Word of the Day Thread - Add yours

[Doreen Peri]

desiderata

pl. of desideratum

noun:   something desired as a necessity


(Let's help expand and develop our vocabularies. Lord knows, I need it! How 'bout you?)

Thanks to Cat for using this word on another board today. I'm going to write a poem by the title. I love the word. It sounds like music!

[abcrystcats]

Hah! Good thing I used it right, anyways! I almost changed the post because I wasn't 100% sure of the definition. I promised myself I would look it up today to make sure, but you saved me the trouble.

Here's my word of the day:

risible -- 1. Able or inclined to laugh 2. of or connected with laughter 3. causing laughter; laughable; funny; amusing; ludricrous.

Latin, risibilis, from ridere -- to laugh

Heard someone reading this word aloud at work yesterday and asking what it meant. I didn't know it, so I looked it up ...

[Doreen Peri]

I love it!

And now.... to use them in a sentence...

Some people may find my desiderata risible.

[panta rhei]

i've always loved the word psithurism - it's so onomatopoeic (i also love the word onomatopoeia... its sound is the one of rhythmic trampoline leaps to me ) don't you think? like the low whispering sound of leaves rustling in the wind (from the greek psythurisma, which means "a whispering").

i also love oneiric (pertaining to or suggesting dreams), coming from the greek word for dream, oneiros.

and then there is pandiculation - the word for the stretching that accompanies yawning (from the latin word pandere meaning "to stretch").

"to guard against oneiric psithursim, one should engage in onomatopoeic pandiculation at least once an hour...."

[knip]

inchoate - adj. just begun and not so fully formed or developed

[Axanderdeath]

sarcastic-

Jim just told me about this word. AT first I thought it was a joke, but I looked it up and it was there. I am still kind of foggy on the meaning of it though...

[Lightning Rod]

Ulalume

This is one of my favorite words
It is from the Poe poem below.
As best as I can determine, it has no meaning.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere -
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir -
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through and alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll -
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole -
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -
Our memories were treacherous and sere, -
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) -
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here) -
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn -
As the star-dials hinted of morn -
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn -
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs -
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies -
To the Lethean peace of the skies -
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes -
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust -
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust -
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust -
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight! -
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright -
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom -
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb -
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume -
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere -
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here! -
That I brought a dread burden down here -
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -
This misty mid region of Weir -
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

--E.A. Poe

[Marksman45]

Some of my favourite words:

Lambent - shining, especially in a playful way

Homunculus - a miniature person created inside a flask in an alchemical experiment. Today people just use it to refer derisively to someone small of stature

Gallimaufry - a hodge-podge or mishmash

Formaheap - a pile of loosely collected objects; or an object of questionable construction, especially constructed out of incongruous parts. This is a word that Beefheart supposedly invented, but I've heard it used as an American Midsouth colloquialism

[mousey1]

Pecksniffian: hypocritical and making a show of having high moral principles.

I have yet to use this word in my daily conversations but I shall pounce should the chance arise.

I'll huff it out.....something like this....

"I've had enough of your Pecksniffian ways! Off with you....
biatch!"

And I also love the word preamble.

preamble: something that precedes, introduces or leads up to something else.

"Preamble me baby!"

"I amble to the preamble of your amiable ways."

[judih]

Remember we spoke of entheogens
and Doreen posted a definition. Well, by chance, today's random link at deoxy.org (yeah - check out the Quotations thread)
was Entheogens!

Entheogen

nov. verb.— Plant sacraments or shamanic inebriants evoking religious ecstasy or vision; commonly used in the archaic world in divination for shamanic healing, and in Holy Communion, for example during the Initiation to the Eleusinian Mysteries or the Vedic Soma sacrifice. Literally: becoming divine within. Hence: Age of Entheogens nov. verb., Entheogenic nov. verb.


1979 Ruck J. Psychedelic Drugs 11: 145. In Greek the word entheos means literally "god (theos) within"... In combination with the Greek root —gen, which denotes the action of "becoming," this word results in the term that we are proposing: entheogen

1980 Wasson The Wondrous Mushroom, xiv. We are now rediscovering the secret and we should treat the "entheogens" with the respect to which they were richly entitled.

1986 Wasson Persephone's Quest, 31. We must break down the "Drugs" of popular parlance according to their properties and overcome our ignorance, which in this field is still monumental. "Entheogen" is a step in that direction.

1993 Ott Pharmacotheon, 19. I have been privileged to be initiated into the sacred realm of the entheogens... have imbibed the amrta of India, the ambrosia of the Olympian gods, Demeter's potion; have for brief blessed instants gazed into Lord Shiva's blazing third eye.


Source:

The Age of Entheogens & The Angel's Dictionary
by Jonathan Ott

[url]URL: http://deoxy.org/define/Entheogen[/url]

Let those who respect the planet continue the judicious study of entheogens and their potential for offering glimpses into larger experience.

Let those who are not yet ready to show the necessary respect, continue to prepare.

[e_dog]

gesticulation

[knip]

ungulate - n., a four-legged hooved animal

[whimsicaldeb]

facetious

fa·ce·tious
adj. : Playfully jocular; humorous; cleverly amusing in tone; "a bantering tone"; "facetious remarks"; "tongue-in-cheek advice"

.... and we never have any of that type of nonesense around here, now, do we!?!


-Ha!
~heeeeeeeeeeeeeee~

[Doreen Peri]

obsidian

* noun:   acid or granitic glass; usually dark, but transparent in thin pieces


I love this word! It's so musical!