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.
At the entry for gizzard the Century supplies, "n. Figuratively, temper: now only in the phrase to fret one's gizzard." The "now" reference is to 1914. The expression is new to me and I like it. This is a fossil that deserves reanimation.
What rara avis bizarrely fluorescent Assails us with crowing incessant? It's only the rumpus Of brass-pated trumpus Who struts in his plumage fulvescent.
"Late capitalism" is a term used by neo-Marxists to refer to capitalism from about 1945 onwards, with the implication that it is a historically limited stage rather than an eternal feature of all future human society. This period includes the era termed the golden age of capitalism.
For spuds and for meat he's voracious But Grandad makes haste to turn gracious And claim he is sated If it's intimated The next dish could be alliaceous.
In my high school Latin class I learned that decimation was a punishment in which one of every ten members of a disgraced legion or other military unit was bludgeoned to death by the other nine. The idea made a deep impression on me. The word seems, however, to be more commonly used to mean "utterly destroy." The common usage has always grated on my ear because the word so loudly proclaims its root in the number ten.
Perhaps the more general application has come about because it sounds so much like "devastate." Something similar could happen to centesimate, which by its sound suggests a sensitivity to pheromones. It could come to describe mating behavior, as in, "I can tell by the tomcats' yowling that a female has been centesimated."
There is nothing I would enjoy more than a visit to Australia and the pleasure of kindly, witty company. At present I am awaiting the cash part of the Nobel Prize for Limericks, which a nice man from Nigeria assured me will follow promptly on the processing of my fees. As soon as that comes through I'll be on my way. You'll know I'm coming if you listen at night by the Alimentation Station:
I loathe to promote hysterical games But cock an ear for chimerical trains. Midst whistles and clatter And such ghostly matter You'll faintly catch limerical strains.
If challenged to poems at dawn Let doubting be banished and gone. Your foe cannot strike you If he's armed with haiku And you have your limerick drawn.
This is one of those words that is pronounced in starkly different fashion on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In England the word rhymes with Ethiopia; in the U.S. It rhymes with gonorrhea.
I see little of Brexit in Texit It's only the sound that connects it. The most they can muster Is boasting and bluster. From Texans one simply expects it.
Continuing to reflect on the thin documentation for bourasque I am now thinking that most lexicographers who have considered the matter may have decided that its rare occurrences are simply instances of a French word misspelled.
According to the Golden Legend, an 11th century compendium of hagiography, three siblings prominent in the New Testament made their way to the South of France in the first century, AD. These were Martha, Mary (in this tale a conflation of Martha’s sister Mary and Mary Magdalen) and Lazarus, their brother who had been raised from the dead by Jesus. Pagans had set these three adrift on the Mediterranean in a boat with neither sail nor rudder but by miraculous intervention they landed safely near Marseille. There they set up shop as miracle workers. The region around the mouth of the Rhône river had long been ravaged by a fierce dragon called the Tarasque. With hymns and holy water Martha tamed the Tarasque and led it back to the village it had been terrorizing. The villagers killed the unresisting beast, regretted doing so, and as a token of their remorse renamed the village Tarascon.
Traversing the Med's a tough task, Becalmed or else tossed by bourasque, And then you arrive Where locals connive To get you to tame the tarasque.
I find bourasque defined only in Century and Collins. None of the other internet-accesible dictionaries (not even the OED) include it. However bourrasque (with a double ‘r’) is routinely included in French dictionaries where it is defined as a storm or a gust of wind. Google Translator renders it as squall. It is odd that it should have been borrowed into English with an altered spelling and then hardly ever used.
Your definition makes sense, alexz, if the emphasis is put on a long 'a' for the middle syllable. If the emphasis is put on the first syllable it becomes the dinner bell in the ship's prison.
ruzuzu, weary of wretched Don's dreck, Resolved to kick ass and wreak heck. Her sly wry aspersions And animadversions Effectively wrang Herr Trump's neck.
The existence of this kind of shoes in Europe is documented since at least 1322, when they appear described for the first time with its current Catalan name.
The term espadrille is French and derives from the word in the Occitan language, which comes from espardenya, in Catalan or alpargata and esparteña in Castilian/Spanish. Both espardenya and esparteña refer to a type of shoes made with esparto, a tough, wiry Mediterranean grass used in making rope. Its name in the Basque region is espartina.
italicosis. - n. A noxious typographical infection by which characters once sturdy and upright are compelled to limp across the page bent like weary travelers fighting a strong East wind. Italics are like some medicines, such as Warfarin, which are beneficial in small amounts but deadly in quantity. Wordnik is struck by this malady from time to time when an infected comment is placed and the telltale rash is spread to all the text on the page below it. This is the result of a double error: first, failing to close the italics HTML markup and, second, failing to check the fresh entry in the context of the Community page to see if it is affecting its neighbors.
Italics are good in small doses As means of directing the focus. But if they're unchecked The whole site is wrecked By rampaging italicosis.
His scorn for the lecture was utter. I heard the old fisherman mutter, "I'll heed that scientist fella And call the thing 'vellela,' But damned if I'll copy his stutter."
When Missy awakes on dewy morns She spruces up her unicorns. Each ear, though of leather, She tops with a feather, Preferring her myths have plumicorns.
I’m having a hard time finding pronunciation guidance on this one. The OED suggests what looks like a diphthong – wuh-oof. It’s Scottish of course, so it’s anybody’s guess.
The Scots stay from good sense aloof, A word such as this is the proof. In Winter wits wilt From wearing a kilt And poor Jocks are driven quite wowf.
The doc thought, "These symptoms are specious. This patient is being facetious Or hypochodriacal To a point near maniacal To claim such a strange anamnesis."
From the definitions and examples provided it seems that among the beasts who may be called stot are: horse, stallion (aka staig), ox (aka stirk), bull, heifer (aka quey), calf, weasel, stoat.
Pray tell if you can: what's a stot?
It's most of the livestock we've got -
A stirk or a quey
Or a staig in it's way.
It seems there's near nothing it's not.
The definition as a verb is more appealing. It describes an amusing form of locomotion favored by young chamois, goats, lambs and the like in which they progress in an exuberant series of four-footed leaps. This is also known as pronking. YouTube abounds in videos of animals stotting or pronking.
Curiously the Word of the Day notification supplies the only definition of the five aggregated on the full entry page that omits mention of the "tapered at the ends" feature of terete structures.
bilby flatters me outrageously - a practice I encourage at every opportunity. As to The Limerick King - self-anointed royals tread a perilous path:
The "King" should eschew boastful ways. The rhyming gift visits but strays. We surely will stumble So, best we be humble And wait until others give praise.
N. b., I understand that current science teaches that the female praying mantis only sometimes eats her mate during copulation, but I have it on good authority that this was standard practice in Noah's day.
Said Ernest, contrite and compunct, "When tested I surely have flunked. I called it a fraud But the word is just odd, Not pompous or phony, just unked.
A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Handling the halo in this circumstance offers a unique challenge for the artist. Some put the halo where the head used to be; others have the saint carrying the halo along with the head.
The term "cephalophore" was first used in a French article by Marcel Hébert, "Les martyrs céphalophores Euchaire, Elophe et Libaire", in Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles, v. 19 (1914).
A good coat need not be enormous But cite for a still doubting thomas: Pioneers braved the storm While still keeping warm With only the short humble wamus.
Gluggaveður is a popular word on the net, perhaps because it has been promoted as one of a list of words in Icelandic that could be usefully borrowed into other languages. "'Window-weather' describes weather that 'is nice to look at through a window, but not nice to be out in.'”
The eth character (ð) is pronounced like a furry version of the English th, or, as Wikipedia has it: "In Icelandic, ð represents a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative ..." It is best to find an audible pronunciation online to get the idea.
The strange gods of Iceland bequeath her A magical shape-shiftng ether. Where fire burns on ice And fine views entice That the unwary find gluggaveður.
My rather lengthy comment below is reposted (unfortunately out of sequence) because it had been blown away by an overeager spambuster. In fact for a while everything posted by qms was FLAGGED AS SPAM. Usually people are too politely discreet to make this declaration. Apparently Erin has admonished all to mind their manners.
Thank you, alexz, for taking my peculiar limitations into account, but I don't think I'm quite ready for haiku:
The limerick for now is my niche.
I don't think I'm likely to switch.
Though noble, haiku
Just simply won't do
As leaving unscratched the rhyming itch.
And, bilby, I don't know whether rhyming mizbpdjryeq is an impossible challenge or none at all. My limited exposure to Polish persuades me that the pronunciation of any word is completely arbitrary. I don't know how those people communicate with one another. I could probably rhyme mizbpdjryeq with orange and proclaim myself victor.
I wonder if our polskispam is the output of the legendary million monkeys typing away to produce the works of Shakespeare? I think they are closing in on Finnegan's Wake.
I will be traveling for a while and may miss a day here and there but I will be pondering the content of the bqrxqhslbdi spam and considering how to get Xanthippe and Calvin into the same limerick.
I sent my snottygobble limerick to a group of my old Peace Corps buddies. The one who lives in Perth, a naturalist by trade, was pleased to tell me that the plant is native to his corner of Oz. He even sent a photo. He deprecated the appearance of the shrub but I found it handsome enough. He also observed that six-year-old boys find the word hilarious. I am glad to have defined my true peers.
I have found at least eight proposed pronunciations for this word. The first syllable can be vi, vuh, or vai. and the third syllable can be in, ine, or een. Stress can fall on any of the three syllables. What is a rhymer to do?
What shocks us more than snottygobble, Revolts us worse than naughty snot’ll? The ultimate gauge Of the true autophage Is he who will savor the potty bauble.
Connoisseurs of such themes really should consult the comments at autophage, where much deep delving is done.
The definitions provided are inadequate. They give the misleading impression that a pochade could be a sketch in pencil or charcoal (a croquis). A pochade is a preliminary sketch for a painting executed in a pigmented medium - oil, watercolrs or acrylic. See Wikipedia.
His painterly pose was facade For ladies on their promenade. His prating of pigment Was only a figment. The man couldn't paint a pochade.
Today's Word of the Day is a seriously conflicted item. The definitions and examples provided support its use to mean
1. night blindness
2. day blindness
3. especially keen vision in low light
The OED confirms this multiplicity of uses, including among its examples the following:
"1684 tr. S. Blankaart Physical Dict. 208 Nyctalopia is two-fold: the first is a Dimness of Sight in the Night..: The other is a Dimness in the Light, and clear Sight in the Night, or in Shades."
To add to the confusion see the definition offered by The Century for hemeralopia:
"n. In pathology, a defect of sight in consequence of which distinct vision is possible only in artificial or dim light; day-blindness. The term is also used, however, to express exactly the opposite defect of vision. See nyctalopia."
Versatility is a useful quality in many things but not so much in words.
Also, all the links to the Jules Verne novel “In Search of the Castaways” in the usage examples fail. Here is a working link to the book at the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2083
My cat finds contentment so simply: After dining she drapes herself limply, Sufficiently fed And flopped in her bed That catches the sunbeam just jimply.
In Byzantine art, and later Eastern Orthodox art generally, the Deësis or Deisis (Greek: δέησις, "prayer" or "supplication"), is a traditional iconic representation of Christ in Majesty or Christ Pantocrator: enthroned, carrying a book, and flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist, and sometimes other saints and angels. Mary and John, and any other figures, are shown facing towards Christ with their hands raised in supplication on behalf of humanity.
A poe is someone on the internet who expresses a deliberately extreme position as an instance of Poe's law - a poker-faced parodist in a context where parody is indistinguishable from the real thing.
I cannot confirm that Peter, Cottontail, Mopsy and Flopsy are eligible for necropsy, but I have learned more of their story.
It has been many a long year since I last consulted the tale of Peter and company. If, like me, you need to refresh your memory, you can do so here.
The seeds of the unhappiness to come are evident in this seemingly innocent history. Note, for instance, that Mrs Rabbit is guilty of euphemism of criminal proportion in warning against going to Farmer McGregor's garden : '...your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.'
Anthony Frederick Sarg (April 21, 1880 – February 17, 1942), known professionally as Tony Sarg, was a German American puppeteer and illustrator. He was described as "America's Puppet Master", and in his biography as the father of modern puppetry in North America.
I see that bilby is, as ever, at the cutting edge of current events. He must have read about the plan here in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to populate an island in the middle of the Quabbin reservoir with 150 timber rattlers.
The Dominican habit is black and white. The Franciscan habit was originally the color of the humblest cloth of the day, which at first was grey. Later it was brown and there tradtion has frozen the costume. Thus Greyfriars, Oxford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars,_Oxford) is a Franciscan institution although the members of that order dress in brown.
Beware, little fly, entombment ghastly! That blossom could be what you'll last see, For should you alight When day turns to night The beckoning bud turns nictinasty.
Abroad we're exposed to hijackers And online assailed by code crackers, But, by Mendel's beans! Please shelter our genes From schemes of the vile biohackers.
Experience has made me leery of commenting on American regionalisms because some people can get quite choleric about a fondness for one's native idiom. But I lived many years in Michigan, an inoffensive state, where they used the term "skiff" for this meteorological phenomenon. My neighbors were amused at my East Coast ignorance of the term. There is something about the word in a Chigago newpaper:
The origin is not clear, but some think it came from the Scottish verb "skiff," which means to lightly move across a surface barely touching it, as perhaps a "skiff" of snow barely covers the ground. The term appears to be colloquial, used mainly in northern parts of the country and in Canada to describe a minor rainfall or snowfall or a light breeze. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a skiff as "a slight gust of wind or shower of rain, etc. Also, a light flurry or cover of snow."
There is full entry for predilection. There must be something funky with the way the term was entered to spawn this new page. Perhaps a leading or trailing space?
Even Scalia’s ideological allies recognized the folly of trying to divine the “intent” of the authors of the Constitution concerning questions that those bewigged worthies could never have anticipated.
It may be that the problem only occurs when a closing italic tag is the very last element in a comment. I suppose we could experiment with this but only at the risk of making a real mess of things.
I observed that everything on the Community page subsequent to (that is, below) vendingmachine's assfish comment has become italicized. On the assfish entry page my limerick followed the vm comment and there its formatting was disrupted. I deleted and reposted the limerick and it formats correctly. Now a bilby comment immediately follows the vm comment and its formatting is disrupted. There is clearly something awry in that vm comment.
Perhaps, andrewk, you are puzzled, as was I at first, by an assumption that you are limited to the comment box on your newly-created personal page. You can insert comments in the boxes at the bottom of each word's entry page, although it can be a long scroll down to find one. Also, you can create a new word entry page just by searching for a word for which no page exists. A new entry will be spawned.
Should a stiffly conventional couple Aspire to a more daring thrupple Then yoga and flexing Had best be their next thing. They're going to need to be supple.
There ran through the crowd a quick titter, Leaving nudists alarmed and atwitter And so much aghast The beach emptied fast From dread he'd return as a clitter.
Also, I repost here a limerick (a rather long-legged variant) I posted to the specific-excrement list on June 17, 2014. I would hate to see the literature of frass go uncollected.
Today's Word of the Day brought to my attention how many words English supplies to denote a loss of consciousness. You can probably find a term to describe the result of too much liquor that is apt for every character type. See pass out, faint, syncope, swoon.
Conté crayon, French crayon conté, drawing pencil named after Nicolas-Jacques Conté, the French scientist who invented it late in the 18th century. The conté crayon is an especially hard pencil, made of an admixture of graphite and clay that can be varied for different degrees of hardness. It is usually made in black, red, or brown and is used as a drawing medium in any combination of these colours.
With maddening frequency I get telephone calls form "David" or "Walter" in India, claiming to represent "Windows Support" and wanting to tell me that my computer can only be saved by their expensive intervention. This list provides a whole new vocabulary of epithets to hurl at "Charles" or "Matthew!"
Despite the comment of 02/10/2013 below, I think this word is better understood as a noun. It’s only appearance in print is in the Old English poem “The Wife’s Lament” where it is glossed with the following note:
Line 7b
'uhtceare' - The period just before dawn, a time when the Anglo-Saxon imagination felt grief was particularly potent. Klinck finds 'an element of sexual deprivation'.
Something odd is happening here. If you click on the hyperlinked “reify” in Jimmydiamonds comment you go to an entry page for the word that contains only his comment. I thought this was a surprising omission, since reify is a well-established word. If you enter “reify” in the search box you will come to a full entry for the word. What gives?
The mourners in silence advance Behind the wee bier and the crants. Their minds are so laden With grief for the maiden They move as though caught in a trance.
Oh please, my calligrapher friends, You masters of shadings and bends, I pray you will show me In your kakizome A happier year than this that now ends.
He thinks of himself as a lucky cuss If going to bed he is muckibus. He's loved by no mortal But through liquor's portal He blissfully visits his succubus.
"Soft as a grape" is an expression meaning tetched. This was a favorite expression of my late brother, Brendan. I had thought it was just old-fashioned, but I have only learned today that it is probably local to New England. Googling it is complicated by the intrusive presence of a purveyor of sports-themed clothing (headquartered in Massachusetts) that has taken the name, although its aptness to such an enterprise eludes me.
Its aptness as an idiom is also something of a puzzle. Perhaps it is that a grape gives a deceptive appearance of solidity but it comes apart under even very slight pressure?
I see that some have construed the expression to imply kindness. They are welcome to this interpretation.
We adults are still girls and boys But free to annoy with our toys. A cacophonous standard Is set in the panyard, A hell (or a heaven) of noise.
However, I am not persuaded by the "steel band corral" definition for this word. It sounds like something concocted in a competition to guess what the word might mean, maybe beating out "the distance traveled by a pancake when flipped from a skillet." I see that the more commonly cited definition is an obsolete version of pannier, a kind of basket. This pleases me more. It's a sturdy weed surviving through neglect.
A word may do what you ask it But temper the challenge you task it; Above all stand guard So a word like panyard Can gracefully age as a basket.
I read your short-lived response, alexz, and it was a noble effort, but this is just a case of a provocateur unloading a few drive-by insults. Such types are best ignored.
If sin should take its heavy toll A conscience cure should be your goal. If you cannot stay pure Then seek a razure; Let shrift amend your battered soul.
Conspicuous for her stern militance But absent all malice or ill intents, At first you're alarmed But then you are charmed By the grandeur of her magniloquence.
It looks to be playful Latin. From the Oxford Dictionaries site:
adjective
Difficult to deal with or settle; perplexing; (of a person) of dubious character.
Origin
Late 17th cent. Origin uncertain; perhaps from classical Latin quisquis whoever, with subsequent alteration of the ending after adjectives in -ous. With the form quisquose perhaps compare -ose.
Comments by qms
Show previous 200 comments...
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
qms commented on the word drownage
Young ladies in crinoline gownage
Refrained from riparian clownage
Else they might have slid
As Ophelia did
To prolonged, if picturesque, drownage.
July 23, 2016
qms commented on the word habilatory
A gossip can never be dilatory
But eagerly hastes to spill a story
And endlessly natters
Of such shocking matters
As subtle transgressions habilatory.
July 22, 2016
qms commented on the word lampadrome
See lights in the Levantine gloam
As linkboys scamper for home.
The torches glow bright
In encroaching night
At the end of a long lampadrome.
Also see comments at lampadedromy.
July 21, 2016
qms commented on the word idolothytic
As gods will not deign to eat meat
Your slender amour spurns a sweet.
It's not hypocritic
But idolothytic
To give her your favorite treat.
July 20, 2016
qms commented on the word niggard
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word niggardly
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word gelastic
Crude youngsters employ a crass trick
To replicate trumpetings gastric,
While I, for my part,
Can hear in no fart
A note in the least bit gelastic.
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word niggard
Something to do with the way the Wordnik compiler processes quotation marks. I will ponder.
July 19, 2016
qms commented on the word dizzard
Much given to fretting his gizzard
Doubts swirl like the flakes of a blizzard.
When Percy must vote
Cold fear grips his throat -
Well-meaning but sadly a dizzard.
July 18, 2016
qms commented on the word to fret the gizzard
At the entry for gizzard the Century supplies, "n. Figuratively, temper: now only in the phrase to fret one's gizzard." The "now" reference is to 1914. The expression is new to me and I like it. This is a fossil that deserves reanimation.
July 18, 2016
qms commented on the word simulacradomes
As fairies and elves have their homes
Why do we neglect our poor gnomes?
Why can we not harden
The roof of the garden
And give them simulacradromes?
July 18, 2016
qms commented on the word fulvescent
What rara avis bizarrely fluorescent
Assails us with crowing incessant?
It's only the rumpus
Of brass-pated trumpus
Who struts in his plumage fulvescent.
July 17, 2016
qms commented on the word balladmonger
Whether Brassens or Dylan or Brel
They draw from the same woeful well
For each balladmonger
Affects pallid longueur.
What unhappy tales they do tell.
July 16, 2016
qms commented on the word celsitude
Though old the tycoon isn't done yet,
But keeps on his staff young Yvette,
Who's sufficiently lewd
To preserve celsitude
On the oligarch's personal jet.
July 15, 2016
qms commented on the word late capitalism
"Late capitalism" is a term used by neo-Marxists to refer to capitalism from about 1945 onwards, with the implication that it is a historically limited stage rather than an eternal feature of all future human society. This period includes the era termed the golden age of capitalism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
July 14, 2016
qms commented on the word keout
Purportedly an Irishism, but I find only one dictionary entry (the Century), one usage example (the Carleton novel) and no pronunciation guidance.
An insult is what it's about,
A bold contumelious shout.
Should I give a hoot
If it rhymes with galoot
Or assume that the word is keout?
July 14, 2016
qms commented on the word iatric
A master of matters iatric
If blessed with some talent theatric
And good looks to boot
Can scoop up some loot
In scoring the tv doc hat trick.
July 13, 2016
qms commented on the word Itinerant
See itinerant.
July 13, 2016
qms commented on the word prosaist
Forsooth, fulsome praise, as thou sayest,
Could go to a clever essayist;
But prithee bestow it
On some soaring poet
And not a mere plodding prosaist.
July 12, 2016
qms commented on the list states-of-mind--2
A daze? stupefaction?
July 11, 2016
qms commented on the word flacket
Let a thirst build at first then attack it.
A beer is improved while you lack it.
The drier you get
The more the beer's wet
And cooler the flanks of the flacket.
July 11, 2016
qms commented on the word diverb
Ignite a spark by useful friction
With symmetry in contradiction.
Inspire or perturb
By a clever diverb -
An ancient tool of formal diction.
July 10, 2016
qms commented on the word alliaceous
For spuds and for meat he's voracious
But Grandad makes haste to turn gracious
And claim he is sated
If it's intimated
The next dish could be alliaceous.
July 9, 2016
qms commented on the word vraisemblance
In Cleveland they'll mime nonchalance
For cocksureness' vraisemblance.
Despite a brave show
At heart they must know
The exercise is a totentanz.
July 8, 2016
qms commented on the word totentanz
See dance of death, danse macabre.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totentanz
July 8, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
I read your response and I wince.
I paid him and have not heard since.
You give me a fright
But It must be all right;
He told me (aside) he’s a prince.
July 7, 2016
qms commented on the word baisemain
A courtier with little shame feigns
He's smitten by royal plain janes.
He'll hint at hot bliss
To a credulous miss
But give her no more than baisemains.
July 7, 2016
qms commented on the word centesimate
A general of Rome grown irate
In heat may incline to decimate,
Or soothed by the touch
Of one he loves much
Relent and benignly centesimate.
July 6, 2016
qms commented on the word centesimate
In my high school Latin class I learned that decimation was a punishment in which one of every ten members of a disgraced legion or other military unit was bludgeoned to death by the other nine. The idea made a deep impression on me. The word seems, however, to be more commonly used to mean "utterly destroy." The common usage has always grated on my ear because the word so loudly proclaims its root in the number ten.
Perhaps the more general application has come about because it sounds so much like "devastate." Something similar could happen to centesimate, which by its sound suggests a sensitivity to pheromones. It could come to describe mating behavior, as in, "I can tell by the tomcats' yowling that a female has been centesimated."
July 6, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
There is nothing I would enjoy more than a visit to Australia and the pleasure of kindly, witty company. At present I am awaiting the cash part of the Nobel Prize for Limericks, which a nice man from Nigeria assured me will follow promptly on the processing of my fees. As soon as that comes through I'll be on my way. You'll know I'm coming if you listen at night by the Alimentation Station:
I loathe to promote hysterical games
But cock an ear for chimerical trains.
Midst whistles and clatter
And such ghostly matter
You'll faintly catch limerical strains.
July 6, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
Should antipodeans assail ya
Your virtue may nothing avail ya.
Oh beware, my darling!
There's danger of farling
In all the rough parts of Australia.
July 5, 2016
qms commented on the word bearjam
Isn't bearjam what you find between your toes after walking barefoot in the woods?
July 5, 2016
qms commented on the word fellmonger
While shunning is painfully felt,
A tradesman must work with what's dealt.
Though no one smells stronger
Than a busy fellmonger
It's the price that is paid for the pelt.
July 5, 2016
qms commented on the word pyrotechny
At mid-day they pander abjectly;
By twilight they cry out "elect me!"
But shrill pleas are drowned
By sight and the sound
Of Fourth of July pyrotechny.
July 4, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
Alas, the degenerate levels
They reach in their unseemly revels!
Hear the tormented screech
Of abused parts of speech
In the jaws of Tasmanian devils!
July 4, 2016
qms commented on the word apophantic
Befuddlement makes me quite frantic.
The migraine I get is gigantic.
I sadly confess
I feel this distress
While struggling to grasp "apophantic."
July 3, 2016
qms commented on the word chewet
You fill it with lean meat or suet
And call it a mortress or chewet,
But if crust enfold it
So that you can hold it
It's pie any way you construe it.
July 2, 2016
qms commented on the word brocatel
The walls of the cold palace spell
The distance the old family fell.
Their misery's told
In Gobelins sold
And hung in their place, brocatel.
July 1, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
Let not Aussie customs perturb.
Their scorn for the rules is superb;
They brew up their crops
Of barley and hops
Then dare to use farl as a verb.
July 1, 2016
qms commented on the word farl
A piece of an oatcake for sure
Is more than this scribe can endure!
I'm stymied by 'farl'
'Cause dressing up 'harl'
Has left me no rhymes to procure.
See comments at harl, which was Word of the Day May 24, 2014.
June 30, 2016
qms commented on the word soothfast
How long should the shadow of youth last
And when shed the shame of uncouth past?
From miscreant young
There often have sprung
Grown men who are noble and soothfast.
June 29, 2016
qms commented on the word Gruffalo
If challenged to poems at dawn
Let doubting be banished and gone.
Your foe cannot strike you
If he's armed with haiku
And you have your limerick drawn.
June 28, 2016
qms commented on the word teapoy
A memorable tiffin gives joy
From the delicate gear you deploy.
It's always more swank
If the tea that you drank
Was served from a little teapoy.
June 28, 2016
qms commented on the word nisus
Contemplative, maybe? Or constitutionalist?
June 28, 2016
qms commented on the word synderesis
The conscience patrols and polices
But nonetheless sin never ceases.
If we're to evolve
The change must involve
Updating our old synderesis.
June 27, 2016
qms commented on the word mythopoeia
A lifetime of bills in arrear
Trump paints as a golden career!
For avid bullshitters
It's not gold that glitters
But polished brass mythopoeia.
June 26, 2016
qms commented on the word mythopoeia
This is one of those words that is pronounced in starkly different fashion on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In England the word rhymes with Ethiopia; in the U.S. It rhymes with gonorrhea.
June 26, 2016
qms commented on the word nipperty-tipperty
Patricia takes many a liberty,
Is flippant and nipperty-tipperty.
Will nothing inhibit
This flibbertigibbet,
So impishly perky and flirty?
June 25, 2016
qms commented on the word Gruffalo
Intending a light and fluffy show
I came across as stuffy though.
Please pardon my folly.
I aimed to be jolly
But struck, it seems, too rough a blow.
June 25, 2016
qms commented on the word panmixia
Romance is afloat on the breeze,
That highway of birds and the bees.
Miasmic panmixia
Is lovers' asphyxia.
A coupling that's random can't please.
June 24, 2016
qms commented on the word Gruffalo
Now, bilby, I weary of guff you throw.
This really is more than enough, you know.
I haven't the time
To search for a rhyme
For something as silly as Gruffalo.
June 24, 2016
qms commented on the word euthenics
There's much that a spa can instill:
Cold showers can stiffen the will;
Applying euthenics
Can calm the splenetics,
While mud baths cure many an ill.
June 23, 2016
qms commented on the word bascule
When Ernest was young and in school
The boy was a nerd en capsule.
Since one of his whims
Was strange synonyms
A seesaw he'd call a bascule.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
June 22, 2016
qms commented on the word caddle
One's work and nutrition do battle
So breakfast each morning's a caddle
Or, too rushed to grapple,
We pocket an apple
And, thwarted again, we skedaddle.
June 21, 2016
qms commented on the word Texit
I see little of Brexit in Texit
It's only the sound that connects it.
The most they can muster
Is boasting and bluster.
From Texans one simply expects it.
June 21, 2016
qms commented on the word wraprascal
I ask as it's colder and wetter
If heat or more clothing is better?
As per my last gas bill
I'll buy a wraprascal
To wind around me in my sweater.
June 20, 2016
qms commented on the word rudas
In case the depiction elude us:
I think the old crone is construed as
A termagant hag,
A shrewish old bag,
A harridan Scott calls a rudas.
June 19, 2016
qms commented on the word boxiana
A bloke with no fisticuffs skill
Can have his vicarious thrill
And use boxiana
In safe proxy manner
To imagine he's king of the hill.
June 18, 2016
qms commented on the word skilts
Some folks with Highlandish tilts
Affect rather outlandish lilts
But nurse an aversion
To whole Scots conversion
By dressing in two-legged skilts.
June 17, 2016
qms commented on the word nesh
Still warm from the oven and fresh
A new loaf heals spirit and flesh.
Succumb to the spell
Of crust like a shell
And crumb that is fragrant and nesh.
June 16, 2016
qms commented on the word lubitorium
Compare lubritorium. This used to be a label commonly placed over gas station service bay doors when I was a kid - long, long ago.
June 16, 2016
qms commented on the word bourasque
Continuing to reflect on the thin documentation for bourasque I am now thinking that most lexicographers who have considered the matter may have decided that its rare occurrences are simply instances of a French word misspelled.
June 15, 2016
qms commented on the word tarasque
See comments at bourasque.
June 15, 2016
qms commented on the word bourasque
According to the Golden Legend, an 11th century compendium of hagiography, three siblings prominent in the New Testament made their way to the South of France in the first century, AD. These were Martha, Mary (in this tale a conflation of Martha’s sister Mary and Mary Magdalen) and Lazarus, their brother who had been raised from the dead by Jesus. Pagans had set these three adrift on the Mediterranean in a boat with neither sail nor rudder but by miraculous intervention they landed safely near Marseille. There they set up shop as miracle workers.
The region around the mouth of the Rhône river had long been ravaged by a fierce dragon called the Tarasque. With hymns and holy water Martha tamed the Tarasque and led it back to the village it had been terrorizing. The villagers killed the unresisting beast, regretted doing so, and as a token of their remorse renamed the village Tarascon.
Traversing the Med's a tough task,
Becalmed or else tossed by bourasque,
And then you arrive
Where locals connive
To get you to tame the tarasque.
June 15, 2016
qms commented on the word bourasque
I find bourasque defined only in Century and Collins. None of the other internet-accesible dictionaries (not even the OED) include it. However bourrasque (with a double ‘r’) is routinely included in French dictionaries where it is defined as a storm or a gust of wind. Google Translator renders it as squall. It is odd that it should have been borrowed into English with an altered spelling and then hardly ever used.
June 15, 2016
qms commented on the word brigading
Your definition makes sense, alexz, if the emphasis is put on a long 'a' for the middle syllable. If the emphasis is put on the first syllable it becomes the dinner bell in the ship's prison.
June 15, 2016
qms commented on the word allopatric
Hot passion online's a safe tactic,
Most outcomes are anticlimactic.
So spew molten woo
While knowing that you
And she are no doubt allopatric.
June 14, 2016
qms commented on the word wrang
ruzuzu, weary of wretched Don's dreck,
Resolved to kick ass and wreak heck.
Her sly wry aspersions
And animadversions
Effectively wrang Herr Trump's neck.
June 13, 2016
qms commented on the word cheveril
My wardrobe's omissions are several.
They're things I don't own nor ever will:
A cane and cravat
A shiny top hat,
Or buff-colored gloves made of cheveril.
June 13, 2016
qms commented on the word vareuse
To give some cachet to a jacket
That otherwise simply would lack it
You can, if you choose,
Say it's a vareuse.
It's a ruse of the high fashion racket.
June 12, 2016
qms commented on the word lusk
Some oxen are known for their musk
And narwhals are typed by the tusk.
The sloth is a creature
Whose defining feature
Is being quite perfectly lusk.
June 11, 2016
qms commented on the word alpargata
It is my understanding that alpargata and espadrille do share ancestry. The Wkipedia entry for Espadrille contains the following:
June 10, 2016
qms commented on the word alpargata
Throughout all the Catalan hills
They're worn by who talks and who tills.
Though all social strata
May wear alpargata
The well-born will say "espadrilles."
June 10, 2016
qms commented on the word cabas
Now bilby's strange lingo's all tangled,
A mélange that's new and odd-fangled.
I have to be frank -
I'm drawing a blank;
Methinks his bahasa's bemangled.
June 10, 2016
qms commented on the word cabas
Poor bilby, I say with respect,
Ignores the French boat that was wrecked.
For Javans descended
From Frenchies upended
The cabas is apt and correct.
June 9, 2016
qms commented on the word cellaret
He seemed a hail fellow well met
And offered his "last" cigarette
He bought with his bonhomie
A friend with economy
For many "last" bide in his cellaret.
June 9, 2016
qms commented on the word blottesque
The painting begins as blottesque
The genius is found in what's next:
There's vigorous rubbing
(A furious drubbing!)
Et voilà! Un chef-d'oeuvre frottesque!
June 8, 2016
qms commented on the word fozy
Since she is a baker and so's he
The dough balls they start with are fozy.
When the kneading is done
And the rising begun
They nestle together quite cozy.
June 7, 2016
qms commented on the word pushti
The shah loved his hairdo quite bushy
And fondly protected his tushy.
The settee he sat in
On cushions of satin
Was backed by a glorious pushti.
June 7, 2016
qms commented on the word cabas
This is a westernized village. (Picky, picky.)
June 7, 2016
qms commented on the word cabas
Pronunciation note: Sometimes the 's' is omitted. When present it is silent.
June 6, 2016
qms commented on the word cabas
When mountains blow up out in Java
The villagers flee from the lava
With the clothes on their backs,
Some food in their packs,
And each baby tucked in a cabas.
June 6, 2016
qms commented on the word latchico
According to the “Irish Slang” site (http://www.irishslang.info/roscommon/roscommon/latchico) it means: a lazy person, usually male.
June 5, 2016
qms commented on the word slimsy
Our plans and ambitions are flimsy,
Assembled from movies and whimsy,
But the brutal banality
Of dreamless reality
Makes mock of cloud castles so slimsy.
June 5, 2016
qms commented on the word couraging
It was probably shunned by the herd.
June 5, 2016
qms commented on the word alamort
Ha! Good one, alexz, although it took me a while to realize that I was not getting an extremely bad review.
June 4, 2016
qms commented on the word alamort
The innocent pay simple court
Not knowing that love is blood sport.
Who enters those lists
Expecting sweet trysts
Soon finds they're engaged alamort.
June 4, 2016
qms commented on the word drumble
What hides in the syllable 'umble'
That makes all its settings so humble?
A tumble's a fall
(But only if small)
And a stumbling mumbler will drumble.
June 3, 2016
qms commented on the word catasterism
For Puss in eternal cat rhythm
Her last breath is no cataclysm,
For soon she will rise
Installed in night skies.
Her next stage is catasterism.
June 2, 2016
qms commented on the word biometry
To shrink my unwelcome enormity
And profit by healthful conformity
On my bicycle ride
The Fitbit's my guide,
Reporting on crucial biometry.
June 1, 2016
qms commented on the word exoteric
Your epic needs echoes Homeric;
For thrillers use tough talk generic.
If nonfiction's your game
Then make it your aim
Above all to be exoteric.
May 31, 2016
qms commented on the word diegesis
A parable mates sundry pieces:
The set-up we call diegesis,
But all who are able
To tinker a fable
Will use it to prop up a thesis.
May 30, 2016
qms commented on the user Carolynsteiner
It's all right Carolynsteiner. Don't mind bilby. Some of the nicest people I know fard.
May 29, 2016
qms commented on the word waragi
Our Ernest abroad keeps his hand in.
There's never a word he'll abandon,
Though it does seem a vagary
To glean such as waragi -
A word that's not ours but Ugandan.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
May 29, 2016
qms commented on the word two weasels
How can you tell that an artist's work is selling fast?
May 28, 2016
qms commented on the word whirlicote
Since a cart may be open or closed
Appropriate dress is supposed.
If you take a whirlicote
In Winter a burly coat
Is worn by the rider well-clothed.
May 28, 2016
qms commented on the word two weasels
Looks like a feeble borrowing of the "lesser of two weevils" joke from O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels. Or is there something here too subtle for me?
May 28, 2016
qms commented on the word uhhh
So now we know where Spamski gets those blocks of text, although I have to say that "Smoking of the lake..." is a less lively example than most.
May 27, 2016
qms commented on the user proof.hsu
Greetings.
May 27, 2016
qms commented on the word benignant
No matter how clearly malignant
The Trumpies think their man's benignant,
But cite, if you dare,
Preposterous hair
And see them all rise up indignant.
May 27, 2016
qms commented on the word italicosis
italicosis. - n. A noxious typographical infection by which characters once sturdy and upright are compelled to limp across the page bent like weary travelers fighting a strong East wind. Italics are like some medicines, such as Warfarin, which are beneficial in small amounts but deadly in quantity. Wordnik is struck by this malady from time to time when an infected comment is placed and the telltale rash is spread to all the text on the page below it. This is the result of a double error: first, failing to close the italics HTML markup and, second, failing to check the fresh entry in the context of the Community page to see if it is affecting its neighbors.
Italics are good in small doses
As means of directing the focus.
But if they're unchecked
The whole site is wrecked
By rampaging italicosis.
May 26, 2016
qms commented on the word Quvenzhané
I shudder (I do hope genteelly)
And ask myself, "Can it be, really?"
I must trust the fairy
Who answers my query:
Quvenzhané's in no way Swahili.
May 26, 2016
qms commented on the word scotopic
If you'd not be thought misanthropic
Then hew to a course philosophic
And look on your fellows,
The whites, blacks and yellows,
Alike with an eye that's scotopic.
May 26, 2016
qms commented on the word kentledge
The Ship of State's rules can be dull;
There's ballast that lards its deep hull.
A certain percentage
Is no more than kentledge
And not worth the work to annul.
May 25, 2016
qms commented on the word Velella velella
His scorn for the lecture was utter.
I heard the old fisherman mutter,
"I'll heed that scientist fella
And call the thing 'vellela,'
But damned if I'll copy his stutter."
May 25, 2016
qms commented on the word uncus
In the lab curiosity fuels
The use of unorthodox tools:
We find that rotifera
In juice of vinifera
Are tasty wheel-animalcules.
May 25, 2016
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
prosthesis
May 24, 2016
qms commented on the word plumicorn
When Missy awakes on dewy morns
She spruces up her unicorns.
Each ear, though of leather,
She tops with a feather,
Preferring her myths have plumicorns.
May 24, 2016
qms commented on the word nyckelharpa
The gamelan comes from Jakarta
And Stockholm supplies nyckelharpa.
When they jam together
Regardless of weather
They dress in sarong and a parka.
May 23, 2016
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
Magna Carta
May 23, 2016
qms commented on the word scammony
From hearing that man on the stump
I acquired a gut full of Trump.
A healer examined me
And dosed me with scammony
For a purgative triumphant dump.
May 22, 2016
qms commented on the word wowf
I’m having a hard time finding pronunciation guidance on this one. The OED suggests what looks like a diphthong – wuh-oof. It’s Scottish of course, so it’s anybody’s guess.
The Scots stay from good sense aloof,
A word such as this is the proof.
In Winter wits wilt
From wearing a kilt
And poor Jocks are driven quite wowf.
May 21, 2016
qms commented on the word anamnesis
The doc thought, "These symptoms are specious.
This patient is being facetious
Or hypochodriacal
To a point near maniacal
To claim such a strange anamnesis."
May 20, 2016
qms commented on the word satisfice
When asked if the hairdo is nice
Know truth can exact a high price.
Dispense with your honor
And heap praise upon her
For timorous lies won't satisfice.
May 19, 2016
qms commented on the word infare
To many a custom the South is heir
But many are gone to thin air.
No more are we blessed
By the welcoming fest,
Oh grieve for the vanished infare!
May 18, 2016
qms commented on the word rail market
Come shop at the market on rails
And find a sure cure for what ails!
Some babaganoush
Will slim your caboose
Or stoke up your boiler with kales.
May 18, 2016
qms commented on the word rail market
Alimentation Station
May 18, 2016
qms commented on the word guiser
Her lover may come as a guiser
Obscured in a Carnival vizor,
Concealing his visage
From casual quizzage
To intrigue and then to surprise her.
May 17, 2016
qms commented on the word spontoon
A drum major's tool to commune
And measure the beat of the tune
Is a staff that is bladeless
And part of parade dress
But surely near kin to spontoon.
May 16, 2016
qms commented on the word genitrix
To homeland their hearts do men afix
In love confused by gender tricks.
While perfectly glad
That Patria's Dad
The Motherland's their genitrix.
May 15, 2016
qms commented on the word aroph
The mustachioed lady's devotion
Is testing each balm and each lotion.
In hunting an aroph
To take her lip hair off
She'll try any alchemist's potion.
May 14, 2016
qms commented on the word corposant
Scared sailors in tempests desire
An omen to calm and inspire
And pray for a corposant
To burn in the topgallant,
The comfort of Saint Elmo's fire.
May 13, 2016
qms commented on the word stot
From the definitions and examples provided it seems that among the beasts who may be called stot are: horse, stallion (aka staig), ox (aka stirk), bull, heifer (aka quey), calf, weasel, stoat.
Pray tell if you can: what's a stot?
It's most of the livestock we've got -
A stirk or a quey
Or a staig in it's way.
It seems there's near nothing it's not.
The definition as a verb is more appealing. It describes an amusing form of locomotion favored by young chamois, goats, lambs and the like in which they progress in an exuberant series of four-footed leaps. This is also known as pronking. YouTube abounds in videos of animals stotting or pronking.
When creatures walk not as they ought
But bound on all fours from a spot
It's joy they announce
With each silly bounce
As ungulates happily stot.
May 12, 2016
qms commented on the word terete
Rodin was a sculptor complete,
Not least when he sat to excrete.
That exquisite shaper
Controlled so his taper
That each of his turds was terete.
May 11, 2016
qms commented on the word terete
Curiously the Word of the Day notification supplies the only definition of the five aggregated on the full entry page that omits mention of the "tapered at the ends" feature of terete structures.
May 11, 2016
qms commented on the word deceits
bilby flatters me outrageously - a practice I encourage at every opportunity. As to The Limerick King - self-anointed royals tread a perilous path:
The "King" should eschew boastful ways.
The rhyming gift visits but strays.
We surely will stumble
So, best we be humble
And wait until others give praise.
May 11, 2016
qms commented on the word swire
While some to bare hilltops aspire
And others scale cliffs of desire,
The sage wisely seeks
The way between peaks
And tranquilly travels the swire.
May 10, 2016
qms commented on the word patency
True friendship must follow on latency -
An interval promoting patency,
For time and some trial
Expose any guile.
So bide for a while to wait and see.
May 9, 2016
qms commented on the word matriarchate
Should mantises on Noah's ark mate
The male must embrace a stark fate:
Only she will debark
From that saving ark
To rule in her matriarchate.
N. b., I understand that current science teaches that the female praying mantis only sometimes eats her mate during copulation, but I have it on good authority that this was standard practice in Noah's day.
May 8, 2016
qms commented on the word strepitus
Preserve me from neighbors obstreperous,
And night squalls appallingly crepitous.
My sleep, so hard won,
Must not be undone
By any disturbance or strepitus.
May 7, 2016
qms commented on the word persiennes
For love-stricken Parisiennes
The long fevered night finally ends,
With limbs sweetly tangled
In dawn light that's angled
And stippled by closed persiennes.
May 6, 2016
qms commented on the word bombilla
Thank you, bilby. You are generous and wise.
May 6, 2016
qms commented on the word bombilla
A gaucho of taste adds vanilla
Or soupçon of fine manzanilla
And calls his maté,
Thus rendered parfait,
The best that has kissed a bombilla.
May 5, 2016
qms commented on the word craunch
A lion in murderous launch
Sinks teeth in a wildebeest haunch.
There's no tune that cheers
The leonine ears
More than the sound of that craunch.
May 4, 2016
qms commented on the word felly
When peasants were gin-soaked and smelly
The wagon was hitched to Old Nelly.
The churls with the wobbles
Were trundled 'cross cobbles
While feeling the strike of each felly.
May 3, 2016
qms commented on the word scarce
And I think in some parts of Ireland words such as fierce and immerse would rhyme with scarce. This will require some thought. Meanwhile,
I'll search for consonant pairs
That work without putting on airs.
Though maybe not crisp,
If you have a lisp
The rhymes are not really that scarce.
May 2, 2016
qms commented on the word electrolier
A new term was tried to anoint
A fixture with bulbs at each point.
They tried electrolier
Instead of chandelier
But now it's the update that's quaint.
May 2, 2016
qms commented on the word cephalophore
I think TankHughes deseves some sort of word hoarder's trophy for knowing about this They Might Be Giants song.
May 1, 2016
qms commented on the word Murphy bed
See comments at doorcase.
May 1, 2016
qms commented on the word doorcase
A Murphy bed's shy but polite;
In daytime it keeps out of sight.
It hides in a doorcase
To free up some floor space
And only comes out in the night.
May 1, 2016
qms commented on the word zadruga
The North slav will miss his sastruga,
The slav of the East his beluga.
For the sad southern slav
The homesickness salve
Is talk of his cherished zadruga.
April 30, 2016
qms commented on the word unked
Said Ernest, contrite and compunct,
"When tested I surely have flunked.
I called it a fraud
But the word is just odd,
Not pompous or phony, just unked.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
April 29, 2016
qms commented on the word cephalophore
A cephalophore (from the Greek for "head-carrier") is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Handling the halo in this circumstance offers a unique challenge for the artist. Some put the halo where the head used to be; others have the saint carrying the halo along with the head.
The term "cephalophore" was first used in a French article by Marcel Hébert, "Les martyrs céphalophores Euchaire, Elophe et Libaire", in Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles, v. 19 (1914).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalophore
April 28, 2016
qms commented on the word rampike
We Wordniks, well-mannered though droll,
Have wearied of Spamski the Troll.
When a hideous spam spike
Stands out like a rampike
Please, Erin, quick chop down that Pole.
April 28, 2016
qms commented on the word supernaculum
The bottle's a liar at best,
As many a wretch can attest.
To drink supernaculum
Is a sad simulacrum
Of life that is lived with true zest.
April 27, 2016
qms commented on the word crispation
A French croissant's a revelation,
A triumph of morning gustation.
The dull sheen of butter
Sets my heart aflutter
And crunch of the crusty crispation.
April 26, 2016
qms commented on the word razzia
The punk kids all yearn to be jazzier
And wear duds once dull but now snazzier.
Like loud clouds of locusts
Ferociously focused
They subject the thrift shops to razzia.
April 25, 2016
qms commented on the user pappajoseph
treacherous, duplicitous, mendacious
April 24, 2016
qms commented on the word needfire
Each romcom you write will require
Some trick to provide the needfire,
Some sort of meet cute
Like a silly dispute
To kindle the flames of desire.
April 24, 2016
qms commented on the word tazza
Alphonse was a pampered reptile,
A model of serpentine style.
He basked in a tazza
On a sunny piazza
While folks fed him bugs all the while.
April 23, 2016
qms commented on the word heartquake
This could also be a word you don't want to hear from the mouth of your cardiologisy.
April 22, 2016
qms commented on the word heartquake
We mock grim death to partake
In horrors that carnivals make.
If the danger is faux
We'll give it a go
To thrill at a harmless heartquake.
April 22, 2016
qms commented on the word chowry
The maiden of Calcutta kneeled
And to her stern father appealed.
"We need no more dowry
Than your tattered chowry.
Let love be our shelter and shield!"
April 21, 2016
qms commented on the word birl
A lumberjack pleases his girl
By skill at the lubricious twirl.
The peavey applied
To front and backside
Is something they learn when they birl.
April 20, 2016
qms commented on the word prelibation
His dancing was wildest gyration
And sure to induce dehydration,
The which to avoid
Our Ernest employed
A liberal dose of prelibation.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
April 19, 2016
qms commented on the word zaguan
From her window (alone, pale and wan)
Conchita espied handsome Juan:
To the door in a rush,
And a maidenly blush
To draw him within her zaguan.
April 18, 2016
qms commented on the word viper
Why'd the angry viper viper nose?
'Cause the adder adder 'ankerchief
To 'elp 'er asp irate.
April 18, 2016
qms commented on the word wamus
A good coat need not be enormous
But cite for a still doubting thomas:
Pioneers braved the storm
While still keeping warm
With only the short humble wamus.
April 17, 2016
qms commented on the word palpebra
A teacher was heard to profess
That teenaged boys are a mess
Discussion of algebra
Will close up their palpebra-
Wide open for bras in a dress.
April 16, 2016
qms commented on the word gluggaveður
Gluggaveður is a popular word on the net, perhaps because it has been promoted as one of a list of words in Icelandic that could be usefully borrowed into other languages. "'Window-weather' describes weather that 'is nice to look at through a window, but not nice to be out in.'”
The eth character (ð) is pronounced like a furry version of the English th, or, as Wikipedia has it: "In Icelandic, ð represents a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative ..." It is best to find an audible pronunciation online to get the idea.
The strange gods of Iceland bequeath her
A magical shape-shiftng ether.
Where fire burns on ice
And fine views entice
That the unwary find gluggaveður.
April 16, 2016
qms commented on the word rampacious
Though roommates complain he's voracious;
And girls in alarm cry, "salacious",
To parents the boy,
Their bundle of joy,
Is only a trifle rampacious.
April 15, 2016
qms commented on the word hypogeum
A cavegirl no doubt in the past,
Assessing each caveguy who asked,
Assigned a high premium
To a dry hypogeum
And love, if considered, came last.
April 14, 2016
qms commented on the word madrina
The Biblioburro and learned madrina
Meet secretly behind the cantina.
For better or worse
They bray out their verse,
A sonnet for him, hers a sestina.
April 13, 2016
qms commented on the word acescent
We're carefree until we're pubescent,
Ambitious until we're senescent.
Our ripeness is fleet;
Let's pray it be sweet
Before we are old and acescent.
April 12, 2016
qms commented on the user mizbpdjryeq
I salute your foresight, alexz, but why spamblast a bilbism? Is he collateral damage?
April 12, 2016
qms commented on the user mizbpdjryeq
My rather lengthy comment below is reposted (unfortunately out of sequence) because it had been blown away by an overeager spambuster. In fact for a while everything posted by qms was FLAGGED AS SPAM. Usually people are too politely discreet to make this declaration. Apparently Erin has admonished all to mind their manners.
April 12, 2016
qms commented on the user mizbpdjryeq
Thank you, alexz, for taking my peculiar limitations into account, but I don't think I'm quite ready for haiku:
The limerick for now is my niche.
I don't think I'm likely to switch.
Though noble, haiku
Just simply won't do
As leaving unscratched the rhyming itch.
And, bilby, I don't know whether rhyming mizbpdjryeq is an impossible challenge or none at all. My limited exposure to Polish persuades me that the pronunciation of any word is completely arbitrary. I don't know how those people communicate with one another. I could probably rhyme mizbpdjryeq with orange and proclaim myself victor.
I wonder if our polskispam is the output of the legendary million monkeys typing away to produce the works of Shakespeare? I think they are closing in on Finnegan's Wake.
I will be traveling for a while and may miss a day here and there but I will be pondering the content of the bqrxqhslbdi spam and considering how to get Xanthippe and Calvin into the same limerick.
April 12, 2016
qms commented on the word snottygobble
I sent my snottygobble limerick to a group of my old Peace Corps buddies. The one who lives in Perth, a naturalist by trade, was pleased to tell me that the plant is native to his corner of Oz. He even sent a photo. He deprecated the appearance of the shrub but I found it handsome enough. He also observed that six-year-old boys find the word hilarious. I am glad to have defined my true peers.
April 11, 2016
qms commented on the user mizbpdjryeq
From Kraków to Łódź, confused as heck,
The spammers are diffusing dreck.
To spam about art
You need to be smart
And know how to spell Toulouse-Lautrec.
April 11, 2016
qms commented on the word vitelline
I have found at least eight proposed pronunciations for this word. The first syllable can be vi, vuh, or vai. and the third syllable can be in, ine, or een. Stress can fall on any of the three syllables. What is a rhymer to do?
As how to pronounce there's no tellin'.
I guess it could rhyme with Magellan,
(But, oh, the disgrace
Of egg on my face
If I misrepresent vitelline!
)Should I opt for a course anodyne
And yoke it with Sweet Adeline?
(But, ah, the crude jokes
About curdled yolks
If I'm wrong about damned vitelline!
)I wonder would rules contravene
If I drag in the works of Racine?
(But hear my shell cracking
From the shellacking
I'll take for a failed vitelline.
)April 11, 2016
qms commented on the word autophage
See also snottygobble.
April 10, 2016
qms commented on the word snottygobble
What shocks us more than snottygobble,
Revolts us worse than naughty snot’ll?
The ultimate gauge
Of the true autophage
Is he who will savor the potty bauble.
Connoisseurs of such themes really should consult the comments at autophage, where much deep delving is done.
April 10, 2016
qms commented on the word ushabti
From golden shoes to double pschent
Young Tut displayed a dandy's bent.
His tomb room ushabti
Were notably natty
Befitting the shade of a gent.
April 10, 2016
qms commented on the word cinereous
The zombies, disfigured and carious,
(What flesh still attaches - cinereous)
Are meant to apall
But I find withal
Their affect is downright hilarious.
April 9, 2016
qms commented on the word pneumatic
Methinks that the allusion is to mammary protrusion.
April 9, 2016
qms commented on the word ruck
There is also this: "To ruffle the temper of; annoy; vex: followed by up."
As in, "I say, Matilda, you've quite rucked me up,"
April 9, 2016
qms commented on the word ruck
Among the many definitions offered for "ruck" is this from The Century: "To perch; seat, as a bird when roosting: used reflexively."
Does this mean that one can affect an air of innocence while telling someone to "go ruck himself?"
What a useful piece of information.
April 8, 2016
qms commented on the word xerophagy
For hermits in their xerophagy
A diet of dust is philosophy.
It's also their practice
To forego a mattress
And slumber in wooden sarcophagi.
April 8, 2016
qms commented on the word jean dimmock
potsherd
April 6, 2016
qms commented on the word wadcutter
Though fans of mass transit may mutter
Of trains that melt distance like butter,
Amtrak can't compare
With bullets elsewhere.
Our train is at best a wadcutter.
April 6, 2016
qms commented on the word diseuse
A sultry seductive chanteuse
Her hypnotic voice fairly purrs.
I once was quite smitten
By Eartha, sweet Kitten,
The actress and charming diseuse.
April 5, 2016
qms commented on the word barranca
Or canyon in old Salamanca,
When gulch and ravine,
And gully all mean
Arroyo, what need of barranca?
April 4, 2016
qms commented on the word pochade
The definitions provided are inadequate. They give the misleading impression that a pochade could be a sketch in pencil or charcoal (a croquis). A pochade is a preliminary sketch for a painting executed in a pigmented medium - oil, watercolrs or acrylic. See Wikipedia.
His painterly pose was facade
For ladies on their promenade.
His prating of pigment
Was only a figment.
The man couldn't paint a pochade.
April 3, 2016
qms commented on the word crepidoma
The jewels of Picasso's Paloma
Are famous in Paris and Roma.
Does she feel any guilt
That her house is built
On Pablo's revered crepidoma?
April 2, 2016
qms commented on the word lutulent
His campaign is nasty and lutulent;
In Donald's discourse is brute intent.
With so much mud flung
A portion has clung
To judge by the lingering putrid scent.
April 1, 2016
qms commented on the list sad-wallpapers
Spamwallopers would be a good name for an outfit selling services to block Polish penis ads.
March 31, 2016
qms commented on the word fopdoodle
A caricature can be quite crude
Or subtly by details allude:
A chap with a poodle
Will seem a fopdoodle
But a guy with a mastiff's a dude.
March 31, 2016
qms commented on the word eigengrau
Old Homer the poet was blind
But, eyeless, had sight of a kind.
He managed somehow
To make eigengrau
Glow vivid with hues of the mind.
March 30, 2016
qms commented on the word necropsy
Thank you, bilby. I had assumed the general silence was out of grief for lost innocence.
March 30, 2016
qms commented on the word canakin
His passion was waxen tableaux
With every small detail just so,
Like miniature canakins
In hands of wee mannequins
In the Mad Hatters tea at Tussaud's.
March 29, 2016
qms commented on the word diremption
The 1040 filing might tempt some
To concoct a phony exemption.
Should an IRS audit
Uncover the fraud it
Will take back the cash by diremption.
March 28, 2016
qms commented on the word bingle
We have been here before. (See comments and limerick below.) The highly doubtful baseball application continues to puzzle. Perhaps this:
It could be a typo, this "bingle,"
Or has it a pedigree lingual?
If a batter is swift
First base is a gift
To one who beats out a bunt single.
March 27, 2016
qms commented on the word sbirro
Maria, though fond of constabulary,
Prefers local cops to carabinieri.
The neighborhood sbirro
Is her secret hero,
Her ideal man to love and marry.
March 26, 2016
qms commented on the word nyctalopia
Today's Word of the Day is a seriously conflicted item. The definitions and examples provided support its use to mean
1. night blindness
2. day blindness
3. especially keen vision in low light
The OED confirms this multiplicity of uses, including among its examples the following:
"1684 tr. S. Blankaart Physical Dict. 208 Nyctalopia is two-fold: the first is a Dimness of Sight in the Night..: The other is a Dimness in the Light, and clear Sight in the Night, or in Shades."
To add to the confusion see the definition offered by The Century for hemeralopia:
"n. In pathology, a defect of sight in consequence of which distinct vision is possible only in artificial or dim light; day-blindness. The term is also used, however, to express exactly the opposite defect of vision. See nyctalopia."
Versatility is a useful quality in many things but not so much in words.
Also, all the links to the Jules Verne novel “In Search of the Castaways” in the usage examples fail. Here is a working link to the book at the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2083
Low clouds the sun's set alight
I saw once as dawn growing bright.
As grim nyctalopia
Turns everything taupier
I now see the falling of night.
March 25, 2016
qms commented on the word lunisolar
At night he is solemn and lazy,
Distracted and quietly hazy.
He must be bipolar
Or else lunisolar -
In daylight he rages like crazy.
March 24, 2016
qms commented on the word uranography
Confusion is normal though comical;
It whispers the base anatomical,
But true uranology
Need blush no apology.
The action is all astronomical.
March 23, 2016
qms commented on the word phronesis
Of wisdom's constituent pieces
A chief is well-practiced noesis.
So nurse your capacity
For healthy sagacity
And nourish your skill at phronesis.
March 22, 2016
qms commented on the word jimply
Thank you,bilby. I need a spectacle revision. I will now look into Elmer's history, which seems unlikely.
March 22, 2016
qms commented on the word eclaircissement
In Dido or Pelléas et Mélisande
We know what follows eclaircissement.
It's fitting and proper
And a fast rule of opera:
The clamorous death is the dénoument.
March 21, 2016
qms commented on the word jimply
My cat finds contentment so simply:
After dining she drapes herself limply,
Sufficiently fed
And flopped in her bed
That catches the sunbeam just jimply.
March 20, 2016
qms commented on the word calembour
Mercutio was funny and ribald
Till stilled by the sinister Tybalt.
A wit's end for sure,
To spew calembour
As enemies fatally quibbled.
March 19, 2016
qms commented on the word Deesis
See also deesis.
March 18, 2016
qms commented on the word deesis
When whelmed by more joy or despair
Than words can express or repair,
Resort to deesis,
A verbal prothsesis
That props up a curse or a prayer.
March 18, 2016
qms commented on the word deesis
See also Deesis.
March 18, 2016
qms commented on the word Deesis
In Byzantine art, and later Eastern Orthodox art generally, the Deësis or Deisis (Greek: δέησις, "prayer" or "supplication"), is a traditional iconic representation of Christ in Majesty or Christ Pantocrator: enthroned, carrying a book, and flanked by the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist, and sometimes other saints and angels. Mary and John, and any other figures, are shown facing towards Christ with their hands raised in supplication on behalf of humanity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deesis
March 18, 2016
qms commented on the word boxty
A hostage to harsh orthodoxy
Poor Bridey, still yearning for boxty,
Mashed tofu and fried it
So honored her diet
While eating potatoes by proxy.
And a happy Saint Patrick's day to all!
March 17, 2016
qms commented on the word samogon
In Winter to muster a sham of dawn
Bleak Russkies break out the samogon.
As moonshine makes night
Grow warmer and bright
They conjure the sun in a dramathon.
March 16, 2016
qms commented on the word poe
Well po-po and Poe Dameron are new ones to me, zuzu, so I reciprocate gratitude.
March 16, 2016
qms commented on the word ventripotent
The pleasures of those ventripotent
Are first, to secure the best quotient,
Next savage the feast,
Gorging veggie and beast,
And after to dream of time so spent.
March 15, 2016
qms commented on the word poe
A poe is someone on the internet who expresses a deliberately extreme position as an instance of Poe's law - a poker-faced parodist in a context where parody is indistinguishable from the real thing.
The Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
March 15, 2016
qms commented on the word sleepasm
See nocturnal emission.
March 15, 2016
qms commented on the word en croute
In a pastry crust.
Oxford Dictionaries
March 14, 2016
qms commented on the word lotic
Think culture is stable and lentic
But those more demotic
Contend it is lotic
And change is more truly authentic.
March 14, 2016
qms commented on the word necropsy
I cannot confirm that Peter, Cottontail, Mopsy and Flopsy are eligible for necropsy, but I have learned more of their story.
It has been many a long year since I last consulted the tale of Peter and company. If, like me, you need to refresh your memory, you can do so here.
The seeds of the unhappiness to come are evident in this seemingly innocent history. Note, for instance, that Mrs Rabbit is guilty of euphemism of criminal proportion in warning against going to Farmer McGregor's garden : '...your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.'
What followed was inevitable and sadly familiar.
As youngsters undoubtedly cute,
But grown they are broken-home fruit.
It's what to expect
From mother's neglect
And a dad who departed en croute.
Now Flopsy, that infamous floozy,
Like Mopsy is idle and boozy.
That wretch Cottontail
Is headed for jail
But Pilfering Pete's the true doozy.
Mere cuteness is no sturdy crutch
And social work didn't help much.
So mired in bad habits
This sad clan of rabbits
Will do some hard time in the hutch.
March 14, 2016
qms commented on the word Sarg
Anthony Frederick Sarg (April 21, 1880 – February 17, 1942), known professionally as Tony Sarg, was a German American puppeteer and illustrator. He was described as "America's Puppet Master", and in his biography as the father of modern puppetry in North America.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Sarg
March 14, 2016
qms commented on the word necropsy
I had not been informed of their demise. A case of drunken joyriding, I expect. I will look into the matter.
March 13, 2016
qms commented on the list a-dram-too-many
ebriety
March 13, 2016
qms commented on the word photovore
The breatharians set ultimate store
By sun and the wind and no more
But sunlight and air
Are a diet too spare
And darkness will cloak the photovore.
The Definition describes the use of "photovore" in robotics only, although the examples supply other applications, as does common sense.
See also inedia and this remarkable Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia
March 13, 2016
qms commented on the word necropsy
Old Yeller died not from the dropsy.
The lump that they found in necropsy
Was a radio playing
His musical baying
And tuned to the Grand Old Opry.
March 12, 2016
qms commented on the word gorp
Once sign for a number or pound
Now hashtag and hex more abound.
I pluck from this gorp
The bright octothorpe -
A name for a key sans a sound.
March 11, 2016
qms commented on the word flumpet
...however; these days the "ump" cluster is just too tempting to resist:
Don Trump is no fan of the flumpet;.
You're welcome to like it or lump it.
By explicit reference
The organ's his preference
And chumps are invited to pump it.
March 11, 2016
qms commented on the word flumpet
The genesis of the flumpet deserves attention . . .
From the womb of a musical strumpet
Emerges that bastard - the flumpet.
Production is frugal,
You need but a flugle,
A bed, and some drinks with a trumpet.
March 11, 2016
qms commented on the word ebriety
When Ernest imbibes in society
His drinking's done quickly and quietly
His voice low and whiskeyish
Condemning "preshcriptivishts"
Is the sign he's achieved his ebriety.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
March 10, 2016
qms commented on the word crotalus
Aha! That accounts for the Tassie-style weather we're having.
March 9, 2016
qms commented on the word cabotage
Do pirate's harass the right's cabotage?
The case seemed a trumpery charge
But rubes with wild stares
And cruising corsairs
Have wrought depredation writ large.
March 9, 2016
qms commented on the word crotalus
I see that bilby is, as ever, at the cutting edge of current events. He must have read about the plan here in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to populate an island in the middle of the Quabbin reservoir with 150 timber rattlers.
You can read about it here.
Ma Nature's benign in The Commonwealth,
Protecting our safety and health:
No pythons to throttle us
And the venomous crotalus
Politely declines to use stealth.
March 9, 2016
qms commented on the word dactylonomy
Let warnings be loud and be clarion
It invites financial despair again
To trust our economy
To the crude dactylonomy
Of a rude short-fingered vulgarian.
March 8, 2016
qms commented on the word biophony
The hum that twice daily restarts
Is solved by acoustical arts:
The deep sea biophony
Is fragrant cacophony
For fish do their talking in farts.
"A Curious Sound Deep in the Ocean," Slate, 02/28/2016
March 7, 2016
qms commented on the word albion
See Albion.
March 6, 2016
qms commented on the word sabulous
For tender feet rarely unshod
Sharp shingle's an unpleasant plod,
But beaches more sabulous
Are likely to jab you less
And need not be so gingerly trod.
March 6, 2016
qms commented on the word pieties
The cravat prevents improprieties
(or foulard in better societies).
Because they don't dangle
The tarts cannot tangle
And stain with gelatinous pieties.
March 5, 2016
qms commented on the word amative
Affection enables a man to live
He must be engaged and amative.
No one's more forlorn
Than he who must scorn-
The fellow without a damn to give.
March 5, 2016
qms commented on the word mulierose
Some meanings exist on a range,
With context and time they can change;
Thus, fond can mean liking
Or something more striking.
Mewonders why you find this strange?
March 5, 2016
qms commented on the word mulierose
His passion unrulier grows,
Provoking peculiar throes:
It's part of the essence
Of male adolescence,
The curse of the mulierose.
March 4, 2016
qms commented on the word camelid
Would you shop for a camelid in the same haberdashery where you would look for a horsecollar?
March 3, 2016
qms commented on the word jacklight
The tv resounds with attack blight.
Some pols choose insult and backbite
And others entice
With cheese for the mice
Or capture the voter with jacklight.
March 3, 2016
qms commented on the word evanid
Bold Lucifer's too highly leavened id
Assured that his glory be evanid.
He famously fell
But ruling in hell
Pleases him better than heaven did.
March 2, 2016
qms commented on the word blackfriar
The Dominican habit is black and white. The Franciscan habit was originally the color of the humblest cloth of the day, which at first was grey. Later it was brown and there tradtion has frozen the costume. Thus Greyfriars, Oxford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars,_Oxford) is a Franciscan institution although the members of that order dress in brown.
March 1, 2016
qms commented on the word syndyasmian
On wedding days I often share
The feelings of the nuptial pair.
The mood that it has me in
Is so syndiasmian
I nidificate with the table ware.
March 1, 2016
qms commented on the word fursectution
These people should be protected. They too have a right to life, liberty, and the fursuit of hairiness.
February 29, 2016
qms commented on the word nyctinasty
Beware, little fly, entombment ghastly!
That blossom could be what you'll last see,
For should you alight
When day turns to night
The beckoning bud turns nictinasty.
February 29, 2016
qms commented on the word sociogenic
A wise man must notice with sadness
How crowds consume hate with such gladness
Cannot outcomes irenic
Be sociogenic
Or must trumpery always breed madness?
February 29, 2016
qms commented on the word soi-disant
jennarenn's comment from 2008 is a brilliant aperçu.
February 28, 2016
qms commented on the word proprioception
Unable to show others affection
Yet self-love he brings to perfection
In the one-person hug
That gift to the smug
That calls only for proprioception.
February 28, 2016
qms commented on the word biohacker
Now Clio may be ill at ease
And claim Gregor Mendel used peas,
But Euterpe has rooms
For other legumes
And will do damn well as she please.
February 27, 2016
qms commented on the word biohacker
Abroad we're exposed to hijackers
And online assailed by code crackers,
But, by Mendel's beans!
Please shelter our genes
From schemes of the vile biohackers.
February 27, 2016
qms commented on the word cosplay
Though copyright holders may whinge
Enthusiasts still will impinge,
For they who would cosplay
Don't care what the laws say,
They think they are blessed to infringe.
February 26, 2016
qms commented on the word skift
Experience has made me leery of commenting on American regionalisms because some people can get quite choleric about a fondness for one's native idiom. But I lived many years in Michigan, an inoffensive state, where they used the term "skiff" for this meteorological phenomenon. My neighbors were amused at my East Coast ignorance of the term. There is something about the word in a Chigago newpaper:
The origin is not clear, but some think it came from the Scottish verb "skiff," which means to lightly move across a surface barely touching it, as perhaps a "skiff" of snow barely covers the ground. The term appears to be colloquial, used mainly in northern parts of the country and in Canada to describe a minor rainfall or snowfall or a light breeze. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a skiff as "a slight gust of wind or shower of rain, etc. Also, a light flurry or cover of snow."
February 25, 2016
qms commented on the list city-names-with-three-or-more-words
Manchester-By-The-Sea, Massachusetts.
http://www.manchester.ma.us/Pages/index
February 25, 2016
qms commented on the word jitney
The hackney and hansom applied
And made Ernest's list of paid ride.
But his taxicab litany
Excluded the jitney -
Too public a lift to abide.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
February 25, 2016
qms commented on the word predilection
There is full entry for predilection. There must be something funky with the way the term was entered to spawn this new page. Perhaps a leading or trailing space?
February 24, 2016
qms commented on the word roustabout
A modest ambition, without a doubt,
But realized now, so shout it out,
For poor simple Fergus
Has run to the circus
To go on the road as a roustabout!
February 24, 2016
qms commented on the word agnosia
We are bound by all we discern,
Delighting in what we should spurn.
The guru's symposia
Will induce agnosia -
To transcend we first must unlearn.
February 23, 2016
qms commented on the word originalism
Even Scalia’s ideological allies recognized the folly of trying to divine the “intent” of the authors of the Constitution concerning questions that those bewigged worthies could never have anticipated.
February 22, 2016
qms commented on the word magnetar
Fans haunt them in restaurants and bars
And orbit their houses in cars,
Thus some who can act
So strongly attract
They're Tinseltown's own magnetars.
February 22, 2016
qms commented on the word assfish
It may be that the problem only occurs when a closing italic tag is the very last element in a comment. I suppose we could experiment with this but only at the risk of making a real mess of things.
February 21, 2016
qms commented on the word cupule
The hygiene of Poxie Dalrymple
Was brutal, disgusting, and simple.
She turned crops of pustules
To a moonscape of cupules
By squeezing and popping each pimple.
February 21, 2016
qms commented on the word assfish
I observed that everything on the Community page subsequent to (that is, below) vendingmachine's assfish comment has become italicized. On the assfish entry page my limerick followed the vm comment and there its formatting was disrupted. I deleted and reposted the limerick and it formats correctly. Now a bilby comment immediately follows the vm comment and its formatting is disrupted. There is clearly something awry in that vm comment.
February 21, 2016
qms commented on the word assfish
Many who shared upper class with
A Windsor, a Churchill or Asquith,
Incarnate again
Will pay for their sin
And come back as bony-eared assfish.
February 21, 2016
qms commented on the word blazar
Some planets are lit by a quasar
And tonier 'hoods by a blazar,
But I, being done right
By moderate sunlight,
Am fond of our shabby old daystar.
February 20, 2016
qms commented on the user andrewk
Perhaps, andrewk, you are puzzled, as was I at first, by an assumption that you are limited to the comment box on your newly-created personal page. You can insert comments in the boxes at the bottom of each word's entry page, although it can be a long scroll down to find one. Also, you can create a new word entry page just by searching for a word for which no page exists. A new entry will be spawned.
February 20, 2016
qms commented on the word chia
I'm slow, whatever the cause be -
As though through a mist dim and gauzy
A glimmer of sun!
I see "chia's" a pun!
It's a joke if you talk like an Aussie.
February 20, 2016
qms commented on the word thrupple
Should a stiffly conventional couple
Aspire to a more daring thrupple
Then yoga and flexing
Had best be their next thing.
They're going to need to be supple.
February 20, 2016
qms commented on the user andrewk
It's anything about words. Curiosity, kindness and good humor generally prevail.
February 20, 2016
qms commented on the word rockist
If a musical snob is a rockist
Is a sports snob thereby a jockist?
Is one who provokes
Such humorless folks
Assailed as a frivolous mockist?
February 19, 2016
qms commented on the word hairy panic
Lots of visuals here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35600546.
A very odd place, Australia.
February 18, 2016
qms commented on the word cymatics
Those youthful acoustical antics
That blast from garages and attics
Can so shake the breeze
That resonant trees
Give lessons in outdoor cymatics.
February 18, 2016
qms commented on the word chia
For diet upgrade I see a need,
A consult was had and we agreed:
The reasons are legion
To sample the vegan
And sprinkle our steaks with chia seed.
February 18, 2016
qms commented on the user Crestinfotech
Your source for all-purpose spam!
At Crestinfo spam is who we am!
The rest may protest
That Crest is a pest
But, frankly, we don't give a damn!
February 18, 2016
qms commented on the word bindle
Collins
noun
1. (US & Canadian, slang) a small bundle of possessions carried by a homeless person
2. a small paper packet containing drugs
See bindle stiff.
February 17, 2016
qms commented on the word praxeology
The changes in hackney ecology
Beget fields of new praxeology.
Academia's gift
To Uber and Lyft
Is work in applied taxiology.
February 17, 2016
qms commented on the word clitter
Posterity needs to know who started this thread:
bilby commented on the word clatter
If you'd like to make up a nonce defintion for clitter *ahem* I will leave that up to you.
February 16, 2016
February 16, 2016
qms commented on the word biophilia
From single-celled swimmers with cilia,
To sea beasts warm-blooded and chillier,
Slow mammals, fast birds,
Alone and in herds -
All creatures inspire biophilia.
February 16, 2016
qms commented on the word clitter
There ran through the crowd a quick titter,
Leaving nudists alarmed and atwitter
And so much aghast
The beach emptied fast
From dread he'd return as a clitter.
February 16, 2016
qms commented on the word feel the Bern
Oh! Rascal from Texas j'accuse
Of a dastardly visual ruse:
Trawl feel the Bern
And, horrified, learn
You've dredged up a load of Ted Cruz.
And thoroughly implemented, too. See the visuals at Bern, Feel the Bern, bernie, etc.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word scold
I think the patent office is backed up with cranky grandmothers contesting the rights.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word ambivert
Bipolars by spasm and spurt
Are frantic or sadly inert,
But one who controls
His opposite poles
Can thrive as a happy ambivert.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word scold
I don't say that Bernie's too old
Nor call his proposals too bold,
But that finger awag
Is becoming a drag.
The man is a tedious scold.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word awag
Adj. oscillating shaking; displaying a waggling motion. See wag, waggle.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word zoo
And then that too disappeared. A doggone shame.
February 15, 2016
qms commented on the word valentine
You started out as a pal of mine
I rashly promoted to valentine,
The outcome of which
Is an amorous itch
That's soothed by no known calamine.
February 14, 2016
qms commented on the word subnivean
WotD for 12/06/2013, subnivean
Snow Fleas
To Winter they're not giving in
To slumber in chilly oblivion.
They cheerfully go
Underneath the snow
And, happy there, hop subnivean.
February 14, 2016
qms commented on the word panpsychism
According to strict panpsychism
From heaven to deepest abysm
All things are aware
And able to care,
So shun the oblivion schism!
February 14, 2016
qms commented on the word upstander
A lady who seeks a philander
Will summon the famed Alexander.
The nights are so few
Why risk someone new
When Alex is such an upstander?
February 13, 2016
qms commented on the word trichromatic
A calico cat is a she;
The shades of her coat are the key.
It's quite automatic:
If a cat's trichromatic
A female is all it can be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_coat_genetics
February 12, 2016
qms commented on the word crosspatch
See comments at pilulous.
February 12, 2016
qms commented on the word spintronics
I think that the moment has come,
As qubits have turned my brain numb,
To abandon spintronics
For frosty gin tonics
And concede that I simply am dumb.
February 11, 2016
qms commented on the word lavender-pink
Please! You're embarrassing the guests.
February 10, 2016
qms commented on the word pro-am
It's no friendly tournament, no ma'am,
It's cutthroat, that merciless dough slam,
So none but the foolish
Leave unguarded poolish
At the bakers's biennial pro-am.
February 10, 2016
qms commented on the word optogenetics
Elusive rhymes I can't yet fix
With yoga or other pet tricks,
But if, as they claim,
They'll illumine my brain
I'll sign up for optogenetics.
February 9, 2016
qms commented on the word placemaking
To clear eyes there is no mistaking
Renewal that's no more than faking.
Avoiding cheap tricks,
The twee and the kitsch,
Is crucial to proper placemaking.
February 8, 2016
qms commented on the word metamaterial
Fact with fiction's now indivisible;
As science can make what was risible,
A cloak ethereal
Of metamaterial
To render a lurker invisible.
February 7, 2016
qms commented on the word Provenance
See provenance.
February 7, 2016
qms commented on the word photoclinometry
"You can be whatever you wanna be,"
They told the bright lad from Menominee.
But who knew he'd steer
To a brilliant career
As champion at photoclinometry.
February 6, 2016
qms commented on the word cerrado
In daytime they strut with bravado
But weep in the night at the fado.
The gaucho's lament
Is achingly sent
To the indifferent stars of cerrado.
February 5, 2016
qms commented on the word stick-up
Great visuals, though.
February 4, 2016
qms commented on the word Umwelt
The newborn has reason to scowl
And protest the change in a howl.
The babe in the womb felt
A comforting Umwelt;
Now Mom is replaced by a towel.
February 4, 2016
qms commented on the word frass
Truly, bilby is wise in the ways of Wordnik:
We Wordniks have authentic class
And honor what others call crass.
A frank designation
Deserves celebration,
So kudos to unabashed frass!
February 4, 2016
qms commented on the word frass
She was a fastidious lass
Who never would picnic on grass.
Why dine on the lawn
Where vile insects spawn
And frolic in heaps of their frass?
Also, I repost here a limerick (a rather long-legged variant) I posted to the specific-excrement list on June 17, 2014. I would hate to see the literature of frass go uncollected.
Philosophers know all things must pass.
What enters the mouth comes out the ass
As dung, scat and scumber -
Too many to number!
Saints leave us turds, insects their frass.
February 3, 2016
qms commented on the word vexillologist
For words in a text a philologist
Might be an effective apologist.
To decipher manners
Of pennants and banners
Consult with a sharp vexillologist.
February 2, 2016
qms commented on the word neurodiversity
Though autism looks like adversity
Some question how much of a curse it be.
Why call them disabled
Whose talents are fabled
And thrive in their neurodiversity?
February 1, 2016
qms commented on the word swoon
For thirsty Cecilia Bethune
There's wine with the luncheon at noon
Then evening cocktails
And (it never fails)
To the couch in a ladylike swoon.
See pass out, faint, syncope, lipothymy.
January 31, 2016
qms commented on the word syncope
Nurse Pruitt's first sip tastes like hope
The next speeds her slide down that slope.
As each new infusion
Breeds greater confusion
She ends in a fuddled syncope.
See pass out, faint, swoon, lipothymy.
January 31, 2016
qms commented on the word faint
Old Roger, by God, was no saint,
And never escaped the drink's taint.
I regret to divulge
He could overindulge
And end on the floor in a faint.
See pass out, syncope, swoon, lipothymy.
January 31, 2016
qms commented on the word pass out
Bob Dobbs knows what booze is about:
You drink till your full to the snout.
Have near to hand
A soft place to land
And guzzle until you pass out.
See faint, syncope, swoon, lipothymy.
January 31, 2016
qms commented on the word lipothymy
In Reggy's self-flattering sophistry
He boasts of an odd idiopathy,
Of taste so exquisite
That should Bacchus visit
The good stuff induces lipothomy.
Today's Word of the Day brought to my attention how many words English supplies to denote a loss of consciousness. You can probably find a term to describe the result of too much liquor that is apt for every character type. See pass out, faint, syncope, swoon.
January 31, 2016
qms commented on the word penstock
Poor Ernest was bored to despair
And damned his bad luck to be there.
There's only intense talk
Of turbine and penstock
At the hydroelectric dam fair.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
January 30, 2016
qms commented on the word contra crayon
Conté crayon, French crayon conté, drawing pencil named after Nicolas-Jacques Conté, the French scientist who invented it late in the 18th century. The conté crayon is an especially hard pencil, made of an admixture of graphite and clay that can be varied for different degrees of hardness. It is usually made in black, red, or brown and is used as a drawing medium in any combination of these colours.
January 30, 2016
qms commented on the word danger triangle of the face
Oh, good. I was running out of things to worry about.
January 29, 2016
qms commented on the word knobkierie
The shillelagh though left home in Kerry,
In the veldt it's ok - not to worry:
For your kind of club
There's an African sub;
They fustigate with the knobkierie.
January 29, 2016
qms commented on the word Daddy-O
Well, that's enough to discourage the spirit of adventure.
January 29, 2016
qms commented on the word Daddy-O
My goodness, bilby, how do you find these things?
January 29, 2016
qms commented on the word Pugnacious
See pugnacious.
January 28, 2016
qms commented on the word furphy
The cats quell the quoll and the bilby
So Australia announces a kill spree.
It's only a furphy
They're aiming at cur-free,
But cats are kaput, or soon will be.
The dogs were in agency purview
And doubtless some barking and fur flew,
But their count is slight
When hunting at night-
Most dogs will abide by a curfew.
January 28, 2016
qms commented on the word novercal
The fairy tales' libelous work'll
Condemn them to Hell's inner circle.
The Grimms and the Goose
Have knotted the noose
To hang the poor ladies novercal.
January 27, 2016
qms commented on the word scarabiasis
Well, I once worked in public health. I know how these things need to be done.
January 26, 2016
qms commented on the word scarabiasis
Beware, young laddies and lasses,
Of bowel-stopping scarabiasis.
There's nothing to bind you
Like looking behind you
At bugs flying out of your asses.
January 26, 2016
qms commented on the word tregetry
Thank you kindly, bilby:
As compliments go that's a dilly,
But I versify willy-nilly.
Old Geoffrey could rhyme
On matters sublime
While I merely strive for the silly.
January 26, 2016
qms commented on the word paraph
Discarded to hasten our pace
Are many old gestures of grace.
A gent's autograph
Forsakes the paraph,
Appending instead a smiley face.
January 26, 2016
qms commented on the word gratulation
The young pursue sense saturation,
But lusts will abate with maturation.
We welcome surcease
Of threats to our peace
And pray for a bower of gratulation.
January 25, 2016
qms commented on the word jebel
Flatlanders must learn how to speak:
A hillock's a hummock with cheek;
A mountain is treble
The size of a jebel
And a cowlick on top is a peak.
January 24, 2016
qms commented on the word hypermnesia
Since Jeopardy! is his ecclesia
To live all alone is just easier.
A partner distracts
From gathering facts,
The food of his mad hypermnesia.
January 23, 2016
qms commented on the word fustigate
Invasions of mice I must abate
When I open the house to rusticate.
If I determine
The presence of vermin
I get out my cudgel and fustigate.
January 22, 2016
qms commented on the word tertulia
A check on the internet finds
Appointments of interesting kinds:
A postponed tertulia
For those with abulia
Who never can make up their minds.
January 21, 2016
qms commented on the word neritic
Emissions make oceans acidic
And sewage the seashore mephitic.
Less sensibly tragic
In regions pelagic
But woeful in waters neritic.
January 20, 2016
qms commented on the word hogchoker
Thus saving the critters from the predations of the lexically scrupulous?
January 20, 2016
qms commented on the list insulting-animals
With maddening frequency I get telephone calls form "David" or "Walter" in India, claiming to represent "Windows Support" and wanting to tell me that my computer can only be saved by their expensive intervention. This list provides a whole new vocabulary of epithets to hurl at "Charles" or "Matthew!"
January 19, 2016
qms commented on the word uhtceare
Pronounced- oot-key-are-a
January 19, 2016
qms commented on the list insulting-animals
Oh! What a lovely list!
January 19, 2016
qms commented on the word antelucan
uhtceare's long-suffering pawn
Must pray for the coming of dawn,
For fears antelucan,
With birdsong and dew can
Disperse like the mists of the morn.
January 19, 2016
qms commented on the word uhtceare
Despite the comment of 02/10/2013 below, I think this word is better understood as a noun. It’s only appearance in print is in the Old English poem “The Wife’s Lament” where it is glossed with the following note:
Line 7b
'uhtceare' - The period just before dawn, a time when the Anglo-Saxon imagination felt grief was particularly potent. Klinck finds 'an element of sexual deprivation'.
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/wifeslament/notes/note07b.html
January 19, 2016
qms commented on the word hesternal
The garden of memory's vernal
If tended each day in a journal.
For all we have known
Already has flown
And tomorrow today is hesternal.
January 18, 2016
qms commented on the word doxastic
Full faith in your surgeon is chief;
Mistrust will lead but to grief.
If your doc is spastic
Be blithely doxastic
And steady his hand by belief.
January 17, 2016
qms commented on the word lurgy
When ailments are all in your head
Faith healing may cure what you dread,
But efforts of clergy
Could drive out your lurgy
And give you marthambles instead.
January 16, 2016
qms commented on the word hanap
My postman has the same problem, dammit!
January 16, 2016
qms commented on the word reify
Something odd is happening here. If you click on the hyperlinked “reify” in Jimmydiamonds comment you go to an entry page for the word that contains only his comment. I thought this was a surprising omission, since reify is a well-established word. If you enter “reify” in the search box you will come to a full entry for the word. What gives?
January 15, 2016
qms commented on the word hanap
A chalice will serve for a nip,
A rhyton ennobles the lip,
But no vessel can cap
The majestic hanap -
The cup of the right royal sip.
January 15, 2016
qms commented on the word fulgor
There's many a Christmas aesthetic,
Serene to the wildly frenetic.
Electrical fulgor
I find rather vulgar
And opt for a style more ascetic.
January 14, 2016
qms commented on the word deemster
A visitor mocking things Manx
Learns quickly contrition and thanks.
He'll write to the deemster,
"I pray you, esteemed sir,
Forgive my impertinent pranks."
January 13, 2016
qms commented on the word andragogy
The hard truth about andragogy
Is mastering it is rather dodgy.
Those students not skeptics
Are often dyspeptics,
So never be boring or stodgy.
January 12, 2016
qms commented on the word napoo
My allergies make much taboo -
No peanut nor even cashew.
My diet from hell
Bans fish in a shell
And gluten of course is napoo.
January 11, 2016
qms commented on the word lough
An Irishman skilled in the talk
Can outpace a laconic Jock.
Take note how it's spelt
By the wordier Celt
And savor the grandeur of "lough!"
January 10, 2016
qms commented on the word frondeur
A leader who's challenged must ponder
How best to appease a fierce frondeur:
Just gentle his grief
With a French apertif.
With absinthe the heart will grow fonder.
January 9, 2016
qms commented on the word darg
He wondered how far will a darg go
In paying for heat here in Fargo.
Much better by far:
Head South in the car
And look for some work in Key Largo.
January 8, 2016
qms commented on the word scortatory
If license should be ballyhooed
By Hefner or one of his brood -
If scurrilous and hortatory
Can we call it scortatory,
A dogmatic version of lewd?
January 7, 2016
qms commented on the word befana
While Santa and elves are all male
Controlling the yuletide portrayal,
The patient Italiana,
Epiphany's Befana,
Knows women who wait will prevail.
January 6, 2016
qms commented on the word santaxenia
I believe bilby has coined a new word!
January 5, 2016
qms commented on the word theoxenia
Old Aram, who had schizophrenia,
Thought cats were once gods in Armenia,
So they, harum-scarum,
Would flock to poor Aram
January 5, 2016
qms commented on the word philomath
If thou wouldst know a false philomath
Attend to the habit of speech he hath:
Who scorns the prosaic
For the pompous archaic -
He treadeth not true wisdom's path.
January 4, 2016
qms commented on the word crants
The mourners in silence advance
Behind the wee bier and the crants.
Their minds are so laden
With grief for the maiden
They move as though caught in a trance.
January 3, 2016
qms commented on the word Ague
See ague.
January 2, 2016
qms commented on the word sitzmark
A skier among trees when it's dark
Can schuss on until he hits bark.
The beasts of the night
Delight in his plight
And leave but a lingering sitzmark.
January 2, 2016
qms commented on the word kakizome
Oh please, my calligrapher friends,
You masters of shadings and bends,
I pray you will show me
In your kakizome
A happier year than this that now ends.
January 1, 2016
qms commented on the word muckibus
He thinks of himself as a lucky cuss
If going to bed he is muckibus.
He's loved by no mortal
But through liquor's portal
He blissfully visits his succubus.
December 31, 2015
qms commented on the word rhyton
The cup of your custom's an icon
Of the level you rightly alight on.
A rube off the wagon
Might drink from a flagon
But a eupatrid uses a rhyton.
December 30, 2015
qms commented on the word surnape
At Brian's place be sure you drape
A sumptuous absorbent surnape.
Let's hope he'll be flattered
And we'll be less spattered
With gravy or juice of the grape.
December 29, 2015
qms commented on the word subtopia
The critics deploring subtopia
Are blinded by snobbish myopia.
We're in happy thrall
To movies and mall,
To retailing's vast cornucopia.
December 28, 2015
qms commented on the word douceur
In Hollywood's view it's a douceur:
A starlet, to please a producer,
Will offer her charms
To elderly arms
And spare him the work to seduce her.
December 27, 2015
qms commented on the word wastel
An old-fashioned cooking apostle,
She animates many a fossil.
She brews her own meads
And seasons with weeds
And bakes humble pie and fine wastel.
December 26, 2015
qms commented on the word toyon
The season's come to make us merry
Let wassail flow and loved ones serry!
Hang tokens of joy on
The branches of toyon
And dance around the Christmas berry!
December 25, 2015
qms commented on the word Christmastide
With patience the ebb to abide
The incoming flow will provide
Whole shoals of good wishes
Like new-stranded fishes
At flood of the high Christmastide.
December 24, 2015
qms commented on the word forty spot
Tasmanian twitchers are taught
To count very quickly each dot.
Thirty-nine is verboten!
The best pardaloten
Must feature that fortieth spot.
December 23, 2015
qms commented on the word soft as a grape
"Soft as a grape" is an expression meaning tetched. This was a favorite expression of my late brother, Brendan. I had thought it was just old-fashioned, but I have only learned today that it is probably local to New England. Googling it is complicated by the intrusive presence of a purveyor of sports-themed clothing (headquartered in Massachusetts) that has taken the name, although its aptness to such an enterprise eludes me.
Its aptness as an idiom is also something of a puzzle. Perhaps it is that a grape gives a deceptive appearance of solidity but it comes apart under even very slight pressure?
I see that some have construed the expression to imply kindness. They are welcome to this interpretation.
December 23, 2015
qms commented on the word soft
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" Romeo and Juliet, II, 2.
December 23, 2015
qms commented on the word schlonged
The Donald feels terribly wronged
By schmucks insufficiently pronged.
It's only a prude
Who'd say he's been rude.
The poor fellow's clearly been schlonged!
December 23, 2015
qms commented on the word typocosmy
His jive makes it clear he's no fool.
His rap and his 'toos they, like - rule!
Such typocosmy
Totally awes me.
I mean, like - whatever! He's cool.
December 23, 2015
qms commented on the word sloth
A Brit will blame you for your sloth
And call for action with an oath.
But cross the North Atlantic froth
And hear the Yank condemn your sloth.
The language is no tailored cloth
But bubbles like a homemade broth.
The Web promotes organic growth,
So Wordnik wisely sanctions both.
December 22, 2015
qms commented on the word mapinguary
A sloth on the hunt cannot hurry
And stinks to alert its shy quarry,
So silence and guile
And slow food's the style
For the patient but foul mapinguary.
December 22, 2015
qms commented on the word telegony
This ewe's randy goat was a creep.
He's gone and replaced by a sheep.
If it isn't miscegeny
It must be telegony
Explaining her new kid - the geep.
December 21, 2015
qms commented on the word reechy
Smug folk, the pompous and preachy;
And rich ones, so haughty and chichi,
Like us were begotten
By primates besotten
In some cavern frigid and reechy.
December 20, 2015
qms commented on the list a-dram-too-many
What an amazing list! But it needs besotten.
December 20, 2015
qms commented on the word luculent
I must be unsparingly luculent
In hopes to forestall a fluke event:
Believe not his slander
Nor suffer his pander.
The Donald is truly a spooky gent.
December 19, 2015
qms commented on the word eupatrid
The youth who boasts of "noble" birth
Of wit displays a dismal dearth.
He may be a stupid kid
But since he's a eupatrid,
His playmates must simulate mirth.
December 18, 2015
qms commented on the word taigle
Thank you, bilby. I am encouraged.
December 18, 2015
qms commented on the word taigle
In mornings my juvenile grumbler
Attempts to impede and encumber.
He'll tarry and taigle
And try to finagle
A few more sweet minutes of slumber.
December 17, 2015
qms commented on the word panyard
We adults are still girls and boys
But free to annoy with our toys.
A cacophonous standard
Is set in the panyard,
A hell (or a heaven) of noise.
However, I am not persuaded by the "steel band corral" definition for this word. It sounds like something concocted in a competition to guess what the word might mean, maybe beating out "the distance traveled by a pancake when flipped from a skillet." I see that the more commonly cited definition is an obsolete version of pannier, a kind of basket. This pleases me more. It's a sturdy weed surviving through neglect.
A word may do what you ask it
But temper the challenge you task it;
Above all stand guard
So a word like panyard
Can gracefully age as a basket.
December 16, 2015
qms commented on the word Critical
See critical.
December 15, 2015
qms commented on the word mouffle
The hunter affects a tough pose
But sentiment inwardly glows.
He always is rueful
When dining on mouffle -
A platter of Bullwinkle's nose.
December 15, 2015
qms commented on the word complemental
I read your short-lived response, alexz, and it was a noble effort, but this is just a case of a provocateur unloading a few drive-by insults. Such types are best ignored.
December 14, 2015
qms commented on the word nidificate
When worn by the turbulent quest
We find ourselves weary and stressed,
Our need is innate
To nidificate
In a place of safety and rest.
December 14, 2015
qms commented on the word sialorrhea
Now diarrhea, I've heard of it,
And know it's an excess of shit,
But had no idea
That sialorrhea
Is the word for a surfeit of spit.
December 13, 2015
qms commented on the word razure
If sin should take its heavy toll
A conscience cure should be your goal.
If you cannot stay pure
Then seek a razure;
Let shrift amend your battered soul.
December 12, 2015
qms commented on the word palilalia
If fresh inspiration should fail ya
Repeat like they do in Australia.
The Bungle Bungle Range
And Woy Woy aren't strange
In Oz, where they've got palilalia.
December 11, 2015
qms commented on the word macrobian
Avoid every danger microbian
And emulate habits cenobian:
You'll not have much fun
But when you are done
You'll boast of a boredom macrobian.
December 10, 2015
qms commented on the word naumachy
A kid in a pool on long summer days
Enjoys himself in various ways
Imagining a storm at sea,
Perhaps a little naumachy
Or, castaway, drifts in torpid daze.
December 9, 2015
qms commented on the word larmoyant
His moods are weirdly erratic
But never are less than emphatic.
In sunshine he's buoyant
On gray days larmoyant
But always he's melodramatic.
December 8, 2015
qms commented on the list the-porn-birds
Is preoccupation with oxpecker a sign of grandiosity or of morbid anxiety?
December 7, 2015
qms commented on the word fantigue
Her frenzy has stirred some intrigue;
It's a fit in a whole different league.
We're not overawed
By a simple fantod
But she has achieved a fantigue.
December 7, 2015
qms commented on the word geep
Forbearance is wise but not cheap:
The hotheads will call you a sheep.
The blamers will vote
To make you the goat,
So learn to be proud you're a geep.
December 6, 2015
qms commented on the word electrosmog
He so far cleared up his techno-fog
To succeed in posting his lexo-blog,
But the world's unaware
Ernest's wisdom is there
Concealed in the mists of electrosmog.
Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit
December 5, 2015
qms commented on the word caliginosity
Some candidates opt for pomposity
Or hide in evasive verbosity;
They shed little light
But thicken the night
With cynical caliginosity.
December 4, 2015
qms commented on the word magniloquence
Conspicuous for her stern militance
But absent all malice or ill intents,
At first you're alarmed
But then you are charmed
By the grandeur of her magniloquence.
December 3, 2015
qms commented on the word snunkoople
I think (but really I'm guessing)
That Westbury, C., is expressing
His hope that this group'll
Embrace his snunkoople
And give it Wordnikian blessing.
He needn't have worried his head
But asserted his new word instead.
In Wordnik submission
Amounts to permission.
We use it if once it's been said.
December 3, 2015
qms commented on the word shopportunity
You see, it's happened to bilby. You do a few, it feels good and then you can't give it up. You've lost your stopportunity.
December 2, 2015
qms commented on the word quisquous
It looks to be playful Latin. From the Oxford Dictionaries site:
adjective
Difficult to deal with or settle; perplexing; (of a person) of dubious character.
Origin
Late 17th cent. Origin uncertain; perhaps from classical Latin quisquis whoever, with subsequent alteration of the ending after adjectives in -ous. With the form quisquose perhaps compare -ose.
December 2, 2015
qms commented on the word shopportunity
Actually fbharjo's last couple were pretty good, but that's how addictions start.
December 2, 2015
qms commented on the word shopportunity
The whole of the Wordnik community
Gives voice in an agonized unity:
Oh, stop, we implore,
And give us no more
Of the misshapen wretch, shopportunity!
December 2, 2015
qms commented on the word lickpenny
Though I have no money to spare
I still like to spend and to share,
Thereby to afflict any
Envious lickpenny
Who squats on a hoard in his lair.
December 2, 2015
qms commented on the word katabatic
An excellent site for the naming of winds:
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wind/
December 1, 2015
qms commented on the word katabatic
Phenomena purely climatic
Can seem to us eerily vatic.
That cold mountain breath
Doesn't whisper of death
It's merely a gust katabatic.
December 1, 2015
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