Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 09, 2010 is:
kapellmeister • \kuh-PELL-mye-ster\ • noun

: the director of a choir or orchestra

Felix’s Example Sentence:

The Kapellmeister amd organist for the downtown Catholic church is traveling to Washington soon as a guest of the President.

Did you know?

As you may have guessed, “Kapellmeister” originated as a German word — and in fact, even in English it is often (though not always) used for the director of a German choir. “Kapelle” once meant “choir” in German, and “Meister” is the German word for “master.” The Latin “magister” is an ancestor of both “Meister” and “master,” as well as of our “maestro,” meaning “an eminent composer or conductor.” “Kapelle” comes from “cappella,” the Medieval Latin word for “chapel.” As it happens, we also borrowed “Kapelle” into English, first to refer to the choir or orchestra of a royal or papal chapel, and later to describe any orchestra. “Kapellmeister” is used somewhat more frequently than “Kapelle” in current English, though neither word is especially common.

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 08, 2010 is:
enthrall • \in-THRAWL\ • verb

1 : to hold in or reduce to slavery

*2 : to hold spellbound : charm

Felix’s Example Sentence:

The guest conductor enthralled the concert audience with his spirited leadership of the orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Did you know?

In Middle English, “enthrallen” meant “to hold in thrall.” “Thrall” then, as now, meant “bondage” or “slavery”; it comes from an Old Norse word, “thraell,” which is probably related to an Old High German word for servant. In the 16th century, the first known figurative use of “enthrall” appeared in the following advice, translated from a Latin text by Thomas Newton: “A man should not . . . enthrall his credit and honour to Harlots.” But we rarely use even this sense of mental or moral enslavement anymore. Today the word is often used in its participle form, “enthralled,” which sometimes means “temporarily spellbound” (“we listened, enthralled, to the old woman’s oral history”), but more often suggests a state of being generally captivated, delighted, or taken by some particular thing.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 07, 2010 is:
parsnip • \PAHR-snip\ • noun

: a Eurasian biennial herb (Pastinaca sativa) of the carrot family with large pinnate leaves and yellow flowers that is cultivated for its long tapered edible root which is cooked as a vegetable; also : the root

Felix’s Example Sentence:

I am familiar with many root crops in the produce department, from carrots to turnips, but parsnips I have never experienced.

Did you know?

The word “parsnip” was borrowed into Middle English in the 14th century as a modification of the Old French word “pasnaie,” itself derived from the Latin noun “pastinaca,” meaning “parsnip” or “carrot.” The scientific name for the parsnip, “Pastinaca sativa,” still reflects this history. “Pastinaca,” in turn, traces back to “pastinum,” a Latin word for a small gardening tool used to make holes in the ground for the insertion of plants, seeds, or bulbs. “Parsnip” may also remind you of the name of another edible root, “turnip,” and there’s a possible explanation for the resemblance. The Middle English spelling of “parsnip” (“passenep”) may have been influenced by “nepe,” the old form of “turnip.”

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 05, 2010 is:
alow • \uh-LOH\ • adverb

: below

Felix’s Example Sentence:

Passing in review during the Fourth of July, the tall ship had sailors in whites alow and aloft.

Did you know?

In nautical use, “alow” means “in or to a lower part of the vessel,” indicating the deck or the area of the rigging closest to the deck, or below-deck as opposed to above-deck. The opposite of “alow” in this sense is “aloft,” used to indicate a higher part of the vessel. Yet, while we are still likely to encounter “aloft,” in both nautical and non-nautical use, “alow” has become something of a rarity. When encountered, it is usually found in the combination “alow and aloft.” This phrase literally refers to the upper and lower parts of a ship or its rigging, but it can also be used to mean “completely” or “throughout” — similar to the more familiar “high and low.”

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 06, 2010 is:
comptroller • \kun-TROH-ler\ • noun

1 : a royal-household official who examines and supervises expenditures

2 : a public official who audits government accounts and sometimes supervises expenditures

*3 : the chief accounting officer of a business enterprise or an institution (as a college)

Felix’s Example Sentence:

The chief financial officer of the agency obviously neglected her responsibility as comptroller, allowing the depletion of reserves and the mingling of funds meant for separate purposes.

Did you know?

If you think “comptroller” looks like a mistaken spelling of “controller,” you’re partially right. Today, “comptroller” is an established word that shares one of its meanings (sense 3) with “controller.” The term did originate as a misspelling, however. Around the 15th century, Middle English speakers altered the spelling of “conterroller” (meaning “controller,” from the Middle French “contrerolleur”) under the influence of the Middle French word “compte” (“account”). The resulting word, “comptroller,” has attracted criticism over the years. Grammarian Henry Fowler condemned “comptroller” as “not merely archaic, but erroneous” in 1920, and a lexicographical column from 1931 agreed that “comptroller” is “erroneous and should not be accepted as correct.” Nevertheless, such modern institutions as colleges and governments continue to have comptrollers. “Comptrollership” occasionally turns up as well.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Memorable date

In my topmost dresser drawer, where things valuable to me beyond the ordinary are kept, there is a parking ticket from the Erlanger parking garage dated 5 Feb 06:42 2003. I stopped by the hospital on my way to work, to see my son and daughter-in-law on the morning that her OBGyn was to induce labor on their first child, somewhat overdue. The parking attendants were not yet on duty when I left, so I kept the ticket.

That precious child observes her seventh birthday today. I spoke to her on the telephone this afternoon, listened to her bright stream of talk, told her that her Granny Babs and I loved her and would see her later this weekend. She said she had received our birthday card and enjoyed it, and I told her we would be participating in a special birthday gift jointly presented by parents and grandparents. She was sweetly grateful.

We love her so.

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 04, 2010 is:
vulnerary • \VUL-nuh-rair-ee\ • adjective

: used for or useful in healing wounds

Felix’s Example Sentence:

Time, according to the aphorism, is vulnerary for all wounds.

Did you know?

In Latin, “vulnus” means “wound.” You might think, then, that the English adjective “vulnerary” would mean “wounding” or “causing a wound” — and, indeed, “vulnerary” has been used that way, along with two obsolete adjectives, “vulnerative” and “vulnific.” But for the lasting and current use of “vulnerary,” we took our cue from the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder. In his Natural History, he used the Latin adjective “vulnerarius” to describe a plaster, or dressing, for healing wounds. And that’s fine — the suffix “-ary” merely indicates that there is a connection, which, in this case, is to wounds. (As you may have already suspected, “vulnerable” is related; it comes from the Latin verb “vulnerare,” which means “to wound.”)

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 03, 2010 is:
elicit • \ih-LISS-it\ • verb

1 : to draw forth or bring out (something latent or potential)

*2 : to call forth or draw out (as information or a response)

Felix’s Example Sentence:

A teacher may elicit enthusiasm in a class by encouragement of hesitant students, but must know when to dampen more disruptive comments.

Did you know?

“Elicit” derives from the past participle of the Latin verb “elicere,” formed by combining the prefix “e-” with the verb “lacere,” meaning “to entice by charm or attraction.” It is not related to its near-homophone, the adjective “illicit” — that word, meaning “unlawful,” traces back to another Latin verb, “licēre,” meaning “to be permitted.” Nor is “elicit” related to the verb “solicit,” even though it sounds like it should be. “Solicit” derives from Latin “sollicitare” (“to disturb”), formed by combining the adjective “sollus,” meaning “whole,” with the past participle of the verb “ciēre,” meaning “to move.”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 02, 2010 is:
evanescent • \ev-uh-NESS-unt\ • adjective

: tending to vanish like vapor

Felix’s Example Sentence:

Like the “peace dividend” exciting us after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union breakup, the hope and enthusiasm greeting Barack Obama on his election has proved evanescent when real world problems hemmed in the new administration.

Did you know?

The fragile, airy quality of things evanescent reflects the etymology of the word “evanescent” itself. It derives from a form of the Latin verb “evanescere,” which means “to evaporate” or “to vanish.” Given the similarity in spelling between the two words, you might expect “evaporate” to come from the same Latin root, but it actually grew out of another steamy Latin root, “evaporare.”

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for February 01, 2010 is:
raj • \RAHJ\ • noun

*1 : rule; especially often capitalized : the former British rule of the Indian subcontinent

2 : the period of British rule in India

Felix’s Example Sentence:

The Raj produced a wealth of fine writing, from Kipling to Forster, and left English as the lasting contribution to the Indian subcontinent.

Did you know?

When British trading posts were established in the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century, English speakers were immersed in the rich languages of the region, and Europeans quickly began adopting local words into their own vocabularies. By the end of the 1700s, Hindi contributions to our language ran from “ayah” (a term for a nurse or maid) to “zamindar” (a collector of land taxes or revenues). When English speakers borrowed “raj” around 1800, they used exactly the same spelling and meaning as its Hindi parent (the Hindi word in turn traces to an older term that is related to the Sanskrit word for “king”). Other words of Hindi descent that are now common in English include “chintz,” “pundit,” “bungalow,” “veranda,” “seersucker,” and “bandanna.”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Word of the Day

… courtesy of Merriam Webster, with slight modifications by me:

The Word of the Day for January 31, 2010 is:
coeval • \koh-EE-vul\ • adjective

: of the same or equal age, antiquity, or duration

Felix’s Example Sentence:

Reading the obituaries each morning, I find more and more of my coeval compatriots listed, and fear that some morning one of the survivors will find my name there.

Did you know?

“Coeval” comes to English from the Latin word “coaevus,” meaning “of the same age.” “Coaevus” was formed by combining the “co-” prefix (“in or to the same degree”) with Latin “aevum” (“age” or “lifetime”). The root “ev” comes from “aevum,” making words such as “longevity,” “medieval,” and “primeval” all near relations to “coeval.” Although “coeval” can technically describe any two or more entities that coexist, it is most typically used to refer to things that have existed together for a very long time (such as galaxies) or that were concurrent with each other in the distant past (parallel historical periods of ancient civilizations, for example).