Northwest Indiana Discussion

Dirty Dago-T's and wearing black socks with shorts and sandals are shibboleths of region residents.

Word of the DayThursday, July 09, 2009

fervid
\FUR-vid\ , adjective:

1.
Heated or vehement in spirit, enthusiasm, etc.
2.
Burning; glowing; intensely hot.
See the full Dictionary.com entry |See Synonyms on Thesaurus.com
Quotes:

Over the last week, the Cubs opened their home season at Wrigley Field, and the city's Lyric Opera was presenting Richard Wagner's four-opera "Ring des Nibelungen," which meant that two of the world's most fervid fan bases were simultaneously encamped on opposite sides of the Chicago River.

-- Bruce Weber, "Take Me Out to the Opera: In Chicago, a Fan Is a Fan", New York Times, April 16, 2009
The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the fervid page,
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age.
-- William Cullen Bryant
Origin:

Fervid comes from Latin fervidus "glowing, burning, vehement," from fervere "to boil, glow." The figurative sense of "impassioned" is from 1656.

Word of the Day for Saturday, July 11, 2009

gauche \GOHSH\, adjective:

Lacking social polish; tactless; awkward; clumsy.

He was largely exempted from the formal socializing he said he found so hard to manage, flustered and gauche in polite company as he had always been.
-- John Sturrock, "Well on the Way to Paranoia", New York Times, July 28, 1991

He was by nature intellectual, shy, even gauche and he always believed he lacked the common touch.
-- "Editor whose legacy was diversity", Irish Times, October 9, 1999

The audience's performance was altogether more gauche, with scores of people in the stalls constantly turning round to gawp at Mick Jagger seated ten rows back.
-- Noreen Taylor, "How was it for him?", Times (London), August 3, 2000

Gauche is from the French for left, awkward.

When you look up gauche in the dictionary you will see a picture of George Bush Jr next to it.

Driving around a poverty-stricken craphole like Gary in your new, taxpayer-funded Hummer is the ultimate in gauche.

Word of the Day
Sunday, July 19, 2009

imbue

\im-BYOO\ , transitive verb:

1.
To tinge or dye deeply; to cause to absorb thoroughly; as, "clothes thoroughly imbued with black."


2.
To instill profoundly; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.
See the full Dictionary.com entry |See Synonyms on Thesaurus.com

Quotes:
Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings.

-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest

Along with the rest of us he would certainly applaud attempts to imbue the young with the spirit of fair play.

-- John Bryant, "Football should heed the Corinthian spirit", Times (London), February 17, 2000

He wanted to remake American cinema into a positive force for good, to imbue it with a transcendent sense of virtue and order.

-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood

Origin:
Imbue comes from Latin imbuere, "to wet, to steep, to saturate."

mis·an·dry
Pronunciation:
\ˈmi-ˌsan-drē\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
mis- (as in misanthropy) + andr- + 2-y
Date:
circa 1909

: a hatred of men

Every has heard of men accused of misogyny, but we all know misandry is far more common, yet no one knows the word for it.

Word of the Day for Sunday, July 26, 2009

ineluctable \in-ih-LUCK-tuh-buhl\, adjective:

Impossible to avoid or evade; inevitable.

. . .ineluctable as gravity.
-- Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

California's vision of itself as a car culture grew out of the impracticality of mass transit in reaching most of its scenic wonders, the innate restlessness of its inhabitants and the ineluctable attraction of an open road.
-- "From the Land of Private Freeways Comes Car Culture Shock", New York Times, October 16, 1997

Linnaeus' classification scheme became popular not because it captured some ineluctable truth about nature. Rather, by the botanist's own admission, the system divided species based more on intuition than science, much as an art historian might group paintings into schools.
-- "Cultivating a New Tree", Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1999

Ineluctable is from Latin ineluctabilis, from in-, "not" + eluctari, "to struggle out of, to get free from," from ex-, e-, "out of" + luctari, "to struggle."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for ineluctable

Thanks, Geronimo, for this thread.
I have a pretty large vocabulary, but I'm learning new words from you.
That's a good thing.