Word of the day.

[velvet paws]

Yes that reminds me...I must find my copy of The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy and finish reading it because I found it very interesting. I think they had just left the planet, inhabited by the people who build planets...or they'd been to the...wait no :eek: I think I did ACTUALLY finish reading it, the more I think about it the more I remember coming after that part....
Dammit! I must find that book and completely re-read it :D

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=tomato]It's another[/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=blue] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=seagreen] [I]SESQUIPEDALIAN [/I]
Relating to a long word; characterised by using long words.

We owe this word to the Roman writer Horace, who wrote in his Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry): "Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba" ("He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long"). It comes from Latin sesqui-, one and a half, plus ped, a foot. It was borrowed into English in the seventeenth century and has become a favourite of those writers who like self-referential terms, or are addicted to polysyllabic humour.
It appears, somewhat disguised, in The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells: "Words attracted [Mr Polly] curiously, words rich in suggestion, and he loved a novel and striking phrase. His school training had given him little or no mastery of the mysterious pronunciation of English, and no confidence in himself... He avoided every recognized phrase in the language, and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance but whim. 'Sesquippledan,' he would say. 'Sesquippledan verboojuice.'"

Somebody who uses long words is a sesquipedalianist, and this style of writing is sesquipedalianism. The noun sesquipedality means 'lengthiness'. If such words are not enough, there's always hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist for someone who enjoys using really long words. [/COLOR]

[*GaLxY-GiRl*]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Capt. Stephanos [/i]
[B][COLOR=sea-green][size=3]Somebody who uses long words is a sesquipedalianist.[/size][/COLOR] [/B][/QUOTE]

[color=royal blue]"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"- Mary Poppins:toothy: LoL[/color]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=royalblue]It's another[/COLOR]

[SIZE=4][COLOR=deeppink]WORD OF THE DAY[/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=orange] [I] WAYZGOOSE [/I]

A printers' annual dinner or excursion.

This is an apposite moment at which to feature this obscure word, as it was at first the name for an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen each year on or about St Bartholomew's Day (24 August). This marked the traditional end of summer and the point at which the season of working by candlelight began. Later, the word came to refer to the annual outing and dinner of the staff of a printing works or the printers on a newspaper. Its origin is unknown; all one can say is that the older spelling is waygoose, the 'z' having being added as a result of a mistaken etymology by the eighteenth-century lexicographer Nathaniel Bailey, and that it has nothing to do with geese. In particular, despite the entry in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, it is not a dialect term meaning "stubble-goose", taken to be the crowning dish at the feast (though a goose might well have been served, as it often used to turn up at feasts around this time of year). The term is virtually extinct now, though it's still in The Chambers Dictionary, no doubt in part because it makes a wonderful triple-word score at Scrabble, and it turns up from time to time as a gently whimsical term for some book-related festivity.

[/COLOR]

[Navi]

My word of the day is:

i·con·o·clast (-kn-klst)
n.
One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
One who destroys sacred religious images.

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=blue]It's another[/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=green] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=red] [I]CALLITHUMPIAN [/I]

Relating to a band of discordant instruments or a noisy parade.

Callithumpian is first noted in America in 1836. It's possible it may have its origin in a southern English dialect word gallithumpian; the English Dialect Dictionary says this could refer to a heckler or someone who disturbs order at Parliamentary elections (which were then public events, not secret ballots); this probably derives from gally, "to frighten", which turns up in another dialect word gallicrow for a scarecrow. But it's also been said to be a blend of calliope and thump, which sounds plausible as an evocation of a noisy fairground atmosphere, except that unfortunately calliope, in the sense of the steam-driven musical instrument, is not recorded before 1858. The word survives, though it's now rather regional even in the US, for example in the Callithumpian Parade on 4 July every year in Biwabik, Minnesota, and in the names of the Callithumpian Consort, which performs avant-garde music, and Jack Maheu's Fire In The Pet Shop Callithumpian Jazz Band. It has a second meaning in Australia and New Zealand, referring to some unspecified nonconformist religious sect. This may be derived from the other meaning given in the English Dialect Dictionary of "a group of social reformers". [/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=blue]It's another[/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=royal blue] WORD OF THE DAY [/SIZE] [/COLOR]

[COLOR=red] [I] BEZOAR [/I]
A supposed antidote against poison.

The bezoar is a hard ball of hair or vegetable fibre that occurs in the stomachs of cud-chewing animals such as goats (though humans get them, too). If you feel like categorising them, a trichobezoar is a hairball, while a phytobezoar is one that contains mostly vegetable fibres.
The word is Persian (pad-zahr, counter-poison or antidote) and the bezoar's fame as a cure for poison spread westwards from there in medieval times. You swallowed it, or occasionally rubbed it on the infected part. In A Voyage to Abyssinia, written by Father Lobo in the eighteenth century, he says: "I had recourse to bezoar, a sovereign remedy against these poisons, which I always carried about me". Belief in its near-magical properties was then common.

Old herbals are full of recipes using it, such as this one from Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal of 1653: "Take of Pearls prepared, Crab's eyes, red Coral, white Amber Hart's-horn, oriental Bezoar, of each half an ounce, powder of the black tops of Crab's claws, the weight of them all, beat them into powder, which may be made into balls with jelly, and the skins which our vipers have cast off, warily dried and kept for use". Culpeper remarks that "four, or five, or six grains is excellently good in a fever to be taken in any cordial, for it cheers the heart and vital spirits exceedingly, and makes them impregnable". Don't try this at home!

(It's not quite as bad as it sounds; scrapings of hart's horn were frequently used as a thickener for jellies, and crab's claws was a common British water plant.)


[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=deeppink] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=orange] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=limegreen] [I] KATZENJAMMER [/I]
A hangover; anxiety or jitters; a discordant clamour.

In the sense of a hangover, this word was known in the US from the middle 1840s. It was taken from a well-established German word (it turns up in at least one work by Goethe, for example) which derives from Katzen, cats, plus Jammer, wailing or distress. In German it could also mean the unhappiness or depression that follows intoxication and so developed in American English a more general sense of what one might call a case of the willies.
The word only really caught on when Rudolph Dirks used it as the name of the family he featured in his cartoon strip. This began life in the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in 1897. The Katzenjammer Kids featured Mamma Katzenjammer, her twin sons Hans and Fritz, and The Captain (who suffered so much from the mischief of the two boys). The strip was modelled on an earlier one in Germany, Max und Moritz, drawn by Wilhelm Busch, and the family was obviously ethnic German. Since the kids were not drunk but raucous, Rudolph Dirks seems to have caused the meaning of katzenjammer to extend somewhat.


[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=orange] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=teal] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=indigo] [i] FLIBBERTIGIBBET [/i]
A frivolous, flighty, or excessively talkative person.

This is a fine word to throw out, in the appropriate circumstances, though there's a risk of tripping over all those syllables. That's no doubt why it has had so many spellings. The original seems to have been recorded about 1450 as fleper-gebet, which may have been just an imitation of the sound of meaningless speech (babble and yadda-yadda-yadda have similar origins). It started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman. A century later it had become respectable enough for Bishop Latimer to use it in a sermon before King Edward VI, though he wrote it as flybbergybe. The modern spelling is due to Shakespeare, who borrowed it from one of the 40 fiends listed in a book by Samuel Harsnet in 1603. In King Lear Edgar uses it for a demon or imp: "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. .. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth". There has been yet a third sense, taken from a character of Sir Walter Scott's in Kenilworth, for a mischievous and flighty small child. But despite Shakespeare and Scott, the most usual sense is still the original one.

[/COLOR]

[Tien]

Hal;f of your post count must have come from this topic,lol

[Ryanmc225]

I think the next Word Of The Day should be spifferific That is an awesome word!!!!:laugh:

[DBZM_Brolly]

The word of the day is

RIGHT..........

[coolkam007]

oh oh! i got words! ones i made up ^_^

skut- mix of skank and slut

moobles- squeezing someone and tickling them at the same time

snizzle- snuggling and cuddling at the same time :) (aww..)

.. and i think there was more.. i just forgot.. o-o

[Jamvis]

i got a word! i got lots of words! scheisse! and punta!hehehehe i evil!

[Hinata]

[COLOR=royalblue]What happened to the word of the day..it's October 31st and nothing is here.... I wanna see a new word....okay I'll give you one...
eldritch
Strange; unearthly; weird; eerie.


Eldritch perhaps derives from a Middle English word meaning "fairyland," from Middle English elf, "elf" (from Old English aelf) + riche, "kingdom" (from Old English rice).[/COLOR]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[COLOR=red]I found this at dictionary.com all by myself
:laugh: [/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=orange] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=limegreen] WORD OF THE DAY [/SIZE] [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dark-blue] [i]BORBORYGMUS [/i]
Rumbling in the guts.

This is rare in everyday language, but you will find it in the medical literature, where it turns up mostly in the plural, borborygmi. It's not an unusual medical condition, it being caused by the normal movement of gas and fluid in the intestines. However, excessive noise might indicate that the sufferer has one of those ailments that can upset our delicate and finely-balanced internal economies, for example lactic acid intolerance or irritable bowel syndrome. Outside medical matters, you are most likely to encounter the adjective, borborygmic, which is used figuratively, mainly it would seem in matters related to noisy plumbing. For example, in Ada by Vladimir Nabokov you'll find "All the toilets and waterpipes in the house had been suddenly seized with borborygmic convulsions", and E Fenwick wrote in Long Way Down: "The room was very quiet, except for its borborygmic old radiator". The word is related to the sixteenth-century French borborgyme, but our term comes directly from Latin, which in turn descends from the Greek word borborugmos with the same meaning.

[/COLOR]

[Hinata]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Capt. Stephanos [/i]
[B][COLOR=orange] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=limegreen] WORD OF THE DAY [/SIZE] [/COLOR]

[COLOR=dark-blue] [i]BORBORYGMUS [/i]
Rumbling in the guts.

[/COLOR] [/B][/QUOTE]

[COLOR=royalblue]LOL...that's a good one..but how do you pronouce it.....but what did you think of my word:love: *sighs* it's good isn't it.[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=deeppink] It's another [/COLOR]

[COLOR=blue] [SIZE=4] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=orange] [i]KATZENJAMMER[/i]
A hangover; anxiety or jitters; a discordant clamour.

In the sense of a hangover, this word was known in the US from the middle 1840s. It was taken from a well-established German word (it turns up in at least one work by Goethe, for example) which derives from Katzen, cats, plus Jammer, wailing or distress. In German it could also mean the unhappiness or depression that follows intoxication and so developed in American English a more general sense of what one might call a case of the willies.
The word only really caught on when Rudolph Dirks used it as the name of the family he featured in his cartoon strip. This began life in the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in 1897. The Katzenjammer Kids featured Mamma Katzenjammer, her twin sons Hans and Fritz, and The Captain (who suffered so much from the mischief of the two boys). The strip was modelled on an earlier one in Germany, Max und Moritz, drawn by Wilhelm Busch, and the family was obviously ethnic German. Since the kids were not drunk but raucous, Rudolph Dirks seems to have caused the meaning of katzenjammer to extend somewhat.


[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=seagreen] It's another [/COLOR]

[COLOR=limegreen] [SIZE=4] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=chocolate] [i]TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA[/i]

Fear of the number 13.

The year 1998 has been a bad for triskaidekaphobics. Strictly, the word does refer only to fear of the number 13, but it's often extended to mean fear of the inauspicious date Friday 13th. This year has been one of the comparatively rare ones in which that date has turned up three times. Every year has at least one Friday 13th, but in each of the 28-year cycles of our calendar there are four years that have three of them. The only consolation I can offer to those affected is that there won't be another for 11 years. But then we shall have three in short order: 2009, 2012 and 2015. The word's origins are all Greek, from tris, "three", kai, "and", deka, "ten" (so making thirteen), plus phobia, "fear, flight". The word is a modern formation, dating only from 1911 (it first appeared in I H Coriat's Abnormal Psychology). Though it has a serious use in psychology, it seems to exist mostly to provide an opportunity for people like me to show off weird words from classical languages.

[/COLOR]

[Hinata]

[COLOR=royalblue] Why do you suppose we have some many words that mean the same thing. *scrathes head and thinks for a long time*. I seriously don't know.... I personally feel they should cut it down like they did in 1984...*looks around*:nervous: "be careful big brother is watching us"....*snaps back to reality*..but not to that extreme point.[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=orange] It's another [/COLOR]

[COLOR=limegreen] [SIZE=4] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=teal] [i]GONGOOZLER[/i]

An idle spectator.

This is one of the odder words in the English lexicon and not only because of its strange appearance. It suddenly started to become popular in Britain from about 1970 onwards, but with very little previous recorded history attached to it. It is closely linked with canal life, and even now it seems to be a word especially favoured by those who like to mess about on narrow waterways. It is said to have been a bit of canal workers' slang, originally for a person who stood on the towpath idly watching activity. You might expect that it would date from the heyday of the canals in the early part of the nineteenth century, but it is actually only recorded from the end of that century or the early twentieth. It was given wider public notice by the late L T C Rolt, who used it in his book about canal life, Narrow Boat, in 1944. It is said to derive from a couple of words in Lincolnshire dialect: gawn and gooze, both meaning to stare or gape. However, nobody seems too clear about this.

[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=royal blue] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=orange] WORD OF THE DAY [/COLOR] [/SIZE]

[COLOR=burlywood] [i]HOUGHMAGANDY[/i]

Adulterous sexual intercourse.

It's a rare word these days, but as it has a grand sound - and it is of such universal application - perhaps somebody should begin a campaign to restore it to common usage. One well-known appearance is in Vladimir Nabokov's book Pale Fire: "She would have preferred him to have gone through a bit of wholesome houghmagandy with the wench". We do know the word was originally Scots, as the guttural gh indicates. The first part is the same word as hock, the joint in a four-legged animal that matches the human ankle, sometimes still spelt that way (as in the Scots' hough soup). It can also refer to the hollow part behind the human knee joint (didn't you always want a word for it? Actually it's better known to medicine as the popliteal area) as well as the nearby thigh. The second element of the word is problematic; it could be from canty, a Scots and northern English dialect adjective for someone who is lively or cheerful, or perhaps active or brisk. So, a bit of active thigh work - you can see how the word could have arisen. There seems to be no link with the similar-sounding but obsolete Australian word for a thin and unpalatable stew, hashmagandy, which comes from salmagundi.

[/COLOR]

[Guest Capt. Stephanos]

[COLOR=teal] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=royal blue] WORD OF THE DAY [/SIZE] [/COLOR]

[COLOR=crimson] [i]SNOLLYGOSTER[/i]
A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.

This is another of that set of extroverted and fanciful words that originated in the fast-expanding United States of the nineteenth century (I see a snollygoster as a outsized individual with a carpetbag, flowered waistcoat, expansive demeanour and a large cigar). These days it's hardly heard. Its last burst of public notice came when President Truman used it in 1952, and defined it, either in ignorance or impishness, as "a man born out of wedlock". Many people put him right, some quoting this definition from the Columbus Dispatch of October 1895, with its splendid last phrase in the spirit of the original: "A Georgia editor kindly explains that 'a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy'". But an American dictionary fifty years earlier had defined it simply as a shyster. The origin is unknown, though the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it may be linked to snallygoster, which some suppose to derive from the German schnelle Geister, literally a fast-moving ghost, and which was a mythical monster of vast size - half reptile, half bird - supposedly found in Maryland, and which was invented to terrify ex-slaves out of voting.

[/COLOR]

[Gee-enki Dama]

whooooooooooooooossshhhhh

the words go right over my head :)

[Charles]

[COLOR=teal] It's another [/COLOR]

[SIZE=4] [COLOR=royal blue] WORD OF THE DAY [/SIZE] [/COLOR]

[COLOR=crimson] [i]ximelolagnia - ( ZY-muh-luh-LAG-nee-uh )
The desire to look a women who cross their legs [/i]


The word ximelolagnia is derived from the latin term, "ximelolatinia." Over time, human nature revealed that men were sexually attracted to women. As a result, women deleoped many uselesss terms that they could use to insult perverted men, without suspicion. In 1945, the United States government officially banned the word, ximelolagnia, when scientists found that when pronounced correctly, it is capable of killing dolphins and small rodents. [/COLOR]