Category: Word of the Day

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Word of the Day – Parvenu

  • Noun: Parvenu

    1. a person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class
  • Synonyms:
    1.  upstart
    2. nouveau riche
  • Usage:
    1. “’I brought the old guys so that my drives look that much longer,’ Watson joked. But we prodded. No, really, what’s the deal? Nothing against these guys, but most tour pros are surrounded by agents, managers, instructors, equipment reps, siblings, former college teammates and general parvenus. (Some pros have enough lackeys to field a softball team.)”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading an Internet article: What would a tour pro shoot at your course? Bubba Watson helps us find out

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Word of the Day – Exogamy

  • Noun: Exogamy

    1. marriage outside of a specific group especially as required by custom or law
  • Synonyms:
    1. marriage
    2. wedlock
    3. spousal
    4. relationship
    5. intermarriage
    6. matrimony
    7. union
  • Usage:
    1. “’Most societies,’ she went on, ‘practice both exogamy and endogamy–a man must marry outside his family but inside his nation, race, religion, or some large group, and you Free Traders are no exception; you must cross to another moiety but you can’t marry fraki.'”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Word of the Day – Parkour

  • Noun: Parkour
    1. the activity or sport of moving rapidly through an area, typically in an urban environment, negotiating obstacles by running, jumping, and climbing
  • Synonyms:
    1.  none found… that were consistent with the definition
  • Usage:
    1. “Runners are the messengers of the future who practice parkour to deliver underground messages to revolutionary factions in the city. Free Running is an exercise/sports game based on the Parkour urban game where athletes use their surroundings to maneuver around areas.”
  • Encountered:
    1. My sadistic spouse, the Mistress Robin, for Christmas gave poor little old OCD me a daily calendar of puzzles, well knowing that I could not let them go unsolved, thus driving me stark raving mad.  Fortunately most of the puzzles are reasonably simple.  The one for April 6th was a puzzle  of word fragments that resulted in 20 words with a sports theme.  I was down to par and kour, either order did not make sense to me so I peeked at the answer.  I then had to look up the definition of parkour.  I have learned something new, I can go home now?

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Word of the Day – Phratry

  • Noun: Phratry

    1. a kinship group forming a subdivision of a Greek phyle
    2. a tribal subdivision specifically : an exogamous group typically comprising several totemic clans
  • Synonyms:
    1.  sept
    2. lineage
    3. kinfolk
    4. pedigree
    5. blood line
  • Usage:
    1. “You people call yourselves a ‘family’ but the grouping is a phratry.“
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Word of the Day – Epexegesis

  • Noun: Epexegesis — Adverb: Epexegetically
    1. additional explanation or explanatory matter
  • Synonyms:
    1. annotation
    2. comment
    3. commentary
    4. gloss
  • Usage:

“’For example, there’s a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There’ll be a whole stack of long words stored just this purpose.

‘Where?’

‘In the word-memory section,’ he said, epexegetically.

  • Encountered:
    1. While reading the short story, The Great Automatic Grammatizator by Ronald Dahl.

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Word of the Day – Sept

  • Noun: Sept
    1. a branch of a family
  • Synonyms:
    1. family
    2. family line
    3. folk
    4. kinfolk
    5. kinsfolk
  • Usage:
    1. “Some fraki family–if fraki have families. So we gave him a family–our own, clan and sept.”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Word of the Day – Dingle

  • Noun: Dingle
    1. a small wooded valley
  • Synonyms:
    1. dale
    2. dell
    3. vale
    4. valley
    5. glen
  • Usage:
    1. “The hobbits saw that they were descending into a great dingle, almost as round as a bowl, very wide and deep crowned at the rim with the high dark evergreen hedge. “
  • Encountered:
    1. While rereading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for the umpteenth time

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Word of the Day -Temerity

  • Noun: Temerity

    1. unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger or opposition : rashness, recklessness
    2. a rash or reckless act
  • Synonyms:
    1. audaciousness
    2. audacity
    3. brashness
    4. brazenness
    5. cheek
    6. chutzpah (also chutzpa or hutzpah or hutzpa)
    7. effrontery
    8. gall
    9. nerve
    10. presumptuousness
    11. sauciness
  • Usage:
    1. “You certainly have a high degree of temerity snoring like that. I was surprised a bear did not think it was a mating call.”
  • Encountered:
    1. While backpacking in the Ozark National Forest with my brother, Dictionary Dude,  I remarked on our rising that he was putting us both in danger with his snoring… tee hee hee.  Then being brothers we begin to argue over the definition of the word.  His snoring probably worked the other way, scaring off all wildlife for a mile radius and a mile and half downwind.

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Word of the Day – Exegesis

  • Noun: Exegesis
    1.  exposition, explanation– especially : an explanation or critical interpretation of a text
  • Synonyms:
    1. clarification
    2. construction
    3. elucidation
    4. explanation
    5. explication
    6. exposition
    7. illumination
    8. illustration
    9. interpretation
  • Usage:
    1. “Kripal’s book Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions weaves together these various strands of his work. Part memoir, part exegesis, it’s a wide-ranging and subversive reinterpretation of religion. And, I might add, it’s like no other book I’ve read.”
  • Encountered:
    1. Reading a review of Kripal’s book Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions in Los Angles Review of Books.

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Word of the Day – Plinth

  • Noun: Plinth

    1. a : the lowest member of a base : subbase
      b : a block upon which the moldings of an architrave or trim are stopped at the bottom
    2.  a usually square block serving as a base broadly : any of various bases or lower parts
    3. : a course of stones forming a continuous foundation or base course
  • Synonyms:
    1. podium
    2. base
    3. bed
    4. bottom
    5. foot
    6. foundation
    7. stand
    8. substructure
    9. support
  • Usage:
    1. “Well… perhaps we can put a statue of you on one of those empty plinths.“
  • Encountered:
    1. Listening to a podcast of Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell me! Chatting with a contestant from Richmond, Virginia before the contest Peter Sagal asked about the confederate statues being removed in Richmond.  He went on to tell the contestant that if he won they might put a statue of him on one of the empty plinths.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day