cotton - Word of the Day - 09/11/17

cotton

verb

Pronunciation

 KAH-tun
 

Definition

1 : to take a liking — used with to
2 : to come to understand — used with to or on to

Examples

"He was so much fun to have in the company. He had that warm, inviting voice. Audiences just cottoned to him." — Gary Gisselman, quoted in The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 3 Mar. 2016

"This exhibition—like many of [Jim] Henson's shows—is mainly for adults, concerned with the craft of puppetry and the expansion of broadcast media…. Henson, born in Greenville, Miss., in 1936, had an early gift for landscape drawing, but he cottoned on quickly to the potentials of a new medium—and to the branding opportunities that the medium would allow." — Jason Farago, The New York Times, 21 July 2017

Did You Know?

The noun cotton first appears in English in the late Middle Ages. It comes, via Anglo-French and Old Italian, from the Arabic word for cotton, quṭun or quṭn. In the 15th century, cotton acquired a verb use meaning "to form a nap on (cloth)." Though this verb sense is now obsolete, our modern-day use might have spun from it. In 1822, English philologist Robert Nares reported that cotton had been used to mean "to succeed" and speculated that this use came from "the finishing of cloth, which when it cottons, or rises to a regular nap, is nearly or quite complete." The meaning of cotton shifted from "to get on well" to "to get on well together," and eventually to the sense we know today, "to take a liking to." The "understand" sense appeared later, in the early 20th century.

Name That Synonym

What 6-letter verb beginning with "t" is a synonym of cotton, meaning "to come to understand," and also means "to fall suddenly and helplessly"?

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archetype - Word of the Day - 07/11/17

archetype

noun

Pronunciation

AHR-kih-type
 

Definition

1 : the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies : prototype; also : a perfect example
2 : a transcendent entity that is a real pattern of which existing things are imperfect representations : idea
3 : (psychology) an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C. G. Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual

Examples

"That archetype of the clean-cut, indefatigable and incorruptible agent was largely the invention of J. Edgar Hoover, who led the FBI for 48 years, from May 1924 to May 1972." — Vanessa Romo, NPR.org, 13 July 2017

"In Nashville, … [Shania] Twain has come to be embraced as an elder and an archetype. Carrie Underwood had to prove that she could handle one of Twain's hits when she competed on American Idol en route to becoming one of the reigning pop-country figures of the post-Shania era." — Jewly Hight, Vulture, 29 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

Archetype derives via Latin from the Greek adjective archetypos ("archetypal"), formed from the verb archein ("to begin" or "to rule") and the noun typos ("type"). (Archein also gave us the prefix arch-, meaning "principal" or "extreme," used to form such words as archenemy, archduke, and archconservative.) Archetype has specific uses in the fields of philosophy and psychology. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, for example, believed that all things have ideal forms (aka archetypes) of which real things are merely shadows or copies. And in the psychology of C. G. Jung, archetype refers to an inherited idea or mode of thought that is present in the unconscious of the individual. In everyday prose, however, archetype is most commonly used to mean "a perfect example of something."

Name That Synonym

Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of archetype: e _ _ m _ _ ar.

Merriam-Webster

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esemplastic - Word of the Day - 06/11/17

esemplastic

adjective

Pronunciation

 ess-em-PLASS-tik

Definition

: shaping or having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole

Examples

"Art achieves its impact from something Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its esemplastic power, the ability to make sense out of chaos, to 'shape into one' the many truths around us." — Teresa Jordan, The Year of Living Virtuously: Weekends Off, 2014

"The prison walls of self had closed entirely round him; he was walled completely by the esemplastic power of his imagination…." — Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, 1929

Did You Know?

"Unusual and new-coined words are, doubtless, an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater," wrote English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, 1817. True to form, in that same work, he assembled esemplastic by melding the Greek phrase es hen, meaning "into one," with plastic to fulfill his need for a word that accurately described the imagination's ability to shape disparate experiences into a unified whole (e.g., the poet's imaginative ability to communicate a variety of images, sensations, emotions, and experiences in the unifying framework of a poem). The verb intensify was another word that Coleridge was compelled to mint while writing Biographia.

Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks to complete an adjective that means "formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount": a _ _ r _ g _ _ e.

Merriam-Webster

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parable - Word of the Day - 05/11/17

parable

noun

Pronunciation

PAIR-uh-bul

 Definition

: example; specifically : a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle

Examples

The priest opened his homily by relating the parable of the Good Samaritan, from the Gospel of Luke.

"Remotely based on the 1844 Hans Christian Andersen tale 'The Snow Queen,' a parable about faith and friendship, the movie ['Frozen'] retained only the central metaphor of a woman who can freeze people's hearts with her witchcraft." — Jesse Green, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

Parable comes to us via Anglo-French from the Late Latin word parabola, which in turn comes from Greek parabolē, meaning "comparison." The word parabola may look familiar if you remember your geometry. The mathematical parabola refers to a kind of comparison between a fixed point and a straight line, resulting in a parabolic curve; it came to English from New Latin (Latin as used since the end of the medieval period, especially in scientific description and classification). Parable, however, descends from Late Latin (the Latin language used by writers in the 3rd to 6th centuries). The Late Latin term parabola referred to verbal comparisons: it essentially meant "allegory" or "speech." Other English descendants of Late Latin parabola are parole and palaver.

Word Quiz

What 6-letter noun is derived from Late Latin parabola and refers to a conference or discussion?

Merriam-Webster

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stridulate - Word of the Day - 04/11/17

stridulate

verb

Pronunciation

STRIJ-uh-layt

 Definition

: to make a shrill creaking noise by rubbing together special bodily structures — used especially of male insects (such as crickets or grasshoppers)

Examples

"When attacked from the side, the crickets stridulated and tried to bite their attacker." — Matt Walker, BBC News, 28 July 2009

"Every day throughout the year begins and ends with … insects rattling and stridulating, and birds singing their hearts out." — Alex Shoumatoff, Yale Environment 360, 18 May 2017

Did You Know?

Stridulate is one member of a word family that has its ancestry in the Latin word stridulus, meaning "shrill." The word alludes to the sharp, high-pitched sound that is produced by a number of insects—particularly crickets and grasshoppers but also certain beetles—as well as other animals, usually as a mating call or a signal of territorial behavior. Stridulus comes from stridere, which is the direct source of our noun stridor, a word found in medical dictionaries. Stridor means "a harsh, shrill, or creaking noise" and also "a harsh vibrating sound heard during respiration in cases of obstruction of the air passages."

Test Your Vocabulary

What instrument emits a high shrill sound called a skirl?

Merriam-Webster

http://creatingcharactersforfictionwriters.blogspot.com.au/

tin-pot - Word of the Day - 03/11/17

tin-pot

adjective

Pronunciation

TIN-PAHT
 

Definition

: cheap or trivial of its kind : petty, small-time, two-bit

Examples

"Every fascist, authoritarian and tin-pot dictator in history has tried to shut down dissent." — Michael Goodwin, The New York Post, 15 June 2017

"What a gaggle of tin-pot soldiers we were, the intelligent bored silly, the mediocre exhausted, and the dense frightened out of their wits." — Paul West, Harper's, January 2009

Did You Know?

Tin has never commanded as much respect as some other metals. As a reflection of this, its name has long been used in terms denoting the tawdry or petty. Tin-pot has been used for minor or insignificant things or people since the early 1800s. Tinhorn has named fakes or frauds (especially gamblers) since the second half of that century, and tin lizzie has been a nickname for an inexpensive car since Ford introduced the Model T. Another example is tin-pan, meaning "noisy, harsh, tinny." That word features in the name of the famous Tin Pan Alley, in which it evokes the tinny sound of pianos pounded furiously by musicians plugging tunes to producers.

Name That Synonym

Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of tin-pot: p _ c _ _ u _ e.

Merriam-Webster


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clew - Word of the Day - 02/11/17

clew

noun

Pronunciation

KLOO

Definition

1 : a ball of thread, yarn, or cord
2 : something that guides through an intricate procedure or maze of difficulties : clue
3  a : a lower corner or only the after corner of a sail
    b : a metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail
    c : (plural) a combination of lines by which a hammock is suspended

Examples

"High overhead, topmen scrambled to furl and unfurl sails and tend to yards and booms and spars and various clews." — Corey Kilgannon, The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2009

"But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the nature of Ernest Everhard." — Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1908

Did You Know?

The "ball of thread" meaning of clew (from Middle English clewe and ultimately from Old English cliewen) has been with us since before the 12th century. In Greek mythology, Ariadne gave a ball of thread to Theseus so that he could use it to find his way out of her father's labyrinth. This, and similar tales, gave rise to the use of clew for anything that could guide a person through a difficult place. This use led, in turn, to the meaning "a piece of evidence that leads one toward the solution of a problem." Today, the variant spelling clue, which appeared in the 17th century, is the more common spelling for the "evidence" sense, but you'll find clew in some famous works of literature. Also, clew is the only choice for the sailing senses.

Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks to complete a noun that refers to something serving as a guide to understanding or knowledge: fi _ _ _ rpo _ _.

Merriam-Webster

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