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The Word of the Day! (An ongoing project) - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - I like words. Really I do. I occasionally read books about linguistics for pleasure. Which may seem odd.Recommend And so when I was trying to decide on a new project for me*, the thought why not do a word of the day list popped into my feverish mind. And so here it is - the Word of the Day. Read and enjoy (and subscribe if you want to follow it). And remember: Fun Facts may or may not be fun, or factual. Edit: I have done a meta-list summarizing the words; you can scan and search for words (control-F or the equivalent for your browser) if you want to see whether Ive done some word or other. Here it is: Word of the Day Summary Geeklist *My previous projects: This Day - EVERY DAY - in History (a 366-Item Geeklist, Eventually) and This Day in Pre-History - Edited Fri Feb 7, 2014 8:20 pmPosted Wed Jan 2, 2013 12:24 am - [+] Dice rolls [1] Prev « 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 | - 3001. Board Game: Cone of Shame the Game [Average Rating:10.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - IGNOMINIOUS I sat down with not one but two words in mind for the Word. But to save myself from the nefarious act of repeating myself, I checked. Drat, already done that. Double drat, done that one too! But fortunately, readers send in suggestions and that helps me avoid the ignominious fate of being unable to think of a Word. And the Word is a reader suggestion, ignominious. This is an adjective. It means disgraceful, shameful, humiliating. Embarrassing as a failure (Fans still remember Englands ignominious loss to Iceland). Even degrading or debasing, a bit harsher but still ignominious. English being a human language spoken by imperfect, petty, venal human beings (as all languages are) certainly had ways of expressing this before adapting ignominy in the early 16th century (or 15th; or 14th; sources ignominiously disagree). But as is often the case with English vocabulary, the more the ignominier I mean merrier. It was straight from Latin ignominiosus which means disgraceful or shameful. If you look closely at the Latin you can see the -nom- element as in name. The ig- (a variant of in-) means not, or opposite. Not of good name.
Dishonorable, indeed. The noun ignominy (shame, dishonor) is a backformation in English from ignominious, attested by the 1530s. Its not as common a word though. Fun Fact: I always have a back-up when getting ready to order in a restaurant to save me from the ignominious fate of having to think up something quick when the waitron says Were out of that. - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3002. Board Game: APBA Pro Baseball [Average Rating:6.99 Overall Rank:5092] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - REPLACEMENT-LEVEL A word that is probably obscure to anybody who isnt a baseball fan, and even to some who are fans - but Ive seen it used in non-baseball contexts including today, so its worth a check. Plus, theres a second totally unrelated meaning to it, an older one. The baseball first. There is an advanced statistical concept called value over replacement player (VORP) which basically quantifies how much a hitter or pitcher brings to a team by comparing his value (basically, as expressed in runs created or prevented) to an average high-minor-league person that could be brought in as a substitute.
In other words, compared to the level of offensive (or pitching) performance a readily available replacement player would bring to the team. The higher the VORP, the better. If VORP is negative, hell cut the player and go with the replacement. (Ill spare you the math on calculating VORP.) So, a replacement-level player is sort of just an average, unremarkable player. And as a modifier, replacement-level in a NON-baseball context means much the same - average, typical, not a star, serviceable but not breaking any records. Baseball writer Keith Woolner published his VORP concept in 2001 which included replacement-level in it. The non-baseball usage isnt common; I think political writers like it. But as I said, I have seen/heard it used a bit, including in an article today, so its out there. Now, the OED does have a DIFFERENT replacement level; that being the level needed to assure replacement, usually of a population. As in, the replacement level (so births and deaths match over a period of time) of births per woman (i.e., to keep a population stable, not including immigration or emigration) is 2.11. Both of the above of course based on the noun replacement, which can mean the act of replacing (1740s), or a thing that takes over for another thing (or person).
As in, When I transferred, my replacement wasnt able to start working for a couple of months, so they had a gap in my position. Fun Fact: Zucchini is for me a replacement-level vegetable. Ill eat it, its fine, but there are plenty of other vegetables I prefer. - - Edited Wed Jun 2, 2021 8:49 pmPosted Wed Jun 2, 2021 8:46 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3003. Board Game: Fix the Fence [Average Rating:5.20 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - REFURBISH Refurbish is, lets be honest, an innately silly word full of silly sounds. Im sorry but urb is a silly syllable. And the -ish on the end, oh my. But this reader suggestion is interesting nevertheless. To refurbish is a pretty simple verb. It means to renovate something, to make something bright or clean or functional once more, to restore to original condition or even better.
And the like. You can sometimes buy refurbished items; my iPad was refurbished, i.e. returned by the previous owner, fixed up, and sold to me for a lot less than a new one wouldve cost. Though English speakers have naturally been refurbishing things since forever, the word refurbish is first attested in 1611. Before, there was the verb to furbish which meant (then and now) to renovate or to recondition something, as well as to polish or brighten something. It had another sense of removing rust from a weapon, which does of course brighten it. Why refurbish when you could just furbish? Sometimes the answer is I dont know! They serve basically the same function, though today refurbish is used something like ten times more often in English-language books than furbish (and probably even more in spoken form, Id bet). Maybe words like renovate, renew, repair, and restore - all older than 1611 by at least a century - influenced the use of furbish and steered it to becoming refurbish. Anyway, furbish, a late 14th century word, came from a form of the Old French verb forbir, to polish or to repair. That was of Germanic origin, from Proto-Germanic *furbjan, to make something look better. Old English also had a word before furbish descended from that root, feormian as in to clean or polish.
Fun Fact: Frobisher, as in the explorer Martin Frobisher who sought the Northwest Passage, and an 18th century family of Canadian fur traders, means one who burnishes; yep, its related. - - Edited Thu Jun 3, 2021 8:20 pmPosted Thu Jun 3, 2021 8:16 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3004. Board Game: The Entente Cordiale Card Game [Average Rating:4.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - CORDIAL Cordial - a nice word. But with a strange history. It serves as an adjective and a noun, though the noun usages are less common in North America I think. In modern senses, cordial means warm, sincere, affectionate, friendly, genial. As in, I was nervous about meeting my partners parents but they gave me a cordial welcome to the family. Thats nice! It can also mean sincere, polite, formally pleasant. As a noun, its uses seem pretty different.
Cordial can mean a certain type of sweet liqueur. Outside of North America it can be a soft drink that is concentrated; you add water to it before drinking. Like Ribena, a British drink. Also called (generically) squash. Or cordial can be the word for a piece of candy (usually chocolate) filled with a liquid, sometimes boozy. The friendly/sincere cordial and the drink or candy cordials dont seem terribly related. They are, though. You see, cordial is also a word that can mean anything that revives or cheers (A most cordial wine!), or a medicine that tastes good. Those senses are rare today, but they get us to cordials origins. Back in the day when the germ theory of medicine was unknown and medical quackery* was even more rampant than today, people prepared cures for ailments using all sorts of things that we know today (and even knew THEN) were poisons. Gold and arsenic, for example. And antimony - its absolutely poisonous, itll make you crap and puke and drool and everybody knows a good purge, copious slobber, and gallons of dark black stool mean you are getting rid of the bad humors that caused your disease, hooray! (If it doesnt kill you, that is; there is evidence that before modern medicine, you were very often better off NOT having a physicians care.
) A very early use (early as in its in Chaucers late 14th-century Canterbury Tales) for cordial as a noun was just something you could ingest - medicine, food, drink - that invigorates the heart. But to make these more palatable (and thus, sell better!), their makers tried to sweeten them, make them tastier. The line is clear - the medicine sense of cordial leads to the concentrated sweet syrupy drink by 1610s. Early on (15th century) cordial also had the apparently unrelated sincere, warm, welcoming senses as a modifier. The common thread there is heart. Cordials first use meant of or belonging to the heart - a usage obsolete now, replaced by cardiac long ago. That was from Medieval Latin cordialis (same sense) and Latin cor (heart), which were from the Proto-Indo-European root, *kerd-, as in heart. Heart-related words being used in different ways to express warm and friendly emotions, cordial came to that adjective sense. Which meant that an alchemist or a physician being very nice in giving you a sweet concoction meant to help your ticker could cordially offer a cordial cordial for your cordial care. Fun Fact: I cordially despise cordial candies. * Im being slightly unfair since many of these people didnt know these medicines and treatments would do more harm than good, but on the other hand, WTF were they thinking? - - Edited Fri Jun 4, 2021 8:53 pmPosted Fri Jun 4, 2021 8:50 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading.
.. | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3005. Board Game: Mare Nostrum [Average Rating:7.31 Unranked] [Average Rating:7.31 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - NOSTRUM Coming across the word nostrum, I thought also of the Latin phrase Mare Nostrum, or Our Sea, a reference to what the Romans called the Mediterranean Sea, and Italian nationalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries also regarded as something that should be theirs. But in English, nostrum is some substance (its composition is usually a secret) that some use as a medicine despite its efficacy - or even SAFETY - being unproven. In other words, the kind of thing a quack would sell you. Or that you can buy in the grocery as supplements. The word also has play in non-medical means, especially in politics, where a nostrum is a policy or plan or theory that some advocate as being a cure for many things, but doesnt work that well really.
For the Republican Party in the US, cut taxes and everybody wins, cutting taxes is the solution to all problems!! has been their go-to nostrum for forty years. Why nostrum? Its been in English since a bit before 1600, and Latins the source. Probably the phrase, nostrum remedium, or our secret (a patent medicine) - as in, Our secret remedy will cure cancer, make your teeth whiter, and give you confidence in the sack, which sounds classier in Latin. The non-medical extended use is recorded by the 1740s. Fun Fact: Did you hear about the oracles secret medicine for the schnozz? Nostradamus Nostril Nostrum is all that. edit: typo edit: I already did snake oil and quack as Words of the Day... - - Edited Sun Jun 6, 2021 7:05 pmPosted Sun Jun 6, 2021 12:46 amSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3006. Board Game: Butter [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - BUTTER For some reason, we were talking about butter and I came to the realization that the Spanish word for butter (manteca) in no way resembles the French word (beurre). It was enough to make me tackle butter as the Word - though Ive already done bread-and-butter and butterfly. So, butter. A noun, meaning that creamy food you get by churning cows milk - soft, yellowish-white, tasty, not good for you in large quantities, that butter. Deriving from (spoiler alert) that original meaning of butter, it has come to mean any creamy spreadable substance even if not made of cows milk, like peanut butter or cocoa butter; even things that arent ingested but are spread on the skin, like tanning butter. Its also used to describe something that has butter as a major component or ingredient, like butter chicken. Or as slang for ejaculate. (Completely unrelated apart from looking and sounding identical is butter as in one who butts, like a ram or a buffalo, from to butt obviously.) Butter is a very old food and a very old word, found in Old English (buteran) before the 12th century. This was from West Germanic sources that had borrowed it from Latin butyrum, in turn taking the Greek word βοÏÏ„á¿¡Ïον (boútÅ«ron), a compound meaning literally cow cheese.
So a bit of an oddity in being a word that made its way from Latin to English via Germanic routes. The verb to butter is first attested in the 1470s, and initially meant to smear butter on something (He buttered the toast left-handed) or to serve something or cook something with butter. It also had a period where to butter meant to cheat at dice. But by the start of the 1700s, to butter had come to mean to praise or talk up somebody with some sort of ulterior motive in mind. Now usually followed by up, as in No matter how much I buttered up the boss and praised his fashion sense, he wouldnt let me go on the trip to Greece for the conference. Butter to mean flattery predates this verb. Anyway, fans of winter sports apparently use butter to mean to shift your weight so that only the tip or tail of your skis or snowboard are in contact with the snow. Oh and fans of international trade and agriculture policy will recall butter mountain - not a Neil Young song, but the huge surplus of butter created in Europe due to subsidized production starting in the 1970s. That mountain has apparently melted away now, though. Fun Fact: Recipes from King Arthur Flour are butter-heavy; we assume they are in the pay of Big Butter.
- - Edited Sun Jun 6, 2021 7:39 pmPosted Sun Jun 6, 2021 7:37 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3007. Board Game: Jungle [Average Rating:6.16 Overall Rank:14674] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - JUNGLE Some words English borrows can change a fair bit in the process. Like jungle, a reader suggestion. In English, where its been seen since the 1770s, its primary meaning is a dense, tropical forest with lush vegetation, or a dense thicket. But its interesting that the South Asian languages jungle is borrowed from (Hindi जंगल or Urdu جنگل, both pronounced jaá¹…gal) got their word from Sanskrit जङà¥à¤—ल (jaá¹…gala), which meant arid or desert - the opposite of what we think of jungly. But Hindu and Urdu gave jungle more meanings than that, like forest, wasteland (i.
e., unused by humans), or uncultivated land, too, especially used of swampy lands at the foothills of the Himalayas. But in English, its mostly the thick forest sense. But jungle has gained more uses in English. Any jumbled or confused or complicated assortment that confuses and confounds can be a jungle, metaphorically - US tax law is a jungle. Or a setting where competition is cut-throat or people struggle to survive is a jungle; Be careful, its a jungle out there, or How to succeed in the corporate jungle. Asphalt jungle and concrete jungle both refer to urban areas with lots of buildings and pavement and little greenery, which makes them seem unforgiving or unpleasant. Other jungle uses include meaning a hobo (homeless) or migrant camp (to jungle was a verb meaning to prepare a meal at such a camp), or a rough on a golf course, a type of electronic dance music, or apparently slang in Texas and Israel for the desert. Back to the Sanskrit I guess. Fun Fact: The Jungle was a famous 1906 novel by Upton Sinclair exposing the horrific working conditions in the American meatpacking industry. - - Posted Mon Jun 7, 2021 9:48 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.
config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3008. Board Game: Junk [Average Rating:6.49 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - JUNK and JANKY It was a usage of janky that put this in mind - but you cant have janky without junk so lets start there. The essence of junk as a word is to mean trash, discarded material, things no longer wanted nor useful - you know, the sort of things you might buy at a garage sale, somebody elses junk. Junk is generally worthless (it might have scrap value, but I digress) and so other worthless even if not worn-out things are termed junk, like a shoddily made or worthless thing, even reading material (Sexy Picard-and-Kirk fan fiction? Why do you read that junk?). Or stuff that arrives in the mail unsolicited that isnt important or wanted, like advertisements (junk mail, used by 1921). Or something obtained that you dont want, like junk fish (fish with no market caught by commercial fishing operations in the process of seeking some other fish; typically discarded).
There is some value judgment involved here. In slang, junk can be used to mean a mans genitalia (Youd cry too if you were hit in the junk by a soccer ball). Or narcotics - heroin. And simply, nonsense - Her explanation was junk. To junk means to throw away or discard or scrap something; I literally junked the first four (cheap used) cars I owned, ran em into the ground and sold em for scrap. There is another junk in English, meaning a Chinese sailing vessel; not related to our other junks, that came to us in the 1610s via Portuguese junco from a Malay word for a sailing vessel, jong. The junkyard dog junk word has been in English since the 1300s, and at first used to mean old cable or rope, a nautical term. That might be from junc which meant rush or reed in Old French, but theres no evidence for that. Its a mystery. For a long time, the bits of old rope sense (now obsolete) was junks sole meaning; the discarded, perhaps reusable (as indeed bits of old rope may be) concept for junk isnt attested until the 1830s. The broader meaning of something thats worthless (My mom threw out all my baseball junk) or nonsense is from the early 20th century. We began to call food that was nutritionally dubious junk (or junk food) by the 1940s.
Anyway - janky, a modifier, means of poor quality or suspicious or dubious, and originated in Black American slang (oldest OED attestation is from the 1989 Eddie Murphy movie, Harlem Nights), a modification of junky which means worthless or trashy, which formed from the noun junk by 1880. Fun Fact: Junk bond (1974) is a financial security that promises high returns, but of course comes with high risks. Be careful of them. - - Edited Wed Jun 9, 2021 1:52 amPosted Wed Jun 9, 2021 1:51 amSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3009. Board Game: The Reward of Merit [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - MERIT and MERITOCRACY Cant have meritocracy without merit, now can you? At least linguistically you cant. The roots of the word merit in English are theological, and its still used in that way, though not commonly.
That is to mean being seen as worthy of reward from God, and secondarily merit as in the good deeds one could do that would allow you to earn such benefits. Reward and credit, basically, and a concept not limited to one religion. Merit was borrowed into English around 1200 from Old French merite, which meant both pay and wages, and moral worth, and from Latin meritum, as in a benefit or favor or worth. The more modern meanings of merit (around even by the 1400s) are in principle more secular. It can be a praiseworthy or admirable quality, or honorable or estimable character, or something that has worthwhile qualities; excellence. A thing worthy of praise is a merit. In law, merits (usually plural) refers to the inherent rights or wrongs of a case, the essential facts. The verb to merit is a bit newer (16th century, from French meriter which meant to deserve reward. To merit is to deserve or earn something (Her performance merits promotion), or to be worthy. Then in the 1950s was coined the word meritocracy, which on its face means rule by merit and talent, as opposed to by those who attain their positions by social status, inherent wealth, being noble, and whatnot. It sounds good until you begin to think about it.
How do you determine who merits something? Well to be fair I suppose we should maybe test young people and those who look like they would be smart and capable would get extra training, maybe be put into a channel to further educate them. The others? Oh well have to think of something for them. And well have smart and educated people design these tests and the system of promotion that will naturally be free of any unseemly biases based on, well you know, and well if it just happens to be that the children of todays meritocrats and the offspring of the wealthy and the scions of societys upper crust are those who by some bizarre series of coincidences do well on these various formal and informal, even unwritten, tests and end up at Oxford and Yale and 10 Downing Street and running big businesses and whatnot, well its purely meritocracy and well too bad that those kids from rural Missouri or Cornwall or the poor neighborhoods in Boston or Glasgow didnt, you know, attend elite prep schools and have summer study programs in Italy and get private tutoring, they must not have really wanted the success that weve earned since they wasted the family income on, you know, food. Oh wait, where was I? Oh yes, meritocracy.
The term was actually coined by Michael Young in a 1958 satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, a warning about new forms of discrimination arising. Fun Fact: A demerit is a mark against you (right Wendell, thats one demerit for talking in class again), though its original meaning was closer to that of sin. - - Edited Wed Jun 9, 2021 8:19 pmPosted Wed Jun 9, 2021 8:14 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3010. Board Game: Trickery [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - LEGERDEMAIN No trickery here, legerdemain is the Word and you can take that to the bank. (Legal note: the Word of the Day is not a negotiable financial instrument.) The root meaning of legerdemain in English (from 1450) is simply sleight of hand; adeptness at doing hand fools the eye magic tricks like pulling coins out of a babys ear and the like.
Legerdemain is the act of conjuring/doing this sort of Doug Henning magic, AND can be the term for an instance of such, for a given trick. Anyway, a skilled magician is successfully deceiving their audiences eyes. And legerdemain by the sixteenth century is shown being used to mean trickery, deception, or skill at trickery and deception. Less often though at least one source notes this, it can be used somewhat admiringly to mean a display of skill; but more often the connotation of calling something legerdemain is to imply its a con, its underhanded, and it is done for the benefit of the person doing the legerdemain. Like in one scathing 2021 usage of legerdemain in which a legal writer says of US Chief Justice John Roberts, He practices intentions-and-expectations originalism while randomly sprinkling some public-meaning originalism fairy dust over his description of his enterprise, perhaps in the subconscious hope that no one will notice the legerdemain. Anyway, if you read French you can probably suss out legerdemains origins - it is just the French phrase (as of the fifteenth century) léger de main, which means literally light (light as in quick) of hand. (Main, from Latin manus, is hand; léger was from the Latin for light (as in weight, not as in the emanations from the sun), levis.
) Oh and a note on sleight; that was a fifteenth century import from some Scandinavian source meaning cunning and deception, and also skill or cleverness. Thats nigh on obsolete now except in the phrase sleight of hand, meaning the sort of dexterity a magician has in doing their tricks, and also by extension any sort of deception. Fun Fact: Just because a con man cant pronounce legerdemain doesnt mean he cant practice it; low cunning can still do damage. - - Posted Thu Jun 10, 2021 8:49 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3011. Board Game: Equity [Average Rating:7.41 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - EQUITY Sometimes equity aint equitable. It can be akin to inequity, in fact. No, this isnt a flammable/inflammable thingamajig. Lets look at it. Equity is a noun. There is a legal technical meaning of it, which is a bit specialized and too complicated to go into great detail about here.
Finance uses equity quite a bit. One sense is just to mean stock of a corporation, and related an ownership right in something (as a share of stock is in a business), or a right or claim to something. We talk about equity in houses; that is the difference between the value of a house and the amount owed on it (to simplify). If your place is worth $235,000 and you owe $188,000, the equity is $47,000. And that concept applies more broadly to any property - equity is (to grossly simplify) value minus whats owed on it. Its that sense that gives us private equity, meaning simply equity in some business thats not raised through the public sale of stocks, but by raising cash from private (i.e., not listed on the stock exchange) sources. And the more you read about private equity funds going in and buying out businesses, carving out the valuable bits (like its real estate), bleeding it dry by firing employees and cutting costs that arent wasteful but are, you know, essential to operating said business, then finally declaring bankruptcy and shutting down the withered husk of the former business while it skips away with the very nice profits (oh and did I mention they kept the real estate separate and for themselves?), the more difficult it is to remember equitys original meaning, which still exists.
That meaning is fairness or justice, or the state of being fair, or something that is just. Now, one can argue the private equity investors are happy, but the people who worked for Toys R Us or the employees and patients of the Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia (just to name two examples) might disagree on whether the results of those plunderings were really equitable for all involved. (One imagines the investors would answer, yes, its totes fair; I made bank.) The word equity was via Old French equite brought into English in the fourteenth century. Latin aequus (just, equal) the ultimate source. Private equity-type financial firms have been around since the 1950s; recorded usages of the phrase private equity though were essentially zero before taking off rapidly starting around 1999. Fun Fact: Mamas dont let your sons grow up to be private equity bros. - - Edited Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:33 pmPosted Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:32 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.
error.message}} - 3012. Board Game: Fuzzy Tiger [Average Rating:6.12 Overall Rank:13265] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - FUZZ and FUZZY If you like words with clear etymologies and distinct meanings, then fuzz is NOT your word. But it IS the Word, so lets not obfuzzcate* further. Ill start with fuzz because thats what Id been thinking of first. Noun and verb. The noun means a mass of fine hairs or fibers. Like the downy substance on a peach, or the first signs of a beard on an adolescent boy, or those white dandelion seeds (well technically the seeds arent fuzz, but fuzz is keeping them aloft) floating through the air. Fuzz looks indistinct; the jump to use fuzz to mean a blurred image, distorted guitar sounds, or a state of confusion isnt hard to imagine. Oh and one other significant slang usage - fuzz (the fuzz usually) to mean police. Who called the fuzz? To fuzz means to make blurred. Or to make fuzzy, so we should have a gander at that form. Fuzzy, adjective; it can mean covered with fuzz (kids love fuzzy toys). It can also mean imprecise, blurred, not clear - memories can be fuzzy.
So can pictures. Or reasoning. There is fuzzy logic which, let me be clear, Im not going to further discuss. Fuzzy, also a noun, can mean a bit of fuzz (Im covered with fuzzies after playing with the cats), or just a thing that is fuzzy. A private (lowest rank) in the military might be called a fuzzy. So, disparagingly to me it seems, might a person in college studying what wed call the liberal arts (history, English, etc), as opposed to math or engineering. Warm fuzzies (usually plural) is seen in print by 1978, meaning pleasant or comforting feelings. Whered all this fuzz come from? Well, its fuzzy. Fuzz, seen in the 1590s as fusball, a puffy ball of tiny spores, is probably a back-formation from fuzzy, but thats not certain at all. If thats true, fuzzy maybe is from some Germanic language; fussig in Low German is weak or spongy; voos in Dutch is spongy. The slang reference to police fuzz was attested by 1929; its a bit dated now and in any case, no idea where that usage came from. Fun Fact: Fuzz on my suits is annoying. * I just made that up, but apparently if sources on slang are to be trusted obfuzzcate (obfuscate with fuzz spliced in there) has been used before to mean to cause it to be hard to read a fax because of poor print quality.
For the youngs out there, a fax is like an email but printed on paper not viewed on a screen. And an email is like a text but not on a phone. - - Edited Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:08 pmPosted Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:06 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3013. Board Game: Alarm [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - ALARM When living in Mongolia in 1997, I needed a new alarm clock. The stores in Ulaanbaatar then not having much in the way of consumer products, my wife on a business trip to Beijing went to a government department store (Beijing in 1997 wasnt like Beijing of today) and bought me a little battery-operated alarm clock for something like $1. Good enough, thatll get the job done. Well fast forward to 2021 and alas, that little clock has just ceased to keep time (the actual alarm function had stopped working two or three years ago; silent alarm clocks are basically just clocks).
New batteries wont prompt the second hand to budge; the minute and hour hands are similarly refusing to move, stuck at 1:37. Ive been keeping a deathwatch on it for 24 hours now, and I am forced to conclude that my little cheapo Chinese alarm clock has kicked the bucket. This Word is in its honor. Alarm began its life in English c. 1400 as an interjective. If there was danger, you would cry Alarm! and probably run through the streets banging a bell or pots and pans or whatever you had at hand as a noisemaker. Via Old French, that was from an Italian phrase alle arme, meaning to arms. In English thats obsolete now, you dont yell alarm! any more. But you DO shout an alarm, an alarm being a warning or a notice of danger. Like shouting fire to alert people to get out of a burning building. Times of danger are scary; alarm can also mean distress or fear or apprehension about an impending air attack, tsunami, tornado, alien invasion, or whatever sort of danger. This state of alarm usage is a bit rare now. By the end of the sixteenth century a device (tocsins, beacons, sirens, bonfires, whatever) that helped alert people to a danger also came to be called an alarm. Since alarms are meant to arouse people into action, a softer sense of an alarm device emerged, something merely intended to wake up a sleeping person - alarm clock was in use in the 1660s.
The verb to alarm came around by the 1580s, from the English noun and/or from French alarmer. It first meant to call to arms for defense, and also came to mean to alert or to warn. But it also means to frighten or disturb (She was alarmed to see the police gathering outside her house), or to equip with a device to give notice of something like a breaking-and-entry (They cant get in here without us knowing, the whole building is alarmed). Fun Fact: RIP little alarm clock. - - Edited Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:35 pmPosted Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:33 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3014. Board Game: Spine Chilling Games [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - SPINE Youve got a spine, and so do I. So does a professionally printed book, so does an anteater (multiples), so does a tree, so does a cactus, so does a lungfish, so does a wombat.
I dont know whether Data has one, but Brent Spiner does. All of the above have spines, though the spines may differ significantly. My first thought for spine is to mean the backbone, that collection of bones on the center-back of our body. The spine is important. Not all spines are that kind of spine, though the heartwood of a tree - the central bit - is also a spine. The word can mean something akin to a thorn or a prickle (whether a plant has a thorn, prickle, or spine is a scientific definition; they all hurt), or the protective quills of an anteater or hedgehog. I.e., something that is pointed and rigid and sticks out and might hurt. By analogy with the backbone, the bound edge of a book - where the pages come together - is also called a spine since around 1920. Spine is also a measure of how stiff an arrow is (in archery, I should add). Backbone has been used figuratively to mean courage or gumption since at least the 1840s. Spine is used in a similar way, though not quite sure when that began. Spineless meaning lacking courage or cowardly is attested by 1885, so presumably the courageous idea of having spine is from before then. Though there are a couple of fifteenth century citations for spine, it seems to have become more commonly used in the seventeenth.
It came from Old French espine (thorn, prickle; backbone) and Latin spina (backbone, thorn). The Latin derived from a Proto-Indo-European root *spei-, meaning a sharp point. Fun Fact: If we humans didnt insist on walking upright all the time, wed have fewer problems with our spine. Knuckle-draggers maybe have better back health? - - Edited Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:15 pmPosted Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:13 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3015. Board Game: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - PETER Another word with anatomical implications though thats not the main thing that makes me want to look at peter (or Peter) as the word. But lets get the slang meaning out there first: peter is a somewhat vulgar word for the penis. By my count, there are approximately 42,045 names for that part of the body, and peter is one of them.
Anyway, this slang word is around by 1902 and is presumably just because of sharing the same initial sound. Also, no shortage of nicknames for this body part that are based on a male name. There is more to Peter or peter than that. The obvious one of course is Peter as a given name, usually for a boy or man. This Peter has been in use in English since the 1100s. Earlier in Old English it was Petrus, which is just the Latin word, which took it from Ancient Greek Î ÎÏ„Ïος (Pétros) and Ï€ÎÏ„Ïος (pétros), meaning a stone or rock. That based on a nickname Jesus gave to a disciple now known as St. Peter as being the rock. There are a few uses of Peter not meaning a name. Like peter, short for blue peter which is a nautical flag (and an iconic British childrens TV show). Why its called that isnt at all clear, though - well the blue part makes sense, it being blue and all. Its used since the 1850s to mean P but that usage comes AFTER the term blue peter, which predates it by a hundred years. Peter (and peterman) is apparently British criminal slang for a safe or strongbox, Australian 19th century slang for a jail cell, and rarely some English cabdrivers still use it to mean a piece of baggage.
And then there is the verb to peter out. That means to slowly diminish then come to an end, After the applause finally petered out, the diva began her next number. This word is seen in print in the US in the 1840s originally in mining contexts; a vein that was exhausted petered (or petered out, the more common usage now). Why? Who needs a reason why? Though the OED suggests perhaps péter, a French word meaning to explode (and to fart) could be involved. Oh and lets not forget the Peter Principle, which says that people are promoted and promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. So called because it was coined by Canadian writer Laurence Peter in a 1970 book of that title. Fun Fact: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, until the peppers petered out and Peter Piper switched to picking pamplemousse. - - Edited Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:28 pmPosted Tue Jun 15, 2021 8:26 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3016. Board Game: Despotic [Average Rating:0.
00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - DESPOT Today the current US president had his first meeting as president with the guy in charge in Russia. The Russian leaders official title is president. In fact, he is a despot, though nobody tends to claim that as a formal title. In fact, Im sure Putin would decry me applying this term to him and would say the multiple cases of death-by-radiation poison and defenestration and whatnot were purely coincidences of the most unfortunate sort, and would say the locking up (unofficially for the crime of refusing to die in an assassination attempt) of his most popular rival was merely him doing his constitutional duty to the people of Russia who most freely oh yes have conferred such power upon humble Vladimirs head. But fuck that, hes a despot. What do we mean by that, as a word? It has a historical background of course; it was a reference to the title senior ruling family members (like the emperor) in the Byzantine Empire used, a title also used by others who ruled independent or semi-independent realms in the Balkans.
That was based on the Ancient Greek δεσπότης (despótÄ“s) (lord, master), from a Proto-Indo-European phrase *déms pótis (“master of the houseâ€). But it made its way to English in the 1560s from Italian dispotto and/or Middle French despote, both of course derived via Latin forms from the Greek. Though there are one or two earlier references, this word in its modern English meaning - tyrannical ruler, a ruler with absolute power, an oppressive leader of a country - doesnt really emerge until around 1780. Though usually applied to people like Putin, Hitler, etc (i.e. political rulers), despot can be used to mean any absolute or oppressive boss; a CEO can be a despot, as can be the president of your local book club. Fun Fact: Unfortunately many despots receive a better end than they deserve. - - Edited Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:15 pmPosted Wed Jun 16, 2021 8:13 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3017.
Board Game: Apparatus [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - APPARATUS An apparatus is basically just a thing. Well, thats not quite complete. Apparatus, a noun, is used to mean something or some things that together perform some function; instruments, machinery. The doodads the eye doctor uses to check your vision are an apparatus. But so is the structure of government (as an organization), or the bits of your anatomy that work together on a task like the digestive apparatus (stomach, intestines, etc). Though I tend to think of apparatus more as a piece of equipment. Or a tool, or tools. All apparatus perform some function. Some specific things are labelled apparatus, like the stuff firefighters use in doing their jobs. Or the equipment gymnasts use to do their gymnastics. For often as apparat, the term was also applied in a specific way to mean the administrative workings of the Soviet Unions Communist Party, which also gave rise to the Russian word аппараÌтчик (apparátÄik), which we borrowed c.
1950 as apparatchik, meaning a Communist agent or bureaucrat, with the added suggestion that they are loyal perhaps to a fault. In English at least, its not usually a compliment to call somebody an apparatchik. Anyway apparatus was a Latin word borrowed and appearing in print in English in the 1620s. The Latin meant tools or equipment, derived from a verb apparare meaning to prepare. Early in in English apparatus also meant the work of preparing (closer to preparation then), but that sense is obsolete. Fun Fact: Keep your apparatus clean if you dont want to void the warranty. edit: italics, typo - - Edited Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:40 amPosted Thu Jun 17, 2021 8:36 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3018. Board Game: Spring Chicken [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - CHICKEN This morning I saw references to chicken in sources as disparate as a newspaper comic strip and in a book about Homer*.
When presented with such omens and auguries, only an old coward would shy away from selecting chicken as the Word. Chicken is the word in English for a domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus - and for the meat of such a bird (no cow/beef, pig/pork, or sheep/mutton disparity here). The bird originated in Southeast Asia but had made it to Greece by 500 BCE; the Romans brought chickens to Britain in 55 BCE maybe, or maybe it was Iron Age tribes who brought them. In any case, by the time there was a language we can call (Old) English, these yardbirds were there and were called cicen (technically, the young of a domestic hen, later more general), from a Proto-Germanic root *kiukinam which derived from *keuk-, as in the cackling sound a chicken makes. Early on chicken also designated the young of any bird, but thats obsolete; other birds that resemble the domestic one are sometimes called chicken. Still other uses for chicken have proliferated. People have been called chickens for a long time, but what was meant by that has changed. Since the sixteenth century its been a term of endearment; it had a period where it meant a fool; with a Shakespeare mention as the oldest cite, it means a coward (Dont be a chicken! Jump!).
There have been NSFW senses too; chicken in US slang (starting 1780s) once meant a prostitute or a promiscuous woman, or a sexually desirable woman. Later it also was used to mean a young homosexual man, especially used of a male prostitute. Unrelated (?) US Navy slang used chicken to mean a ships boy; also, rarely a chicken as a new recruit into the military. As an adjective (discounting the culinary uses), chicken means cowardly, American slang from the 1880s. Then a game of chicken (or just chicken) is one where the first person to back down from a dangerous situation - like DRIVING YOUR CAR AT HIGH SPEED DIRECTLY AT ANOTHER ONCOMING CAR - is the loser, a sense first attested in the 1940, specifically about the suicidal car dare. It can be used in non-vehicular contexts; the periodic vote whether to raise the US debt ceiling is a kind of a game of chicken because failing to do so would be colossally damaging. Then there is to chicken, usually to chicken out, as in to lose ones nerve, to not do something because of fear. Yeah, I chickened out and didnt demand a raise at work; this is twentieth century US slang. There are MANY phrases involving the word chicken, not only ones about food.
Like spring chicken, meaning a small chicken (tender for eating) and more broadly in US slang a young person, found almost exclusively in the negative, as in Rita Moreno is no spring chicken but shes still working, i.e. she is no longer young. And let us not forget chickenshit, 20th century US military slang originally, adjective and noun meaning trivial, meaningless, worthless, and also cowardly or afraid, or petty (The hardest thing about prison will be chickenshit rules enforced by chickenshit people, from Orange Is the New Black). Fun Fact: Greeks called this new (as of 500 BCE) bird a Persian fowl. * the Greek poet or more properly, the convenient catch-all term for all the poets Homer represents, not Homer Simpson - - Posted Fri Jun 18, 2021 6:20 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} - 3019. Board Game: Auto Repair: A Game of Expenses [Average Rating:0.00 Unranked] - - WendellUnited States Yellow Springs OhioSi non potes reperire Berolini in tabula, ludens essetis non WIF.
Hey, get your stinking cursor off my face! I got nukes, you know. - EXPENSIVE Getting shot is very expensive. I wish that were just an example sentence I had made up, but it is not. It is a direct quote from a woman who survived the Oregon District shooting in Dayton in 2019; she was referring to the $60,000 in medical bills for treatment for being shot by an AR-15 that night that she still faced, bills she cannot begin to cover based on her earnings as a waitress. Expensive, indeed. Expensive, an adjective, means having a high cost. Can be financial, as in Getting shot is very expensive. Can be used in other non-financial ways too, as in The refusal to consider meaningful gun control is increasingly expensive in lost and ruined lives. The word can also just mean high-priced, as in Marco always chooses the most expensive item on the menu and then insists on dividing the bill evenly. Expensives earliest attestation is from the 1620s, and initially it meant given to excessive spending. Thats obsolete now, you could use profligate instead if you want to describe your adult childs spending habits. It comes via intermediate Latin forms from the same Latin root that the verb to expend (to pay out, in English from the fifteenth century) derives from; expendere meaning to pay out.
Or literally, to weigh money - the Romans werent writing checks or paying with bank notes, and they certainly werent using Venmo. Fun Fact: Expensive is relative; Zuckerberg probably spends $60,000 on sushi a year. - - Posted Sat Jun 19, 2021 7:29 pmSubscribeComment Die Rolls - [+] Dice rolls Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} [1] Prev « 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 | Loading... | Locked Hide Show Unlock Lock Comment » {{data.config.endpage}} {{error.message}} - - - [ShowHide] Thank you for helping us moderate the site. [Community Rules]EditedPostedReplyQuoteEditDelete {{comment.error.message}} [1] Prev « 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 |
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