Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Vocabulary

Seen online. People actually used these words to communicate. Maybe they were trying to lord over us with their superior vocabulary.  Maybe they got lost inside their own head. Maybe they speak those fer'ner languages all the time. Maybe they are just whacked.

There are seventy-six entries. Some are duplicates. I'll take the whole file of "new words" and dump them into the old file of "words" The laptop will stop the ones already there. Hang on.

* gammon
* interstitial
* kayfabe
* locus classicus
* suppurating
* thimblerigger
* tisane

Some words are so strange that your brain rejects them for you. Your super editor caring for you.  Those are duplicates. I'll add a "2" to their title so I have both definitions. That way we tell our brain who's boss around here.

Other words seem too easy. I don't know why they're here. We see them all the time and know them. They are not obscure. I must have been accidentally high again.

* affinities
* circumflex
* Gramscian
* imperium
* incommensurable
* inter alia
* interstitial
* jizya
* metonymically
* numinous
* plenum
* revenant
* roundelay
* sangfroid
* skein
* solipsistic
* suppurating
* triturate

What was wrong with me? This is embarrassing. It seems to show that I'm going brain dead. Again. I just have to face the facts. I'm losing it.

Here's the new list:

*  aerophone: Any musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound.

Clue: certain aerophone
Answer: oboe

*  affinities: A natural attraction, liking, or feeling of kinship. A natural tendency or ability to use or do something. Relationship by marriage. An inherent similarity between persons or things. An attraction or force between particles or chemicals that causes them to combine.

Elites do not see their fellow citizens in exceptional terms of the affinities of a common language, shared history, or sovereign geography.

*  ambulette: A specially equipped motor vehicle for transporting people who are convalescing or have mobility issues.

A teenager who was pushed in front of an ambulette and killed likely lost his life to the same subset of Trinitarios gang members who killed Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz.



*  Basta cosi: that's enough.

*  bedlamite: A mentally ill person.

Ms Langmuir goes on to share other tales of bedlamite sorrow.

*  beguine: A ballroom dance similar to the foxtrot, based on a dance of Martinique and St. Lucia. The music for this dance.

Begin the Beguine

*  bobodon: word doesn't exist. some stupid shit J.J. Sefton (Ace, morning report) made up. bobo is urban for  a liberal, highly educated person who combines a bourgeois, affluent lifestyle with bohemian nonconformist values and attitudes.

*  bursar: A professional financial administrator in a school or university.

 UC Berkeley takes a hit in the bursar's office for censoring conservative students

*  caparison: An ornamental covering for a horse or for its saddle or harness; trappings. Richly ornamented clothing; finery. To outfit (a horse) with an ornamental covering.

[images show electric guitars]

Clue: Equine trappings.

*  casemate:  a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired.Originally, the term referred to a vaulted chamber in a fortress. In armored fighting vehicles that do not have a turret for the main gun, the structure that accommodates the gun is termed the casemate.

Sometimes erroneously written casement

In this casemate Jefferson Davis, president of the confederate states, was confined, may 22 - October 2, 1865.

[images show cellphone covers]

*  cherce: Urban dictionary, "choice."

Not much meat on the links today but what we got is "cherce," so let's get with it.




*  cicerone: old term for a guide, one who conducts visitors and sightseers to museums, galleries, etc., and explains matters of archaeological, antiquarian, historic or artistic interest. The word is presumably taken from Marcus Tullius Cicero.

In the over-saturated, over-extra food world we currently reside in, wall art not from a local graffiti artist, and a beer list not put together by a cicerone, and a color scheme not picked out by a nationally lauded design firm feels almost refreshing.

*  circumflex: punctuation mark, a diacritic in Latin an Greek scripts and various romanization and transcription schemes. Circumfleuxus "bent around." A chevron-shaped mark above letters. It marks the stressed vowel of a word in some languages.

In French the circumflex generally marks the former presence of a consonant (usually s) that was deleted and is no longer pronounced. (The corresponding Norman French words, and consequently the words derived fro them in English, frequently retain the lost consonant. For example"

ancêtre "ancestor"
hôpital "hospital"
hôtel "hostel"
forêt "forest"
rôtir "to roast"
côte "coast"
pâté "paste"
août "August"
dépôt (from the Latin depositum 'deposit', but now referring to both a deposit or a storehouse of any kind)

* Dianabol: The trade / brand name for the anabolic steroid Methandrostenolone. It is well-known and ranked as the most popular and most widely used anabolic steroid in all history.

Chaplinsky Fool: CNN's Meathead Buffoon Chris Cuomo Slights Rape Survivor, Brags About His Muscles. John Sexton at Hot Air recounts this latest bizarre episode from the Dianabol Kid.

* divagation: To wander or drift about. To ramble: digress.

Thus all our divagation about the “root causes” of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists’ very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.

*  door cards: Car door panel in British-talk. An insert on the door of a vehicle that covers the door's internal components.



*  dropsy: An old term for the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water.

Today one would be more descriptive and specify the cause. Thus, the person might have edema due to congestive heart failure.

Edema is often more prominent in the lower legs and feet toward the end of the day as a result of pooling of fluid from the upright position usually maintained during the day. Upon awakening from sleeping, people can have swelling around the eyes referred to as periorbital edema.

Let me ponder on the miraculous healing of the man with dropsy (Saint Luke 14: 2):

1. How the Lord touched the man with dropsy, and he was healed and went home.

2. How my soul is under the burden of a like dropsy, the burden of care and love for the body.

3. How the Lord can heal my soul of its dropsy with just one touch, and liberate it from the heavy burden of the passions.

*  frimeur: pejorative puffed-up, conceited.

*  gammon: An old-fashioned English dish made from a hind leg of pork, sometimes topped with caramelized pineapple. Shorthand for a certain type of middle-aged white man. He’s a Conservative voter, he likely supports Brexit, and his habitual rantings about immigration and the scourge of political correctness have caused him to turn so red as to resemble a pan-fried slab of ham.

Fascinating much gammon in the youtube comments



*  Gramscian: Antonio Francesco Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher and politician. Wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. Attempted to break from the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought and so is considered a key neo-Marxist. Was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.

Wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources.

Best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "common sense" values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure.

Some weirdo.

 You could just grab his hair and smack him.

*  hors de combat: Out of action; disabled. Out of the fight. unable to take further part in the struggle.

The Lunatic is long past losing the plot. She is hors de combat. The Law is moving in on her and her partner in crime.

*  hugbox: derogatory term for an environment, usually on the internet, in which a group with similar interests gathers to discuss topics in what they intend to be a safe, comforting, and confrontation-free environment.

Your generation is nothing but hugbox retards.

*  hygge: Danish for a quality of cosiness that comes from doing simple things such as lighting candles, baking, or spending time time at home with your family.

*  imperium: A form of authority held by a citizen to control a military or governmental entity. It is distinct from auctoritas and potestas, different and generally inferior types of power in the Roman Republic and Empire.

One's imperium could be over a specific military unit, or it could be over a province or territory. Individuals given such power were referred to as curule magistrates or promagistrates. These included the curule aedile, the praetor, the consul, the magister equitum, and the dictator. In a general sense, imperium was the scope of someone's power, and could include anything, such as public office, commerce, political influence, or wealth.

Speaking of centurions and imperiums, one can’t help but compare the digital status quo to the Roman Empire of yore.

*  incommensurable: Having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison. Utterly disproportionate. Mathematics. (Of two or more quantities) Having no common measure.

*  inter alia: among other things

Mark Levin inter alia devotes a discussion to what we might call the “un-news

*  interstitial: as to do with small spaces, called "interstices." Interstices can be literal spaces, like the gaps between your teeth, or they can be figurative, like the few minutes you have between classes.

Thursday and as we wander through the interstitial nether world between Christmas and New Year's we still have things to deal with so here we go.

*  jizya: A tax levied on non-Muslims.

He’s getting rid of the gas tax, but replacing it with the gas jizya.

*  juul: a vaping device that fits in the hand and comes in flavors.



*  kayfabe: In professional wrestling is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. Kayfabe has also evolved to become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.

Is that true or kayfabe? I don't know.

*  literati tree: Bunjin style, tall spindly pine bonsai.



*  locus classicus: A passage from a classic or standard work that is cited as an illustration or instance. A classic case or example.

The locus classicus of Russian collusion, however, is Hillary Clinton’s effort in 2016. The facts are not in dispute. Using the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign paid a foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to compile a smear dossier against Clinton’s then-opponent, Donald J. Trump.

*  lugenpresse: lying press

What I mean is that they are exactly the same as the vicious and false narrative against POTUS Trump that Obama's lugenpresse has been publishing since June 16, 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy for the Presidency.

*  lycanthropy: A delusion that one has become a wolf.

... sung by someone whose hobbies include selling soda pop and the area code theory of permissible lycanthropy

*  Lysistrata: A comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired.

Lysistrata has never been funnier:  Harridans on sex strike! Can the nation hope to survive?

*  meesekeit: Ugly person. Yiddish. You're face is so ugly it hurts to look at it.



Hack writer and noted meesekeit Fran Leibowitz wishes assassination on Trump a la Jamal Khashoggi ...

*  Merkwurdige: Strange, german. (J.J. Sefton again. Ace, Morning Report)

Merkwurdige Merkel tried pressuring the president of Romania not to move their embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

*  mésalliances: a marriage with a person of inferior social position.

Time neglected to check on Khashoggi and now finds that it nominated a Qatar stooge, whose columns were midwifed by officers in the Qatar government, and whose “journalistic” career was but a distracting pendant to his many more serious activities, latterly as an anti-Saudi lobbyist, nephew to the one-time world’s biggest arms dealer, and a host of other shadowy mésalliances.

*  metonymically: A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government or of the sword for military power. In rhetoric, change of name; a trope or figure of speech that consists in substituting the name of one thing for that of another to which the former bears a known and close relation. A trope in which one word is put for another that suggests it.

That he was wearing a white tie and tails acted metonymically for the growing inequality in our society: not so much the gap as the unbridgeable gulf between the well- and ill-born, the winners and losers in an increasingly divided society.

*  midichlorian: Word imagined by George Lucas to totally fuck up the mysticism surrounding the Force in Star Wars.

But rather than realizing that the Social Justice Warrior Force of Outrage runs strong in him -- his outrage midichlorian count is off the chart -- French Davidian decides to once again claim that his enemies on the right are Social Justice Warriors, and worse than the left:

*  nosocomial: Of or relating to a hospital. Relating to or being an infection that a patient acquires while being treated in a hospital.

Most of them would come out in far worse shape than they were when they entered, even if they managed to avoid other hospital hazards like nosocomial infections or malnutrition from lousy hospital food.

*  numinous: adjective, "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring."

Mecca. The Holy Land. Sacred ground. I feel sacrilegious for invoking such numinous phrases, but it’s hard to think of a better personal metaphor for the Strand, New York City’s iconic bookstore located in Greenwich Village.

*  nutsy-fagin: Nutsy Fagan was a vaudeville MC at the Nut Club in Greenwich Village, NYC. hiyah!!!!!

Then there was an entertainer in NYC named Nutsey Fagan, who was Tarzan in movies and was famous for daredevil swimming acts.

There was a Nutsy Fagan comic strip in the 50s.

Also from the 50s-60s, Jackie Gleason used to do a bartender skit on his TV show where hed talk about Nutsey Fagan, but you never saw the character.

In "The Producers" Zero Mostel calls someone a "Nutsey Fagan."

Thursday and we're loaded with all sorts of juicy stuff guaranteed to make you nutsy-fagin so here we go.

*  okole: Hawaiian for butt.

We need a strong support leader outside the political circle to get people off their okoles and out on the streets...

*  pareidolia: The perception of a recognizable image or meaningful pattern where none exists or is intended, as the perception of a face in the surface features of the moon.

The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals, seeing shapes in clouds, or hearing hidden messages in music.

Welcome to the often mentally unstable world of pareidolia.



*  Phrygian cap;  Or liberty cap is a soft conical cap with the top pulled forward associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, including Phrygia, Dacia, and the balkans. In early modern Europe it came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty through a confusion with the pileus, the felt cap of manumitted slaves of ancient Rome. In artistic representations it signifies freedom and he pursuit of liberty.



*  Plenum: An assembly or meeting with all members present. A condition, space, or enclosure in which air or other gas is at a pressure greater than that of the outside atmosphere. The condition of being full: fullness.

The plenum of a grain bin. (The floor with holes in it so air blown through can dry the grain above it.

*  polonium / Fort Marcy Park: "And laced with polonium and a one way trip to Fort Marcy Park to anyone who leaks it."

Polonium: Chemical element symbos Po atomic number 84, rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes. Similar to selenium and tellurium though its metal character resembles its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead and bismuth. The short half-life of its isotopes it's natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores. Discovereed in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie when it was extracted from teh uranium ore pitchblende and identified solely by its strong radioactivity. Named after Marie Curie's homeland of Poland.

Fort Marcy Park: The park where Vince Foster's body was discovered July 20, 1993

*  Pulaski: A a special hand tool used in wildland firefighting.. The tool combines an axe and an adze in one head, similar to that of the cutter mattock, with a rigid handle of wood, plastic, or fiberglass.

Get out of the basement, go to Califre sign up ,swing a Pulaski, load airtankers at McClellan, Chico or Redding.



*  quango: Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization. Typically an organization to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies.

... an establishment quango, the Electoral Commission, having given the Brexit party a clean bill of health on its financing the week before, responded to an evidence-free demand from former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown that the party’s finances should be investigated for illegal contributions ...

*  ratissage: A raid (especially violent carried out by the police or military , originally and chiefly carried out by the French in Algeria.

Speaking of "raking", I'd like to see a ratissage of the kind employed by the French in Algeria, to rid us of KimDotcom and his (?) ilk.

*  revenant: A visible ghost or animated corpse that is believed to have revived from death to haunt the living. Derived fro the Old French word, revenant, the "returning"

Time, that tattered, shrunken revenant of a once-popular news magazine, continues in its endless decline to delude itself that it has either the authority or the competence to name the “Person of the Year.”

*  roundelay: A poem or song with a regularly recurring refrain.

Take a look at the roundelay of performers who've embraced show business' most perilous assignment, and the failure rate is enough to give even that rock climber in Free Solo vertigo.

*  saleratus biscuits: Sodium bicarbonate used in cookery; baking soda.

There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to.

*  sangfroid: Coolness and composure, especially in trying circumstances.

Barack Obama, I argued, evinces a preternatural sangfroid, for he is in America but not of it, a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans.

*  sciatica: A medical condition characterized by pain going down the leg fro the lower back. Pain affecting the sciatic nerve, a large nerve extending from the lower back down the back of each leg.

 Someone's sciatica must be playing up again.

*  sealioning: A type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility.The troll pretends ignorance and feigns politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.

*  skein: A length of yarn or thread wound on a reel or swift preparatory for use in manufacturing. Anything wound in or resembling such a coil. Something suggestive of the twistings of a skein.

Their lives are fenced in by an ever-growing skein of nanny-state regulations.

*  Sláinte: "Health" in Gaelic languages common used as a drinking toast in in Ireland and Scotland

*  solipsistic: The theory that he self is the only thing that can be known and verified. The view that the self is the only reality. The belief or proposition that the person entertaining it alone exists, and that other people exist only as ideas in his mind.

I’m not saying Dad was a saint. Just that his AAirpass was about more than solipsistic travel.

*  sozzled: sozzle: One who spills water or other liquids carelessly. An untidy woman. A confusedly mingled mass or heap.

With the caravan in Tijuana descending into a sozzled mess and den of pestilence, caravan organizers Pueblo Sin Fronteras now say they have nothing to do with it and seem to have skipped town.

*  sun dog: Formally called parhelion in meteorology is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to the left or right of the Sun. Two sun dogs often flank the Sun with a 22° halo. A member of the family hals, caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

windbag: Hey, that's the same sunset I was looking at awhile ago on our way back from Kannapolis. We had sun dogs here and there.



*  suppurating: To form or discharge pus.

This association between will [the squad and the Dems] be a suppurating open wound from now until 2020, the squabbling will continue, and the Democrats' constant howling that Trump is a racist is bouncing off him like raindrops hitting a tin roof.

*  syzygy: A collinear configuration of three celestial bodies.



*  thanatophobia: Fear of death, or fear of the dying process.

Racism and thanatophobia all in one.

*  Thanatos Gambit: What happens when a character deliberately manipulates the circumstances of their death to their own profit. It could be to ensure that they get as comfy (or stylish) an exit as possible, but most often, it's used to deliver one last "Screw you" to their arch nemesis. A character who is Secretly Dying is especially likely to employ one of these.

Named for the Greek personification of death.

I agree that President Trump sees another Thanatos Gambit setup and took it. Notice also how President Trump referenced the crimes problem that Sweden is having. He’s going to shine more Trump Spotlight on Sweden.

*  the worm turns: Even a worm will turn. An expression used to convey the message that even the meekest or most docile of creatures will retaliate or seek revenge if pushed too far.

Sometimes, the worm does turn: I Paris, the worst riots in a generation.

*  thimblerigger: Shell game. Typically a swindle, in which spectators are challenged to bet on the location of a small object ostensibly concealed under one of three cups or nutshells manipulated by sleight of hand.

Clue: Thimblerigger's item. Pea

*  thorium cycle: The thorium fuel cycle is a nuclear fuel cycle that uses an isotope of thorium, 232 Th as the fertile material. In the reactor, 232
Th is transmuted into the fissile artificial uranium isotope 233
U which is the nuclear fuel. Unlike natural uranium, natural thorium contains only trace amounts of fissile material (such as 231 Th), which are insufficient to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. Additional fissile material or another neutron source is necessary to initiate the fuel cycle.

*  tisane: An herbal infusion or similar preparation drunk as a beverage or for its mildly medicinal effect. A decoction with medicinal properties. Compare ptisan.

Ptisan: A medicinal infusion, such as sweetened barley water. A mild harmless drink, or one having a slight medicinal quality, as barley-water or herb-tea. Grape-juice allowed to drain on the slab, without pressure.

*  tricoteuse: Knitting woman. The term is most often used in its historical sense as a nickname for the women who sat beside the guillotine during public executions in Paris in the French Revolution, supposedly continuing to knit in between executions. Amongst the items they knitted was the famous liberty cap or Phrygian cap.

*  triturate: to rub, crush, grind or pound into fine particles or a powder; pulverize.

*  winnow: To separate the chaff fro grain by means of current of air. To rid of undesirable parts. To blow chaff off or away.

Yet none should doubt the long-seething precursor to this conflagration despite the impossibility of capturing winnowed domestic budgets and severe fiscal hardship on film.

*  Yinzer: A provincial, typically residing in the western half of Pennsylvania (USA), who strongly identifies with the nearby city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, often due to a fervent, pseudo-religious loyalty toward one or more professional sports teams headquartered there.

I have to say, I love Salena Zito's stuff, even if she is a Yinzer.



2 comments:

edutcher said...

I knew maybe 20%. So ashamed.

Sláinte is pronounced sloncha (learned from a beautiful Irish girl with a face Rubens would have loved).

And dropsy is called edema today.

Mumpsimus said...

"Hugbox" is good. I hadn't seen that one before.