kibitzer - Word of the Day - 31/01/17

kibitzer

noun

Pronunciation

KIB-it-ser

Definition

: one who looks on and often offers unwanted advice or comment; broadly : one who offers opinions

Examples

It wasn't long after they bought their house that Dana and Regan heard from kibitzers in the neighborhood offering tips on design and remodeling.

"'Bill [Clinton] can't help himself from giving advice. He loves the game. He's the great kibitzer." — Roger Stone, quoted in The New York Times, 6 Nov. 2016

Did You Know?

The Yiddish language has given English some particularly piquant terms over the years, and kibitzer (or kibbitzer) is one such term. Kibitzer, from the Yiddish kibitser, came to that language from the German word kiebitzen, meaning "to look on (at cards)." Kiebitzen may or may not be derived from a German word for "lapwing," a type of bird noted for its shrill and raucous cry. (We can speculate that the bird's cry reminded people of the shrill commentary of onlookers at card games.) The word became more popular and widespread after the 1929 play The Kibitzer came out. Although kibitzer usually implies the imparting of unwanted advice, there is a respectable body of evidence for a kibitzer as a person simply making comments.

Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks to complete a word for a troublesome meddler: b _ t _ _ n _ ky.


Merriam-Webster

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fastidious - Word of the Day - 30/01/17

fastidious

adjective

Pronunciation

fass-TID-ee-us

Definition

1 a : having high and often capricious standards : difficult to please
   b : showing or demanding excessive delicacy or care
   c : reflecting a meticulous, sensitive, or demanding attitude
2 : having complex nutritional requirements

Examples

"I may have thrown in a little thing here or there, but I'm pretty fastidious about sticking to the script if I like it…." — Michael Shannon, Screen International, 21 Nov. 2016

"The luckiest house cats reside in homes where they can stalk tiny rodents, but that's not always the case for felines who cohabit with fastidious modern-day humans. The menu is more likely to be a can of Salmon Surprise, and food is always plentiful." — Jessica Firger, Newsweek, 7 Oct. 2016

Did You Know?

There's nothing offensive about fastidious workmanship, and yet the word fastidious traces to the Latin noun fastidium, meaning "aversion" or "disgust." Fastidium itself is probably a combination of the Latin words fastus, meaning "arrogance," and taedium, meaning "irksomeness" or "disgust." (Taedium also gave us our tedium.) In keeping with its Latin roots, fastidious once meant "haughty," "disgusting," and "disagreeable," although those uses are now archaic or obsolete. Today, the word is most often applied to people who are very meticulous or overly difficult to please, or to work which reflects a demanding or precise attitude.

Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of fastidious: p _ r _ _ ic _ e _ y.


Merriam-Webster

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macerate - Word of the Day - 29/01/17

macerate

verb

Pronunciation

 MASS-uh-rayt

Definition

1 : to cause to waste away by or as if by excessive fasting
2 : to soften by steeping or soaking so as to separate the parts

Examples

"Absinthe is made by macerating herbs and spices … with the grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) that gives the drink its name." — Julia Reed, Newsweek, 12 Apr. 2010

"Choose whatever berries you'd like for a topping, and let them macerate in the sugar until they yield a little syrup." — Dorie Greenspan, The Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2016

Did You Know?

Macerate is derived from the Latin verb macerare, which means "to soften" or "to steep," and, in Late Latin, can also mean "to mortify (the flesh)." Macerate first entered English in the mid-1500s to refer both to the wasting away of flesh especially by fasting and to softening or steeping. A few other manifestations sprouted thereafter from the word's figurative branch (e.g., the 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne once wrote of "a city so macerated with expectation"); however, those extensions wilted in time. Today, the "steeping" and "soaking" senses of macerate saturate culinary articles (as in "macerating fruit in liquor") as well as other writings (scientific ones, for instance: "the food is macerated in the gizzard" or "the wood is macerated in the solution").

Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks to complete a verb that means "to make tender": i _ _ ene _ _ te.


Merriam-Webster

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dander - Word of the Day - 28/01/17

dander

noun

Pronunciation

DAN-der

Definition

1 : dandruff; specifically : minute scales from hair, feathers, or skin that may be allergenic
2 : anger, temper

Examples

Farrah liked dogs, but she couldn't own one because she was allergic to pet dander.

"If you had to start a new Western state from scratch and you got to choose a natural landmark that would become its symbol—something that could drive tourism and that you might name the capital city after—would you choose the Great Salt Lake? People get their dander up when I ask things like that." — Jay Evensen, The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2016

Did You Know?

How did dander acquire its "temper" sense? Etymologists have come up with a few possibilities, but nothing is known for sure. Some experts have proposed, tongue-in-cheek, that the meaning stems from the image of an angry person tearing out his or her hair by the fistful, scattering dandruff in the process. Some think it may come from a West Indian word dander, which refers to a kind of ferment and suggests "rising" anger (in English, ferment can mean either "an agent capable of causing fermentation" or "a state of unrest or excitement"). Yet another proposed possibility is that the "anger" sense was imported to America by early Dutch colonists and is from their phrase op donderen, meaning "to burst into a sudden rage."

Name That Synonym

Fill in the blanks to complete this synonym of dander meaning "temper": h _ c _ l _ s.

Merriam-Webster

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omnibus - Word of the Day - 27/01/17

omnibus

adjective

Pronunciation

AHM-nih-bus

Definition

1 : of, relating to, or providing for many things at once
2 : containing or including many items

Examples

"Michael Counts … invites you on a blind date with 17 playwrights. They have taken over the Lower East Side club Fat Baby for this immersive, omnibus evening, which features an array of [one-act plays] describing contemporary courtship." — The New York Times, 4 July 2014

"For the last several years, Congress has been prone to passing … omnibus spending bills that pack many smaller, regular appropriations bills into one, instead of new, individual bills each fiscal year." — Ariella Phillips, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 21 Dec. 2016

Did You Know?

The adjective omnibus may not have much to do with public transportation, but the noun omnibus certainly does—it not only means "bus," but it's also the word English speakers shortened to form bus. The noun omnibus originated in the 1820s as a French word for long, horse-drawn vehicles that transported people along the main thoroughfares of Paris. Shortly thereafter, omnibuses—and the noun omnibus—arrived in New York. But in Latin, omnibus simply means "for all." Our adjective omnibus, which arrived in the mid-1800s, seems to hark back to that Latin omnibus, though it may also have been at least partially influenced by the English noun. An "omnibus bill" containing numerous provisions, for example, could be likened to a bus loaded with people.

Test Your Vocabulary

What 3-letter word is the name for an omnibus conductor or for a rude and selfish man?

Merriam-Webster

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

barbican - Word of the Day - 26/01/17

barbican

noun

Pronunciation

BAR-bih-kun

Definition

: an outer defensive work; especially : a tower at a gate or bridge

Examples

"He heard the voices of the sentries in the barbican as they conversed with the newcomers." — Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mad King, 1926

"The result is an honest-to-goodness fairy-tale castle that sits perched on a hilltop, guarding against invaders high above Malibu's coastline. There are turrets, barbicans and winding stone steps that lead to circular rooms." — Ann Brenoff, The Los Angeles Times, 18 Feb. 2007

Did You Know?

You've heard of moats and drawbridges, but barbicans may be unfamiliar. Those stone outworks stand in front of the gate of a castle or bridge and historically helped prevent invaders from gaining access to the main entryway. Up to a point, the case for the history of the word barbican is well fortified. It is clear that English speakers seized the term from the Anglo-French barbecane, which in turn had been taken from the Medieval Latin barbacana (both of those words had the same meaning as the modern word). The etymological path crumbles from there, however. Some speculate that the ultimate ancestor of barbican might lie in a Persian phrase meaning "house on the wall," but that speculation has never been proven.

Test Your Vocabulary

Unscramble the letters to create a word for a small enclosed defensive work: BEORUTD.

Merriam-Webster

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ab ovo - Word of the Day - 25/01/17

ab ovo

adverb

Pronunciation

 ab-OH-voh

Definition

: from the beginning

Examples

"Given Arthur's fondness for approaching a problem ab ovo, without reference to previous results, and adding to it a certain obscurity of presentation that even I, who knew him well, had found disturbing, it was a wonder that he had done as well as he had." — Charles Sheffield, "A Braver Thing," 1990

"'Peter and the Starcatcher'—a show that exalts that ephemeral space where actor and audience embrace, time out of time—promises to stand for many years as a worthy legacy to Rees: the superb actor, brilliant director, and absolutely marvelous man who was there ab ovo." — Judith Newmark, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Dec. 2015

Did You Know?

"Ab ovo usque ad mala." That phrase translates as "from the egg to the apples," and it was penned by the Roman poet Horace. He was alluding to the Roman tradition of starting a meal with eggs and finishing it with apples. Horace also applied ab ovo in an account of the Trojan War that begins with the mythical egg of Leda from which Helen (whose beauty sparked the war) was born. In both cases, Horace used ab ovo in its literal sense, "from the egg," but by the late 16th century it had been adapted to its modern English meaning of "from the beginning," perhaps for the first time by Sir Philip Sidney in his An Apology for Poetry: "If [the dramatic poets] wil represent an history, they must not (as Horace saith) beginne Ab ouo: but they must come to the principall poynt of that one action."

Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks to complete another 2-word Latin phrase beginning with ab that means "from the beginning": ab  _ n _ t _ _.


Merriam-Webster

http://grammarandpunctuationmodule4.blogspot.com.au/