Word of the Day: Esemplasy
(n.); unification; to make into one; the unifying power of imagination; accredited to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “Austen is far from superficial … Her books are intimate and compelling. She…
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word of the day
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Word of the Day: Didascalic
(adj.); intended to teach; related to teaching or education “How did it come to be … that ‘those of us for whom English is a line of work are also…
Word of the Day: Nescient
(adj.); absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance; from Late Latin ne (“not”) + sciential (“knowledge”) “Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” –William Hazlitt, from his essay “On Prejudice.” There is…
Word of the Day: Antithalian
(adj.); opposed to mirth, festivity, or fun “For many of us, these systems provided a foundation for our childhood and opened the door to vast electronic worlds to explore, hack,…
Word of the Day: Agacerie
(n.); allurement, enticement, coquetry; flirtation; from the French agacer (“to tease”) Fictional characters – unlike the messy organisms from which they derive – float free from the sordid contingencies of…
Word of the Day: Excogitate
(v.); to think out, devise or invent; to study intently in order to fully comprehend; from the Latin ex (“out of”) + co (“together”) + agitare (“to turn over”) “Many…
Word of the Day: Suppalpation
(n); gaining affection by caressing; the act of enticing by soft words; from the Latin suppalpari (“to caress a little”) Simply put, written English is great for puns but terrible…
Word of the Day: Euonymous
(adj.); having a well or suitable name From Dickens with his bitter Gradgrind to J. K. Rowling with her sour Voldemort, authors have long understood that names help establish character. —Neal…
Word of the Day: Anopisthographic
(adj.); inscribed only on one side; c. 1870-75 “As literary quarrels go, [Boisrobert’s denunciation of Homer] was a particularly good one, because it wasn’t really about technique but about the…
Word of the Day: Silvicide
(n.); a special pesticide intended for killing unwanted trees and other brush It was the kind of horrific end no one could have imagined for the demure Harkey matriarch ……
Word of the Day: Ubeity
(n.); the condition or quality of being in a place, of being located or situated; whereness or ubication; from the Latin ubi (“where”) “I love repetition. I love doing the…
Word of the Day: Atrabilious
(adj.); gloomy, morose, or morbid; bad-tempered, irritable; from the Latin agra bili(s) (“black bile”) “Caleb stopped, massaged, then stopped again, as though he felt something under the skin. ‘Too big…