Category: Word of the Day

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Word of the Day – Asperity

  • Noun: Asperity
    1. roughness of manner or of temper :  harshness of behavior or speech that expresses bitterness or anger He asked with some asperity just what they were implying.
    2. rigor, severity    … whether hearing herself described as a ‘lovely woman’ softened the asperity of her grief … — Charles Dickens
    3. roughness of surface :  unevenness; also :  a tiny projection from a surface the asperities of the tongue
    4. roughness of sound
  • Synonyms:
    1. harshness
    2. sharpness
    3. abrasiveness
    4. roughness
    5. severity
    6. acerbity
    7. astringency
    8. tartness
    9. sarcasm
  • Usage
    • “Someone Trump deemed fit to be a spokesman for him appeared on television to put a tasty dressing on her employer’s word salad: “What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?” To which a retired Army colonel appearing on the same program replied with amazed asperity: “The point of the nuclear triad is to be afraid to use the damn thing .”
  • Encountered

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Word of the Day – Amanuensis

  • Noun:
    1. plural amanuenses –  a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another; secretary
  • Synonyms:
    1. secretary
    2. stenographer
    3. transcriber
    4. scrivener
  • “But his deteriorating eyesight limited his diplomatic travels. By 1654, Milton was completely blind. For the final 20 years of his life, he would dictate his poetry, letters and polemical tracts to a series of amanuenses – his daughters, friends and fellow poets.”
  • Encountered

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Word of the Day – Mendicant

Mendicant

  • Noun: Mendicant
    1. someone (such as a member of a religious group) who lives by asking people for money or food
  • Synonyms:
    1. beggar
    2. monk
    3. panhandler
    4. pauper
    5. vagabound
  • Usage:

‘”This mendicant insists upon speaking to you, and pretends that you will be very glad to see him.”’

  • Encountered:

Reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

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Word of the Day – Augury

Augury

  •  Noun: Augury
    1. divination from auspices or omens; also : an instance of this
    2. omen, portent
  • Synonyms:
    1. Bodement
    2. Cast
    3. Forecast
    4. Foretelling
    5. Predicting
    6. Presaging
    7. Prognosis
    8. Prognostic
    9. Prognosticating
    10. Prognostication
    11. prophecy
    12. soothsaying
  • Usage:

“This smile appeared to d’Artagnan to be of bad augury.”

  • Encountered:

Reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

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Word of the Day – Cabal

There's_no_cabal

  • Noun: Cabal
    1. the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government); also :  a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues
    2. club, group
  • Synonyms:
    1. clique
    2. faction
    3. coterie
    4. cell
    5. sect
    6. junta
    7. camarilla
  • Usage:

“Does my lord seriously wish me to name any one who was mixed up in the cabals of that day?”

  • Encountered:

While reading Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

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Word of the Day – Pettifogger

pettifogger

  •  Noun: Pettifogger
    1. a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable :  shyster
    2. one given to quibbling over trifles
  • Synonyms:
    1. Dishonest
    2. Fraud
    3. Corruption
    4. Cheating
    5. Deception
    6. Deceit
    7. Gerrymandering
  • Usage:

“He owed me for the councillor, the pettifogger!”

  • Encountered:

While reading Twenty Years After by Alexandre

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Word for the Day – Manumission

manumission

  •  Noun: Manumission
    1. the act or process of manumitting; especially : formal emancipation from slavery
  • Synonyms:
    1. emancipation
    2. liberation
    3. release
    4. rescue
  • Usage:

“However, especially after 1800, most manumissions involved select slaves, and they were often the mixed-race relatives, in one way or another , of the master.”

  • Encountered:

While reading Colors Matters edited by Kimberly Jade Norwood

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Word of the Day – Cupidity

Cupidity

  • Noun: Cupidity
    1. inordinate desire for wealth : avarice, greed
    2. strong desire : lust
  • Synonyms:
    1. Greed
    2. Avarice
    3. Covetousness
    4. Rapacity
    5. Materialism
    6. Mammonism
    7. Money-grubbing
  • Usage:

“Nevertheless, knowing the weakness of her husband, and more particularly his cupidity, she did not despair of bringing him round to her purpose.”

  • Encountered:

Reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

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Word of the Day – Loquacious

  •  Noun:  LoquaciousGarrulous
    1. full of excessive talk :  wordy
    2. :  given to fluent or excessive talk
  • Synonyms:
    1. Talkative
    2. Voluble
    3. Chatty
    4. Communicative
    5. Garrulous
  • Usage:

“Mr. Munck is a husky, loquacious man who lives about an hour south of Copenhagen.”

  • Encountered:

 While reading a New York Times editorial: Denmark’s Drug-Free Pigs

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Word of the Day – Mazophilia

breasts

  • Noun: Mazophilia
    1. A paraphilia, not formally recognised in the DSM-IV, in which sexuoeroticism hinges on the female partner’s/partners’ breasts to the virtual exclusion of other physical features.
  •  Synonyms:
    1. none found
  • Usage:

“Breast fetishism is clinically known as “mazophilia.” It falls under the DSM category of partialism, meaning an exclusive focus on one part of the body. Dr. Anil Aggrawal refers to breast partialists as those with, “an exclusive or almost exclusive reliance on breasts as a stimulus for sexual arousal.” There are a number of categories breast partialists can fall into. A simple Google search demonstrates just how wide the community spans. ”

  • Encountered:

Article on AlterNet.org : Adult Breast Feeding, Anyone? Inside the World of Breast Fetishism (Article no longer there)

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