Word of the Day - 3/23/12 - celerity

celerity
/suh-ler-i-tee/ IPA: /sɪˈlɛrɪtɪ/, /səˈlɛrɪti/


Noun
1. exceptional speed; swiftness

A cyclist racing forth with great celerity

Origin: Entered English around 1480, from Middle French celerite. Ultimately derived from Latin celeritas, from the root celer- meaning swift, also found in English acceleration. Celerity is formed by combining this Latin root celer- with the suffix -ity, which appears in English as a result of borrowing from French and Latin as well. The suffix -ity takes several different forms, such as -ety as in piety, -iety as in sobriety, and -ty as in safety and bounty. There is also a discrepancy in the first vowel’s pronunciation, as the Oxford English Dictionary transcribes the vowel as a high front /ɪ/, while other sources present the vowel as a central mid /ə/. Both of these pronunciations are written in IPA form above. The OED typically transcribes the appropriate pronunciation for British speakers of English, which could be the cause for the discrepancy.


Notes: Celerity is often used in titles of businesses and capital ventures, perhaps to symbolize the company's hopes of moving swiftly past the competition.


Usage: "For the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the counsel, and celerity in the execution. For when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy, comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift, as it outruns the eye." - Sir Francis Bacon, The Essays: Of Delays (1625)


Quote of the Day: "Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Word of the Day - 3/22/12 - somnambulatory

somnambulatory
/som-nam-byuh-luh-tawr-ee/ IPA: /sɒmˈnæmbyələˌtɔri/


Adjective
1. carried out while sleepwalking
2. prone to sleepwalking
3. performing a task without enthusiasm; "going through the motions"

Lady Macbeth somnambulating in
William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1603) 

Origin: Entered English as a verb in 1833 in the form somnambulate, from Latin somnus meaning "sleep" and ambulare meaning "to walk". The more common adjective form is somnambulant, which entered English in 1866. Somnambulatory is not recorded in any major dictionary, therefore the date it entered the English language is unclear. It can be classified as either an extinct form or a literary invention, perhaps by Sinclair Lewis in his famous work The Job: An American Novel, one of the few places the word can be found in print. This compound structure of two Latin roots can be found in many other English words, such as supernatural (from super meaning "over, above" and nascor meaning "to be born") and contrapuntal (from contra meaning "opposite" and punctum meaning "point").


Usage:
"For two years - two years snatched out of her life and traded for somnambulatory peace, Una lived this spectral life of one room in a family hotel on a side street near Sixth Avenue." - Sinclair Lewis, The Job: An American Novel (1917)


"Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)


Quote of the Day: "Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" - Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) 

Word of the Day - 3/21/12 - gyre

gyre

/gahy-r/, /jahy-r/ IPA: /ˈgɑɪᵊr/, /ˈdʒɑɪᵊr/

Verb

1. to move in a spiral; to whirl

Noun

1. a circle or spiral

2. a spiral motion, such as a vortex

3. a system of ringed ocean currents, rotating clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!" 

Origin: Entered English as a verb in 1420, as a noun in 1566. Derived from Latin gyrus meaning "circle", and from Greek gyros meaning "circle" or "ring". Ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʰwel meaning "to bend". By virtue of Grimm's Law, the voiced aspirated plosive /gʰ/ became /g/ which appears in the Latin and Greek forms. One of the most famous uses of gyre occurs in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this case Carroll uses gyre distinctively as a verb in his nonsensical poem "Jabberwocky" to describe the motion of the toves, which are a mix between a badger and a lizard. Carroll himself insisted that gyre as a verb is pronounced with a /g/ sound (as is "guy"), and gyre as a noun is pronounced with a /dʒ/ sound (as is "judge"). This difference is pronunciation may be a result of when the respective forms entered English, since the verb form entered the language more than 130 years before the noun form.

Usage:

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves; Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe" - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)

"O sages standing in God's holy fire / As in the gold mosaic of a wall / Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre / And be the singing-masters of my soul" - W.B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium (1928)

Quote of the Day: "No man is free who is not master of himself." - Epictetus (55 A.D. - 135 A.D.)

Word of the Day - 3/20/12 - tarn

tarn

/tahrn/ IPA: /tɑrn/

Noun

1. a mountain lake or pool, particularly one filling a cirque formed by a glacier

Grisedale Tarn, Fairfield, England

Origin: Entered English in 1256, from Old Norse tjǫrn, meaning "a mountain lake without tributaries". Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *terno, which may have carried the meaning of "watering hole". Several spelling variations exist across the Scandinavian languages: Norwegian tjern, Swedish tjärn, and Danish tarn, while the Middle English form is terne or tarne. These cognates all seemingly derived from the same Proto-Germanic root *terno. The present spelling of English tarn indicates that the word-final vowel has been dropped since Middle English, a process which occurred due to the Great Vowel Shift where the word-final vowel was no longer pronounced and therefore eliminated orthographically. The meaning of a mountain lake has been broadened to include a variety of lakes and ponds, such as those in the Lake District of Northern England.

Notes: Tarn is also a region (department) of southern France, which gets its name from the Tarn River, also located in southern France and known for its dangerous flash flooding.

Usage: "Acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down" - Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Quote of the Day: "A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Word of the Day - 3/19/12 - saturnine

saturnine

/sat-er-nahyn/ IPA: /ˈsætərˌnɑɪn/

Adjective

1. slow, lethargic, melancholy (in manner)

2. dark, dull, gloomy (in appearance)

3. being of Saturn's influence (astrological)

4. containing lead; related to saturnia, Latin word for lead poisoning

Ptolemy's Geocentric model of the universe 

Origin: Entered English in 1433, from French saturnin. Originally derived from Latin saturninus, the adjectival form of Saturnus, in reference to the planetary body Saturn. The meanings of somebody who is slow moving 
or something that is gloomy and dismal come from the limited astronomical knowledge of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. At this time, the most prevalent astronomical theory was the geocentric model, which featured Earth at the center of the universe, and Saturn as the last known planet to be orbiting Earth. Since Saturn is the furthest planet from Earth visible to the naked eye and since it seemingly orbited Earth the slowest, it came to represent slow, sluggish movement and a dark, dreary appearance.

Roman aqueduct

Saturnine also came to mean something containing the element lead because of the effects of lead poisoning throughout the Roman Empire. Lead was used to create Roman aqueducts, which meant most people drinking water collected from this system were exposed to high quantities of lead on a daily basis. The result was many cases of lead poisoning, particularly gout, which caused the victims to move slowly and deliberately, hence the adaptation of saturnia.

Usage: "Doc Daneeka was a very neat, clean man whose idea of a good time was to sulk. He had a dark complexion and a small, wise, saturnine face with mournful pouches under both eyes." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

Quote of the Day: "The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Word of the Day - 3/18/12 - paladin

paladin
/pal-uh-din/ IPA: /ˈpælədɪn/

Noun

1. a knight, champion, or hero

2. a defender of a specific cause

3. any of the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne's court, King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans in the 9th century A.D.

Imperial Palace on Palatine Hill, modern day Rome

Origin: Entered English in 1592, from Middle French paladin and Italian paladino. Ultimately derives from the Latin word Palatium, which refers to Palatine Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome and the hill on which Romulus supposedly founded the city of Rome. Palatine Hill is also where the Roman Emperor's Imperial Palace was situated. Paladin finds its etymological roots here because it refers those who are "of the Emperor", specifically the brave heroes who defended the Roman Empire and protected the Emperor. Paladin was originally used to describe Charlemagne's peers in the 9th century, however by virtue of broadening, the term has come to refer to any chivalrous or brave hero.


Notes: Paladin is the name of the main character on the TV show Have Gun - Will Travel, an American Western that aired from 1957-1963. Paladin is also the athletic mascot for Furman University.


Quote of the Day: "A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man." - Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)