Word of the Week of the Year

It’s been a while since I’ve had a word of the week. Yesterday, not knowing its meaning, I began saying “perspicuity” compulsively. I wasn’t sure if it was a real world – Jen suggested I really mean promiscuity, which is something entirely different. Thankfully, Google is smart enough to guess what I was trying to [...]

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Cut The Crap

It’s been a while since we’ve had a word of the week. The basic premise, you might remember, involves words that are stuck in my head, not words that are complicated or interesting. These words are not SAT words. Though sometimes they just so happen to be. “Triage” has got to be my word of [...]

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To Go Without

Several years ago, on our first backpacking trip, my father, brother and I ran out of water. New Hampshire was dry that summer, and once we got above 3000 feet, there was nothing. We siphoned muck out of puddles (it tasted like peanuts), but ended up going to bed with nothing. I spent the entire [...]

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Toxicity

It’s not exactly standard high-flung Word of the Week material, but “toxic” has infected my lexicon in places where it had never been before recently. The big hitter came from Wall Street, where toxic loans have led to wholesale collapse of capitalism. More recently, Bethany used it to describe my relationship tendencies – this opened [...]

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Word From The Blue

Most of the time I know my Words of The Week. If not, I at least remember hearing them. Not so with intransigent, which I neither know nor recall being exposed to. I think I prefer it in its noun form where I’d be allowed to call one who refuses to compromise an intransigent. But [...]

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Could You Rephrase The Question?

A few years ago I discussed the propensity of a prof to ask obscenely simple questions at the Hopkins corporate diploma mill. Today, for my excessively long class at work, we had a guy that asked questions that have up to a thousand different answers, none of which are completely right, but only one of [...]

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Money For Nothing

As far as I can tell, as a single American citizen making less than $75,000 per year, I will be receiving a $600 check in the mail. I can’t fathom why. I think the idea is that I’m supposed to give it to someone else, ASAP. Now, I’m no economics expert, but if I owned [...]

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Confronting Heat

I have two Words of the Week brewing at the moment. These aren’t the kinds that assert themselves non-stop for two straight days, it’s more of an accumulated impact of several weeks of occasional exposure. The first is from an unlikely source, “Extreme Weather“. Not known for its literary merits, this book is a good [...]

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Now You Tell Me

It took me until page 800 before Amy Vanderbilt finally explained to me how to arrange an audience with the Pope. You do it through some North American College in Rome. Eventually you receive a reply back (via courier) in Italian, which you, of course, speak. If you have a hard time discerning some detail, [...]

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Cows Are Kind of Scary

It’s been stuck in my head for two days now, so I’d say we have a legitimate Word of the Week this week. The word is cow. Good word, right? I’m interested in the verb, which means to be intimidated, bullied, or struck with fear because of something. The definition doesn’t mention this, but I [...]

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Time With Gaps

I just looked at the Word of the Week archive page and was flabbergasted to see that yesterday was my first WotW this year. Preposterous! I decided while I was writing yesterday’s post that uproarious isn’t that good of a word afte rall. It wasn’t really a word of the week, more a word of [...]

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Uproarious

I have a Word of The Week, at long last. It’s not even a good word, but I did jot it down on a little sticky note more than a half hour ago, which qualifies it as a special word. I approve of Adam’s purchase of season 2 of Cheers. The uproarious episodes have him [...]

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Items

1) Two words of the week today/this week – neither of which I formerly knew how to say out loud, which doesn’t matter for not many would be able to tell the difference. One is a Gibbon favorite, extirpate, meaning to annihilate completely (a good word for defeated armies etc). Next is resplendent which took [...]

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Din of Night

A word popped into my head this weekend. Words of the week are typical for me, except this isn’t a word. I don’t remember what it meant, but it was reminded of it as I slept in my brother’s room. Actually, before I mention the words, my mother has a habit of opening windows throughout [...]

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Lets Make A Deal

The plan was to leave for the Poconos at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. A relaxing long weekend with my family in the woods – I’d get reading done, get the opportunity to absorb my running death and think about my divergent future plans. It was going to be nice. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Today I’m in [...]

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Three For One

Whenever someone uses a word that is not part of my current repertoire, I run the risk of having my mind latch on to it, repeating it over and over again, until I am forced to look it up and use it regularly. It’s a blessing AND A CURSE. Anyway, inculcate induced that particular compulsive [...]

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Confusing

While describing the mental states of the parties involved in awkward social exchanges, I started collecting good words for confusion. Here’s how to use them, according to me: awestruck: this is positive, if someone leaves you awestruck you are definitely impressed. befuddle: this is more like “stumped”, in that if I befuddle you, you don’t [...]

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Unwritten Words

Some words are never written, only spoken. Take, for instance, this week’s word of the week, shyster. I’ve never seen that word in print before. I especially like the word etymology. This is not a traditional word of the week, as it has not been wedged in my brain, hammering into my consciousness at a [...]

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Stratagem Is Also A Good Word

Here’s a word of the week for you, as introduced to my head on the way to Wal-Mart after scheming for several minutes prior. Subterfuge, which I had to look up, apparently means roughly what I thought it meant. The awkward pronunciation is important, and I relish the opportunity to say “fuge” as it sounds [...]

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T As In Tom

I claim that a lot of things bother me. This really isn’t true, I merely take pleasure in whining. Bitching and moaning, those are my two favorite pasttimes. This is, of course, why I have a blog, so that I can whine to the world and the world can listen and commiserate with me in [...]

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I Am Duke Leto Artrades, Your Father

The WotW this week isn’t really a word, at least not in this language. As part of my “don’t go to class” initiative, I have been reading somewhat more. Thus far I’ve only read a handful of books, but I’ve supplemented them with a series of randomly selected short stories from a book I got [...]

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No Excuse

I now have the internet in the Ville, leaving me with no excuse for not posting. Other than, I guess, not having anything to say, but it hasn’t stopped me for, what, about 5 years, so I don’t think it should stop me now. Now, Hanlon, while defending his honor or somesuch on AE’s site [...]

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Botulism

It seems appropriate for me to post, as I haven’t done it in 4 days. I move in two days, after which time things will open up slightly. Of course, a heart stopping season of 24 starts on Sunday (ON FOX), meaning that I won’t have to snort my weekly coke for a few months. [...]

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Words For Sectarians

Someone was grappling for a word last night. Having chosen “egocentric” as her first guess, she requested a word from the resident freelance dictionary.com spokesperson…me (which people here will find amusing given my tendency to abuse words). I gave her “megalomaniacal” which is sort of like egocentric only more psychologically disturbed. In fact, I love [...]

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No, Look It Up, Really

I like the word niggling but sound like a racist whenever I use it.

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Farious Family

I have, as is my custom, had a word caught in my head constantly these last few days. Multifarious, which I had to look up, means what I thought it meant. It’s like “ambidexterous in things.” I was looking for this word a few months ago, while describing someone (or something in this case) who [...]

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Words of Wisdom

There are three words of the week this week. First, I am reading intensive exegetical commentaries again. For some reason, every thirteenth word in nearly all of the commentaries I’ve ever read has been “eschatology“. But, I have spoken of “eschatological” before, I am not prepared to speak of it again. The new word from [...]

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Unions, Big Business, and Consumer Corpulence

I don’t like economics. I don’t much care for politics either. Both are far more important than I’d like for them to be, considering how boring they are. In fact, I consider both to be immaterial in the greater scheme of things. However, they love themselves, those politicians and economists, and we all live in [...]

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Ten Things Numerically Sorted

I had been trying not to think about it. Now, though currently locked in fierce battle with an odd sort of post-partum depression, I am looking to the future. A chunk of time has just broken loose from its moorings; as it drifts aimlessly away, there’s a void left in its stead. All told, the [...]

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Of Import

For whatever it’s worth, the word of the week for this week is import, in the “carrying significance” sense. As always, I have no idea why this is the word of the week. Someone implied that I am a recipient of dictionary.com’s word of the day and steal my WotW from that. Both statements are [...]

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Exhibit A

Before I forget, requiem is the word of the week. Why? Because I had to look it up a few minutes ago. It means roughly what I thought it meant. Furthermore, mustard, 34 degree rain, traffic jams, old people in training classes, the color purple (especially in conjunction with gold), deer ticks, green peppers, vodka, [...]

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No, Seriously

It’s too soon to have another word of the week, but it’s never too early to randomly introduce the temporary category of “phrase of the week”. We’ll make it a memorial to my Grandfather Alfred/Fritz “For Crying Out Tears” Furst. How is it that he had two first names anyway? I’ve never understood that. 1) [...]

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Word, Word In My Head

It is my custom to become obsessed with words for week long chunks of time. Due to ridiculous amounts of annoyance in class and at work, however, my mind has not have the occasion to latch onto anything useful in the past few weeks. Months really. Some might even argue years. Anyway, I recently adopted [...]

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WotW

The word of the week was going to be “aplomb”, as, even though I don’t think I’ve ever used it in a sentence, it has been caught in my head for the past few days. However, recently I have used the word “untenable” several times, almost spasmodically. It is spasmodic overuse of the English language [...]

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Rebuilding Babel

As I continue to put large quantities of thought into the recent events, I have a few dangling thoughts, opinions and expected impacts that I will be sharing regardless of whether anyone wants to hear them. 1) Why are we so hellbent on rebuilding New Orleans? Now, I understand that portions of New Orleans MUST [...]

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Oxymoronic

In what is becoming a consistent, gimmicky, and altogether boring for everyone involved, tradition, the word of the week is rumored to be “monosyllabic“. Despite having rarely, if ever, said this word outloud, I love the way it sounds. Mono-sill-lab-ick. It’s that “lab” in the middle there, it just knocks you down. Plus, despite meaning, [...]

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Word of Week Frontrunner

It’s looking like mendicant is in the lead for this week. I’ll let you know.

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Words Words Everywhere

I finally have added a Word of the Week category to my moveable type (MT) interface to this blog. It’s getting to the point where a word rams its way into my head, completely out of nowhere, and I immediately recognize that it will be stuck in my head all week long. Earlier this week, [...]

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Docket, Locket, Socket

I used “docket” outloud a few days ago. It felt awkward at first, but I enjoyed it as I finished the word. Despite using “specious” twice in a 4 hour period with the same person on Monday (via email and in person), this week’s Word of the Week is “vet”, as in “I’m vetting out [...]

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For Those Keeping Track At Home

Despite perhaps never having used the word outloud or on paper in my life, “docket” is this week’s word of the week. The entire concept is a little creepy; a word ingrains itself into my subconscious and then starts popping up at random intervals throughout the day, in almost all circumstances. It’s sort of like [...]

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