You will observe that on the top right of every page in Wordnik there is a text field labeled “Search” displaying a magnifying glass symbol. Replace the grayed-out Search text string with the word you want to look up and hit Return or click the magnifier image.
Two notes on decollete/décolleté: I assume that the unaccented version exists only because of US publishers’ misguided aversion to French accents. I have never heard ir pronounced as though unaccented. Also, it is defined here as an adjective but is frequently used as a noun.
Two notes on decollete/décolleté: I assume that the unaccented version exists only because of US publishers’ misguided aversion to French accents. I have never heard ir pronounced as though unaccented. Also, it is defined here as an adjective but is frequently used as a noun.
I once ate in a restaurant that described its main offerings as “meat (of some kind),” potatoes “(of some kind),” and “dujours.” I asked the waitress what “dujours” are and she giggled.
Well done, vm. Thank you. From the citation Tank gives I am thinking that “Popkiss” might be a “nurse name” for “Hopkins.” I had a grand aunt called Lalla. Her actual name was Ellen, but when my father was a toddler he could not pronounce that and said “lalla” instead. So she remained for the rest of her life. It is a little harder to understand such developments in surnames.
You “found” it and it was wrong. I think the idea of a lexicographical site is that you check your sources. I can “find” anything in ten seconds of searching.
This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot's description of such a situation in his Paradoxe sur le comédien.1 During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" ("a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again when he finds himself at the bottom of the stairs").
In this case, "the bottom of the stairs" refers to the architecture of the kind of hôtel particulier or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, the reception rooms were on the étage noble, one floor above the ground floor.2 To have reached the bottom of the stairs means to have definitively left the gathering.
Oh, very good, Tank! Your posting does not provide a definition but my googling turned up this at Wiktionary:
qobar
English
Noun
qobar (plural not attested)
1. A dry fog of the upper Nile. quotations
o 1800, Report of the Board of Regents (volume 44, page 237)
In Ethiopia, where it is called qobar, this haze is of extraordinary density and hides all the features of the landscape beyond the distance of a mile, and conceals stars of the third magnitude even in the zenith.
o 2010, Charles Barnett, Iscariot (page 265)
Pietro Gandolfo, inside the old sedan, rumbled by, hidden by the dunes and the early morning qobar, dry fog of the Nile. He fidgeted nervously. He had no idea what to expect ahead.
It is a pleasure to come across an authentically obscure word rather than madeupicals like “shoemit = vomit in your shoes.”
From Ben Zimmer’s review in the Wall Street Journal of the book Origins of Kibosh:
Mr. Little, a professor at Mississippi State University, was the first to suggest in a piece for Comments on Etymology that “kibosh” may derive from the word “kurbash,” a long whip used for punishment in parts of the Muslim world. It originally appeared in Arabic and Turkish, borrowed into French as “courbache” and into English as “kurbash” and other variant spellings.
That theory received a big boost when Mr. Goranson, who works at the Duke University library, discovered a poem published in London as a broadside around 1830. The anonymous author uses the expression “put on the kibosh” and explains in the next line, “That is, if they was to introduce the lash.”
The phrase "Alphonse-and-Gaston routine", or "Alphonse-Gaston Syndrome", indicates a situation wherein one party refuses to act until another party acts first... Also, the phrase has a specific meaning in baseball lingo: when two fielders allow a catchable ball to drop between them, it is known as “doing the Alphonse and Gaston.”
Alphonse and Gaston was an American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper, featuring a bumbling pair of Frenchmen with a penchant for politeness.
See gangerh’s comment of Jan. 12, 2013. If it makes sense it does not count. It is an exercise in irrelevancy. A bit redundant for the Wordnik Community page perhaps, but amusing nevertheless.
You’re telling us that when a Bogotan steps in dog shit he cries, “lo que hace tu mascota?” A remarkably placid people, those Bogotans. (Bogotenes? Bogotanos?)
Have you noticed that lately athletes and celebrities who are given praise will usually say that they are “humbled?” They can jog to the podium wearing an ear-to-ear grin, hoist the gaudy trophy and expand on how humbling the experience is. Of course, they are proud as peacocks, as they have a right to be, but they are unwilling to say so. I think that “humble” may be undergoing an inversion into its opposite. Just as “literally” has come to mean “figuratively,” I fear that “humble” will soon mean “proud.”
I am an old-fashioned bloke and happy to declare that I am literally proud to receive your praise.
I reside in the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Lately I have been learning a lot about the origin of this name. A little over a week ago the Word of the Day was haverbread (see comments there), and today’s WotD, haverel, is a near homonym of the city name. The name of the city is pronounced in these parts as a two syllable word to rhyme with “cave thrill,” whereas the middle syllable in “haverel” gets some slight acknowledgment. I learned haver can mean oats/oatmeal or to talk foolishly. I have seen little of the former locally and find the latter no more abundant here than elsewhere. Of course, the American city is named after an English town. If anyone can testify to that town’s reputation for either oats or foolishness I would be glad to read it.
Most of the usage examples supplied apply the word as a synonym for “executioner.” None of the aggregated dictionaries (nor the OED) extend the word to include this meaning.
bilby has shrewdly discerned my reason for preferring the OED definition. In an emergency I invite the reader to repeat my contribution nine more times.
It took me overnight, but when I awoke this morning I finally saw the pun buried deep in bilby's comment: "new Rolexes" - I think? In mysterious ways works that mind.
Edmond Hoyle (1672 – 29 August 1769 was a writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" came into the language as a reflection of his generally perceived authority on the subject; since that time, use of the phrase has expanded into general use in situations in which a speaker wishes to indicate an appeal to a putative authority.
The audio buttons on Word entry pages have never worked on my iPad, although they do sometimes work on my pc. I should have checked the OED, which includes the accent aigu. I see now that Wordnik does have an entry for corvée as well. Picky, picky. I wonder what the word sounds like in strine?
Ex.: Police say that between four counties, Jack McPeak stole flags from fire departments, schools, cemeteries, “and the one that really torques me off,” said Keith County Sheriff Jeff Stevens, “the American Legion.”
Google "really torques me" to find many such examples. Kitit, in comments at tork, reports that this expression was common when he was a teenager in the 1960s. I am about the same age as Kitit and I do not recall hearing this expression while growing up in New England. It may be a regionalism.
Some years ago I was traveling with family through the Loire Valley and we passed through the town of Tours. In the central part of the city there is an ancient tower (French “tour”). It was plain that if we had stopped to be guided through that remnant we would be taking the Tours tour tour.
I used to have a carbuncle. He was wonderfully helpful with "normally aspirated" car engines but became an anachronism when fuel injection came in. He works on lawn mowers now.
ไข่เยี่ยวม้า (khai yiao ma), literally "horse piss eggs," is the Thai term for what are more commonly called "hundred year old eggs." These are hard boiled eggs pickled to a deep brown. Supposedy the old Thai recipe used horse urine as the pickling agent.
Puzzling how, in spite of everything, Australians enjoy such a reputation for friendliness. Perhaps bilby’s ill humor is the result of frustration with the Australian dung beetle problem. It seems the place is covered in shit.
According to the OED the vowel in broose is one of those peculiarly Scottish stranglings. Think of the sound made by an expiring bagpipe as it dwindles to a flaccid state. I have elected to rhyme it as you see. Those who want perfect authenticity should abuse the rhyming words into conformity.
The Kalenjin people of Kenya dominate marathon running worldwide. For a treatment of the role of coming of age traditions in fostering this dominance see:
Sounds a lot like “okaley dokaley,” the favorite expression of assent of Ned Flanders, Homer Simpson’s pious neighbor. Could this be evidence of the influence of Dutch folk tradition on The Simpsons? There might be a PhD dissertation there.
I see that some GNU collaborator (or perhaps an imperious spell checker), in plundering The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia for a definition of "tetric " has assumed the old and honorable "froward" to be a misspelling of "forward" and has "corrected" it.
Since The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was last published in 1914 I think the most Mr. Foreman can claim for his 2005 contribution is a novel coinage made in ignorance that the word already had a definition.
What a great name for a plant! I saw “crybaby tree” on the Recently Loved Words list and had to check it out. The most succinct explanation I found is;
The plant you are asking about is Erythrina crista-galli. A native of Brazil, it will actually grow into a tree during periods of mild winters. Otherwise, it does tend to be more shrubby (though large) when frozen back to the ground regularly. The common name "crybaby" comes from the formation of drops of nectar which drip from the flowers like tear drops. This is a great hummingbird plant, as the tiny, nectar feeding birds find the red flowers irresistible.
This leaves me scratching my head. An "engineer hoist with his own petard" (from Hamlet) is a bomb-layer blown up by his own device. How is this without foundation? It seems to me a fruitful metaphor. In fact, the “See also” list at the end of this expression’s Wikipedia entry is full of possibilities:
In attempting to dissect "stompclacker" (Using thick gloves and very long tools. He's a wily one, that bilby.) I came across the following document which purports to be a glossary of informal medical terms current in Yorkshire. It's good for some chuckles.
I think our resident marsupial misconstrues the meaning of "whoop" in the countrified American expression "open a can of whupass.". It is not a celebratory cry but rather means a whipping or beating. So, one trash-talking basketball player might say to his adversary, "I'm gonna whup your ass!" To open a can of whupass is to invite calamity. It is a more local and limited version of opening Pandora's box.
I find the key syllables spelled as an unhyphenated "whoopass," hyphenated as "whoop-ass," and as two words - "whoop ass." The first syllable may be whoop, woop, wup, or whup. The most common version I find is "whupass."
A more exact British version might be, "open a tin of thrashbottom." The trouble with this formulation, however, is that the threat may not be received as entirely unwelcome. We colonials hear stories of the widespread plying of the cane on tender young bottoms in the "public" schools and of a fondness for such "correction" that persists into adulthood. Would an English cricketer intimidate his opponent by pledging to thrash his bottom or would he make a new friend?
Perhaps bilby could lay a long ear to the ground and provide us with an Australian equivalent.
It's funny: "urinal" is one of those persistent little buggers who seem to hop from foot to foot squealing, "Rhyme me! Rhyme me!" It tried to intrude on "diuturnal" on the twelfth of this month and it did hitch a ride on "supernal" about a year ago. Given the amount of time spent in earnest intercourse with the appliance by the urbanized male of our species this cocky familiarity (to coin a phrase) should probably not surprise.
Thank you, ruzuzu, for your kind words and for informing me that tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, etc, are all nightshade cousins. It is a small world, isn’t it? Food for thought, so to speak. I will henceforth view my tomatoes askance.
Laquearia is a genus of fungi in the Rhytismatales order. The relationship of this taxon to other taxa within the order is unknown (incertae sedis), and it has not yet been placed with certainty into any family.1
It also can mean a paneled ceiling. This is used in literary works such as The Waste Land, and Aeneid.
n. An open-faced sandwich of grilled or broiled cheese on bread.
I came across this term in a Guardian interview with Lorraine Bracco:
The famous fill Bracco’s conversation. Somehow, though, it feels less like namedropping than her just being one of those people for whom life ended up like an ongoing cheese dream, random faces drifting by. Madonna turns up here, Christopher Walken there.
It seems to be a British expression and may be founded in a study of British cheeses published by the British Cheese Board in 2005 claiming to have determined that eating cheese just before going to bed can affect your dreams. It further claimed that the type of cheese you ate controlled what sort of dream you had: Stilton for bizarre effects, cheddar for dreams of celebrities, etc.
I have seen it used as two words and as a hyphenated word. The definition I provide above is my best guess at the application of this term. Can anyone add more to this?
(For the sake of completeness I include the sandwich definition but I am in no way curious about that. It has a Wikipedia entry.)
Note a typo in the second GNU definition where a "g" is printed instead of the correct "q." The word is quibble. Also see comments at quibble for Sam Johnson's eloquent and funny take on Shakespeare's fondness for quibbles (puns).
When systasis was selected as Word of the Day, June 24, 2015, I wrote a limerick based on a mistaken notion of its pronunciation. This is embarrassing, especially as it follows on the discovery of my quaff gaff. I could try the eye rhyme dodge, but that would be unpersuasive in a limerick. Now that systasis is once again the Word of the Day I could delete and replace the old limerick, but that feels rather dishonest. I will let the old limerick remain. Like the corpses (or corpses in the making) of criminals that were once hung from gibbets to admonish some and gratify others, I will leave it in place:
The Century definition addresses the origin of the term manzai but does not explain its contemporary application:
Manzai (漫才?) is a traditional style of stand-up comedy in Japanese culture.
Manzai usually involves two performers (manzaishi)—a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke)—trading jokes at great speed. Most of the jokes revolve around mutual misunderstandings, double-talk, puns and other verbal gags.
"With wood spars, the conventional method used to attach the shroud and forestay is to use TANGS. Tangs are short metal straps usually with a crimp or bend to splay them out from the mast when in position."
I find no dictionary that defines "alities." All of the usage examples on this page are instances of the string's occurrence as part of a longer word. The presumed singular, ality, is defined in some places (including Wordnik and the OED) as a suffix. In the quote attributed to Dierdre Shaw "alities" is almost certainly a typo.
Strange: The definition is of an enthusiastic interjection yet every usage example makes reference to losing (one's) shpadoinkle. Those users clearly regard it as a noun meaning something like "mind" or "composure."
Note that sclaff can be either a verb or a noun. Oddly the Word of the Day notification provides three definitions for its use as a verb only, yet all the examples supplied use it as a noun.
In Scotland on taking some whiskey The young men are prone to feel frisky, But liquor soon wilts What stirs in their kilts. Alas, a most chastening pliskie.
Quintesabd, by entering your comments as new word entries you are creating a great deal of clutter and confusion. At the bottom of every word entry page is a comment box. Please put your comments there and click "Save." The results will be much cleaner, will give you access to some HTML formatting, and will remain editable by you
The few times I have heard this term used have mostly been while watching television coverage of the Tour de France. The venerable announcing team of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (both Brits) use it to describe the fierce bumping and jostling that goes on during sprint finishes. The definitions provided here all assume its application to verbal contention, but Liggett and Sherwen seem comfortable with it in a physical context.
This a reposting of a comment originally posted on October 25, 2015 which was accidentally deleted. We REALLY need some sort of safeguard associated with the delete button. A single touch activates it. There is no “are you sure” warning and no way of undoing.
I am surprised that none of the dictionaries that Wordnik aggregates provides a definition for this word. When I was growing up in New England this was the common childhood term for excrement. I don’t know to what extent American dialect varies on this, but versions of the word are pervasive in European languages.
Wikipedia provides a fascinating discussion of cacāre and its descendants:
trumpenproletariat – n. A class of American voters, privileged by race and income, who nevertheless nurse an overweening sense of grievance and share a conviction that they are the victims of both ambitious ethnic minorities and mysterious “elites.” They are characterized by nostalgia for a golden age that never was and limitless credulity.
My self-assigned daily challenge is to write a limerick that rhymes on the Word of the Day (WotD). I have occasionally posted a limerick that included the WotD somewhere other than at the end of a line, but only rarely. A word like circumduce is especially troublesome because it is a transitive verb and it takes some engineering to place it naturally at the end of a line. I came up with a serviceable solution after reading that the word is an adornment of Scottish law. The Rangers and the Celtics (the “Old Firm”) are famously bitter football rivals in Glasgow, so it seemed apt to acknowledge a Scottish connection.
Not only is the verb transitive but it seems to pair with only one direct object – “term”. Every usage example uses the verb in the phrase “circumduce the term.” I bethought myself of some way of writing a limerick on that phrase rather than on the verb alone. It looked unlikely but there is perverse inspiration to be got from current events. The 2016 Clinton/Trump presidential election is two days away and it is a great stimulant to the imagination.
Our sins do a burdensome toll take. While prayer and works on the whole make Our vile purgatory A less lengthy story The ticket to heaven's the soul-cake.
What mischievous rhymes can I call up That wouldn't be utter codswallop? It's driving me dotty To find something naughty In a word that's as harmless as hollop.
He's glad that you fill up his meal-pock But spare him your flattering sweet talk. He'll not be your friend So don't condescend To a pauper as proud as a peacock.
Research reveals that nugae is pronounced as though it were spelled "new-jee." There are other possibilities for a terminal "-ae" and you can read some of these discussed in comments at lunula.
In the Autumn of 2016 the United States, and lately the UK as well, has been plagued by creepy clown sightings:
CBS News, October 8, 2016
Hoax or threat? Clown sightings fuel panic nationwide
There’s been a wave of creepy clown sightings across the United States. Going back to late August, there have been dozens of reports of threatening clowns, largely centered around schools and colleges.
Many have been dismissed by law enforcement as pranks, but more than a dozen people have been arrested in connection with the sightings. Whether they are pranks, threats or actual sightings, police and other officials have to take them seriously as a potential threat to safety. That’s starting to drain resources from law enforcement agencies, who are also concerned about feeding into hysteria…
After posting my Word of the Day limerick on life-car I became curious to see what one looked like and to know if they had ever been put to practical use, so I ventured on to the net and discovered an interesting story.
An American named Joseph Francis invented the life-car in the mid 19th Century and it was used in the saving of many lives from wrecks near the shore. Francis’s achievement seems to have been first recognized by foreign nations and he received recognition and awards from many countries. He was in Europe, perhaps to accept some of these accolades, when a Captain Douglass Ottinger of the United States Revenue Cutter Service applied to congress for a grant to recompense him for the invention of the life-car. Since Francis was not there to dispute Ottinger’s claim the congress awarded Ottinger $10,000. Only many years later was Francis recognized by congress with a gold medal. You can read an account of the matter here and see an image of a life-car here.
How shameful that envious strife mar What ought to be Francis's bright star, For Ottinger's claim Occluded his fame For gifting the world with his life-car.
Curmudgeons will always get cranky At toffs who won't call it a hanky: "To call it a mouchoir Is Frenchified bushwa, But snot rag does fine, very frankly."
There are French words such as garage that the English have dressed up in local fashion (rhymes with marriage) while Americans have preserved some of the native sound (rhymes with barrage). Sirvente is such a one.
I don’t have strong feelings about latinx (although I do think it utterly lacks charm), but I don’t know what it provides that Latin does not. One of the American Heritage definitions cited in Wordnik is “n. A Latino or Latina.”
A word popular in Shakespeare's day and unused since:
OED
Forms: Also inconie, in-conie, in conie, inconey, in conye.
Etymology: A cant word, prevalent about 1600, of unascertained origin.
It appears to have rhymed with money , compare coney n.1 Suggestions as to its derivation are that it represents French inconnu , or Italian incognito , unknown; that it is a variation of uncanny , unconnyincautious, etc. (see canny adj.); that it is connected with unco unknown, strange, etc.; but none of these is free from difficulty.
The OED uses the past tense in guessing how the word might have been pronounced. Its meaning is likewise veiled in the mists of time.
The commonplace may hold truth's kernel And point the way to things supernal, So follow that arrow From a red wheelbarrow Or raise your eyes from Duchamp's urinal.
His speeches can only fleece hicks Who'll swallow his dreary sleaze mix. They haven't a prayer — This snake oil purveyor Is famed as a thorough skeezicks.
Hunting rhymes for "nutation" I looked into the legitimacy of "fruitation" and was disappointed to find that what little attention it draws is scorn as an unsophisticated stand-in for "fruition". This is too bad. I like the word and think that it nicely evokes an image of a tree laden with ripened fruit.
We have a mulberry tree that, at midsummer when its branches droop with the weight of berries, is visited by crowds of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, etc., and cats in pursuit of the wild creatures. Even on windless days the tree pulsates as though palsied. Thus,
The mulberry tree in fruitation Is swayed by a great disputation As critters at odds Cause tremors and nods And days of a steady nutation.
I think fruitation works just fine here. For that matter nutation could just as well be applied in season to oaks or walnuts to describe both their abundance and their behavior:
A language improves by mutation Producing delights like fruitation, Like saplings new-born From acorns wind-torn From oak trees that bend with nutation.
The lamp of sweet reason grows dimmer And decency's quite gone aglimmer. He sucks up the light And brings on the night. The man is a lout and a limmer.
We scurry in fortune's fierce race Till age makes us slacken the pace. We cease being rovers And guard our estovers And hope that we fade with some grace.
While I am a tilting toddler in Wordnik years I am a shambling mutterer in terms of sun orbits. You Wordie veterans have amazingly rich lists. I put together a few lists to collect the lovely words I don't want to forget. Then I forget the lists. I still don't understand what tags do.
From Wikipedia: "A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning "big cage"; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning "cage") is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping."
See these employed with increasing frequency in retaining walls along roads and highways.
Comments by qms
Show previous 200 comments...
qms commented on the word spindrift
At Kittyhawk the brothers Wright
Imagined a man in a kite
And welcomed the spindrift
Portending the wind lift
The day of the very first flight.
March 8, 2018
qms commented on the word limpsy
Though Donald is notably blimpy
Wee Donny is oftentimes skimpy
And needs a small hand
To firm up his stand
And cease being puny and limpsy.
March 7, 2018
qms commented on the word herm
The prudish among us may squirm
But scholars and aesthetes confirm:
The carver of stone adds
Some prominent gonads
As tokens of luck on each herm.
March 6, 2018
qms commented on the word deave
A marketer strives to achieve
A story that people believe.
If still they aren’t buying
Despite earnest trying
He’ll crank up the volume and deave.
March 5, 2018
qms commented on the word lunt
Now smoking’s become an affront
My pipe is a prop and a stunt
I clench and caress it
And (dare I confess it?)
Pretend I can still puff a lunt.
March 4, 2018
qms commented on the word sonsy
There was a bold fellow from Swansea
Who went by the moniker Chauncy.
He liked beer and cheese
And a smotherinq squeeze
With ladies good-natured and sonsy.
March 3, 2018
qms commented on the word misology
He studied old tales and idolatry
But, blameless, he’s charged with misology.
Now willow-the-wisp,
Betrayed by a lisp,
He gives up pursuit of mythology.
March 2, 2018
qms commented on the word psychotomimetic
His search for release is frenetic
And rooted in forces genetic.
His Dad could enthuse
Over ganja and booze
But his trip’s psychotomimetic.
March 1, 2018
qms commented on the word cacafuego
Patrick O’Brian was also enamored of this word. See comments at shitfire.
March 1, 2018
qms commented on the word millesimal
A homeopathic professional
Doles dosages infinitesimal.
He need never wrestle
With mortar and pestle;
His pipette drops portions millesimal.
February 28, 2018
qms commented on the word mesic
I savor the insult that’s sly,
That risks slipping unnoticed by,
But humor that’s ethnic
Is rather too mesic.
Martinis and jokes I like dry.
February 27, 2018
qms commented on the word irenic
When Adam and Eve were edenic
They needed no crude calisthenic
They rightly believed
Perfection achieved
In salubrious groves and irenic.
February 26, 2018
qms commented on the user rhtalbott
You will observe that on the top right of every page in Wordnik there is a text field labeled “Search” displaying a magnifying glass symbol. Replace the grayed-out Search text string with the word you want to look up and hit Return or click the magnifier image.
February 25, 2018
qms commented on the word petrography
While some study subjects that bleed
Or classify flower and weed,
Petrography suits
More disciplined troops
For rocks are hard science indeed.
February 25, 2018
qms commented on the word eristic
We know it from lore and statistic:
A boy who’s persistently fistic
Will find legal brawling
His natural calling,
Rewarding his talents eristic.
February 24, 2018
qms commented on the word euphemism
Is not the spoonerism itself the euphemism? As in ,
Q: How is the Swiss navy like a baby?
A: Always sucking and never fails.
I do not know that this genre has a name.
See also spoonerism.
February 23, 2018
qms commented on the word argons
See argon.
February 23, 2018
qms commented on the word edaphic
Her fashions can make heavy traffic:
Once celibate, next she was Sapphic,
Now thinks she’s Earth Mother
Or something or other
That’s sweaty, unwashed and edaphic.
February 23, 2018
qms commented on the word leg-rope
Perhaps in attempting to subdue livestock the Aussies have misinterpreted the classic French seduction technique - le grope.
February 22, 2018
qms commented on the word langrage
When enemy men-o’-war meet
Their greetings are iron and heat.
The harrowing language
Of carcass and langrage
Are all their palaver and treat.
February 22, 2018
qms commented on the word hippocras
A warthog, you’re saying, lacks class.
You claim that a rhino’s badass,
But since quite a lot of us
Admire hippopotamus
Then call not the poor hippocras.
February 21, 2018
qms commented on the word glottochronology
When Ernest and Herr Doktor Otto
Get talking and drinking till blotto
They grow rather foggy
On strictest chronology
And vague ‘bout the meaning of glotto.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
February 20, 2018
qms commented on the word lodestar
As compasses tell us direction
So Donald consults his erection,
And where it is pointed
A new love’s anointed.
His lodestar is lust, not affection.
February 19, 2018
qms commented on the word intellection
Since today is Presidents Day I thought our maximum leader deserved more celebration. Besides, I had some rhymes left over.
See comments at lodestar.
February 19, 2018
qms commented on the word intellection
The Donald mistakes a connection
Twixt talent and his strange election,
Thus fools will construe
Good luck as their due
In absence of all intellection.
February 19, 2018
qms commented on the user deepakyadavmc
Greetings, deepakyadvmc.
February 18, 2018
qms commented on the word fandangle
Ludmila would scorn a lone bangle,
Preferring her bracelets to jangle,
And thinks it right cheering
That each dangling earring
Should serve as a tinkling fandangle.
February 18, 2018
qms commented on the word equipollent
A teen in the morning is indolent;
The nocturnal beast’s still somnolent.
The breakfast convention
Will hang in suspension
While hunger with sleep’s equipollent.
February 17, 2018
qms commented on the word delectate
As all of God’s creatures must defecate
Let no one the humble bug deprecate.
Let praises be sung
Of beetles (type dung)
Whose appetites droppings delectate.
February 16, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
How beastly, touting Yankees!
February 15, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Hunch beneath transgression’s yoke!
February 15, 2018
qms commented on the word sisu
A Finn, if you press him, resists you;
Compliance is always at issue.
Despite your appeals
He digs in his heels
To show he has true Finnish sisu.
February 15, 2018
qms commented on the word peart
Well done, bilby.
February 15, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Heat bothers the yeti.
February 15, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Hear Bernese teens yodeling.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word peart
Pronunciation guidance for this word is varied but the best authorities recommend “pert,” a word for which “peart” seems to be a variant spelling.
Wise counselors now will assert,
Be never too forward or peart.
What used to be charm
Can now do you harm.
It’s dangerous these days to flirt.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Health benefits to yogurt.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Heroic bilby taming yobs.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Haunted by turbulent youth.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word hbty
Hot babes tempt you.
February 14, 2018
qms commented on the word gestic
A limerick’s light and domestic.
Though hobbled by feet anapestic
It paces and sways
In familiar ways
That can be beguilingly gestic.
February 13, 2018
qms commented on the word mollydooker
The lithe lass was sure a good looker
But still her fiancé forsook her.
His counseling minister
Advised she was sinister -
A blithe, unabashed mollydooker.
February 12, 2018
qms commented on the word Endymion
Endymion is the name of one of the tradional “krewes” that contribute a float to the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans.
http://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/schedule/parade-info/parades-endymion.html
February 11, 2018
qms commented on the word canthus
A geisha takes no silly chances
So every small detail enhances:
How sweetly she speaks,
The blush on her cheeks,
The dark line that shadows her canthus.
February 11, 2018
qms commented on the word décolleté
Two notes on decollete/décolleté: I assume that the unaccented version exists only because of US publishers’ misguided aversion to French accents. I have never heard ir pronounced as though unaccented. Also, it is defined here as an adjective but is frequently used as a noun.
February 10, 2018
qms commented on the word decollete
Two notes on decollete/décolleté: I assume that the unaccented version exists only because of US publishers’ misguided aversion to French accents. I have never heard ir pronounced as though unaccented. Also, it is defined here as an adjective but is frequently used as a noun.
February 10, 2018
qms commented on the word décolleté
Sophisticates turn bored away
On seeing what some think risqué:
A skirt that’s split high
For a glimpse of a thigh
Or top that is décolleté.
February 10, 2018
qms commented on the word decollete
Sophisticates turn bored away
On seeing what some think risqué:
A skirt that’s split high
For a glimpse of a thigh
Or top that is décolleté.
February 10, 2018
qms commented on the word choplogic
Sam Johnson loved Hodge, his old cat
Indulging him till he grew fat.
Though be it choplogic
For want of a Hodge lick
He’d feed him an oyster or sprat.
Read more about Dr. Johnson’s cat.
February 9, 2018
qms commented on the word bibliopegy
Joe’s sinned so much against property
Th court now is begging he cop a plea.
His record’s immense!
With one more offense
His rap sheet will need bibliopegy.
February 8, 2018
qms commented on the word autecology
He recounts with pride, not apology,
His labors in humble scatology,
For eloquent turds
Can say more than words,
Enhancing a deep autecology.
February 7, 2018
qms commented on the word monocracy
For -ocracy I’ve run out of rhymes
That dodge phonetical crimes.
I dread the monotony
Of such as monocracy;
I’ve rhymed them too many times.
February 6, 2018
qms commented on the word graticule
To resize an image the classic tool
Encloses the source in a lattice rule,
A copyist then,
With pencil or pen
Precisely can follow the graticule.
February 5, 2018
qms commented on the word sciagraphy
She renders the lightfall quite magically
Employing no digital gadgetry.
She’s learned to apply
Her hand and her eye
In service of skillful sciagraphy.
February 4, 2018
qms commented on the word lubber-fiend
Your house-elf, if you treat him right,
Will clean up your cottage at night
So, well scrubbed and cleaned
By your lubber-fiend,
You’ll find your kitchen shining bright.
February 3, 2018
qms commented on the word drusy
Geologists drink and get woozy
And soon become droopy and snoozy.
They fall into dreams
Of rocks laced with seams
And caverns aglitter and druzy.
February 2, 2018
qms commented on the word du jour
I once ate in a restaurant that described its main offerings as “meat (of some kind),” potatoes “(of some kind),” and “dujours.” I asked the waitress what “dujours” are and she giggled.
February 1, 2018
qms commented on the word sonoluminescence
To mantis shrimp the trick’s no feat,
Just means to get the stuff to eat.
They teach us no lessons
In sonoluminescence.
The shrimp is an artless synaesthete.
February 1, 2018
qms commented on the word reboant
So warm and with sweet scents so redolent,
And where is so private yet resonant?
To feel music’s power
We sing in the shower,
A chamber most cozy and reboant.
January 31, 2018
qms commented on the word pintadine
I dream in this pale Winter scene
Of atoll lagoons tinted green,
Where maids without morals
Swim in from the corals
To offer me plump pintadine.
January 30, 2018
qms commented on the word morology
Oh, what can the cause of this folly be,
This mad, inauspicious frivolity?
Their mouths are uncivil
And spewing forth drivel.
The Congress is mired in morology!
January 29, 2018
qms commented on the word crepitate
It’s terribly hard to emulate
How speakers of Zulu articulate.
You must learn the tricks
Of consonant clicks-
To enunciate you must crepitate.
January 28, 2018
qms commented on the word loutrophoros
The ancient Greeks long before us
Invented the play with a chorus
And down all the ages
We still love their sages
But don’t use the old loutrophoros.
January 27, 2018
qms commented on the word drabbing
The goblin’s on record as gabbing
Of prowess at unwanted grabbing,
But Stormy’s tale shows
That sometimes he chose
The commoner pastime of drabbing.
January 26, 2018
qms commented on the word gnomology
It’s published in ponderous tomes
And shelved in the soberest homes.
Despite what you thought
Gnomology’s not
The frivolous study of gnomes.
January 25, 2018
qms commented on the word nurse name
Well done, vm. Thank you. From the citation Tank gives I am thinking that “Popkiss” might be a “nurse name” for “Hopkins.” I had a grand aunt called Lalla. Her actual name was Ellen, but when my father was a toddler he could not pronounce that and said “lalla” instead. So she remained for the rest of her life. It is a little harder to understand such developments in surnames.
January 24, 2018
qms commented on the word vulnerary
The aloe vera’s extraordinary,
With uses digestive and vulnerary.
It soothes cuts and burns
Which quality earns
A place where the efforts are culinary.
January 24, 2018
qms commented on the word luciferase
Sly fireflies will cook up new ways
To brighten their luminous rays,
For lightning bug lasses
Like lads with bright asses
Just bursting with luciferase.
January 23, 2018
qms commented on the word chrysocracy
Oh, tell me not you’re shocked to see
Self-dealing and gross hypocrisy.
“Make America Great”
Was cheap sucker bait
From sellers of vulgar chrysocracy.
January 22, 2018
qms commented on the word vum
A toady’s no more than a bum
Pretending some tyrant’s his chum.
There will be a reckoning,
For Old Nick is beckoning.
He’ll haste to that hearthside, I vum.
January 21, 2018
qms commented on the word swither
As hither is mixed up with thither
And whence is confounded with wither,
If you would compose
Faux biblical prose
Prepare for a sweat and a swither.
January 20, 2018
qms commented on the word brocard
cui bono, you sensibly ask,
When lawyers so muddle their task?
When simpler folk heard
A latin brocard
They bowed to the learned man’s mask
January 19, 2018
qms commented on the word philosopheme
It starts as a commonplace meme,
Repeated, becomes a grand theme.
Its freshness once past
It settles at last
Retired as a philosopheme.
January 18, 2018
qms commented on the word bavardage
Palaver that’s boredom’s camouflage
Is chatter - no more than bavardage.
Enlivened with zest
Of banter and jest
It jumps up to jolly persiflage.
January 17, 2018
qms commented on the word down-gyved
I’ve poked, I’ve prodded and strived.
At last my conclusion’s arrived:
When droopy your hose
(But no other clothes)
Uniquely are labelled down-gyved.
January 16, 2018
qms commented on the word barrow-back't
Compare barrow-tram.
January 16, 2018
qms commented on the word shithole
The Lord when assembling a fit soul
Is careless betimes in the wit dole.
Inserting a brain
He failed in his aim
So Donald must think with his shithole.
January 15, 2018
qms commented on the word adiaphorous
Miss Duncan made viewers wax amorous
By dancing in garments diaphanous.
The prim and the haughty
Did think her quite naughty
But art is at worst adiaphorous.
January 15, 2018
qms commented on the word mussitation
Near speechless, the suffering nation
Now mutters in utter frustration.
The goblin’s obscenist
New claim is his genius.
We‘re driven to dazed mussitation.
January 14, 2018
qms commented on the word loukoum
When Turks meet with friends we assume
Thick coffee is poured to consume
With plates of sweet bites
That we call delights
But locals embrace as loukoum.
January 13, 2018
qms commented on the word knifegun
Prestige though it be at low tide,
The humblest of creatures show pride,
And perchance you will see
A dandified bilby
With ears freshly starched and bowtied.
January 12, 2018
qms commented on the word blazonry
The president strikes his own coin;
There ego and bad taste conjoin.
If he can so brazenly
Profane the old blazonry
What symbols will next he purloin?
January 12, 2018
qms commented on the word pottle-pot
See also comments at pottle.
January 11, 2018
qms commented on the word pottle
If sips don’t suffice then a lot’ll.
By golly, just chug down the bottle!
If you still can’t forget
Then drown all regret
In the bountiful flood of a pottle.
See also comments at pottle-pot.
January 11, 2018
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
drongo
January 10, 2018
qms commented on the word androcracy
Our governors earn lots of mockery
For mindlessly limp mediocrity.
We need an infusion
Of gender diffusion
To stiffen the flaccid androcracy.
January 10, 2018
qms commented on the word houghmangandy
You “found” it and it was wrong. I think the idea of a lexicographical site is that you check your sources. I can “find” anything in ten seconds of searching.
January 9, 2018
qms commented on the word chronometry
Imprisoned you learn the enormity
Of years of unchanged uniformity
So prolonged confinement
Promotes the refinement
Of exquisite skills in chronometry.
January 9, 2018
qms commented on the word jugal
For some folk obliged to be frugal
Adventure’s confined to a google.
It’s not parsimony
But dear matrimony -
The price of the benisons jugal.
January 8, 2018
qms commented on the word nomogram
Computers, they teach now at school,
Displaced the beloved slide rule,
But give not a damn
For the old nomogram
Which once was an elegant tool.
January 7, 2018
qms commented on the word perfectibilist
Of dullards perhaps not the visiblest
Once found, though, surely the risiblest.
To mock the dimwitted
Is even permitted
If shown he’s a true perfectibilist.
January 6, 2018
qms commented on the word orchestic
The dancing impulse is eclectic,
Exotic or comfy domestic.
In oldsters and hipsters
Terpsichre’s whispers
Inspire expression orchestic.
January 5, 2018
qms commented on the word bauson
According to popular notion
They forage with fiercest devotion.
Thus folklore assured it,
That one who’s obdurate
Be known as an obstinate bauson.
January 4, 2018
qms commented on the word l'esprit de l'escalier
This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot's description of such a situation in his Paradoxe sur le comédien.1 During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" ("a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again when he finds himself at the bottom of the stairs").
In this case, "the bottom of the stairs" refers to the architecture of the kind of hôtel particulier or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. In such houses, the reception rooms were on the étage noble, one floor above the ground floor.2 To have reached the bottom of the stairs means to have definitively left the gathering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier
January 3, 2018
qms commented on the word dowie
Poor Angus entreated her hourly
In wooing persistent and flowery,
But to his dismay
At end of the day
He trudged home defeated and dowie.
January 3, 2018
qms commented on the word qobar
Oh, very good, Tank! Your posting does not provide a definition but my googling turned up this at Wiktionary:
It is a pleasure to come across an authentically obscure word rather than madeupicals like “shoemit = vomit in your shoes.”
January 2, 2018
qms commented on the word adversaria
The world grows alarming and scarier;
How fight off impending hysteria?
You tame what you fear
And save what is dear
By penning in neat adversaria.
January 2, 2018
qms commented on the word qualtagh
The generous folk who speak Manx
Have swollen our lexical ranks.
Oh, let us exalt it
And welcome the qualtagh!
The new year begins with our thanks.
January 1, 2018
qms commented on the word perennity
Indulge in a cleansing obscenity
Then face the new year with serenity.
Despair put away!
You’ve aged but a day;
The changed date marks only perennity.
December 31, 2017
qms commented on the word anomie
He publicly calls for sweet amity
While counting a critic an enemy.
He widens each rift,
Unmoored and adrift
And tossed on the billows of anomie.
December 30, 2017
qms commented on the word kibosh
From Ben Zimmer’s review in the Wall Street Journal of the book Origins of Kibosh:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/putting-the-kibosh-on-an-old-riddle-the-source-of-the-phrase-1514564107
December 30, 2017
qms commented on the word dotation
Philanthropists make a vocation
Of bountiful funds’ allocation.
If fame’s the reward
It’s nothing untoward -
Small payment for lavish dotation.
December 29, 2017
qms commented on the word Alphonse and Gaston
See Alphonse-and-Gaston.
December 28, 2017
qms commented on the word Alphonse-and-Gaston
The phrase "Alphonse-and-Gaston routine", or "Alphonse-Gaston Syndrome", indicates a situation wherein one party refuses to act until another party acts first... Also, the phrase has a specific meaning in baseball lingo: when two fielders allow a catchable ball to drop between them, it is known as “doing the Alphonse and Gaston.”
Alphonse and Gaston was an American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper, featuring a bumbling pair of Frenchmen with a penchant for politeness.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_and_Gaston
December 28, 2017
qms commented on the word ecophobia
Ecophobia, let it be said
Won’t trouble a sensible head.
It’s madness abounding
To fear your surrounding;
An asinine instance of dread.
December 28, 2017
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
See gangerh’s comment of Jan. 12, 2013. If it makes sense it does not count. It is an exercise in irrelevancy. A bit redundant for the Wordnik Community page perhaps, but amusing nevertheless.
December 28, 2017
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
milquetoast
December 27, 2017
qms commented on the word arval
For mortals the visit is brief
And time a deceiver and thief,
And yet I must marvel
At assuaging arval.
The coronach tempers our grief.
December 27, 2017
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
infestation
December 27, 2017
qms commented on the word valiance
The captain’s brief health food dalliance
Provoked the old sea cook’s galley rants.
The oaths and the bitchin’
Just poured from that kitchen.
To enter there proved a tar’s valiance.
December 26, 2017
qms commented on the word geniture
In crèches that model the geniture
The infant is always the cynosure.
While Mary’s displayed
Poor Joe’s in the shade,
His fatherhood being a sinecure.
December 25, 2017
qms commented on the word cracknel
Per Ernest the story is factual,
That this is the source of our cracknel:
You blow up a swine;
The meat comes out fine –
The crunchy fat chunks are the shrapnel.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
December 24, 2017
qms commented on the word repastination
Comedians in cold calculation
Know old jokes still cause cachinnation;
So spade up and sift
There’s many a gift
Unearthed in repastination.
December 23, 2017
qms commented on the word dormition
Reports of unwanted dormition
Might call for a thoughtful physician,
But if shadows creeping
Are deeper than sleeping
Then turn to your favorite mortician.
December 22, 2017
qms commented on the word obmutescence
Be quicker to pray than to preach,
More eager to learn than to teach;
For wisdom’s true essence
Can be obmutescence
And silence be deeper than speech.
December 21, 2017
qms commented on the word kapta
The elf lass enjoyed her hot Lapp cha
Kept warm by the jacket that wrapped her.
As Rudolph last Christmas
Is stew meat on this pass
His hide makes an elf a fine kapta.
December 20, 2017
qms commented on the word ignoration
The goblin prefers adulation
But settles for villification.
So praise or defame,
To him – much the same.
He simply can’t bear ignoration.
December 19, 2017
qms commented on the word anomalist
A comma before “and,” as some insist,
Should not be required in a comma list.
My faction is small
But still I stand tall
And proud to be called an anomalist.
December 18, 2017
qms commented on the word dorsiflexion
A rhymer sunk deep in dejection
May sometimes support an exception,
And if he should lack words
Will bend over backwards
In postures of pained dorsiflexion.
December 17, 2017
qms commented on the word nupson
Whence comes this alarming eruption
Of ravening public corruption?
Can voters in masses
Be consummate asses
And Everyman be a blunt nupson?
December 16, 2017
qms commented on the word lo que hace tu mascota
You’re telling us that when a Bogotan steps in dog shit he cries, “lo que hace tu mascota?” A remarkably placid people, those Bogotans. (Bogotenes? Bogotanos?)
BTW, the link seems to be a dud.
December 15, 2017
qms commented on the word periegesis
The writing and sale never ceases
Of guides and advice with the thesis
That travelers need
A docent to heed,
Else fail in their periegesis.
December 15, 2017
qms commented on the word jockteleg
Thank you, bilby.
Have you noticed that lately athletes and celebrities who are given praise will usually say that they are “humbled?” They can jog to the podium wearing an ear-to-ear grin, hoist the gaudy trophy and expand on how humbling the experience is. Of course, they are proud as peacocks, as they have a right to be, but they are unwilling to say so. I think that “humble” may be undergoing an inversion into its opposite. Just as “literally” has come to mean “figuratively,” I fear that “humble” will soon mean “proud.”
I am an old-fashioned bloke and happy to declare that I am literally proud to receive your praise.
December 14, 2017
qms commented on the word jockteleg
The rough fellows draining the keg,
Though wasted, played mumblety peg.
It never would fail
That one would impale
A foot with a foul jockteleg.
December 14, 2017
qms commented on the word epanalepsis
Repeat till your poem’s replete
With hints of the joys indiscreet
When epanalepsis
Shall marry prolepsis
And endlessly loop and repeat.
December 13, 2017
qms commented on the word anonym
I knew an old fellow called Jim
Who told me it once was his whim
To take a new name
And make it a game
To live a few days anonym.
December 12, 2017
qms commented on the word renitency
A pause before action is hesitancy.
A trifling aversion is reticency,
But if the refusal
Is firmer than usual
Reluctance amounts to a renitency.
December 11, 2017
qms commented on the word peregrinity
Though “brotherhood” cites an affinity
Not literal consanguinity
I still find it cloying.
Most folk are annoying
And striking for stark peregrinity.
December 10, 2017
qms commented on the word noetic
In swaddling we’re merely zoetic.
At school we are coaxed to noetic,
And if we’re well taught
And deepen our thought
We gracefully age to poetic.
December 9, 2017
qms commented on the word annumerate
As outrages daily accumulate
The choices confuse and obnubilate:
To keep right on caring
Or join the despairing?
Which faction ought I to annumerate?
December 8, 2017
qms commented on the word dorlach
Those learned in mystical lore talk
Of wizard, bewitcher and warlock,
And philters and potions
To warp your emotions
Kept hidden down deep in a dorlach.
December 7, 2017
qms commented on the word fulgent
He is quite a self-effacing fellow, but I will confer with him.
December 6, 2017
qms commented on the word fulgent
Most people think Ernest a dull gent
Hi mom though is much more indulgent.
To her he’s aglow,
The star of the show,
A man who is modest yet fulgent.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
December 6, 2017
qms commented on the word obnubilate
When Ernest and friends fully lubricate
Oh, how those staid scholars pursue debate!
A great deal is said
Though scant light is shed.
They digress and hap’ly obnubilate.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
December 5, 2017
qms commented on the word idoneous
In hiring be never erroneous;
The new guy could turn out felonious,
So google his name
In search of ill fame
And pray that you find him idoneous.
December 4, 2017
qms commented on the word haverel
I reside in the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Lately I have been learning a lot about the origin of this name. A little over a week ago the Word of the Day was haverbread (see comments there), and today’s WotD, haverel, is a near homonym of the city name. The name of the city is pronounced in these parts as a two syllable word to rhyme with “cave thrill,” whereas the middle syllable in “haverel” gets some slight acknowledgment. I learned haver can mean oats/oatmeal or to talk foolishly. I have seen little of the former locally and find the latter no more abundant here than elsewhere. Of course, the American city is named after an English town. If anyone can testify to that town’s reputation for either oats or foolishness I would be glad to read it.
In these troubled times the braver will
Indulge in expressions most flavorful.
A colorful word
Is more likely heard
When discourse is noisy and haverel.
December 3, 2017
qms commented on the word gurglet
Most tropical places defeat
The parting of water and heat.
It’s simplest to purge it
By filling a gurglet
To make a sublimely cool treat.
December 2, 2017
qms commented on the word doomsman
Most of the usage examples supplied apply the word as a synonym for “executioner.” None of the aggregated dictionaries (nor the OED) extend the word to include this meaning.
December 1, 2017
qms commented on the word doomsman
To uncover truth and illumine
Is highest of gifts that are human,
But scoundrels like Trump
Will cry, “Kill the ump!”
In justified fear of the doomsman.
December 1, 2017
qms commented on the word mobocrat
He could be the fattest fat cat
And feeding his greed in plain fact.
The rabble aroused
By lies he’s espoused
Are played by a shrewd mobocrat.
November 30, 2017
qms commented on the word obeliscal
A stalactite drips in the night
Begetting a child that’s upright,
An offspring of crystal
To rise obeliscal,
In darkness a bright stalagmite.
November 29, 2017
qms commented on the word rakehelly
As Byron confessed to pal Shelley,
“Mysterious urges compel me.
I’m misunderstood.
I’m trying to be good
But forced to be always rakehelly.”
November 28, 2017
qms commented on the word obduration
Pigheadedness’ better relation
Is stubbornness raised up a station,
But reason defied
With obstinate pride
We dignify as obduration.
November 27, 2017
qms commented on the word numps
Find fervent apostles of Trump’s
In rustical family clumps.
I ask: Must a numps’ kin
Be always a bumpkin?
Can cousins in town not be numps?
November 26, 2017
qms commented on the word ideography
Old-timers used ASCII and coffe
Assembling slash and apostrophe.
Now digital fogies
They loathe mew emojis
As prefab unearned ideography.
November 25, 2017
qms commented on the word haverbread
For ages has crofter labor fed
The gentry who lay late abed.
They rise warm to eat
Fine dainties of wheat;
While cold crofters gnaw haverbread.
November 24, 2017
qms commented on the word gemmary
The fading of recall is cruel
So savor Thanksgiving and Yule
And keep them in memory
As though in a gemmary
For each is a luminous jewel.
November 23, 2017
qms commented on the word fragor
Eat lots of fruitcake and I’ll wager
The aftereffects will be major.
They’ll shortly erupt
Unplanned and abrupt
In a way that is doubly a fragor.
November 22, 2017
qms commented on the word nuncupative
The old man despised daughter Beth
So left her bereft at his death,
And even nuncupative
His will was vituperative,
To wound her with his dying breath.
November 21, 2017
qms commented on the word rafty
Though most people think he is daft he
Makes some think, “not crazy but crafty.”
I doubt it’s a feint
‘Cause clever he ain’t.
The man is authentically rafty.
November 20, 2017
qms commented on the word filature
The nurture of worms will procure
The thread for a cloth to thrill couture.
There’s truly no ilk
For elegant silk
That’s patiently wound ‘round a filature.
November 19, 2017
qms commented on the word glutist
I can think of another definition:
At naming of nates he’s astutist,
Assessing the fullest and cutest.
He calls them patoots
Or maximal glutes;
The man is a classical glutist.
November 18, 2017
qms commented on the word micher
The Judgement by Bosch is a picture
That study can always make richer
So look and beware
Of characters there,
The lustful, the glutton, the micher.
November 18, 2017
qms commented on the word telestich
A limerick’s perfectly fine
With rhymes at the end of the line,
But really the best trick
Would make it telestich,
A challenge I’ll gladly decline.
November 17, 2017
qms commented on the word cafila
We dream of a heaven afar
Viewing life as a long cafila,
So though we are weary,
The way slow and dreary,
We trudge toward a bright Shangri-la.
November 16, 2017
qms commented on the word ice-blink
After months in the arctic I think
My friends will recoil from my stink
And read in my stare
The stain of that glare,
The infamous mad’ning ice-blink.
November 15, 2017
qms commented on the word hastilude
Old Camelot’s typical habitude
Promoted a genial placitude.
Their war was all talk
And battles were mock,
Replcaed by fine costume and haslitude.
November 14, 2017
qms commented on the word gelid
She got a surprise, dead Nell did;
She learned of a secret that hell hid:
It’s no fiery bed
But what you most dread.
For warmth-loving Nell it is gelid.
November 13, 2017
qms commented on the word foy
Oh, pity the smart Scottish boy
Departing to take new employ:
His future is bright
But farewells a blight,
For he bears the cost of his foy.
November 12, 2017
qms commented on the word yonies
See yoni and blush.
November 11, 2017
qms commented on the word asemia
Some brains are essentially blind
To statements of figurative kind.
To say that asemia
Is mental anemia
Would baffle the literal mind.
November 11, 2017
qms commented on the word tenebrose
Though seldom are ladies and men verbose
On subjects so private and tenebrose:
Know obstinate movement
Is coaxed to improvement
By silently sipping a senna dose.
November 10, 2017
qms commented on the word lamback
Stunt artists must practice the sham smack
To make it look real - not a ham whack,
And mime with precision
The fist/face collision,
Persuasively faking a lamback.
November 9, 2017
qms commented on the word rosarian
Sub-rosa assassins and spies
Must find a non-threatening guise -
A helpful Rotarian
Or harmless rosarian -
To lead astray curious eyes.
November 8, 2017
qms commented on the word phyllomania
The best pie in all Ruritania
Is layers of dough plus extranea!
The thinner you roll it
The more I’ll extol it,
Admitting to deep phyllomania.
November 7, 2017
qms commented on the word muscadin
Some men consider it just a sin
To risk disarray from a gust of wind,
So scarf and a cap
Protectively wrap
The delicate plumes of the muscadin.
November 6, 2017
qms commented on the word disworship
Admire his entrepeneurship;
Applaud his keen connoisseurship!
He’s captured his prize
With well-crafted lies
And crowned himself king of disworship.
November 5, 2017
qms commented on the word splendent
He once strutted proud and ascendant
In glittering orange quite splendent.
I’m sure he’ll look cute
In a tangerine suit,
The mark of the shackled defendant.
November 4, 2017
qms commented on the word lalophobia
A lalophobia sufferer’s weak
At tasks that require he speak,
But he can do fine
With gesture and sign
So miming’s the work he should seek.
November 3, 2017
qms commented on the word fremescence
A murmur unnoticed before
Now hubbub that’s hard to ignore.
A growing fremescence,
A kind of tumescence,
That swells to a mighty uproar.
November 2, 2017
qms commented on the word aseity
It seems that an authentic deity
Should get what he wants with velleity,
Unless it transpire
That gods don’t desire
‘Cause wanting conflicts with aseity.
November 1, 2017
qms commented on the word gyre-carline
See gyre-carlin.
October 31, 2017
qms commented on the word gyre-carlin
Variously spelled: gyre-carline, gyre-carling, gyir-carling, gyre-carling, gy-carling, gay-carlin.
October 31, 2017
qms commented on the word gyre-carlin
Each dragon that’s fiercely fire-snarlin’
Or toddlin’ ghoulish dire darlin’
We may think adorable
And cutely mock-horrible
But dread the approaching gyre-carlin.
October 31, 2017
qms commented on the word mungy
Buy tripe that is bright white and spongey
Then braise it with onions and fungi
And leave it to simmer
Till pallor grows dimmer
And all is deliciously mungy.
October 30, 2017
qms commented on the word graip
Some pols’ tool of choice is their wit
For others faux bio’s more fit,
But fibbing and jape
Can’t match a good graip
When Donald starts pitching his shit.
October 29, 2017
qms commented on the word menology
Discernment was not her best quality
So Sheila was flustered and all at sea:
“The man I want ain’t
Some fuckin’ Greek saint.
That’s not why I’m takin’ menology!”
October 28, 2017
qms commented on the word prolocutor
By right he’s his party’s prolocutor
By nature a cheesy provocateur.
What little makes sense
Still gives great offense.
By God, the guy only can talk ordure!
October 27, 2017
qms commented on the word younker
The boys at the bar slump and hunker
And lie as they get ever drunker.
Truth little avails
To tame their tall tales
Of conquests each made as a younker.
October 26, 2017
qms commented on the word marcassin
The hunter’s a kind of assassin
Whose keen eye will fatally fasten
On sanglier young
Who, killed, are then flung
In pots for a meal of marcassin.
October 25, 2017
qms commented on the word proem
They say that you can’t write a poem.
So set yourself down and you show ‘em!
Give ‘em rhythm and rhyme
And make it sublime,
With epilogue, footnotes and proem.
October 24, 2017
qms commented on the word alevin
The raids are increasingly bold,
Now salmon are traded for gold.
Oh, where is the paladin
Who’ll rescue our alevin
Before their breeding ground’s sold?
See:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/10/politics/bristol-bay-salmon-invs/index.html
October 23, 2017
qms commented on the word encenia
In Oxbridge they boast of their past
But plain speech would leave dons aghast,
So high academia
Will call it encenia
To hide that they’re having a blast.
October 22, 2017
qms commented on the word tithe-pig
For boys in the gentry of yore
Birth order told what was in store.
The first won the prize gig,
The last was the tithe-pig,
To serve in the church evermore.
October 21, 2017
qms commented on the word dismission
Our rights he erodes by attrition
And justice withholds by omission.
Our gov is gazumped
Or, worse yet, it’s Trumped,
Unless we achieve a dismission.
October 20, 2017
qms commented on the word antonomasia
Australians display an odd trait
Addressing the lowly or great:
Call it aphasia
Or antonomasia
But blokes of all kinds are called “mate.”
October 19, 2017
qms commented on the word balagan
The prescriptivist fights, and he shall again,
Against the descriptivist’s balagan.
He’ll rage and defame
In the conference game
But ‘tweentimes he’ll make him a pal again.
October 18, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
In Mass. we will drop the last “R”
Though some find the custom bizarre,
But see bilby’s rhyme
Those same would call crime!
The Aussies are bolder by far!
October 17, 2017
qms commented on the word probabilist
Though pains of the past still endure
What oracle forecasts a cure?
For that job enlist
A probabalist -
Mistrust any sage who’s too sure.
October 17, 2017
qms commented on the word catallactics
They honor Ayn Rand and von Mises
So know naught of judgment in crisis.
In true catallactics
The salient fact is
Invariant truth fits all sizes.
October 16, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
My couple has started this train
Then bilby and I swapped disdain.
A moiety’s done
When I finish this one.
Can we call it a demi-dizain?
October 16, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
My fragile contentment was fleeting,
Now marred by Tasmanian bleating.
How comes he so hostile
To OED gospel?
In Oz does good sense stand for cheating?
October 15, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
bilby has shrewdly discerned my reason for preferring the OED definition. In an emergency I invite the reader to repeat my contribution nine more times.
October 15, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
A dutiful rhymer must strive
To keep dying verse forms alive.
The limerick style
Succeeds in its trial
So long as its lines number five.
With negligible metrical strain
Are limericks linked in a chain;
The reader’s not troubled
By limericks doubled
To make a neglected dizain.
October 15, 2017
qms commented on the word dizain
As defined by the OED: A poem or stanza of ten lines.
October 15, 2017
qms commented on the word virgate
Old measures make palates alert
At feasts for surveyors of dirt.
They’ll fill up a plate
With hides and virgate
And caruscate cake for desert.
October 14, 2017
qms commented on the word whirlblast
To every question the girl asked
His answer unheard would hurl past.
She realized speed dating
Is no way of mating
And felt like a ship in a whirlblast.
October 13, 2017
qms commented on the word astrobleme
Alas, there’s no foe to be blamed,
No noble defense to be claimed.
A player defaced
By a solo misplaced
Abjectly admits he’s self-maimed.
October 13, 2017
qms commented on the word pettifogger
A fellow I know is a blogger,
An alt-right conspiracy flogger.
No absence of facts
Or motive distracts
From work of a true pettifogger.
October 12, 2017
qms commented on the word astrobleme
The Irish, my ancestral race,
Play ball at a furious pace.
They kick and they dribble
But, sure, there’s no quibble -
You don’t catch the ball with your face.
October 11, 2017
qms commented on the word cantillation
Good Juliet, a nursing sensation,
Would burst into sweet cantillation.
Her unbidden trilling
Made illness less chilling
And filled me with warm consolation.
October 11, 2017
qms commented on the word feodary
In Tudor days only few could be
A fat and contented feodary.
The rich orphan scam
(A pious old sham)
Enabled enrichment quite duty-free.
October 10, 2017
qms commented on the word feodary
The OED provides the following definitions:
1. a. One who holds lands of an overlord on condition of homage and service; a feudal tenant, a vassal.
b. A subject, dependant, retainer, servant.
2. An officer of the ancient Court of Wards.
3. A confederate.
The Collins Dictionary reports that it is “a variant spelling of feudary. ” Pronunciation guidance confirms “feud” as the first syllable.
October 10, 2017
qms commented on the word euripus
Rhetorical tempests do blight us
And tweet blasts asudden affright us.
The ship of state drifts,
It plunges and lifts
And shakes in the jaws of euripus.
October 9, 2017
qms commented on the word amain
The lexical drudge must explain
And make every mystery plain.
The job is to teach
The details of speech
And spew forth examples amain.
October 8, 2017
qms commented on the word chidester
The new bride needs counsel to guide her
But finds it too often denied her.
The groom's jealous dam
Makes family a sham,
And glories in being a chidester.
October 7, 2017
qms commented on the word tantivy
Fox hunters preparing to go
Hear brazen horns wavering blow,
But first a tantivy
En masse to the privy
Then mount with a brave tallyho!
October 6, 2017
qms commented on the word ancientism
A door lock's a frail mechanism
And ours is an archaic system,
But she sees great glory in
Devices Victorian
So safety defers to ancientism.
October 5, 2017
qms commented on the word malversation
The stories appall the whole nation.
The villains outrage in rotation.
True, winners take spoils,
But conscience recoils
At boldness of such malversation.
October 4, 2017
qms commented on the word wanchancy
Though some think it clever and fancy
I call it profane necromancy
To exhume in job lots
These mouldering Scots
Like kippage and forlorn wanchancy.
October 3, 2017
qms commented on the word tumultuary
A transplant is tricky. Results may vary.
A heart that once beat in a voluptuary
May later be placed
In one meek and chaste
And render a future tumultuary.
October 2, 2017
qms commented on the word neuroethics
I'm following you this time. It's obvious that psst is an initialism for "pun surreptitiously secreted in text."
October 1, 2017
qms commented on the word neuroethics
It took me overnight, but when I awoke this morning I finally saw the pun buried deep in bilby's comment: "new Rolexes" - I think? In mysterious ways works that mind.
October 1, 2017
qms commented on the word clapperclaw
When Gossip begins to flap her jaw
The carrion crones will snap and caw
And this will incite
A backbiting blight,
An orgy of spite and clapperclaw.
October 1, 2017
qms commented on the word neuroethics
I ponder the retro reflexes
Of Britain's entrenched eurosceptics:
Can doctors retrain
The xenophobe brain
Within bounds of strict neuroethics?
September 30, 2017
qms commented on the word mishanter
A leader should be an enchanter
And not a coarse bullying ranter.
How comes it about
We're led by a lout?
Is it earned or a random mishanter?
September 29, 2017
qms commented on the word piacular
What blossoms in floral vernacular
Are abject, albeit spectacular?
What bouquet subsumes
In penitent blooms
Devotion while being piacular?
September 28, 2017
qms commented on the word according to Hoyle
Edmond Hoyle (1672 – 29 August 1769 was a writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" came into the language as a reflection of his generally perceived authority on the subject; since that time, use of the phrase has expanded into general use in situations in which a speaker wishes to indicate an appeal to a putative authority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hoyle
September 27, 2017
qms commented on the word garboil
Debating, according to Hoyle,
Exemplifies cool reason's toil.
But reason is scant
In goblinesque rant;
It's heated and hate-fueled garboil.
September 27, 2017
qms commented on the word obelus
Thank you, kind ruzuzu.
September 26, 2017
qms commented on the word obelus
The task of the editing tribe
Is chiding the indifferent scribe
With signs not too obvious,
Discreet, like the obelus,
That seem more a hint than a jibe.
September 26, 2017
qms commented on the word criminous
Vulgarity fits, that's de minimis,
But let's not be bashful or timorous:
Each twitter enlarges
The bill of our charges -
The goblin and crew I call criminous.
September 25, 2017
qms commented on the word verein
A German-speaking friend writes to tell me that I got the pronunciation of verein wrong, so here is another limerick to cover the bases.
When cat and companion combine
In union humano-feline
I'm quite at a loss
To know who's the boss.
It must be a working verein.
September 24, 2017
qms commented on the word inveterate
A rhymer should be fairly literate
And rewriting must be inveterate
To polish and shine
And tune every line
Until the damned verses are better writ.
September 24, 2017
qms commented on the word verein
Surveying the legal terrain
For linkage that will not enchain,
Suppress your keen urge
To partner or merge
And choose a less binding verein.
September 23, 2017
qms commented on the word Epitomize
See epitomize.
September 22, 2017
qms commented on the word facinorous
A nation thought noble and generous
Looks threatening now and sinistrous.
When governed by fear
It's bound to appear
No beacon of hope but facinorous.
September 22, 2017
qms commented on the word mizmaze
The farmer must fill up his days
In trimming his crop so it pays.
Folks stray in their walks
Through maize in its stalks
Enjoying the autumn mizmaze.
September 21, 2017
qms commented on the word kippage
A flea circus's basic equipage
Is prone to some natural slippage,
So dogs are kept by
To replenish supply
And muster the minimum kippage.
September 20, 2017
qms commented on the word casuistry
Pale daybreak reveals a new mystery -
Will ever we know the true history?
The drinker's evasions
On wounds and abrasions
Amuse but are clear casuistry.
September 19, 2017
qms commented on the word minarchism
Philosophers pursuing wisdom
Are always at risk of simplism.
Each elegant plan
Will least govern man
Achieving unique minarchism.
September 18, 2017
qms commented on the word physiocrat
Though long past her mouse-catching day
She thinks current comforts her pay.
This dizzy old cat
Is a physiocrat,
Convinced this is nature's true way.
September 18, 2017
qms commented on the word agitprop
In waiting rooms outside the docs'
The tv persistently squawks.
Oh, please make it stop!
It's crude agitprop -
That 'news' they distribute at Fox!
September 17, 2017
qms commented on the word equipoise
A wise soul takes pause and enjoys
The balance of duties and joys.
When harsh day is done
Yet night not begun
He savors the brief equipoise.
September 16, 2017
qms commented on the word objurgatory
Old Dante told so lurid a story
Of suffering down in purgatory
To make a good case
That divine distaste
Is stronger than objurgatory.
September 15, 2017
qms commented on the word Patrimoney
See patrimony.
September 15, 2017
qms commented on the word latitudinarian
To some he's a bad grammarian,
To others a mad contrarian,
But Ernest prefers
Unfetttered words.
He's truly a latitudinarian.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
September 14, 2017
qms commented on the word fulminate
On such things do they ruminate in Oz.
September 14, 2017
qms commented on the word fulminate
From far and near hear them all ululate
As grievances endlessly pullulate.
The deeds that offend
They cannot amend
But, oh, are they able to fulminate!
September 12, 2017
qms commented on the word heterocosm
The power of wishing is awesome
For dreaming can solve ills or cause 'em
Select your wish well
You may have to dwell
Within your own heterocosm.
September 11, 2017
qms commented on the word losel
His phony compassionate pose'll
Be seen as a feeble proposal,
The work of a loser,
A clumsy fake newser,
A "leader" who's only a losel.
September 10, 2017
qms commented on the word cenoby
To lustful dyspeptic King Henery
Contemplative types were the enemy,
So monks and their abbots
Were chased out like rabbits
And torches were put to each cenoby.
September 9, 2017
qms commented on the word pauciloquy
Use language with careful facility.
Let silence project as humility.
Some, when laconic,
Seem downright moronic,
The artful are praised for pauciloquy.
September 8, 2017
qms commented on the word odd-come-shortly
The busker has trodden in motley
And crowds have applauded him hotly,
So nurtured his claim
To fortune and fame
Arriving, he's sure, odd-come-shortly.
September 7, 2017
qms commented on the word nocuous
The man seemed a comical crock to us,
But Trumpland turned out to be populous.
The boastful jamoke
No longer's a joke -
The goblin has won and he's nocuous.
September 6, 2017
qms commented on the word mopeful
My tossing and turning has ceased -
The sun has arrived in the East.
In darkness I'm mopeful
But dawn makes me hopeful
I'll grind out a couplet at least.
September 5, 2017
qms commented on the word longinquity
The romantic cities of mystery
Arise by shores of distant sea.
Remotest on earth
They tell me is Perth,
Excelling in terms of longinquity.
September 4, 2017
qms commented on the word corvee
The audio buttons on Word entry pages have never worked on my iPad, although they do sometimes work on my pc. I should have checked the OED, which includes the accent aigu. I see now that Wordnik does have an entry for corvée as well. Picky, picky. I wonder what the word sounds like in strine?
Your teen will account you a jerk
If you should oblige him to work.
He'll face with dismay
His domestic corvee.
It's deep in his nature to shirk.
September 4, 2017
qms commented on the word parergon
Officials who use inside dope
May slither the slippery slope:
Abuse and perversion
Or simply parergon
To help a poor senator cope?
September 3, 2017
qms commented on the word corvee
Your teen will account you a jerk
If you should oblige him to work.
He will resent sorely
His domestic corvee.
It's deep in his nature to shirk.
September 2, 2017
qms commented on the word opuscule
When light fades to dim crepuscule
Take heart in a new opuscule.
A limerick writ
Means brains that are fit,
That time's not yet claimed a new fool.
September 1, 2017
qms commented on the word lysimeter
To know if the land's right for grain
Assess what the crops can attain.
If rainfall's the limiter
Then build a lysimeter
To see what the soil will retain.
August 31, 2017
qms commented on the word balize
It sways with the swells and the breeze
Where rivers flow in to the seas,
The seafarer's token
The long journey's broken,
The weathered but welcome balize.
August 30, 2017
qms commented on the word pasticcio
My lettuce and spinach so leafy grow
I plucked 'em along with radicchio.
With oniony zest
And casually dressed
They make an inviting pasticcio.
August 29, 2017
qms commented on the word anaglyph
When this age is done (and God speed!)
What monument fits Donald's deed?
A faint anaglyph
Carved in some cliff
In lowest relief fills the need.
August 28, 2017
qms commented on the word humstrum
I face a confounding conundrum:
On alternate days I become dumb.
My lyre is unstrung,
The songs I'd have sung
Are sunk in cacophonous humstrum.
August 27, 2017
qms commented on the word cenotaph
Memorializing lost friends
The clamor of laughter ascends:
Let drinks that we quaff
Be their cenotaph.
Fond recall's a marker that mends.
August 26, 2017
qms commented on the word bahut
The restless afflicted with stray foot
Are never persuaded to stay put.
Their home is a plane,
A tour boat or train,
Their worldly goods packed in a bahut.
August 25, 2017
qms commented on the word galuchat
I knew a most privileged cat.
The throne where this prodigy sat
Was lavishly built
With silver and gilt,
Upholstered in rare galuchat.
August 24, 2017
qms commented on the word dabster
See another version of the back-handed compliment in comments at facetely.
August 23, 2017
qms commented on the word facetely
How praise when the show fails completely?
Why, smiling, just comment discreetly,
"You've never been better!"
It's true to the letter
And solves your dilemma facetely.
See another solution to this problem in comments at dabster.
August 23, 2017
qms commented on the word cecity
The peace of the house may require
A deaf ear to what could transpire.
A prudent necessity
Is selective cecity -
To act the benevolent liar.
August 22, 2017
qms commented on the word azurn
Thank you, bilby.
August 22, 2017
qms commented on the word azurn
With passage of years we should learn
That night's not the time for concern.
Lay worries aside
For they will abide
And await when the sky turns azurn.
August 21, 2017
qms commented on the word linctus
A skunk came last night and he stinked us.
I count this event a distinct plus:
There's little that's minus
In clearing the sinus
And giving the throat a swift linctus.
August 20, 2017
qms commented on the list a-dram-too-many
Is there a reason that toped (see 11/1/2016 below) is unacceptable?
August 19, 2017
qms commented on the list a-dram-too-many
ebriosity
August 19, 2017
qms commented on the word ebriosity
The worst are consumed with ferocity;
Protections alarm by their paucity.
It's tempting to yield-
Abandon the field-
And sink into deep ebriosity.
August 19, 2017
qms commented on the word badigeon
Oh, thanks to the generous pigeon
Contributing his humble smidgen!
He's doing his part
For out-of-doors art
With dollops of fresh white badigeon.
August 18, 2017
qms commented on the word pottle-pot
If you would imbibe and waddle not
Give heed to the size of bottle bought.
The short road to ruin
Is steep and it's strewn
With many an empty pottle-pot.
August 17, 2017
qms commented on the word yeanling
When first the spring meadows are greening
The cycle of life shows most meaning.
See four-footed young
Like flowers new sprung,
The foal and the calf and the yeanling.
August 17, 2017
qms commented on the word avolation
When bound for the last destination
I hope to create no sensation,
Ask no trumpet blast
To hear at the last
But subtle and sweet avolation.
August 16, 2017
qms commented on the word lucullanism
See Lucullan.
August 15, 2017
qms commented on the word cecils
So jealous are chefs of their story
They'll quibble at terms gustatory.
Your balls in a pot
Will still get as hot
And you'll claim it's all to your glory.
August 15, 2017
qms commented on the word cecils
In higher class fry cooking vessels
Each savory orb of meat nestles.
What mere cooks will call
The common meatball
A master chef turns into cecils.
August 15, 2017
qms commented on the word dabster
A diplomat viewing disaster
Might say that the artist's a dabster.
Though bungling's averred
The Janus-faced word
Is heard as the praise of a master.
August 14, 2017
qms commented on the word caynard
A fox pup must study and train hard
Or risk he's dismissed as a caynard.
The skulk's tough tuition
Achieves full fruition
In raising a wily red Reynard.
August 13, 2017
qms commented on the word babblative
As talk for the troubled's a palliative
And Congress, a failing collaborative,
Inept to the hilt
Is Babel rebuilt,
It's frantic and futilely babblative.
August 12, 2017
qms commented on the word twistical
Don't fall for the cynical listicle
Where news is typically mythical.
The "ten things you must"
Are hot air and dust,
Just click-bait that's wickedly twistical.
August 11, 2017
qms commented on the word autotheist
On tv at most he was B-list
(Absent a C- or a D- list)
But still self-assessed
As clearly the best.
The goblin's a true autotheist.
August 10, 2017
qms commented on the word scenography
Thank you kindly, ruzuzu. The challenge with such words is to resist the obvious "-ography" rhymes but after years of this I am running out of dodges.
August 10, 2017
qms commented on the word scenography
Potemkin knew ways to delude.
His town was struck down and renewed
Repeatedly, doggedly,
A feat of sceneography,
The man was a talented dude.
August 9, 2017
qms commented on the word adit
They say the great pyramid had it,
Though sheathing of marble once clad it:
The way to the tomb
(And curses of doom)
Began with a well-hidden adit.
August 8, 2017
qms commented on the word epigone
He copied the language and tone
The goblin prefers on the phone,
But, lacking the bite
Of soul-searing spite,
The Mooch proved a pale epigone.
August 7, 2017
qms commented on the word torque
torque, v. to offend, to arouse anger.
Ex.: Police say that between four counties, Jack McPeak stole flags from fire departments, schools, cemeteries, “and the one that really torques me off,” said Keith County Sheriff Jeff Stevens, “the American Legion.”
https://www.facebook.com/NPTelegraph/posts/1350267468330821
Google "really torques me" to find many such examples. Kitit, in comments at tork, reports that this expression was common when he was a teenager in the 1960s. I am about the same age as Kitit and I do not recall hearing this expression while growing up in New England. It may be a regionalism.
August 7, 2017
qms commented on the word torks
See torque.
August 7, 2017
qms commented on the word lusory
Remember the fun that it used to be
Reciting beloved Mother Goosery?
Those memorable rhymes
Limned foibles and crimes,
So making mind shaping more lusory.
August 6, 2017
qms commented on the word pokelogan
The footwear that's always in vogue in
The Maine woods is clearly the brogan.
They'll withstand the suck
Of voracious muck
Awaiting in every pokelogan.
August 5, 2017
qms commented on the word tranter
In dark streets the living have flown
A ghostly voice pleads all alone.
The cry of that tranter,
Ethereal chanter,
Is that of sweet Molly Malone.
August 4, 2017
qms commented on the word thermophile
My cat chases sunlight in pathces
And bathes in the warmth that attaches.
Devout thermophile,
She'll squirm for a while
Then nap in each one that she catches.
August 3, 2017
qms commented on the word born a bit tired
An expression that deserves reanimation.
August 2, 2017
qms commented on the word opiniator
The suitor who will stimulate her
Will be a sureness simulator,
Implacably stout
And scornful of doubt:
Prince Charming the Opiniator.
August 2, 2017
qms commented on the word neocracy
The hot show in town is neocracy
With wonders the people will flock to see:
The kleptocrat's portion!
The moral contortion!
A circus of preening hypocrisy!
August 1, 2017
qms commented on the word mulligrubs
Enmeshed by so grievous events
The sharp pang of panic relents.
Sour fate dully rubs
And makes mulligrubs
From fevers of old discontents.
July 31, 2017
qms commented on the word lushington
Oh, hear the poet's gushing tongue
Sing sweet, although a lushington!
In drink, aloud,
He charms the crowd,
Yet on the page is nothing done.
July 30, 2017
qms commented on the word hanaper
In Summer sweet passions can occur:
There's many a sensual plan astir,
So fruits of the season
And wine beyond reason
Fill young lover's hopeful hanaper.
July 29, 2017
qms commented on the word luteous
It's strange what comes to be beauteous:
If renal disease put its root in us
The optimist's eye
Will ceaselessly try
To spy the elusively luteous.
July 28, 2017
qms commented on the word imparisyllabic
sprung rhythm is rather elastic
With changes from small to the drastic,
So words you thought odd
Can be even trod
Though looking imparisyllabic.
July 27, 2017
qms commented on the word lurry
Cornelius tended to hurry.
His gait on most days was a scurry,
His costume, unkempt,
A failing attempt
To shape something more than a lurry.
July 26, 2017
qms commented on the word brassard
Put trust in no helmet or brassard
For life is a game played at hazard,
So fate's subtle arts
Will find softer parts
And kick your incompetent ass hard.
July 25, 2017
qms commented on the word jawsmith
The throwing of veggies is rude -
A terrible waste of the food
But I find good cause with
The faux golden jawsmith
Provoking a food throwing mood.
July 24, 2017
qms commented on the word souterrain
A basement's decidedly plain
And will for the many remain,
But go win the Lotto
And build you a grotto,
An oenophile's cave or souterrain.
July 23, 2017
qms commented on the word brachistochrone
When Ernest paces and frets all alone
He prays for a call on the phone.
To garner a word,
Remotest preferred,
He'll find the brachistochrone.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
July 23, 2017
qms commented on the word falcated
We've made luxurious sport
Of fingers reputedly short
We'd be less elated
To learn they're falcated,
A brevity of ominous sort.
July 21, 2017
qms commented on the word habitacle
A rhymer grown weary and stressed
Does work that's not always the best.
He needs a sabbatical
In some sweet habitacle -
A rhymless and rhythm-free rest.
July 21, 2017
qms commented on the word guilloche
This house was once classy, by gosh,
The walls with proud details awash.
Some long-ago master
Of decorative plaster
Had spun out a web of guilloche.
July 19, 2017
qms commented on the word borak
It matters not pale-faced or black
In cities or furthest outback:
The Aussies converse
In patterns perverse;
It's tall tales and endless borak.
July 18, 2017
qms commented on the word fakement
Beware lest like Eve you should meet
A serpent who lies for a treat.
That wily old snake meant
To purvey a fakement
For sheer love of simple deceit.
July 17, 2017
qms commented on the word grape-cure
From what I read you had to eat leaves and stems too, but I suspect wine was the point. The customers came eagerly and left happy.
July 16, 2017
qms commented on the word grape-cure
When rich folk felt clogged and unfree
They'd travel to mountains or sea,
Or make an escape tour
Including a grape-cure
To purge them of turgid ennui.
July 16, 2017
qms commented on the word brachydactylous
A small-minded leader is fractious,
One shriveled in heart is disastrous,
But heaven forfend
Our fate should depend
On one who is brachydactylous.
July 15, 2017
qms commented on the word carmagnole
Your dress and gesture bespoke your role
And safest in those days was prole
To retain your head
For a cap of bright red
While dancing a mad carmagnole.
July 14, 2017
qms commented on the word antre
A cave man might woo her with banter
Or show shiny stones to enchant her,
If wise she'll require
That he light a fire
Before she'll bed down in his antre.
July 13, 2017
qms commented on the word bordereau
A lawyer can put on a show
Of precedents, row upon row.
It beggars belief
To call it a "brief,"
So name it instead "bordereau."
July 12, 2017
qms commented on the word euhemerism
A mystery cult needs a team
To manage how origins seem
And stem any schism
Like euhemerism
That threatens to spoil the dream.
July 11, 2017
qms commented on the word glocalization
A marketeer hungry for fame
Will give common practice a name.
A vocalization
Like glocalization
Refreshes the same weary game.
July 10, 2017
qms commented on the word eolith
He's more than a chip off the block;
This cave man is cock of the walk.
Not Dad's eolith
But rad neolith
Is what he can knock from a rock.
July 9, 2017
qms commented on the word agostadero
I am not a polyglot hero.
My knowledge of Spanish is zero.
I'd rather write "pasture"
Than risk a disaster
In rhyming with agostadero.
July 8, 2017
qms commented on the word tripudiation
At meetings of Lexical Nation
A collation precedes some potation.
There's never a chance
They simply will "dance;"
The evening must end in tripudiation.
July 7, 2017
qms commented on the word fisc
Though beef was but rarely a fisc fit
On Paddy's Day they'd always risk it.
The immigrant tide
Took pleasure and pride
In platters of cabbage and brisket.
July 6, 2017
qms commented on the word perquisite
There's many a prez who'd flirt a bit
High office bestows that perquisite
But impulse erupts
And power corrupts
So never entrust a jerk with it.
July 5, 2017
qms commented on the word girandole
His brief part should have been droll,
A gesture, a flourish, a girandole.
But clownish excess
From too much success
Has trapped us now in the Grand Guignol.
July 4, 2017
qms commented on the word murage
The pirates taxed beyond endurage
They taxed for sailing and for moorage
And charged every boat
In that city afloat
Ridiculous fees for the murage.
July 3, 2017
qms commented on the word parataxis
A little word trips, hampers, attacks us.
Resist; adopt a disciplined practice.
Conjunctivitis
Never will blight us,
Defended by sharp paralaxis.
July 2, 2017
qms commented on the word extramental
It starts as a union placental,
Persists as invisible tendril,
But twins, so they say,
May dwell far away
And share in a way extramental.
July 1, 2017
qms commented on the word aerophagia
At yoga camp life's a bit lazier
To mimic the graces of Asia.
At breatharian camp
The signature stamp
Is general alarmed aerophagia.
June 30, 2017
qms commented on the word nympholepsy
The folks in a mystical cult
Sip potions to help them exult.
The visions adepts see
Provoke nympholepsy,
Which is the desired result.
June 29, 2017
qms commented on the word nutrimental
The scheme of the vegan is gentle
With quinoa and kale and the lentil.
Are benefits real
As followers feel,
Or is its appeal nutrimental?
June 28, 2017
qms commented on the user qms
The Word of the Day limerick for July 27, 2017 is meant to be read in the context of the comment posted at logothete on September 4, 2014.
June 27, 2017
qms commented on the word logothete
The warhorse was no longer fleet
So had to be shrewd and discreet.
Where stronger words failed
Old Teddy assailed
His foe with the slur, logothete.
June 27, 2017
qms commented on the word porte cochere
See porte cochère.
June 27, 2017
qms commented on the word onfall
At Daisy Mae's regular onfall
The hollow resounds to her bonk call:
"Come old men and young
The wee and well-hung
It don't matter none. I want y'all!"
June 26, 2017
qms commented on the word head-hung
All night fans in frenzy gave tongue -
Gargantuan efforts of lung!
Despite boastful songs
The team failed its throngs,
Who slouched sadly homeward, head-hung.
June 25, 2017
qms commented on the word fraudsman
Some think that the Donald's an odd man,
But others, a sweet-natured Lord's man.
I must give the nod
To the party of odd;
His piety reeks of the fraudsman.
June 24, 2017
qms commented on the word locodescriptive
While "nut job" and "loon" are dismissive
Yet "mad" and "insane" echo fictive.
The language amazes
With terms for our crazes;
It's supple and locodescriptive.
June 23, 2017
qms commented on the word frugivore
ruzuzu and bilby combine
Lamenting my poor withered vine,
But if there's an ointment
For cruel disappointment
That comforting unction is mine.
For limericks are careless of clime
And ripen regardless of time.
Their happiest chore
Is spreading of spore
To generate offspring in rhyme.
June 23, 2017
qms commented on the word frugivore
The pattern is hard to ignore:
Buy local and you are a locavore;
If seeking cheap eats
In veggies and meats
You're frugal and known as a frugivore.
June 22, 2017
qms commented on the word jobation
Expressions of disapprobation
Have many a nasty mutation:
The cold look that lingers,
The wagging of fingers,
But worst is the endless jobation.
June 21, 2017
qms commented on the word hermeneut
A poet who's really astute
Is neither obscure nor too cute.
His work ought to dart
Straight to the heart
Not needing a shrewd hermeneut.
June 20, 2017
qms commented on the word Goodman
See goodman.
June 20, 2017
qms commented on the word dewfall
Meditation is surely our true call,
Let light that's inside us imbue all
The mists that conceal
Resolve and congeal
And peace will descend like the dewfall.
June 19, 2017
qms commented on the word ekphrasis
As patience and rhyming time passes
The evidence clearly amasses:
If not quite deplorable
At least it's ignorable.
A word we don't need is ekphrasis.
June 18, 2017
qms commented on the word testificate
The Scots wanted all done in triplicate
But folks became testy and sick of it.
Now red tape's reduced,
Contentment produced
By banning the pesky testificate.
June 17, 2017
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
spinach
June 17, 2017
qms commented on the word demilune
Now scholars, I read, have once more
Uncovered a case of fakelore.
That beckoning moon,
That quaint demilune,
Was carved in no true outhouse door.
See http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/outhouses-crescent-moons
June 16, 2017
qms commented on the word begrutten
Alas, bonnie lassie, why weep?
Our dearest loves we cannot keep.
I see you're begrutten
But eat up your mutton,
The gift of your favorite sheep.
June 15, 2017
qms commented on the word tripe-visaged
His face was of a type privileged
To be by the great bard ripe-imaged
It's sagging and sallow,
Twixt mucus and tallow,
Immortalized now as tripe-visaged.
N. B.: So far as I can tell this word has been used in earnest precisely once. All other instances are quotation of that passage in Henry IV, Part 2.
June 14, 2017
qms commented on the word mortiferous
May God in his mercy deliver us
From beasts that are wild and carnivorous,
From shoal-ridden shores
And humorless bores,
And all things that tend toward mortiferous.
June 13, 2017
qms commented on the word Book Book
Bravo!
June 13, 2017
qms commented on the word Book Book
Some years ago I was traveling with family through the Loire Valley and we passed through the town of Tours. In the central part of the city there is an ancient tower (French “tour”). It was plain that if we had stopped to be guided through that remnant we would be taking the Tours tour tour.
June 12, 2017
qms commented on the word scintillate
See comments at sparkle.
June 12, 2017
qms commented on the word sparkle
Sparkle, sparkle, puny orb;
Will I your mys'try e'er absorb,
Lording over everything
Like a rock star trailing bling?
-by Quentin M. Sullivan
See comments at scintillate.
June 12, 2017
qms commented on the word carnassial
A tiger might flex a fierce fascicle
And show you dentition carnassial.
Would he likely munch on
Your haunch for a luncheon?
I think you can bet your sweet ass he will.
June 12, 2017
qms commented on the word inedia
Mortality's sentence is eating her
But panic will doom her the speedier.
She seizes in terror
On all forms of error
Including the fatal inedia.
See also breatharian and comments at autotroph and photovore.
June 11, 2017
qms commented on the word fibbery
I used to have a carbuncle. He was wonderfully helpful with "normally aspirated" car engines but became an anachronism when fuel injection came in. He works on lawn mowers now.
June 10, 2017
qms commented on the word fibbery
If fibbers are guilty of fibbery
Then sybarites wallow in sybary.
A scribe who is given
To squibs hasty scriven
Is lost in the thickets of squibbery.
June 10, 2017
qms commented on the word ichthyophagy
Ecologists warn us that fish
Are not a sustainable dish.
Enlightened philosophy
Eschews ichthyophagy,
Or so would the scientists wish.
June 9, 2017
qms commented on the word ambagitory
So what's with the dogs' shaggy story
And why do the pooches grab glory?
If she's left unhindered
My cat is long winded
And, much like a mutt, is ambagitory.
June 8, 2017
qms commented on the word mother
If ruzuzu could drink what she'd druther
It'd be some astringent or other.
A natural quirk,
Genetics at work
In one who calls vinegar "mother."
June 7, 2017
qms commented on the word chandelle
The hot shots are flying pellmell
And groundlings aren't able to tell:
Was that trick more nimble than
A flamboyant Immelmann
Or more of a normal chandelle?
June 7, 2017
qms commented on the list food-that-shall-not-be-named
ไข่เยี่ยวม้า (khai yiao ma), literally "horse piss eggs," is the Thai term for what are more commonly called "hundred year old eggs." These are hard boiled eggs pickled to a deep brown. Supposedy the old Thai recipe used horse urine as the pickling agent.
June 7, 2017
qms commented on the word mystagogy
His mem'ry is still a bit foggy
(These days he often wakes groggy).
He gropes for those truths
He found in the booze
Last night in his bright mystagogy.
June 6, 2017
qms commented on the word enchiridion
We learn from the lesson of Gideon,
Who vanquished the army of Midian,
Success takes invention
And not close attention
To rules in some stale enchiridion.
Judges 7:17–22
June 5, 2017
qms commented on the word WotD
I try hard to rhyme up to spec
But sometimes I put out pure dreck.
It is most convenient
My readers are lenient
And bilby will not wring my neck.
June 4, 2017
qms commented on the word pleonexia
His antics are having effects bizarre.
Take note of the nerve-shattered wrecks we are!
The truth, be it told:
He's hungry for gold
And driven by deep pleonexia.
June 4, 2017
qms commented on the word WotD
No posting by this time is strange,
Exceeding by far normal range.
Yet here must we languish,
Wordless in anguish.
The Word of the Day does not change.
June 4, 2017
qms commented on the word gride
Cruel mockers beware, woe betide!
For Ernest's no safe man to chide.
He knows words with edges,
So legend alleges.
His sharp tongue may baffle but gride.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
June 3, 2017
qms commented on the word piquette
The oenophile's delicate senses
Take shelter from vulgar pretenses.
No plonk's to be found
Within his surround,
Defended by strong piquette fences.
June 2, 2017
qms commented on the word morsure
Puzzling how, in spite of everything, Australians enjoy such a reputation for friendliness. Perhaps bilby’s ill humor is the result of frustration with the Australian dung beetle problem. It seems the place is covered in shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Dung_Beetle_Project
June 1, 2017
qms commented on the word morsure
Their tastes are demanding for sure:
From sniffing to careful morsure
Dung beetles commit
To freshness in shit
And none but the finest ordure.
June 1, 2017
qms commented on the word intenerate
Be sweet at the start and intenerate
And hope that your arguments penetrate.
If the blockhead's unmoved
By good sense, though proved,
Then seize him and quickly defenestrate,
May 31, 2017
qms commented on the word habile
To raise your verse above the babble
Start out with the simplest dabble.
Begin with June/moon
And find very soon
Your voice become fluent and habile.
May 30, 2017
qms commented on the word codlin
"Delicious" is marketing hype
While "mac" marks a plain-spoken type.
It seems to me "codlin,"
Is rather too maudlin
For fruit that you coax to be ripe.
May 29, 2017
qms commented on the word broose
The wedding once done, a race ensues
Involving the lusty kilted youths.
The new-minted missus
Will dole out some kisses
To he who comes first in the broose.
According to the OED the vowel in broose is one of those peculiarly Scottish stranglings. Think of the sound made by an expiring bagpipe as it dwindles to a flaccid state. I have elected to rhyme it as you see. Those who want perfect authenticity should abuse the rhyming words into conformity.
May 28, 2017
qms commented on the word spinthariscope
When bored to the end of your rope
Try a toy that will help you to cope:
Watch atoms decay
In their frivolous way
In the lens of a spinthariscope.
May 27, 2017
qms commented on the word astrobleme
The Yucatan narrates the birth
Of changes for old Mother Earth.
The pastoral scene
Hides a vast astrobeme,
The secret to dinosaur dearth.
For a description of the Chicxulub crater and its relation to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, see
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
May 26, 2017
qms commented on the word depuration
Thank you, hh.
May 26, 2017
qms commented on the word depuration
A Kalenjin youth's preparation
For manhood involves separation
From infantile joys,
And foreskins of boys,
And comfort as harsh depuration.
The Kalenjin people of Kenya dominate marathon running worldwide. For a treatment of the role of coming of age traditions in fostering this dominance see:
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-one-kenyan-tribe-produces-the-worlds-best-runners
May 25, 2017
qms commented on the word versing
The Wordie affliction's a curse;
Indifference, however, is worse.
How blessed the infection
That raises objection
And moves gentle bilby to verse.
May 24, 2017
qms commented on the word threnody
Our grief seeks surcease and a remedy,
A passage from pain to serenity,
And such is the meaning
Of inchoate keening
Or intricate weave of a threnody.
May 24, 2017
qms commented on the word euphuism
The voter is bored with me-tooism,
Impatient with faux folksy truism.
He longs for much more
Like great days of yore
When orators mastered euphuism.
May 23, 2017
qms commented on the word altricial
It's fine if the state is initial
When infancy's cute and official,
But helpless and squalling,
Is sad and appalling
When old folk are worn to altricial.
May 22, 2017
qms commented on the word mortcloth
I know how the vampirish sort doth:
Their fashion is always to sport goth.
Their trademarks are fangs
And ebony bangs
And capes that are sewn out of mortcloth.
May 21, 2017
qms commented on the word bemock
Cult members once loved how he talked
But now for his gaffes he's bemocked.
His status, once clerical,
Is changed to chimerical.
The high priest of con is defrocked.
May 20, 2017
qms commented on the word sanguinolent
tristero, you must be a cat lover. Penelope (my aged cat) and I rejoice in your approval.
May 19, 2017
qms commented on the word sanguinolent
My cat for the most part's indolent
And curled in sleep seeming innocent,
But fidgets will twitch her
From dreams that bewitch her
Betraying ambitions sanguinolent.
May 19, 2017
qms commented on the word schav
Consider the choices you have
Selecting a soup of the slav.
There's bigos, quite thick,
Or pick one that's quick
And dine on a fresh bowl of schav.
May 18, 2017
qms commented on the word ollekebolleke
Sounds a lot like “okaley dokaley,” the favorite expression of assent of Ned Flanders, Homer Simpson’s pious neighbor. Could this be evidence of the influence of Dutch folk tradition on The Simpsons? There might be a PhD dissertation there.
May 17, 2017
qms commented on the word purblind
My friend, alas, made up her mind
To credit some claims of dafter kind.
So reason's traduced,
It's trumped and seduced
By visions supplied the purblind.
May 17, 2017
qms commented on the word hymnographer
Said Bach to his bold interlocutor,
"It seems, sir, you are a provocateur.
While true, it's been said
I'm matchless in bed,
I'm also an unmatched hymnographer."
May 16, 2017
qms commented on the word froward
See comments at tetric.
May 15, 2017
qms commented on the word tetric
I see that some GNU collaborator (or perhaps an imperious spell checker), in plundering The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia for a definition of "tetric " has assumed the old and honorable "froward" to be a misspelling of "forward" and has "corrected" it.
Obscurity makes one a coward
Another finds language empowered:
It's timid and horrid
To substitute forward
From distrust of stubborn old froward.
May 15, 2017
qms commented on the word tetric
The fare at the fair is eclectic:
You might spy a clown with a pet trick,
See shows of all styles
For thrills and for smiles
And nary a visage that's tetric.
May 15, 2017
qms commented on the word materfamilias
The votes had been willy nilly cast
Electing our materfamilias.
Electoral flunkies
(Those mischievous monkeys)
Appointed instead a male silly ass.
May 14, 2017
qms commented on the word mellisonant
Perfumed were the notes Melissa sent
With sweet and enticing kiss of scent,
Beguiled was my ear
When lips were more near
To hear her soft whispers mellisonant.
May 13, 2017
qms commented on the word alegar
*deep bows and blushes*
May 13, 2017
qms commented on the word bodement
An oracle who's on the decline
Is desperate to peddle a sign.
She must sell a bodement
To pay her abode rent
And maintain her practice divine.
May 12, 2017
qms commented on the word alegar
A brewmaster's post is a sinecure
In abstinent towns such as Srinagar,
But still they are tickled
With veggies well pickled
So happy with Gallagher's vinegar.
May 12, 2017
qms commented on the word pronged ant
Or, in the case of impatient lovers, you might see a pronghorn ant elope.
May 12, 2017
qms commented on the word alegar
The ale that is brewed by one Gallagher
Is never a champion challenger.
The judge always fails it.
I don't know what ails it
But, my! It's a fine batch of alegar.
May 11, 2017
qms commented on the word eduction
Since The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was last published in 1914 I think the most Mr. Foreman can claim for his 2005 contribution is a novel coinage made in ignorance that the word already had a definition.
May 10, 2017
qms commented on the word mordacious
Romanians mostly are gracious,
With smiles on their welcoming faces,
But should it transpire
You've met a vampire
Then count on him turning mordacious.
May 10, 2017
qms commented on the word psychozoic
Zuzu, your praise is a perfect balm.
May 9, 2017
qms commented on the word psychozoic
The dumb beasts can't voice their complaint
That men are more psycho than saint,
So must remain stoic
In this psychozoic,
But contented neighbors they ain't.
May 9, 2017
qms commented on the word patrocinate
Success is often a toss of fate
For politicians who oscillate.
Observers may savor
A fortunate waver
As willingness to patrocinate.
May 8, 2017
qms commented on the word astrolatry
There's worship of differing quality
From reverence to outright frivolity
The champ of bizarre,
The oddest by far,
Is Hollywood tinsel astrolatry
May 7, 2017
qms commented on the word torve
In Latin he'll punish, by Jove,
Those schoolboys whose silly minds rove.
Hell get their attention
With endless declension
And looks that are classically torve.
May 6, 2017
qms commented on the word lemniscate
Erect he's the humble number eight
But, privileged to help out the great,
And supple and nimble,
Reclines as a symbol,
So toppled becomes the lemniscate.
May 5, 2017
qms commented on the word hugeous
His fitness for office eludes us.
He seems like one of The Stooges.
His character's wriggly
Yet he projects bigly,
So failings are shown loud and hugeous.
May 4, 2017
qms commented on the word geoglyph
If shipwrecked on a desert strand
Exploit the things you find on hand.
It takes but a brio jiff
To make up a neoglyph
By spelling out "Help!" in the sand.
May 3, 2017
qms commented on the word rap-full
Assessing the speed of fast yachts
You'll estimate headway in knots.
A crew that's not bashful
Will keep the craft rap-full;
The knots that they make will be lots.
May 2, 2017
qms commented on the word ennead
At softball we played plenty bad
So heed my sad jeremiad:
Though students of lit
May prosper at wit
They're bad at forming an ennead.
May 1, 2017
qms commented on the word pock-pudding
Most insults are quickly construed
But Scots are inventively rude.
I find it off-putting -
The Brit as pock-pudding -
From folks who treat haggis as food.
April 30, 2017
qms commented on the word musaceous
A blender is most efficacious
At rendering foodstuff pultaceous
You'll whip up a doozy
Of banana smoothy
With yogurt and fruit that's musaceous.
April 29, 2017
qms commented on the word pedregal
The college ideal's medieval.
Though all crave relations "collegial,"
Now academe's groves
Are turned profit troves
Are blasted to barren pedregal.
April 28, 2017
qms commented on the word Trexit
There is going to have to be a Trentrance before there is a Trexit. Turkey is not a member of the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union
April 27, 2017
qms commented on the word robustious
As youths they were doubtless robustious
But proved to be smart and industrious.
The twig's not ill bent
By youthful ferment;
The pack are become quite illustrious.
April 27, 2017
qms commented on the word pultaceous
When Ernest is off on word chases
His appetite's often voracious.
For convenience' sake
He'll blend up a shake
And suck down his suppers pultaceous.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
April 26, 2017
qms commented on the word crybaby tree
What a great name for a plant! I saw “crybaby tree” on the Recently Loved Words list and had to check it out. The most succinct explanation I found is;
To be found at:
http://www.nola.com/homegarden/index.ssf/2014/05/what_is_the_latin_name_of_the.html
I want one.
April 25, 2017
qms commented on the word nociceptive
The master must make his objective
Instruction that's clear and effective.
The best way to train
Is with a quick cane
For young'uns are quite nociceptive.
April 25, 2017
qms commented on the word mastaba
The kings that the Nile gods anoint
Had tombs that were flat-topped but quaint
Long gone now, mastaba,
Near far-off Aqaba
As pyramids made more a point.
April 24, 2017
qms commented on the word firebug
The addict is wrapped in the dire hug
Of mania felt as a higher tug.
For twitchers it's birds,
For others it's words
Or smoke and bright flame for the firebug.
April 23, 2017
qms commented on the word athelemic
This leaves me scratching my head. An "engineer hoist with his own petard" (from Hamlet) is a bomb-layer blown up by his own device. How is this without foundation? It seems to me a fruitful metaphor. In fact, the “See also” list at the end of this expression’s Wikipedia entry is full of possibilities:
Own goal
Poetic justice
Irony
List of inventors killed by their own inventions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard
April 22, 2017
qms commented on the word bigos
The Polish eat more than just ham.
They breakfast on pancakes and jam.
They garnish with sea moss
Their big bowls of bigos,
But mostly their kitchens make spam.
April 22, 2017
qms commented on the word gype
The Scot has his kilts and his pipes
And names for the scorn-worthy types:
The treacherous skellums
And obnoxious blellums,
Ungainly and foolhardy gypes.
April 21, 2017
qms commented on the word diple
A jazz magazine seeks a tool
To edit without being cruel.
I think that the diple,
Deployed rather hiply,
Is both copacetic and cool.
April 20, 2017
qms commented on the user yiliahair
Isn't all hair "pre-owned?" Who knows what shocking things have been done to it.
April 20, 2017
qms commented on the word tin of hooraybum
In attempting to dissect "stompclacker" (Using thick gloves and very long tools. He's a wily one, that bilby.) I came across the following document which purports to be a glossary of informal medical terms current in Yorkshire. It's good for some chuckles.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2006/04/24/glossary_for_international_recruits.pdf
April 20, 2017
qms commented on the word tin of hooraybum
See examples at whupass.
April 19, 2017
qms commented on the word whupass
See comments at tin of hooraybum.
April 19, 2017
qms commented on the word tin of hooraybum
I think our resident marsupial misconstrues the meaning of "whoop" in the countrified American expression "open a can of whupass.". It is not a celebratory cry but rather means a whipping or beating. So, one trash-talking basketball player might say to his adversary, "I'm gonna whup your ass!" To open a can of whupass is to invite calamity. It is a more local and limited version of opening Pandora's box.
I find the key syllables spelled as an unhyphenated "whoopass," hyphenated as "whoop-ass," and as two words - "whoop ass." The first syllable may be whoop, woop, wup, or whup. The most common version I find is "whupass."
A more exact British version might be, "open a tin of thrashbottom." The trouble with this formulation, however, is that the threat may not be received as entirely unwelcome. We colonials hear stories of the widespread plying of the cane on tender young bottoms in the "public" schools and of a fondness for such "correction" that persists into adulthood. Would an English cricketer intimidate his opponent by pledging to thrash his bottom or would he make a new friend?
Perhaps bilby could lay a long ear to the ground and provide us with an Australian equivalent.
April 19, 2017
qms commented on the word torticollis
Though bobbleheads children may call us
Our wrynecks do bring us some solace.
The world's all askew
But not in our view:
It's righted by our torticollis.
April 19, 2017
qms commented on the word porte-bonheur
All sages I'm sure will concur
On need for a good porte-bonheur,
A charm to protect
And maybe deflect
Capricious storms of force majeure.
April 18, 2017
qms commented on the word bulse
The sites that take celebrity pulse
Compete to make voyeurs convulse
By plying the fools
With gossipy jewels,
But big lovely lies are a bulse.
April 17, 2017
qms commented on the word shikari
I've heard that some "hunt" for big game
Where imported beasts are near tame.
No need for safari
Or wise old shikari.
They'll come if you call them by name.
April 16, 2017
qms commented on the word bouilli
Preparing the food for a sloop
Or any adventurous troop,
You cook down your bouilli
Until it gets gooey
Then dry it to portable soup.
April 15, 2017
qms commented on the word daunton
There once was a filly in Taunton
Whose ways were unruly and wanton.
A fellow beguiled her
And rendered her milder,
A wrangler who knew how to daunton.
April 14, 2017
qms commented on the word ginnel
The alleys in Yorkshire are dim
With hazards to life and to limb.
There's many a gin mill
Down a dark ginnel
Where drinking's determined and grim.
April 13, 2017
qms commented on the word helve
The cave-salesman pitched how to delve
With flint that surmounted a helve:
"Save knuckles and nails
And move dirt in bales,
Why, one man can work as though twelve!"
April 12, 2017
qms commented on the word pyrheliometer
You've busted the boffin's barometer!
You're too hot for one nerd's thermometer!
The charms that he's treasured
Can only be measured
By means of a a pyrheliometer.
April 11, 2017
qms commented on the word farouche
André wore a sneer on his bouche
Intended to mark him farouche.
But his faux mystery
Was mostly gaucherie;
The poor guy appeared only louche.
April 10, 2017
qms commented on the word saphie
In Lagos when taking a taxi
The old hands are wary and savvy.
They close their eyes tight
To limit the fright,
And cling to their favorite saphie.
April 9, 2017
qms commented on the word patrix
The print roller, Eve, is the matrix,
But note the paternalist basics:
The pattern's true source,
Its "Adam," of course,
Is naturally thought of as patrix.
April 8, 2017
qms commented on the word misprision
With duty and greed in collision
What think you the Goblin's decision?
His honor's a pittance
That's sent in remittance
For grand enough deeds of misprision.
April 7, 2017
qms commented on the word perduellion
He seemed long ago a mere hellion;
His victims then limned a rapscallion,
And footsie with Vlad
Is more than just bad.
It's making a case for perduellion.
April 6, 2017
qms commented on the word omnicide
The Goblin-in-chief in his pride
Thinks science is safely defied.
Grotesque though his stance is
Still warming advances,
Foreshadowing brute omnicide.
April 5, 2017
qms commented on the word shabradoodle
Aka a mutt?
April 4, 2017
qms commented on the word contemn
Our cat does not deign to condemn,
But gives a sharp feline, "Ahem!"
Attention once won
We know then to shun
That thing that Herself would contemn.
April 4, 2017
qms commented on the word fent
My jacket I know has a vent
But too little time have I spent
In learning the lesson
Of clothes that I dress in
To praise the ubiquitous fent.
April 3, 2017
qms commented on the word orchestrion
The player piano and rest be gone,
Obsessives are on a quest beyond
To catch every part
Of symphonic art
In gears of a wondrous orchestrion.
April 2, 2017
qms commented on the word thimblerig
Court jester was never a simple gig
Though tired you danced a nimble jig
Since courtiers were fond
At times to be conned
You had to have mastered the thimblerig.
April 1, 2017
qms commented on the word titubate
He rises to urgently micturate
But, tending to totter and titubate,
He's slow to the door -
Can hold it no more -
Arriving, alas, just a bit too late.
March 31, 2017
qms commented on the word hallux
Write down this in bold and italics!
Watch out for the bilby called Alex,
Using various masks
For nefarious tasks
But known by his want of a hallux.
March 30, 2017
qms commented on the word simplism
A fellow by name of Abe Chisolm
Could jive to the Trumpian rhythm,
And the pleasure he got
Was better than thought.
It's sweeter to swing to simplism.
March 30, 2017
qms commented on the word pinkie
Hmm: bilby, macrotis, pinkie? I think this particular bandicoot carries too many passports to be trusted.
March 30, 2017
qms commented on the word macrotis
For all of the famed Aussie vaunting
Ennobling this creature is daunting.
A macrotis will still be
No more than a bilby,
And always that hallux is wanting.
March 29, 2017
qms commented on the word electrophorus
In labs that the old movies offer us
The science is mad and preposterous:
Alembics that bubble
As foretastes of trouble
And ominous electrophorous
March 29, 2017
qms commented on the word crottin
The word means a cheese like a turd
And sounding in French is preferred:
"..Un peu de crottin
Pour les oeufs au gratin.."
To rhyme it in English's absurd.
But Ernest, when he is besotten,
All lexical niceness forgotten,
Is apt to command,
"The Froggies be damned!
I'll order a portion of crottin."
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
March 28, 2017
qms commented on the word squail
Consider their lives of travail:
Contentment so brief and so frail,
Of offspring bereft
And little time left,
Should poultry yet suffer a squail?
March 27, 2017
qms commented on the word microphthalmia
That beady-eyed bloke's microphthalmia
Provokes less than general neuralgia.
The pain is terrific
In a place most specific:
His gaze causes instant proctalgia.
March 26, 2017
qms commented on the word equilibrist
The voice, your dull pol will insist,
Is his and not his ventriloquist.
He'll grasp at renown
As contortionist clown,
Or fame as an agile equilibrist.
March 25, 2017
qms commented on the word antidromic
Consultants who line the Potomac
Like sadhus all-knowing and gnomic,
Must sense any drift
As paying tides shift
And never be caught antidromic.
March 24, 2017
qms commented on the word posnet
Boiled scraps and leftover slaws get
Decanted with herbs through a gauze net.
That filtering cloth
Produces a broth
You're proud to serve up in your posnet.
March 23, 2017
qms commented on the word overvote
Vote counting has turned for the bad —
The fraud claims and strange hanging chad,
The mystery trove of note
Or mischievous overvote,
Now Russians come hacking us. Sad!
March 22, 2017
qms commented on the word vallum
The legions who civilized Gaul
At Scotland were forced to a stall.
'Twas best to corral 'em
Beyond a strong vallum,
So Hadrian built him a wall.
March 21, 2017
qms commented on the word thutter
When riled at the start he will mutter.
More outrage will bring on a stutter,
Then, gone all forbearance,
Comes full incoherence
Till, limply, a lisp and a thutter.
March 20, 2017
qms commented on the word uninominal
It's funny: "urinal" is one of those persistent little buggers who seem to hop from foot to foot squealing, "Rhyme me! Rhyme me!" It tried to intrude on "diuturnal" on the twelfth of this month and it did hitch a ride on "supernal" about a year ago. Given the amount of time spent in earnest intercourse with the appliance by the urbanized male of our species this cocky familiarity (to coin a phrase) should probably not surprise.
March 20, 2017
qms commented on the word uninominal
Democracy! What was there grander
Till slain by the sly gerrymander?
The game's uninominal,
But cheating's phenomenal,
As witness our new chief commander.
March 19, 2017
qms commented on the word technography
The omens support no disguise
So prophets and scholars surmise:
The dark data boom
Will bring on our doom.
Technography spells our demise.
For this use of "dark data" see:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
March 18, 2017
qms commented on the word sympatric
The Auld Sod is blessed with a hat trick
In Columbkille, Brigid and Patrick
And, so the monks tell us,
They're none of them jealous,
Their patronage sweetly sympatric.
March 17, 2017
qms commented on the word stridulous
Post-dinner I'm always quite keen
My crystal should boast a bright sheen
If rubbing's assiduous
The pantry is stridulous,
To tell me they're all squeaky clean.
March 16, 2017
qms commented on the word cloop
The oenophile's tightly knit group
Has formed its own musical troupe.
The bibulous chums,
Indifferent to drums,
Will march to the beat of the cloop.
March 15, 2017
qms commented on the word saleratus
Though yeast bread is higher in status
It's likely to bring on some flatus,
But nothing will squelch
The renegade belch
Like scones or a bread saleratus.
March 14, 2017
qms commented on the word consuetude
Though once a dainty ankle viewed
Was thought unspeakably lewd,
Now limbs can go bare
And no one will stare
It's all the effect of consuetude.
March 13, 2017
qms commented on the word diuturnal
The wise man will write in his journal
And capture the day while it's vernal,
For time, we know, flies
And memory lies,
But truth written down's diuturnal.
March 12, 2017
qms commented on the word socius
A good judge's solemn obligation
Is blindness to erstwhile association.
No matter how close he be
To his former socii
He rules indifferent to affiliation.
March 11, 2017
qms commented on the word osmazome
Carême from the pillared Vendôme
And Beeton in her homely tome
Found a tsunami
Of meaty umami
In the mythical juice, osmazome
March 10, 2017
qms commented on the word chirm
The birds in dawn chorus confirm
The early bird captures the worm.
The cries of the winners
And slugabed sinners
Produce a cacophonous chirm.
March 9, 2017
qms commented on the word olibanum
A fine word for drum is the tympanum
I'm glad steel alloys with molybdenum.
I like frankincense
But scent's more intense
If I call it a cloud of olibanum.
March 8, 2017
qms commented on the word demulcent
Go contract yourself a consultant
And read the report that's resultant,
Or save yourself time
By heeding this rhyme
And know that our product's* demulcent.
*Insert favorite snake oil.
March 7, 2017
qms commented on the word embrocation
The Donald's frail feelings will bruise
If journos do aught but enthuse
His best embrocation
For such irritation
Is persistent cries of "fake news!"
March 6, 2017
qms commented on the word barm
A brewery to Angus has charm;
He feels there he's safe from all harm:
The vats and the kegs,
The browst and the dregs,
Enfold like a comforting barm.
March 5, 2017
qms commented on the word nightshade
A Solanaceae Family Reunion
The family still tries to keep touch:
While Spuds don't socialize much
The Peppers will gab
At any confab.
(Tomatoes will weep and then clutch.)
The happy throng fills the bright glades,
But Aubergine quails as light fades.
A shadow fell upon her
Of deadly Belladonna,
The lunatic aunt of Nightshades.
The laughter dies down if she stays
But rises again when she strays
From nervous relief!
Their season's so brief
They'll not be denied salad days.
March 4, 2017
qms commented on the word amphoteric
There once was a sycophant, Eric,
Obligingly calm or hysteric.
He'd quickly adapt
To whatever was apt.
His nature was quite amphoteric.
He'd mime, if need be, courtly grace,
But gossip in ways truly base.
His manner was placid
Or dripping with acid
As suited his welfare's best case.
March 4, 2017
qms commented on the word pomato
Thank you, ruzuzu, for your kind words and for informing me that tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, etc, are all nightshade cousins. It is a small world, isn’t it? Food for thought, so to speak. I will henceforth view my tomatoes askance.
March 3, 2017
qms commented on the word interfluvial
A doab, which often is beautiful,
Is not just some land interfluvial:
Its two rivers merge
In a nuptial surge
And writhe in a torrent connubial.
See comments at doab.
March 3, 2017
qms commented on the word pomato
Tomato's no veg, as you may know,
And maybe it's true if you say so,
But the brute is a fruit
And the spud is a root
So how'd they beget a pomato?
March 2, 2017
qms commented on the word cassonade
Fear not! Ernest is harmless to all but himself.
March 1, 2017
qms commented on the word bodach
OED
Irish. A peasant, churl; also (Sc.) a spectre.
March 1, 2017
qms commented on the word cassonade
When Ernest pursues a young maid
He uses the tools of his trade.
He spreads sugared glazes
And strews honeyed phrases-
A blizzard of sweet cassonade.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
March 1, 2017
qms commented on the word sardony
Sweet flora is apt to astonish us,
As nature is pleased to admonish us,
For sardony's breath
Makes mock of our death:
Her last laugh is risus sardonicus.
February 28, 2017
qms commented on the word laquearia
Laquearia is a genus of fungi in the Rhytismatales order. The relationship of this taxon to other taxa within the order is unknown (incertae sedis), and it has not yet been placed with certainty into any family.1
It also can mean a paneled ceiling. This is used in literary works such as The Waste Land, and Aeneid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laquearia
February 28, 2017
qms commented on the word barrow-tram
A bullock at work that barrow-tram
Was otherwise only a callow lamb.
He met a faux gypsy
Who helped him get tipsy
Then took all his cash with a tarot scam.
February 28, 2017
qms commented on the word raw-boned
See rawboned.
February 28, 2017
qms commented on the word mezzeria
Do tenants or sharecroppers ofter
Lay claim as to whose bed is softer?
The mezzadro is freer
In his mezzeria,
But none is so quaint as the crofter.
February 27, 2017
qms commented on the word inotropic
If a heart has a feeble or slow tick
There's a tried and a true medico trick.
They virtually seize it
And rhythmically squeeze it
With drugs that are called inotropic.
February 26, 2017
qms commented on the word headrace
The Word of the Day, if you will,
Is only the grist for the mill
The rhymes in their dread pace
Cascade down the headrace
So the rumble of verse is not still.
February 25, 2017
qms commented on the word fool-hen
Rob Burns wrote some verse on a louse -
Apostrophized once a wee mouse.
Was I out of school when
We studied his fool-hen
Or has he not honored the grouse?
February 24, 2017
qms commented on the word eddish
I take a great pleasure in knowing
That aftermath follows on mowing.
This naming of eddish
Has turned to my fetish
And foggage foretells the next sowing.
February 23, 2017
qms commented on the word crypsis
Like words that hide in ellipsis
Or planets obscured by eclipses,
Some peace-seeking prey
Have mastered a way
To thrive under threat using crypsis.
February 22, 2017
qms commented on the word cheese-dream
See comments at cheese dream.
February 21, 2017
qms commented on the word cheese dream
n. An especially vivid and/or bizarre dream.
n. An open-faced sandwich of grilled or broiled cheese on bread.
I came across this term in a Guardian interview with Lorraine Bracco:
It seems to be a British expression and may be founded in a study of British cheeses published by the British Cheese Board in 2005 claiming to have determined that eating cheese just before going to bed can affect your dreams. It further claimed that the type of cheese you ate controlled what sort of dream you had: Stilton for bizarre effects, cheddar for dreams of celebrities, etc.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4851485
I have seen it used as two words and as a hyphenated word. The definition I provide above is my best guess at the application of this term. Can anyone add more to this?
(For the sake of completeness I include the sandwich definition but I am in no way curious about that. It has a Wikipedia entry.)
February 21, 2017
qms commented on the word snotter
A sailor should be a good knotter
And know how to rig his lines tauter:
So master the riches
Of bowline and hitches
And humble but mem'rable snotter.
February 21, 2017
qms commented on the word antiphlogistic
My tea, made of herbs and holistic,
Has a health-giving characteristic:
It soothes and it tames
Intestines in flames
Because it is antiphlogistic.
February 20, 2017
qms commented on the word locomote
The egg can be coy and just float;
Her suitor though must locomote.
An ambitious sperm
Must earnestly squirm
If ever he'll be a zygote.
February 19, 2017
qms commented on the word squareabout
No doubt a precursor to the zigzagabout, which will bring traffic to a complete stop.
February 19, 2017
qms commented on the word diapason
If pretty miss mammoth should happen upon
A masculine hunk of a mastodon
Like trumpets his bellows,
Her sighing like cellos,
Will swell a primeval diapason.
February 18, 2017
qms commented on the word phreatophyte
Thank you, ruzuzu.
February 17, 2017
qms commented on the word phreatophyte
The dilettante's blossom is bright
But withers in weather and light.
The deep-rooted scholar,
Though paler and smaller,
Persists like a phreatophyte.
February 17, 2017
qms commented on the word ex-vivo
That's going to be one big test tube!
February 16, 2017
qms commented on the word jurat
A true but a somewhat obscure fact
Is wombats make cubes out of pure scat.
This isn't a trick;
They do shit a brick.
I'll swear it and sign with a jurat.
See also comments at scat.
February 16, 2017
qms commented on the word onychoschizia
Also known as onychoschisis or lamellar dystrophy.
See also onychorrhexis.
February 15, 2017
qms commented on the word onychoschizia
onychoschizia n. The term onychoschizia includes splitting, brittle, soft or thin nails. (fingernails and toenails)
http://www.aocd.org/?page=BrittleSplittingNail
February 15, 2017
qms commented on the word isostasy
With nukes that fly across the sea
We strive to balance bellicosity.
The nations assume
Their mutual doom,
So peace is preserved by isostasy.
February 15, 2017
qms commented on the word domiciliation
When love's first mad exhilaration
Gives way to a plan for affiliation
Wise lovers adjust
And temper their lust
To tend to their domiciliation.
February 14, 2017
qms commented on the word perdure
You are kind, ruzuzu.
February 13, 2017
qms commented on the word consociation
In post-prison con convocation
Alumni convene for confabulation.
The ex-cons confer
And try to concur
On concepts of consociation.
February 13, 2017
qms commented on the word perdure
The insight of Barnum was pure -
There's one born per minute for sure.
That worm has not turned
And nothing is learned
So bunkum and folly perdure.
February 12, 2017
qms commented on the word gametophobia
From the model of gamomania I think gamophobia would be a better candidate.
February 11, 2017
qms commented on the word kanzu
Old Ernest's odd look is brand new:
He sports now a grand Fu Manchu
And thinks it is chic
To foster mystique
By wearing a flowing kanzu.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
February 11, 2017
qms commented on the user msrose88
All together now: "Hello, msrose88!
February 10, 2017
qms commented on the word guisarme
A peasant had only his farm
To furnish the stuff for his arm,
So faced armored horsemen
And bloodthirsty Norsemen
With only an axe called guisarme.
February 10, 2017
qms commented on the user Petrona273
Well, shake off the snow and have a cup of hot chocolate!
February 9, 2017
qms commented on the word hyperbaton
If grace notes you'd have conferred upon
The featureless drone of your wordathon,
Keep reader alert!
Your language invert
By liberal use of hyperbaton
February 9, 2017
qms commented on the word plastron
The righteous who dress to defeat
The slings and the arrows they meet
Each morning will strap on
A stout mental plastron
And brace for the next crazy tweet.
February 8, 2017
qms commented on the word greenfish
I knew that bilby was venerable, but I had no idea! This must be from before he was transported.
February 7, 2017
qms commented on the word deobstruent
The rhythms of verse should be fluent
And rhymes come quick and congruent.
It's often suggested
A poet congested
Use sleep as a sure deobstruent.
February 7, 2017
qms commented on the word bioregionalism
By bioregionalism's grace
Our maps will display a new face.
The borders it draws
Scorn language and laws.
It's nature that outlines a place.
February 6, 2017
qms commented on the word pistoleer
The self-conscious cowpoke makes clear
His chaps are not fellows but gear,
His high heels and spurs
Are what he prefers
And mark him a bold pistoleer.
February 5, 2017
qms commented on the word brancard
Miss Gurney is fallen and anchored
After one too many a tankard.
Is it fitter to fetch her
By litter or stretcher
Or summon an elegant brancard?
February 4, 2017
qms commented on the word lairage
Consider the bees' looted hives
And kine in their bucolic lives,
Kept safe in their lairages
From natural ravages
En route to the abbatoir's knives.
February 3, 2017
qms commented on the word volost
A city gives refuge at cost:
Imperial favor is lost.
Czar Donald the Great
Will not hesitate
To punish a rebel volost.
February 2, 2017
qms commented on the word synteresis
The sybarite does as he pleases,
No shame or regret ever teases,
And each night he knows
The sweet deep repose
Of living without synteresis.
February 1, 2017
qms commented on the word matrass
The alchemist, bubbling with lust,
Cried, "Love me, my lovely! You must!
I'll brew in my matrass,
A philter that's matchless
Else surely my heart will combust."
January 31, 2017
qms commented on the word equivoque
It's gospel to haughtier folks
That puns are inferior jokes.
While quibbles evince
A groan and a wince
They're witty if called equivoques.
January 30, 2017
qms commented on the word equivoque
Note a typo in the second GNU definition where a "g" is printed instead of the correct "q." The word is quibble. Also see comments at quibble for Sam Johnson's eloquent and funny take on Shakespeare's fondness for quibbles (puns).
January 30, 2017
qms commented on the word epify
EAMHarris, go to edify for edification. This is, among other things, a dictionary.
January 29, 2017
qms commented on the word heteronomy
I see clearly how it's gonna be:
While Donald's a mastermind wannabe
There's more that's astute in
Sly Vladimir Putin.
Prepare for a harsh heteronomy.
January 29, 2017
qms commented on the word errorist
Some fail at the truth, though they try.
Some fear climate change, so deny,
But the true eco-terrorist's
The cold-blooded errorist
Who knowingly sells the big lie.
January 28, 2017
qms commented on the word circumzenithal
Thank you, zuzu. That one was a challenge and I appreciate your noticing.
January 27, 2017
qms commented on the word systasis
The marriage did once in bliss persist
Until she discovered he'd kissed her sis
With passion so awful
'Twas sister-unlawful
And ruptured forever their systasis.
January 27, 2017
qms commented on the word systasis
When systasis was selected as Word of the Day, June 24, 2015, I wrote a limerick based on a mistaken notion of its pronunciation. This is embarrassing, especially as it follows on the discovery of my quaff gaff. I could try the eye rhyme dodge, but that would be unpersuasive in a limerick. Now that systasis is once again the Word of the Day I could delete and replace the old limerick, but that feels rather dishonest. I will let the old limerick remain. Like the corpses (or corpses in the making) of criminals that were once hung from gibbets to admonish some and gratify others, I will leave it in place:
January 27, 2017
qms commented on the list trix--1
Maybe because it's a list of words ending in "-trix."
January 27, 2017
qms commented on the word inpeccinate
You are too kind, bilby. If you only knew the things I have been compared to! And the superlatives are worse.
January 26, 2017
qms commented on the word birl
See also comments at birling.
January 26, 2017
qms commented on the word birling
A lumberjack proves he is sterling
By showing he's skillful at birling.
This so fills with thrills
The sweet lumberjills
They queue up in lines for a twirling.
See also comments at birl.
January 26, 2017
qms commented on the user AnnePern
See suggestions at inpeccinate.
January 25, 2017
qms commented on the word inpeccinate
In response to the following query from AnnePern;
If I understand correctly you are not looking for an equivalent to “commit a sin” but for something to mean “to designate or to classify as a sin.”
anathematize is one possibility.
But that may be more subjective and context-dependent than you want – closer to condemn (which is also a possibility).
incriminate might come close, but that applies more to the actor than the act.
impeccable comes to mind as describing a condition nearly opposite of what you are looking for.
After some reflection on the roots of both incriminate and impeccable (which entries see) I suggest:
January 25, 2017
qms commented on the word zek
The victims surviving the wreck
Begin the quadrennial trek,
In Winter begun
But South to the sun
And end to a life as a zek.
January 25, 2017
qms commented on the word mugwump
He relishes fanfare and tubthump
But tepid reactions will bug Trump,
So fragile his pride
He cannot abide
The quiet and wavering mugwump.
January 24, 2017
qms commented on the word bossism
Mankind in its imperfect wisdom
Builds many a governing system,
But powers entropic
Inhere in this topic
So tending them all toward bossism.
January 23, 2017
qms commented on the word alternative fact
For too long this circus has lacked
A memorable signature act.
Ms Conway provides it,
Sits boldly astride it:
The untamed alternative fact.
January 22, 2017
qms commented on the word mumpsimus
Thank you, bilby.
January 22, 2017
qms commented on the word wanhope
Like moles in the darkness we grope
To unearth a rhyme or a trope.
For means to compare
Our sense of despair
We dig in the mine of wanhope.
January 22, 2017
qms commented on the word refusenik
Electoral purists learn new tricks,
Like playing with poems or Poohsticks,
To cope with the trial
Of internal exile
And abide for a while as refuseniks.
January 21, 2017
qms commented on the word quaff
I have just listened to a half dozen audio clips that all pronounce it to rhyme with off or cough. This is bad news for my limericks.
In my native dialect, the fast disappearing one of eastern New England, laugh and half might have the vowel that pterodactyl hears in quaff.
January 21, 2017
qms commented on the list befouled
I am glad you like it, zuzu. I have a hunch there are lots more out there.
January 21, 2017
qms commented on the word quaff
For rhymes with quaff see comments at sclaff and bibliotaph.
January 21, 2017
qms commented on the word prexy
Addicted to money and sex he
Induces in some apoplexy.
Oh, what's gone amiss
That one such as this
Today is anointed our prexy?
January 20, 2017
qms commented on the word mumpsimus
A trump to the limit is trumpsimus,
If trumpier outright presumptuous.
But Trump in the rough
Is trumpy enough
For chumps and their comforting mumpsimus.
January 19, 2017
qms commented on the word chrematistics
Forget all your fussy statistics
For wealth is a game of heuristics.
Getting more than your neighbor
With minimum labor
Is practicing good chrematistics.
January 18, 2017
qms commented on the word bioenergetics
While athletes may swear by athletics
As central to bioenergetics.
We aesthetes still know
An energy flow
Is felt when we practice aesthetics.
January 17, 2017
qms commented on the word fanfaron
Oh, wonder not that he yammers on;
He was to the bullshit manner born.
His loftiest notion
Is crude self-promotion
It lives in the genes of the fanfaron.
January 16, 2017
qms commented on the word to the manner born
For an interesting discussion of "to the manner born" and its illegitimate spawn "to the manor born" see
http://www.word-detective.com/2011/10/to-the-manner-manor-born/
January 16, 2017
qms commented on the word East Jesus
What better a haven could please us
When orage and outrage besiege us
Than a place that's pacific,
Albeit quite mythic,
The safe and unchanging East Jesus.
January 15, 2017
qms commented on the word entelechy
I reckon the teacher respects me
'Cuz he's all smart and intellecky
And don't call me no fool
For lovin' my mule
But sez that we share a entelechy.
January 15, 2017
qms commented on the word braggardism
His manner's a comical bastardism,
A union of unction and braggardism,
But soon comes the hour
The clown will take power
And shtick become serious blackguardism.
January 14, 2017
qms commented on the list theres-no-place-like-nowhere
I believe Brendan Behan coined this.
See https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/East_Jesus
January 14, 2017
qms commented on the word East Jesus
I believe Brendan Behan coined this.
See https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/East_Jesus
January 14, 2017
qms commented on the list theres-no-place-like-nowhere
Podunk. Also podunk. An interesting history. Lots of places claim to be the original Podunk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podunk
January 13, 2017
qms commented on the word dogged
witch's comment addresses the past tense of the verb to dog, which see. Among the many definitions there is:
idiom dog it Slang To fail to expend the effort needed to do or accomplish something.
January 13, 2017
qms commented on the word ophelimity
Affluence is happiness' mimicry.
To highlight the hidden asymmetry
They've coined a new word
You might not have heard:
The useful but awkward ophelimity.
January 13, 2017
qms commented on the word anergia
The Church of Indifference's teaching
Holds holiness not worth the reaching.
Its superfluous clergy are
Sunk deep in anergia
And cannot be bothered with preaching.
January 12, 2017
qms commented on the word frustraneous
Since improv is extemporaneous
The best are the quickest and zaniest.
The slow and dull-witted
Are wholly unfitted
And they find the challenge frustraneous.
January 11, 2017
qms commented on the word bowfarts
I should think bowfarts are very unkind to those amidships.
January 11, 2017
qms commented on the user foozilla
Yo, fozilla! I hope you will find the company congenial.
January 10, 2017
qms commented on the word blague
The venue in vogue was the stage
And plays about plague were the rage.
His ague a blague yet
Still vaguely on target
Gave tongue to the fears of the age.
January 10, 2017
qms commented on the word moonbow
Young people who crave now to know
What fortune may some day bestow
Will assuage this fancy
With selenomancy
And dance 'neath the pearly moonbow.
January 9, 2017
qms commented on the word marplot
Intentions are good, outcomes are not,
We end twixt a rock and a hard spot.
While bossy and silly
She means well, this Milly,
But Millicent's merely a marplot.
January 8, 2017
qms commented on the word fadge
A very versatile word which can be, among other things, a verb describing a kind of complementary blending -
or it can be noun naming a kind of rustic loaf of bread -
Or a short fat person -
It can mean a lot of other things but I have run out of rhymes.
January 7, 2017
qms commented on the word vibrissa
When traveling how sorely I miss her,
My cat, the beguiling Clarissa!
How sad 'tis to slumber
Where she'll not encumber
Nor wake to a tickling vibrissa.
January 6, 2017
qms commented on the word mankini
Said Bella, "I know how to swing.
When boys say they'll pay for a fling
I tell the bambini,
'Then bring a mankini,
'Cause I'll put your balls in a sling.'"
January 5, 2017
qms commented on the word hydronym
No mapmaker serves his own whim;
The naming’s not left up to him.
Our heroes account
For each soaring mount,
But Indian words for a hydronym.
January 4, 2017
qms commented on the word carucate
The ploughman endures a cruel fate:
Obliged as he is to hew straight.
All day thus he walks
In the shit of his ox
To furrow the whole carucate.
January 3, 2017
qms commented on the word etesian
To sail waters peloponnesian
Attend to the winds of the season,
And haste to adjust
To Meltemi's gust
And go with the flow that's etesian.
January 2, 2017
qms commented on the word meltemi
See also comments at Meltemi.
January 2, 2017
qms commented on the word Meltemi
Meltemi is the Greek and Turkish name for the well known etesian wind blowing from north to northwest across the Aegean Sea.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wind/The-Meltemi.htm
See also comments at meltemi.
January 2, 2017
qms commented on the word manzai
The Century definition addresses the origin of the term manzai but does not explain its contemporary application:
We gaijin in our way can try:
Remember that hoary standby
And be not averse
To "Who is on First"
As an instance of Yankee manzai.
January 1, 2017
qms commented on the word trumple
trumple - v. To figuratively crush underfoot. To damage or destroy by actions or words employed with callous indifference to truth or consequences.
Collected by Dr. W.G. Marx from a CBS News report on "mall brawls," Dec. 27, 2016.
Civility's surface, though rumpled,
Had never before wholly crumpled
Till electoral games
In this year of shames
Saw standards of decency trumpled.
December 31, 2016
qms commented on the word antepast
The wondering world is aghast
At change that has happened so fast
And quivers with dread
That what we've been fed
Is only a foul antepast.
December 31, 2016
qms commented on the word stramash
Note a typo in the Century definition: "light" should be "fight."
December 30, 2016
qms commented on the word stramash
There's nothing will Angus abash
Once fed with the juice of the mash.
Then, reft of all shame,
Indifferent to blame,
A ceilidh he'll make a stramash.
December 30, 2016
qms commented on the word browst
It's Angus's dream to be doused
In the finest distillery's browst,
To float and submerge
In gluttonous splurge,
Emerging quite perfectly soused.
December 29, 2016
qms commented on the word earthlight
The breadth of the new moon's girth might
Be darkest when viewed on the first night,
But the sun's growing blaze
On successive days
Will outline the glow of the earthlight.
December 28, 2016
qms commented on the word xenia
For more on the wretched Eugenia's woes see comments at neomenia and psychasthenia.
December 27, 2016
qms commented on the word neomenia
For more on the wretched Eugenia's woes see comments at psychasthenia and xenia.
December 27, 2016
qms commented on the word psychasthenia
We visit again poor Eugenia,
For more on the wretched Eugenia's woes see comments at neomenia and xenia.
December 27, 2016
qms commented on the word novation
Those debts that proceed in rotation.
The risk is substantial
In matters financial
That trap you in endless novation.
December 26, 2016
qms commented on the word frumenty
He's downed milk and cookies aplenty
So after a weary descent he
Is pleased with the treat
Of hot milk and wheat,
For Santa is fond of frumenty.
December 25, 2016
qms commented on the word subtilize
She offers a glance of shy surmise
That hints a hope of sweet surprise.
Her gaze is expressive
But never excessive;
Her looks speak volumes but subtilize.
December 24, 2016
qms commented on the word exostosis
Beware of high fashion's appeals
And perils that lurk in high heels.
The danger that's grossest
Is dread exostosis
That marketers' cunning conceals.
December 23, 2016
qms commented on the word chronogram
A chronogram for a desolate scene,
A twelvemonth both wretched and mean:
Though MeMory's vexed
There's hope that the neXt
ImproVes on vIle twenty-sIxteen.
December 22, 2016
qms commented on the word becket
A sailboat's a thicket of slang:
A salt links the gaff to the vang
Or he may connect it
By means of a becket
That hooks up a shroud to a tang.
December 22, 2016
qms commented on the word tang
"With wood spars, the conventional method used to attach the shroud and forestay is to use TANGS. Tangs are short metal straps usually with a crimp or bend to splay them out from the mast when in position."
https://www.glen-l.com/free-book/rigging-small-sailboats-3.html
December 22, 2016
qms commented on the word aposematic
Evade an importunate Claus
Who rings for some nebulous cause
With a scowl so emphatic
It's aposematic.
Escape in his stunned silent pause.
December 20, 2016
qms commented on the word nocturia
It's common to many a prelate;
Their age and their gender compel it.
This rampant nocturia
Afflicts the whole curia,
As Vatican leakers will tell it.
December 19, 2016
qms commented on the word ophicleide
They've tried since Jimmy Hoffa died
To honor him with proper pride,
To answer the urge
To play him a dirge
With glockenspiel and ophicleide.
December 18, 2016
qms commented on the word coggie
The Highlands are treeless and boggy,
The winters there chilly and foggy.
Wise crofters repair
To a fireside chair
For talk and a comforting coggie.
December 17, 2016
qms commented on the word atole
When daylight is short and branches bare
My yearnings turn to Mexican fare.
Some chicken in mole
Or bowl of atole
Can help me pretend that I'm there.
December 16, 2016
qms commented on the word circumzenithal
The sun sends at times an epistle
Through water condensed into crystal.
A solar hello
To creatures below
In an arc called circumzenithal.
December 15, 2016
qms commented on the word alities
I find no dictionary that defines "alities." All of the usage examples on this page are instances of the string's occurrence as part of a longer word. The presumed singular, ality, is defined in some places (including Wordnik and the OED) as a suffix. In the quote attributed to Dierdre Shaw "alities" is almost certainly a typo.
December 15, 2016
qms commented on the word mononym
John Clayton, a truly bizarre man,
Is set among Hollywood's stars and
We've only known him
By this, his mononym -
That swinger, the ape-man, our Tarzan.
December 14, 2016
qms commented on the word donzel
A lady in waiting mistook
A page for the unabridged book.
When damsel and donzel
Entangled some tonsil
The lady her waiting forsook.
December 13, 2016
qms commented on the word bragget
My dog drinks his brew without fail,
Reviewing each batch with his tail.
I know that he'll wag it
For a big bowl of bragget.
He does like his honey and ale.
December 12, 2016
qms commented on the word stichomancy
Did Ernest mislead by design?
The preacher, not bright but benign,
Assembles his homily
By means of stichomancy
Because he was told it's divine.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
December 11, 2016
qms commented on the word biosemiotics
The peacock prefers the boldly erotic
And butterflies go for coyly exotic
For dumb creatures must
Thus signify lust
By means that are biosemiotic.
December 10, 2016
qms commented on the word chalazion
I grant we elected the crazy one
While loathing the hideous ways he won.
The vista dismays,
Outrages the gaze,
An eyesore, a stye, a chalazion.
December 9, 2016
qms commented on the word blessing
In addition to being a noun blessing is also the progressive or continuous form of the verb to bless.
See http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/bless.html
December 8, 2016
qms commented on the word astucious
Oh, pity the good man's malaise
Who grew up in honor's strait ways,
In all things astucious,
As wise as Confucius
Yet governed by knaves in late days.
December 8, 2016
qms commented on the word shpadoinkle
Strange: The definition is of an enthusiastic interjection yet every usage example makes reference to losing (one's) shpadoinkle. Those users clearly regard it as a noun meaning something like "mind" or "composure."
The word can be used to enthuse
But usages tend to confuse.
It changes like "boink"ll,
This shifting shpadoinkle,
And sometimes it's something you lose.
December 7, 2016
qms commented on the word spagbol
See also spag bol.
December 7, 2016
qms commented on the word spagbol
A Britishism for spaghetti bolognese.
December 7, 2016
qms commented on the word fautor
The true sporting fan's not a shouter,
No brazen uncritical touter.
He's both mind and heart,
Like a patron of art:
A loyal but discerning fautor.
December 6, 2016
qms commented on the word paraphrenia
Of note in his psychical scenery are
His boasts that he's king of Slovenia:
A comical claim
But nuts just the same,
A sure sign of some paraphrenia.
December 5, 2016
qms commented on the word mumchance
The Muses React to the 2016 Election
Terpsichore writhes in some dance;
Melpomene casts a glum glance.
And once merry Thalia?
She weeps, inter alia,
While Clio, appalled, sits mumchance.
December 4, 2016
qms commented on the word mumchance
Why do people seem always to "sit mumchance?" Cannot one stand, lie, stride or simply be mumchance?
December 4, 2016
qms commented on the word bobbery
Thus endeth a season of bobbery
Replete with conspicuous daubery.
The master of squabbles
Now gathers the baubles.
Prepare for a circus of jobbery.
December 3, 2016
qms commented on the word sclaff
Note that sclaff can be either a verb or a noun. Oddly the Word of the Day notification provides three definitions for its use as a verb only, yet all the examples supplied use it as a noun.
December 2, 2016
qms commented on the word sclaff
In Scotland the golfers will quaff
A dram before plying the staff,
Then mar in their haze
The luckless fairways
With many a duff and a sclaff.
December 2, 2016
qms commented on the word pliskie
Of course a thrifty (thriftey?) Scot would not spend an inessential "e" but I have a more expansive ancestry.
I hope the Tasmanian hibernation has concluded.
December 2, 2016
qms commented on the word pliskie
In Scotland on taking some whiskey
The young men are prone to feel frisky,
But liquor soon wilts
What stirs in their kilts.
Alas, a most chastening pliskie.
December 1, 2016
qms commented on the user Quintesabd
Quintesabd, by entering your comments as new word entries you are creating a great deal of clutter and confusion. At the bottom of every word entry page is a comment box. Please put your comments there and click "Save." The results will be much cleaner, will give you access to some HTML formatting, and will remain editable by you
November 30, 2016
qms commented on the word nutraceutical
The flesh of no nutria is suitable
To pitch as a true nutraceutical.
The trouble is that
It's called a swamp rat
And bias against it's immutable.
November 30, 2016
qms commented on the word octastyle
There is the architectural application:
Let's sit ourselves down and talk a while
Of how may a portico beguile,
And what are the graces
Attending such spaces
And tally the virtues of octastyle.
But also this:
The she-squid bestows a shy smile
Permitting an amorous trial,
Inviting his charms
And myriad arms
For loving that's done octastyle.
November 29, 2016
qms commented on the word ragstone
I'm making it red white and blue
As all good deplorables do.
My patio ragstone
I'm painting as flagstone
To show I'm more loyal than you.
November 28, 2016
qms commented on the word intercalate
Should dalliances usurp a date
Then Trump will invoke a perk of state.
If the day's come and gone
Then the calendar's wrong.
He'll order the gov to intercalate.
November 27, 2016
qms commented on the word marthambles
Compare lurgy.
November 26, 2016
qms commented on the word macle
An ailment that doctors can't tackle
A sorceress with crystals and knack'll.
She'll bring out the quartz
To cure you of warts
Or treat your marthambles with macle.
November 26, 2016
qms commented on the word cosmorama
Victorians loved their melodrama
And spectacles like cosmorama,
Now stale and passé;
Amusements today
Derive more from digits or pharma.
November 25, 2016
qms commented on the word harvest-home
The harvesters in from the gloam,
Kids bright from the scrub and the comb.
The windows alight
Bejewel the night
As darkness enfolds harvest-home.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
November 24, 2016
qms commented on the word banhammer
Protect us from Polish spam mills,
Purveyors of nostrums and pills.
Oh, heed your fan clamor
To bring the banhammer
And cast out the scammers and shills.
November 23, 2016
qms commented on the word spoon-meat
The bird as a whole is a boon treat
But remnants are what we will soon eat
In fragments instead -
In fritters, on bread,
And finally we'll sip it as spoon-meat.
November 22, 2016
qms commented on the word eschar
Mon Dieu! What a dégoutant deed!
Cette blessure est vraiment putride!
When you have an eschar
You tend to it, n'est-ce pas?
America, please now debride.
November 21, 2016
qms commented on the word tocher
In Scotland a good marriage broker
Will find you a lass and will yoke her.
If he's done his duty
She may be no beauty
But bring you a generous tocher.
November 20, 2016
qms commented on the word cates
The gourmet is cursed by the fates
To crave only rarest of cates.
Though plain food may nourish
Yet he needs a flourish
And only the Lucullan sates.
November 19, 2016
qms commented on the word argy-bargy
The Grant's ranch was tranquil and gracious
But Barbara and Rob disputatious.
To praise argy-bargy
They chose "RG bar G"
To brand their own wide open spaces.
November 18, 2016
qms commented on the word argy-bargy
The few times I have heard this term used have mostly been while watching television coverage of the Tour de France. The venerable announcing team of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (both Brits) use it to describe the fierce bumping and jostling that goes on during sprint finishes. The definitions provided here all assume its application to verbal contention, but Liggett and Sherwen seem comfortable with it in a physical context.
November 18, 2016
qms commented on the word cyclothymia
Events all conspire to annoy
And forces of evil deploy.
No ailment is timelier
Than this cyclothymia
That unbid gives moments of joy.
November 17, 2016
qms commented on the word paction
The Lord of Misrule make a paction
With those of the frivolous faction
To reign for a season
Defying all reason
And driving the proud to distraction.
This a reposting of a comment originally posted on October 25, 2015 which was accidentally deleted. We REALLY need some sort of safeguard associated with the delete button. A single touch activates it. There is no “are you sure” warning and no way of undoing.
November 16, 2016
qms commented on the word fervid
A third option is perfervid, which unambiguously implies excess.
November 16, 2016
qms commented on the word scientism
Competitive pumpkiners know
The road to blue ribbon is slow.
Accomplish your giantism
With patience and scientism
And pray that the monster will grow.
November 16, 2016
qms commented on the word caca
I am surprised that none of the dictionaries that Wordnik aggregates provides a definition for this word. When I was growing up in New England this was the common childhood term for excrement. I don’t know to what extent American dialect varies on this, but versions of the word are pervasive in European languages.
Wikipedia provides a fascinating discussion of cacāre and its descendants:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_profanity#Cac.C4.81re:_to_defecate
The whole article on Latin profanity is entertaining.
See also kakistocracy and cacatopia.
November 15, 2016
qms commented on the word bouleversement
The polity's trust has been rended
And amity's wagon upended,
A brute renversement
A bouleversement
A wreck that's not readily mended.
November 15, 2016
qms commented on the word trumpenproletariat
The prospect's now so scary that
The thought's no place to tarry at.
Our doom is presaged
By the loud and enraged
The howling trumpenproletariat
November 14, 2016
qms commented on the word trumpenproletariat
trumpenproletariat – n. A class of American voters, privileged by race and income, who nevertheless nurse an overweening sense of grievance and share a conviction that they are the victims of both ambitious ethnic minorities and mysterious “elites.” They are characterized by nostalgia for a golden age that never was and limitless credulity.
Cf. lumpenproletariat.
November 14, 2016
qms commented on the word autopoiesis
A system engaged in autopoiesis
Replenishes loss but never increases.
Is it fated to go
Forever on so,
Or comes there a time when it ceases?
November 14, 2016
qms commented on the word pseudoplastic
As ketchup can tend to confuse
The kids must be given some clues:
It's goop pseudoplastic
So shaking extracts it;
Unshaken it never will ooze.
November 13, 2016
qms commented on the word daven
A friend called this very odd combination of definitions to my attention:
daven - n, a person with a huge cock
However, the example given, " Dude, that's such a huge Daven! ", applies the term not to the whole person but to the appendage itself.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Daven
If you read the prayers aloud
You've blessings of which to be proud.
A ritual maven
Encouraged to daven
Is bound to be found well-endowed.
November 12, 2016
qms commented on the word choenix
Boys come to the Greek teacher's door
When cheated by Cook and implore,
"He's up to his mean tricks
And shorting my choenix.
I pray you, Dear Master, some more!"
November 12, 2016
qms commented on the word choenix
n. A Greek dry measure, mentioned by Homer, and originally the daily ration of a man, but varying from a quart to over a quart and a half.
November 12, 2016
qms commented on the word tirl
It can mean to whine or to twirl,
To quiver or else to unfurl,
A wheel or a sample
Or thrill, for example.
My head's in a whirl over tirl.
November 11, 2016
qms commented on the word plout
In the Highlands when angling for trout
Be silent or whisper - don't shout.
You'll displease your gillie
With conduct that's silly.
Wade gently and don't ever plout.
November 10, 2016
qms commented on the word alexipharmic
Misfortunes quite often are karmic -
The evil we've done and the harm stick.
We sicken at last
From sins of the past
But good deeds are alexipharmic.
November 9, 2016
qms commented on the word psephology
Election Day, 2016
We simply don't know what to think!
Just how have we come to this brink?
In absence of knowledge we
Abandon psephology
And flee to the solace of drink.
November 8, 2016
qms commented on the word manufactroversy
Announce something new on email
And Hillary hauled off to jail:
A manufactroversy
That persists perversely.
It's bait they will take without fail.
November 7, 2016
qms commented on the word circumduce
My self-assigned daily challenge is to write a limerick that rhymes on the Word of the Day (WotD). I have occasionally posted a limerick that included the WotD somewhere other than at the end of a line, but only rarely. A word like circumduce is especially troublesome because it is a transitive verb and it takes some engineering to place it naturally at the end of a line. I came up with a serviceable solution after reading that the word is an adornment of Scottish law. The Rangers and the Celtics (the “Old Firm”) are famously bitter football rivals in Glasgow, so it seemed apt to acknowledge a Scottish connection.
Not only is the verb transitive but it seems to pair with only one direct object – “term”. Every usage example uses the verb in the phrase “circumduce the term.” I bethought myself of some way of writing a limerick on that phrase rather than on the verb alone. It looked unlikely but there is perverse inspiration to be got from current events. The 2016 Clinton/Trump presidential election is two days away and it is a great stimulant to the imagination.
Elections circumduce the term
So pauses Trump to spruce his perm.
He thinks that election
Can spread his infection,
And gleefully he'll loose the germ.
November 6, 2016
qms commented on the word circumduce
The Old Firm are Glaswegian tribes
Whose loyalists hate circumscribes.
Why not call a truce
They can't circumduce
And give up the insults and jibes?
November 6, 2016
qms commented on the word bioprocess
Biologists greedily dream
Of a captive microbial team,
To build a colossus
Of new bioprocess,
A rich biotechnical scheme.
November 5, 2016
qms commented on the word feretory
It seems to me a tasteless lapse
To march about with saintly scraps.
The apter territory
For any feretory
Is seen through a pane in the apse.
Note. I have found three suggested pronunciations for this word: fer-uh-TORY, fuh-RET-urry, FERRET-tree.
November 4, 2016
qms commented on the word epidiascope
For plain folk to get the straight dope
A lecture was one way to cope.
The ones they liked best,
So records attest,
Were blessed with an epidiascope.
November 3, 2016
qms commented on the word soul-cake
Our sins do a burdensome toll take.
While prayer and works on the whole make
Our vile purgatory
A less lengthy story
The ticket to heaven's the soul-cake.
Compare dumb-cake.
November 2, 2016
qms commented on the list a-dram-too-many
toped?
November 1, 2016
qms commented on the word Hallowmas
In Autumn is death's shadow cast
On thoughtless lad and callow lass.
The death lust they show
Is fervent but faux
The eve of the feast of Hallowmas.
November 1, 2016
qms commented on the word hollop
What mischievous rhymes can I call up
That wouldn't be utter codswallop?
It's driving me dotty
To find something naughty
In a word that's as harmless as hollop.
October 31, 2016
qms commented on the word grue
Tonight pay the devil his due
And savor the witches' strange brew
As bandits and zombies
And other bad hombres
Cause many a shriek and a grue.
October 31, 2016
qms commented on the word heart-scald
"The worst thing a man can do is go bald. Never let yourself go bald." Donald J. Trump
He looked in the mirror appalled,
His tonsure a horror and heart-scald
And took then to building
With fleece of much gilding
A pelt to conceal that he's bald.
October 30, 2016
qms commented on the word quale
While humorous verses are jolly
The words if unheard are mere folly
The laugh we provoke
By telling a joke
Is purely the listener's quale.
October 29, 2016
qms commented on the word textuary
I read in a serious bestiary
A clownfish can cause its sex to vary.
I know it may sound
Like I'm clowning around
But trust me, I'm strictly a textuary.
October 28, 2016
qms commented on the word TBR pile
Oh, alexz! Say it ain't so.
October 27, 2016
qms commented on the word red-tapism
See also comments at red-tapist.
October 27, 2016
qms commented on the word red-tapist
The office of humor correction
Has experts at offense detection.
Each earnest red-tapist
Maintains a bad-jape list
Of jokes that will cause an objection.
See also comments at red-tapism.
October 27, 2016
qms commented on the word pygostyle
A plowshare first sounded terrific
But vomer seemed more scientific,
Then after a while
I loved pygostlye
As sweet to the ear philornithic.
October 26, 2016
qms commented on the word frontless
Poor Ernest's affront caused him shame
And liquor again was to blame.
If only he'd drunk less
He'd not have been frontless
Nor owe now effrontery's claim.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
October 25, 2016
qms commented on the word gallinipper
The wee pest's a dangerous vector
But heed this key gender corrector:
The gal gallinipper
Alone's the blood sipper;
The guy bugs imbibe only nectar.
October 24, 2016
qms commented on the word meal-pock
He's glad that you fill up his meal-pock
But spare him your flattering sweet talk.
He'll not be your friend
So don't condescend
To a pauper as proud as a peacock.
October 23, 2016
qms commented on the word palingenesis
Sweet reason's political nemesis,
Or so some experienced men insist,
Is Sarah's sour cant
Informing Don's rant,
An instance of strange palingenesis.
October 22, 2016
qms commented on the word levet
A biker to feel well-endowed
Requires an engine that's loud.
At daybreak he'll rev it -
The neighborhood levet -
Then flee from the rage of the crowd.
October 21, 2016
qms commented on the word elutriate
A consummate broth, experts say,
Is filtered the albumin way.
The soup you create
When you elutriate
Is elegant clear consommé.
October 20, 2016
qms commented on the word nugae
Despairing the rhymester hurls curses
At info that Wordnik disperses:
Though clumsy and kludgy
Oh, call them not nugae
Or damn them as trivial verses.
October 19, 2016
qms commented on the word nugae
Research reveals that nugae is pronounced as though it were spelled "new-jee." There are other possibilities for a terminal "-ae" and you can read some of these discussed in comments at lunula.
October 19, 2016
qms commented on the word almsdeed
A comfortable conscience balm's creed
Holds charity nurtures harm's seed:
Don't coddle the poor
But give them a cure
By nobly withholding almsdeed.
October 18, 2016
qms commented on the word transpare
His slowly diminishing hair
Is causing the Donald despair.
He's fighting the tide
But cannot abide
His pink pate should baldly transpare.
October 17, 2016
qms commented on the word volery
Our laughter when humor is light
May soar like the swallows at night
But cynical drollery
Can conjure a volery
Where fluttering never takes flight.
October 16, 2016
qms commented on the word hemolymph
She was to the eye a delighter,
To hot-blooded youth an exciter,
But cold hemolymph
Filled veins of that nymph
And no ardent boy could ignite her.
October 15, 2016
qms commented on the word femtobarn
The boffins with patient precision
Examine each tiny collision
And don't give a darn -
Not one femtobarn -
For ignorant cries of derision.
October 14, 2016
qms commented on the word scapulimancy
An oracular fellow named Clancy
Claimed knowledge of scapulimancy.
But a blade from a sternum?
He could not discern 'em,
So forecasts were generally chancy.
October 13, 2016
qms commented on the word bioswale
Consider the throughput travail
Designing a new bioswale.
Input the terrain
And volume of rain
And hear the weary BIOS wail.
October 12, 2016
qms commented on the word solutionism
His manner is cheerful and breezy,
Asserting all remedies easy,
But airy solutionism
Is trumped by his Putinism
And more than foolhardy - he's sleazy.
October 11, 2016
qms commented on the word kincob
Oh pity the spokesperson's woes!
Exposed to the jibes of his foes,
The surrogate's spin job
Must dress up in kincob
A king who is wearing no clothes.
October 10, 2016
qms commented on the word spleuchan
Old Angus was given to moochin'
But Scotsmen in thrift have few kin.
When he begged a smoke
They claimed to be broke
And not one would open his spleuchan.
October 9, 2016
qms commented on the word creepy clown
The rumors abound in the town
That wealth's not the cause for renown.
No, Donald's real claim
To nationwide fame
Is status as creepiest clown.
October 8, 2016
qms commented on the word creepy clown
In the Autumn of 2016 the United States, and lately the UK as well, has been plagued by creepy clown sightings:
See coulrophobia.
October 8, 2016
qms commented on the word rigorism
A suspect avowal of stigmatism
Is tested with maximum rigorism.
Hysterical miracles
Imperil the clericals
And threaten to trigger a schism.
October 8, 2016
qms commented on the user majdalawi
It is good to have you with us.
October 7, 2016
qms commented on the word vellicate
When amorous urges accelerate
A prudent seducer will hesitate.
As moods can be fickle
First test with a tickle.
It's safer at first if you vellicate.
October 7, 2016
qms commented on the word life-car
After posting my Word of the Day limerick on life-car I became curious to see what one looked like and to know if they had ever been put to practical use, so I ventured on to the net and discovered an interesting story.
An American named Joseph Francis invented the life-car in the mid 19th Century and it was used in the saving of many lives from wrecks near the shore. Francis’s achievement seems to have been first recognized by foreign nations and he received recognition and awards from many countries. He was in Europe, perhaps to accept some of these accolades, when a Captain Douglass Ottinger of the United States Revenue Cutter Service applied to congress for a grant to recompense him for the invention of the life-car. Since Francis was not there to dispute Ottinger’s claim the congress awarded Ottinger $10,000. Only many years later was Francis recognized by congress with a gold medal. You can read an account of the matter here and see an image of a life-car here.
How shameful that envious strife mar
What ought to be Francis's bright star,
For Ottinger's claim
Occluded his fame
For gifting the world with his life-car.
October 6, 2016
qms commented on the word life-car
The best choice for rescue by far -
As cozy as man and his wife are!
When next you're ship-wrecked
Be sure you select
The safety and speed of the life-car!
October 6, 2016
qms commented on the word drysalter
I once was a sea salt exalter
But desiccant preferences alter.
At present I think
That Himalayan pink
Is key for the gourmet drysalter.
October 5, 2016
qms commented on the word hubbly
Swamp gases make pond water bubbly
And snowfall confuses things doubly.
The mingling's not nice
For mid-winter ice,
Which skaters will find sadly hubbly.
October 4, 2016
qms commented on the word previse
Cassandra with far-seeing eyes
Was cursed with the gift to previse.
Her passionate pleading
Yet yielded no heeding,
For truth needs a pleasing disguise.
October 3, 2016
qms commented on the word misspense
The climate deniers are dense,
Unwilling to listen to sense.
There's little occasion
For fruitful persuasion -
The effort's a noble misspense.
October 2, 2016
qms commented on the word latitudinarianism
The commune's nudist agrarianism
The neighbors call lewd barbarianism.
The counsel I give
Is live and let live
In tolerant latitudinarianism.
October 1, 2016
qms commented on the word magsman
Though comics and internet wags can
Make fun of faux hair and his gag tan,
Suspicion still lingers
That such tiny fingers
Are marks of the natural magsman.
September 30, 2016
qms commented on the word excogitate
Though you may prefer to meditate
Or idly to ponder and speculate,
Should thinking involve
Some problem to solve
You'd better prepare to excogitate.
September 29, 2016
qms commented on the word aquacade
Ms Williams, quite fetchingly made
And big in the movie star trade,
Unable to act
(A regrettable fact),
Excelled in the old aquacade.
September 28, 2016
qms commented on the word apophasis
News item: Trump Praises Self During, After Debate for Not Bringing Up Bill Clinton’s Infidelity
The Donald traversed discourtesy's axis
From casually rude to utterly classless.
Self-praise for his silences
On Bill's misalliances
Is no more than thuggishly crude apophasis.
September 27, 2016
qms commented on the word ambigu
A buffet for plain folk must do,
Though some will say smorgasbord too,
But a table of nosh
If the setting is posh
Turns into a true ambigu.
September 27, 2016
qms commented on the word cumbrous
When Autumn turns chilly and umbrous
And burdens once light become cumbrous,
The long shadows deepen,
The way seems to steepen.
And pilgrims grow weary and slumbrous.
September 26, 2016
qms commented on the word umbrous
OED:
umbrous — 1. Lying in the shade; shady, shadowed.
September 26, 2016
qms commented on the word intertrigo
The doctor said, "Sorry, amigo;
I know it's a blow to the ego:
That flab that you cache
Has done something rash.
It's blooming with wild intertrigo."
September 25, 2016
qms commented on the word metate
The gaucho at end of the day
Reclines with his gourd of maté.
His hammock will swing,
His gaucha will sing
To the beat of mano and metate.
September 24, 2016
qms commented on the word emargination
The stock of his gun, so it's said,
He notched for each man he shot dead;
What meaning then place on
The emargination
That pocked the headboard of his bed?
September 23, 2016
qms commented on the word catena
In New Pagan lit's strange arena
They work for an antique patina.
They'll quote and they'll cite
By wizard and rite
To build up a mystic catena.
September 22, 2016
qms commented on the word sabretasche
A hussar must dress with panache
From spurs to his sash and mustache;
And he must afford
A damascene sword
Adorned with a fine sabretache.
September 21, 2016
qms commented on the word mouchoir
Curmudgeons will always get cranky
At toffs who won't call it a hanky:
"To call it a mouchoir
Is Frenchified bushwa,
But snot rag does fine, very frankly."
September 20, 2016
qms commented on the word caffa
Mustafa, who ruled once in Jaffa,
Insisted his women wear caffa.
A lip-hugging veil
To be worn without fail
Was known as Mustache of Mustafa.
September 19, 2016
qms commented on the word waney
Some lumberjacks, when it is rainy,
Make tabletops - rustic and grainy.
It's work they can get
When weather is wet
And uses what's knotted and waney.
September 18, 2016
qms commented on the word margent
When parties set out to augment
They'll boast that they have a large tent,
But under that big top
The clowning is nonstop
To flatter the crazy margent.
September 17, 2016
qms commented on the word loof
True saintliness calls for some proof:
One, praying, might drift to the roof,
Or, best of all data,
Could bear the stigmata,
The blessing of wounds in the loof.
September 16, 2016
qms commented on the word stover
The cows feast on green grass and clover
Till seasons of fresh growth are over,
Then autumn fields shorn
To dry stalks of corn
Will make up their wintering stover.
September 15, 2016
qms commented on the word dichotic
The Donald sows discord and fear
With nonsense I'd rather not hear.
Since life's less chaotic
When listening's dichotic
I've learned how to turn a deaf ear.
September 14, 2016
qms commented on the word costrel
A wonderful vessel, the neti pot,
A tool every New Ager's got:
A sort of a costrel
You stick up your nostril
To sluice out your stubbornest snot.
September 13, 2016
qms commented on the word dyspnea
Pygmalion carved Galatea
And gave himself instant dyspnea.
The girl of his making
He made so breathtaking
He gasped and he panted to see her.
September 12, 2016
qms commented on the word singultus
A life can be rendered tumult'ous
If plagued by persistent singultus
And peace so much riven
That some folk are driven
To seek out the help of occultists.
September 11, 2016
qms commented on the word holophrastic
If new to environs monastic
You'll find that the silence is drastic.
They frown on the phonic
So monks are laconic,
Conversing in bursts holophrastic.
September 10, 2016
qms commented on the word autotroph
I checked it out on Wikipedia
And other reliable media
So safely I'll scoff
At the smug autotroph
Extolling the joys of inedia.
See also breatharian and comments at photovore.
September 9, 2016
qms commented on the word complicacy
My recipes feature efficacy
Eschewing all fuss and complicacy.
A poulet compliqué
Would ruin my day.
I'll stew up my bird in a fricassee.
September 8, 2016
qms commented on the word imaret
A sultan could put up a minaret
But virtuous actions are better yet.
He'll garner more blessing
By simply addressing
The needs of the poor in an imaret.
September 7, 2016
qms commented on the word nebulium
Poor Huggins felt silly and truly dumb
To learn he was wrong on nebulium.
If he had been able
To add to the table
The next thing he'd name was nofoolium.
September 6, 2016
qms commented on the word sistrum
A prophet in Egypt's old system
Had curious aids to assist him.
While thinking up answers
He watched sacred dancers
Who bent to the beat of the sistrum.
September 5, 2016
qms commented on the word polyptoton
True, rhetoric and its devices
The mischievous in me entices,
But having now tripped upon
That devil polyptoton
I deem them all devious vices.
September 4, 2016
qms commented on the word sirvente
There are French words such as garage that the English have dressed up in local fashion (rhymes with marriage) while Americans have preserved some of the native sound (rhymes with barrage). Sirvente is such a one.
The Brits, as often their bent,
Domesticate Gallic sirvente.
The Yanks may still flaunt
A proper sirvente
But the English are intransigent.
September 3, 2016
qms commented on the word ruckle
At sound of the grim reaper's chuckle
Even the mighty must truckle.
He finds it amusing
To hear at his choosing
Laments and a jolly death-ruckle.
September 2, 2016
qms commented on the word crotaline
That rattle is dire serpentine -
Your comfort and his don't align.
The gauntlet is flung
Before you are stung
If the snake that you rile's crotaline.
September 1, 2016
qms commented on the word bilocation
How quantum mechanics is quaint,
Giving physics a mystical taint!
Wee bits in rotation
Achieve bilocation
Which had been reserved to the saint.
August 31, 2016
qms commented on the word latinx
I don’t have strong feelings about latinx (although I do think it utterly lacks charm), but I don’t know what it provides that Latin does not. One of the American Heritage definitions cited in Wordnik is “n. A Latino or Latina.”
August 30, 2016
qms commented on the word sexting
It's a tide of the tawdry we're breasting.
I pray we'll get on to the next thing,
As Donald feigns shock
At views of his cock
Now Anthony's back to his sexting.
August 30, 2016
qms commented on the word eurythmy
Come share in my metrical whimsy,
If not agin, then you are with me,
For insight shows best
As limerick dressed
In humor and lively eurythmy.
August 30, 2016
qms commented on the word vaticinate
Young prophets who'll live out the fate
Must cautiously anticipate.
The old and the wise 'uns
With looming horizons
Have freedom to boldly vaticinate.
August 29, 2016
qms commented on the word jill-flirt
Beg pardon if I dish some dirt:
They never were angels, for cert.
The Jack and the Jill
Who went up that hill
Were jackanapes and a jill-flirt.
August 28, 2016
qms commented on the word incony
An odd one, this old-time incony:
The word is elusive and funny;
Meaning artless or fragile
But, shifting and agile,
It hops like a lexical bunny.
August 27, 2016
qms commented on the word incony
A word popular in Shakespeare's day and unused since:
The OED uses the past tense in guessing how the word might have been pronounced. Its meaning is likewise veiled in the mists of time.
August 27, 2016
qms commented on the word tenson
Itinerant troubadors tired
But gigs at the palace required
They stake their ascents on
A winnowing tenson,
Before they were comfortably hired.
August 26, 2016
qms commented on the word erumpent
Does random unreason triumphant
Explain the party's entrumpment,
Or is it the working
Of illness long lurking
Whose presence at last is erumpent?
August 25, 2016
qms commented on the word craniometry
Too clever by half, it's been said,
If subject and science aren't wed.
So use plane geometry
And not craniometry
To measure a simple blockhead.
August 24, 2016
qms commented on the word fabliau
The bawdy is narrative's fodder
And broad jest its babbling water.
Jongleurs had a go
With hot fabliaux
And we work the famed farmer's daughter.
August 23, 2016
qms commented on the word smaik
What pleasure in geck the Scots take!
In insults that sting like a snake
It's limmer they'll fetch
(Or skellum) for "wretch,"
But scroyle is much like a smaik.
Here's a provocative thought:
Scots insults suit Donald a lot,
Perhaps this is merited
By genes he inherited.
His mom was an immigrant Scot.
August 22, 2016
qms commented on the word skellum
Some think mental illness befell him.
I rather suspect
A cruder affect:
The Donald is simply a skellum.
August 21, 2016
qms commented on the word pleochroism
A rock hound when he is wistful
dreams gemstones garnered by fistful,
And rock turned to prism
By pleochroism -
The trick of a magical crystal.
August 20, 2016
qms commented on the word supernal
The commonplace may hold truth's kernel
And point the way to things supernal,
So follow that arrow
From a red wheelbarrow
Or raise your eyes from Duchamp's urinal.
August 19, 2016
qms commented on the word geck
Some cock may presume he's exec
With general permission to peck
But strutting your stuff
May not be enough
When the flock is aflutter with geck.
August 18, 2016
qms commented on the word coelostat
A sailor who finds where he's at
Adjusts to the long and the lat;
Astronomers though
To check any flow
Will stick with a strict coelostat.
August 17, 2016
qms commented on the word coelostat
Note that coelostat is pronounced "seal-o-stat" as in coelacanth or coeliac disease.
August 17, 2016
qms commented on the word vespertine
When daylight's begun its decline
And darkness is poured out like wine
Our lusty young braves
Like bats from their caves
Emerge for the hunt vespertine.
August 16, 2016
qms commented on the word skin-game
A trickster betrays his sly aim
Assailing his foe without shame.
To charge voting fraud
In no way seems odd
From one who has played the skin-game.
August 15, 2016
qms commented on the word hypermetropic
Cosmologists peer far and wide,
Putting issues of history aside.
To hypermetropics
Such trivial topics
Are less than their minds can abide.
August 14, 2016
qms commented on the word skeezicks
His speeches can only fleece hicks
Who'll swallow his dreary sleaze mix.
They haven't a prayer —
This snake oil purveyor
Is famed as a thorough skeezicks.
August 13, 2016
qms commented on the word vol au vent
See vol-au-vent.
August 13, 2016
qms commented on the word paronymous
"Gregarious" hints at a commonness,
"Egregious", however's, more ominous.
The first is preferred
As part of the herd
But, cousins, the words are paronymous.
August 12, 2016
qms commented on the word archaeoastronomy
We've learned of our ancestors' yearning
In scholarship subtly discerning
Called archaeoastronomy,
While paleoeconomy
Is knowledge of primitive earning.
August 11, 2016
qms commented on the word ladrone
Democracy's cycles are prone
To flaws that the sages bemoan:
Slick dealers hijack
The passionate pack
And try to elect a ladrone.
August 10, 2016
qms commented on the word collogue
My goodness! How do they say this in Hobart? Frafft? Frackit?
Go to the site pasted below and hear some audio examples.
http://www.memidex.com/fraught#audio
It must be the effect of hanging bat-like from the bottom of the planet.
August 10, 2016
qms commented on the word collogue
Some private exchanges are fraught
As innocent converse is not.
In voices that collogue
Hear treachery's prologue,
The reptilian hiss of a plot.
August 9, 2016
qms commented on the word fruitation
A vegan embraces fruitation
With many a happy potation —
A sovereign cure
For all that's impure
And slayer of cruel constipation.
August 9, 2016
qms commented on the word fruitation
See comments at nutation.
August 8, 2016
qms commented on the word nutation
Hunting rhymes for "nutation" I looked into the legitimacy of "fruitation" and was disappointed to find that what little attention it draws is scorn as an unsophisticated stand-in for "fruition". This is too bad. I like the word and think that it nicely evokes an image of a tree laden with ripened fruit.
We have a mulberry tree that, at midsummer when its branches droop with the weight of berries, is visited by crowds of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, etc., and cats in pursuit of the wild creatures. Even on windless days the tree pulsates as though palsied. Thus,
I think fruitation works just fine here. For that matter nutation could just as well be applied in season to oaks or walnuts to describe both their abundance and their behavior:
August 8, 2016
qms commented on the word limmer
The lamp of sweet reason grows dimmer
And decency's quite gone aglimmer.
He sucks up the light
And brings on the night.
The man is a lout and a limmer.
August 7, 2016
qms commented on the word scroyle
Amid the political moil
Republicans strive to be loyal,
But this sorry fettle
Will sure test their mettle,
For Jumbo has spawned them a scroyle.
August 6, 2016
qms commented on the word estovers
We scurry in fortune's fierce race
Till age makes us slacken the pace.
We cease being rovers
And guard our estovers
And hope that we fade with some grace.
August 5, 2016
qms commented on the word estovers
Ety. note: Old French estover, estovoir, subst. use of estovoir to be necessary. (OED)
August 5, 2016
qms commented on the word axiology
Damn! I was hoping it was the study of armpits.
See axillary.
August 4, 2016
qms commented on the word furvert
Does an incestuous furvert in heat do a furgent search among her furkin?
August 4, 2016
qms commented on the word crepuscule
The heat of the day can be cruel.
We swelter and yearn to be cool,
To sip a cold drink
And watch the sun sink
And soak in the sweet crepuscule.
August 4, 2016
qms commented on the user mohsin12027
Greetings mohsin. I hope you will enjoy the experience.
August 3, 2016
qms commented on the word seely
Our Ernest knows Wordnik's a tool
To facet a phrase like a jewel.
What does he mean really
By calling you seely?
Is saint what he names you-or fool?
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
August 3, 2016
qms commented on the word pickthank
A crafty pol should be a pickthank.
When voters send an impolitic blank
His career's not demolished;
The apples he's polished
Will land him a post in a think tank.
August 2, 2016
qms commented on the list character-types
While I am a tilting toddler in Wordnik years I am a shambling mutterer in terms of sun orbits. You Wordie veterans have amazingly rich lists. I put together a few lists to collect the lovely words I don't want to forget. Then I forget the lists. I still don't understand what tags do.
August 2, 2016
qms commented on the word birkie
The nature of humans is murky.
Our moods make our preferences quirky.
Who one day beguiles
With laughter and smiles
The next is a tedious birkie.
August 1, 2016
qms commented on the word war-fain
Perhaps the cold grip of mortmain
Or Olympian gods who ordain
That men through the ages
Indulge their wild rages
Disposed to be always war-fain.
July 31, 2016
qms commented on the word hamshackle
When casting with fly fishing tackle
The novice who has not the knack'll
Find that such angling
Is deeply entangling
And wind up impaled and hamshackled.
July 30, 2016
qms commented on the word tucket
He fondled each farthing and ducat
Before dropping them into his bucket.
The comforting sound
As they rattled around
To him was both nocturne and tucket.
July 29, 2016
qms commented on the word ram-stam
Not like that repellent damn sham
That callously plays with "wham bam,"
But just helter-skelter,
An innocent welter.
There's nought to offend in ram-stam.
July 28, 2016
qms commented on the word pussy
A pussy foot can be an omen -
Remember ex ungue leonem.
The essence of Trump's
Expressed in those stumps.
Let Pussy become his cognomen.
July 27, 2016
qms commented on the word ex ungue leonem
ex ungue leonem: from the claw (we may judge of) the lion : from a part we may judge of the whole.
Merriam-Webster
July 27, 2016
qms commented on the word panada
When hungry how low will we stoop
Our dwindling strength to recoup?
A bowl of panada
Is better than nada.
If need be I'll eat some bread soup.
July 27, 2016
qms commented on the word screenwalking
'screenwalking' = walking along looking at your cellphone with no attention to what's going on around you.
July 27, 2016
qms commented on the word orra
The gnomes are not fauna nor flora
But gardens are blessed by their aura.
Their magic potential
May not be essential
But some find them charmingly orra.
July 26, 2016
qms commented on the word nayword
His small talking skills being wayward
He chattered at times like a jaybird.
For marital peace
His babble would cease
If she uttered the pre-arranged nayword.
July 25, 2016
qms commented on the word balneal
The best way I know how to heal
A pestilent rash popliteal
Is immersing your knees
As hot as you please
Applying the cure-all balneal.
July 24, 2016
qms commented on the word gabion
From Wikipedia:
"A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning "big cage"; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning "cage") is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping."
See these employed with increasing frequency in retaining walls along roads and highways.
July 24, 2016
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