Here I was hoping to pfind a new word. And what to I phind? Phunny pfolks phooling around. Doesn't anybody have a new word? I've got one.
My word of the day is
obsequious--marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness.
Andy, Are you gonna ask me why I picked that word? OK, I'll tell you. I got an email from someone I think is obsequious. Whenever someone asks me what I think of this person, I say that I think this person is obsequious. It occurred to me I should probably have a definition at my fingertips just in case someone says, "Obsequious? What the hell does that mean?"
Thank you, Roberta, for saving me the trouble of having to ask you.
Don't humor me, Andy. I know you know, and you know I know you know. Ya know?
This was submitted by Seaglass, who is temporarily (I hope) unable to access A2K. So I'm posting it for her.:
luftmensch \LOOFT-mensh ("OO" as in "foot")\ noun
: an impractical contemplative person having no
definite business or income
Example sentence:
"The son ...," wrote American author Irving Howe, "is
leaving to be a luftmensch -- a starving poet, a painter without
pictures, a radical leader without followers."
Did you know?
Are you someone who always seems to have your head in
the clouds? Do you have trouble getting down to the lowly
business of earning a living? If so, you may deserve to be
labeled a "luftmensch." That airy appellation is an adaptation
of the Yiddish "luftmentsh," which breaks down into "luft" (a
Germanic root that can be tied linguistically to the English
words "loft" and "lofty"), meaning "air," plus "mentsh,"
meaning "human being." "Luftmensch" was first introduced to
English prose in 1907, when Israel Zangwill wrote "The
word 'Luftmensch' flew into Barstein's mind. Nehemiah was not an
earth-man .... He was an air-man, floating on facile wings."
Andy, I positively love this word. In fact, I am a luftmensch. And all this time I thought I was just a bum--or a regular person with bum tendencies. Now I'm a regular person with luftmensch tendencies. Sounds better, but I'm still the same.
I always knew you were a luftmensch, Roboita, 'cuz it takes one to know one.
Ha! A couple of LMs. I shoulda known.
Would you believe...? I just heard the word 'luftmensch' used in a sentence on the air on the radio! Not half an hour ago, Nancy Wilson, hosting the show 'Jazz Profiles' on NPR, referred to Artie Shaw as something of a luftmensch. I think this wonderful word is about to enter the mainstream!
Andy, Life is strange. You unearth a word you think is obscure (and it is, imo), and the next thing you know someone is using said word in a sentence on the radio. Don't hold your breath for luftmensch to enter the mainstream. Life is strange, but that would be beyond strange.
Hmmm; I always thought luftmensch was a club for abandonned German WWII pilots!
.
I think I'm suffering from this
Weird Words: Coulrophobia
An irrational fear of clowns.
What, fear those delightful purveyors of slapstick comedy? One may
as well go in terror of Santa Claus (but then a few people do that,
too). But clown humour has always embraced cruelty in its teasing
and insulting of other clowns and members of the audience. Clowns
represent anarchy, the personifications of unreason, and a force of
nature out of control. Who knows what actually lies behind their
unchanging painted faces and outlandish costumes? These are all
good enough reasons for even the strongest and most adult of us to
feel unease in the presence of a clown. Some children are terrified
by them and a surprisingly large proportion of adults confess to
finding them creepy and disturbing, so much so that this word for
their condition has had to be invented. It's not old: perhaps from
the 1980s. It's from Greek "koulon", a limb, which seems strange
until you find the related "kolobathristes" was a stilt-walker.
This seems to have been the nearest its unknown coiner could get to
a suitable classical allusion, since classic Greek didn't have a
word for a clown in our modern sense.
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World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2003. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.
Andy, As sympathetic as I am to your condition, I don't imagine it would be all that difficult to avoid contact with clowns. Don't go to the circus. And I guess you'll have to stear clear of Cavfancier. But otherwise, I think you should have free sailing.
Outstanding word.
They're all over the place, Roberta. Have you checked Abuzz lately? It's the online clowns who caused the onset of my coulrophobia, I think.
Andy, I haven't been to abuzz in ages. To paraphrase a quote from Bill Parcells before the Giants played the Bills in the Super Bowl, I'm not afraid of clowns. I'm afraid of spiders, snakes, and the IRS. A good quote, but I'm not afraid of spiders. Substitute mice for spiders, and you've got yourself a quote.
I barely have enough time to be here. Can't possibly be in two forums.
Why don't you get one of those recordings you can listen to while you're sleeping. "I'm not afraid of clowns. I'm not afraid of clowns."
My word of the day is
belladonna, an Old World poisonous plant of the nightshade family; also called
deadly nightshade.
This is not exactly a word that pops immediately to mind. But I saw a flier for a new restaurant in my neighborhood. The name?
Belladonna!
Two words, bella donna, and you've got a beautiful woman. But one word. Poison. Not on my list of places to dine.
had 2 spread my serendipitous notice of a 'bizarro' in the etymological Oxford:
flo:cci-nau:ci-ni:hili-pi:li-fication (have no concept of where the colons and dashes come from; never seen anything like it)
meaning: action or habit of estimating something as worthless.
example/usage: i'm sick and tired of your flo:cci-nau:ci-ni:hili-pi:li-fication of my contributions to this thread!
Hey Bo, I wouldn't dream of floccinaucinihilipilificating your contributions to this or any other thread. I'm impressed beyond words (almost) with this doozy of a word of the day. I'd love to be able to use it should the circumstances present themselves, but I'm afraid that by the time I remember the whole thing and get is said, the circumstances will have changed.
To reiterate: This one's a doozy.
roberta; have u ever come accross any other word with all those colons and dashes in it; they were printed exactly as i showed it?
Bo, I've never seen such things before. You said you got the definition from the Oxford etymological dictionary. Maybe there's an explanation in there somewhere about words that are presented in this way. The marks are certainly helpful with syllabification, but I don't understand the difference between the hyphens and colons.
i got an url from monger; and after browsing a bit came up with this 1:
http://www.ypass.net/dictionary/index.html?random=1
which generates random words from their abbreviated dictionary;
might either b of use, or destroy the integrity of this thread.
(don't try this at home kids)
