Word of the Day

[Whistler]

prurient - having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters.

The prurient consigliere's weak spot was young beauties.

[Katya]

landrace - a local cultivar or animal breed that has been improved by traditional agricultural methods

The farmer took a great interesting in breeding local landraces, due to a sort of agricultural prurience.

[Emiliana]

Prolepsis: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished. (Used in an ESL seminar I was in yesterday! I love when presenters don't dumb down their professional development.)

The landraces were not yet strong enough to plow the fields as quickly as the farmer hoped, but his proleptic optimism cause him to continue working them.

[Whistler]

a bunch of words I didn't know here! I guessed well and got 28/30 http://www.playbuzz.com/jonb10/how-many ... ually-know

[Digit]

Spaghettification: The vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field, caused by extreme tidal forces.

Taking into account the proleptic alteration of her physique due to the impending spaghettification, the usually weight conscious astronaut in the rocket heading for the black hole sighed and popped another tub of rocky road.

[Katya]

roustabout - an unskilled or casual laborer

The roustabouts on the neutron star mining crew frequently suffered from side effects of spaghettification.

[Yarjka]

gallimaufry: a hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley

From Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World:
"This unattractive gallimaufry of attitudes and morals that made up pre-earthquake San Francisco was presided over, most appropriately, by a city government that was as corrupt as it was incompetent."

There were a gallimaufry of reasons for the roustabouts to be working at the spaghetti factory.

*How did you not know the word roustabout from the song at the beginning of Dumbo?

[Katya]

*How did you not know the word roustabout from the song at the beginning of Dumbo?

Because I've seen that film maybe once?

[Katya]

anodyne - not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so

The venue was overbooked, but the gallimaufry of artists at the fair were quite anodyne, so nobody minded.

[Digit]

diptych. A painting, especially an altarpiece, on two hinged wooden panels that may be closed like a book.

I'd email the author of this piece at National Geographic that that "diptych" of Dr. Oz and his father halfway down the page is not really a diptych, but anodyne as it is, I won't bother.

[Yarjka]

cellaret
a deep, often metal-lined drawer in a sideboard used for storing wines and liquors.

We could enhance the look of our cellarets by commissioning a diptych.

[Yarjka]

vinculum
that line that goes above a repeating decimal (and has other uses as well)

(I was probably taught the name in a math class at some point, but it has no familiarity to me at all)

'How full is the cellaret, lad?' 'Point three with a vinculum, sir.'

[Katya]

chine - a backbone, especially that of an animal as it appears in a cut of meat

"I'm so hungry, that vinculum reminds me of a chine." "Time to take a dinner break, then. We'll come back to studying later!"

[Digit]

Atychiphobia: fear of failure.

Having always suffered from acute atychiphobia, Leonard always preferred a regular chine cut to the wishbone, and its attendant challenge.

[Portia]

{Isn't "grit" the new codeword for what rich white people think poor minority children need instead of funding in their schools?}

[Digit]

The ones born on third base who go through life thinking they hit a triple

[Marduk]

Is that a reference to the Pearl Jam song? Or is there another reference that I'm unaware of?

[Digit]

It's just a funny quote I'd heard before and remembered. Looks like a man by the name of Barry Switzer is the one to whom it is attributed.

[Katya]

frass: (1) Fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects. (2) The excrement of insect larvae.

I encountered this word in its second definition today during a presentation by our library's conservation department.

"The new conservator was terrified of accidentally damaging any materials and even a minor encounter with frass could trigger her atychiphobia."

[Yarjka]

frass: (1) Fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects. (2) The excrement of insect larvae.

I encountered this word in its second definition today during a presentation by our library's conservation department.

This is my 4-year-old daughter's favorite book at the moment. So I just learned about frass as well (and lots of other things I never knew I wanted to know).