What new word did you learn recently?

termagant - a scolding or abusive woman; shrew. Violently abusive and quarrelsome; vixenish.
(and when it's capitalized)
Termagant: An idol or imaginary deity of very turbulent, overbearing character that the medieval romances represented Moslems as worshipping.

A very literate and expressive friend of mine was describing a woman we both know and called her a "termagant". I had literally never heard the word before. I thought it sounded vaguely bird-like (for some reason) but I looked it up and found that (sadly for her, and those who have to deal with her) it described her perfectly.

Interesting. I used that word very recently, just a couple of days ago, in the 'start a new word...' thread. I think termagant is about to make a comeback!

triskadecaphobia.... should there not be an 'i' in between the a and the d.. tris-kai-deka-phobia...

Malapert
Boldly disrespectful or impudent.

ephemeral

Etymology: Greek ephEmeros lasting a day, daily, from epi- + hEmera day
1 : lasting one day only <an ephemeral fever>
2 : lasting a very short time <ephemeral pleasures>

Lorinery

The craft of making various metal parts of a horse's harness.

Clitorides. Plural form of Clitoris. Rhymes with...ummm..."bigger titties"...yeah, this is my new favorite word.

A ligase is an enzyme that catalyzes molecule linkage;in genetics splitting off a pyrophospate group from ATP concurrently.

I just thought I would share that.

Thank you for sharing. We are grateful and feel more educated as a result!

portmanteau

-- 1 : a large suitcase
2 : a word or morpheme whose form and meaning are derived from a blending of two or more distinct forms (as smog from smoke and fog)

morpheme

-- a distinctive collocation of phonemes (as the free form pin or the bound form -s of pins) having no smaller meaningful parts

Say wha'?

Picked up that word from another meaning on the previous page. I'm still trying to understand it, too!

Saturnalia

An occasion of wild revelry or indulgence.

The original Saturnalia was a Roman mid-winter festival held in the
middle of December, starting on the 17th in the modern calendar (or
the 25th in the Roman one). It lasted for seven days and was a
period when excess was encouraged: the shops were closed, gambling
was permitted, presents were exchanged, slaves were given licence
to speak their minds and join in the fun, and generally joy was
unconfined. The holiday began with a sacrifice to the Roman god of
agriculture, Saturn (Latin "satus" means sown), whose day it was.

From the eighteenth century on, the word became a more general one
in English for a period of unrestrained licence at any time of
year, often with a lower-case initial letter. An example of modern
use is in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 of 1961: "Other men picked up
steam as the hours passed, and the aimless, riotous celebration
continued. It was a raw, violent, guzzling saturnalia that spilled
obstreperously through the woods to the officers' club and spread
up into the hills toward the hospital and the antiaircraft-gun
emplacements."

World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2005. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .

I learned another word already!



-- 1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : CLAMOROUS <obstreperous merriment>
2 : stubbornly resistant to control : UNRULY
synonym see VOCIFEROUS

Humphreys -- It's apparently a British swear word.

hehe, So I've read!

Here's some new words for the dictionary, too:


Crackberry, podcast make 2005 word list: Canadian Oxford Dictionary

at 15:42 on December 16, 2005, EST.

TORONTO (CP) - How many times have you checked your crackberry today? Are you seeing your friend with benefits tonight? Have you downloaded a podcast?

If none of the above makes sense to you, then you may have been living in seclusion this past year. Crackberry, friends with benefits and podcast are among the key words of 2005, according to the editors of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

Each year the editors assess which new words gained in prominence.

"Podcasting started in late 2004 and has really taken off," says Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of dictionaries at Oxford University Press Canada's Toronto office.

And podcast - which will be added to the next edition of the dictionary - wasn't the only new technology-related word. Crackberry (a nickname for the addictive BlackBerry), infomania, snaparazzi, VoIP and Wi-Fi also became a part of our vocabulary.

Also on the Oxford list are Sudoku, the numbers-based puzzle, and parkour, the sport of running and climbing over urban structures.

Relationship words include the aforementioned "friends with benefits," meaning friends who have sex regularly with each other without being in a committed romantic relationship.

The term "wing girl" was also noticed. It refers to a pretty girl hired by a man to accompany him to a party in the hopes of making him more attractive to other women.

While these words were on the tip of our collective tongue this year, not all of them will make it into the dictionary, says Barber.

"We'll have to wait and see how well they establish themselves in general parlance before entering them in a dictionary," she said.

Thanks to DrewDad for using another word that I didn't know!

solipsism

-- a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing

Aside: The American Oxford Dictionary folks also chose 'podcast' as their word of the year for 2005.

Andrew, I'm not surprised, as these digital players are everywhere now. It seems that everybody's got one.

The Apple iPod was the first, right?