Roosevelt met so that the candidate might later ask after a spouse or child. Modern politicians maintain “Farley files” for the same purpose.
In a Word
metrophobia
n. an irrational fear of poetry
In a Word
arrident
adj. pleasant
agrised
adj. terrified
presentific
adj. causing something to be present in the mind
cacology
n. a bad choice of words
Shortly after physicist Anthony French joined the MIT faculty in 1962, he was asked to teach an introductory mechanics course to hundreds of freshmen.
“I wanted to be cautious about giving it a name,” he said. “So I called it, blandly, ‘Physics: A New Introductory Course.’
“I couldn’t imagine how I could have been so stupid. The students read that as ‘PANIC’ … it was known forever afterwards as the PANIC course.”
In a Word
ambilogy
n. uncertain or doubtful meaning; ambiguity
raddled
adj. of a person: confused, fuddled
trilapse
n. a third lapse
recreant
adj. defeated
When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head — the other man’s head, I mean — then that proved that his — the first fellow’s — girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head — not his own, you know, but the other fellow’s — the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who — well, if he broke his head, then his girl — not the other fellow’s, but the fellow who was the — Look here, if A broke B’s head, then A’s girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A’s head, then A’s girl wasn’t a pretty girl, but B’s girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1886
In a Word
volant
adj. engaged in flight
espieglerie
n. impish or playful behaviour; mischief
apopemptic
adj. pertaining to leave-taking or departing
réclame
n. publicity or notoriety
In 1953, 61-year-old British ace Christopher Draper flew an Auster monoplane under 15 of the 18 bridges on the Thames, negotiating 50-foot arches at 90 mph.
“I did it for the publicity,” he told the press. “For 14 months I have been out of a job, and I’m broke. I wanted to prove that I am still fit, useful and worth employing. … It was my last-ever flight — I meant it as a spectacular swan song.” He was fined 10 guineas.
In a Word
scrutator
n. a person who investigates
ambagical
adj. obscure
butyraceous
adj. of the nature of, resembling, or containing butter
delibation
n. a slight knowledge of something
In “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” Sherlock Holmes makes an enigmatic allusion: “You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.”
He says nothing more. In The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie Klinger writes, “Numerous pastiches and analyses of the ‘Abernetty business’ have been written and are surveyed in detail in William Hyder’s ‘Parsley and Butter: The Abernetty Business.’ Hyder concludes, without foundation, that no less than murder was involved. Is it not equally likely that a business — perhaps an inn or tavern — run by the Abernetty family was ‘dreadful’ (that is, kept in poor sanitation), and that that condition was first brought to Holmes’ notice by the butter having been left out on a hot day? The connection between this observation and the ensuing investigation remains undetermined. A number of scholars consider whether and how fast parsley will sink into butter. Not surprisingly, they do not agree.”
In a Word
kirkify
v. to make like a Presbyterian church in appearance
(This is in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s English Note-Books of 1857: “Then we went to St Giles’s Cathedral, which I shall not describe, it having been kirkified into three interior divisions by the Covenanters.”)