“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right
to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

- George Orwell

Billingsgate (BIL ingz gate)
noun

Billingsgate is foul and abusive language, coarse invective. The word comes from Billingsgate, London, for hundreds of years the site and name of a fish market where fish sellers and porters were notorious for their foul, coarse language. The market was near a gate in the old city wall named after a property owner, Billings. To talk billingsgate (sometimes capitalized) is to indulge in vituperation and vilification. The women who worked there were particularly offensive; from the Middle English fisshwyf we get fishwife, a term applied to coarse, vituperative, foul-tongued women who belie the traditional gentility of their sex. These lines appear in The Plain Dealer, a play by the English poet and dramatist William Wycherley (c. 1640-1716):

QUAINT: With sharp invectives—
WIDOW: Alias, Billingsgate.

My example: Rosie O'Donnell's billingsgate tendencies have been on view since she joined "The View."

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Abjure
(ab JOOHR) verb

To abjure something is to renounce it, retract, repudiate, forswear it. Abjure comes from the Latin verb abjurare (to deny under oath); abjuration from Late Latin abjuratio (recantation); both are based on ab- (away) plus jurare (to swear). Reformed sinners abjure the errors of their ways. A number of American communists abjured their allegiance to the Communist Party and informed on their former colleagues. The noun abjuration (abjoo RAY shuhn) implies renunciation upon oath, or at least some measure of solemnity and formality, something more than a mere change of mind. Born-again Christians abjure their former unbelief. The English poet John Donne (1572-1631) wrote:

The heavens rejoice in moiion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety

In Paradise Lost, the English poet John Milton (1608-1674) says:

I waked To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure.

My example: The Minnesota Twins abjured the lousy baseball they played in April and June and came back to win the American League Central Division title on the last day of the season.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Verjuice
(VUR joos) noun

Verjuice, literally, is the sour juice of unripe fruits, especially crabapples and grapes. Figuratively, verjuice is sourness of temperament, disposition, or expression. It is the hallmark of a curmudgeon, itself an interesting word, generally described in dictionaries as of unknown origin though Samuel Johnson (the English lexicographer, 1709-1784) says in his Dictionary: "It is a vitious [the old spelling, based on Latin vitiosus] manner of pronouncing coeur méchant [ French for wicked heart ]. . ."

My example: Grapes of wrath make for vintage verjuice, don't they, Mr. Reid?

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Traduce
(truh DOOHS, -DYOOHS) verb

To traduce someone is to slander him, vilify him, malign, defame, and calumniate him, speak falsely and with malice toward him or his character; from Latin traducere (to disgrace), a variant of transducere (literally, to carry over; figuratively, to expose, "show up"). In Shakespeare's Othello (Act V, Scene 2), Othello cries to Lodovico who has come to arrest him:

...In Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the State,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.

Whereupon, he obeys Shakespeare's stage directions: Stabs himself. Things are tough all around and it's a bloody mess; but getting back to words and definitions, avoid the common error of identifying slander or defame with libel. Without going into legal minutiae and ramifications, libel is slander in written form and "published", i.e., communicated in that form to a third party or parties. Best advice: Keep your mouth shut and your pen in your pocket.

My example: In an election year, the end of summer means the weather is cooling just as the political traducing season is really heating up. That's some good advice above, though.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Quotidian
(kwoh TID ee un) adjective

Quotidian means "daily," i.e., recurring every day, as in a quotidian report, and in that sense is synonymous with diurnal but only in the first meaning given under that entry, i.e., "daily," as opposed to "daytime" used attributively. By extension, quotidian has acquired the second meaning of "everyday" in the sense of "ordinary, commonplace," and in certain contexts, "trivial." In this extension, it follows its Latin antecedent quotidianus (daily), which acquired the meaning "common, ordinary." Things that go on day after day do become run-of-the-mill after a while. Variety is the spice, etc. The American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), in The Comedian as the Letter C, wrote: "...the quotidian saps philosophers."

My example: The best bloggers disprove Stevens, being both quotable and quotidian.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Pismire
(PIS mire, PIZ-) noun

A pismire is an ant, but the term has been applied contemptuously to a despicable individual. Robert Penn Warren, the American poet and novelist (b. 1905), used it that way, "What do you think I'd do with a young pismire like you?" Shakespeare knew the word. In Henry IV, Part 1 (Act I, Scene 3), the impetuous young Harry Percy, known as Hotspur, cannot bear to hear the name of Bolingbroke:

Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods, Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.

In the same play (Act III, Scene 1) the same Hotspur uses the word ant. In reviling Mortimer's father, he says:

...sometimes he angers me With telling me of the moldwarp (mole) and the ant...

In the earlier speech, the Bard obviously needed a two-syllable synonym for ant. Pismire is derived from Middle English pissemyre (a urinating ant, based on Middle English pisse, urinate, plus obsolete mire, ant). A pismire, then, is a urinating ant, i.e., an ant exuding formic acid.

My example: From my time living in more southerly parts of the country I am familiar with a colloquial version of this word: pisant, or pissant. The meaning is the same, however, as I always heard it used (or used it myself) to describe someone who is an irritating nuisance. I don't think any of us knew we were borrowing from Shakespeare or thought in terms of having formic acid released upon us (irritating but not very damaging), but we definitely knew that to use the word was to describe someone who was an irritant completely out of proportion to his or her significance, kind of like ....

Well, I'll leave the examples this week to you. If you'd like to supply the name of your pet pissant, do so in the comments or include the word and the individual in one of your posts and send me a link so I can see it.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Objurgate
(OB jur gate) verb

To objurgate is to denounce harshly, to upbraid vigorously, to berate sharply, to reproach in no uncertain terms, to give 'em hell. Objurgate is from Latin objurgatus, past participle of objurgare (to scold, chide, reprove), based on prefix ob- (against) plus jurgare (to rebuke), based in turn on jur-, stem of jus (law, right) plus agere (to drive). Objurgation (ob jur GAY shun) is the noun, and a geat deal of it is heard at the United Nations (which is given as an example of oxymoron in another part of this book).

My example: I was going to go into how the Harry Reid, et al, think objurgate and obfuscate are the same thing. Then I realized that more expressive examples of admirable objurgation can be found over at my friend Andy's blog.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Meliorism
(MEEL yuh riz um, MEE lee uh-) noun

Meliorism is the belief that everything tends to get better and better. One who lives by this doctrine is a meliorist (MEEL yuh rist, MEE lee uh-). These words are derived from Latin melior (better), the comparitive of bonus (good). The superlative is optimus (best), which gave us optimism and optimist. It may be hard to find much difference between the attitudes of meliorists and optimists, but the English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) did find a shade of difference: The English poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) wrote, in an autobiographical note: "I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist)..." In Latin, pejor means "worse" and pessimus means "worst." A pejorist (whose doctrine is known as pejorism) believes that everything is getting worse; a pessimist thinks that it's all going to be as bad as possible: superlatively bad, shall we say, in this atomic age? In any event, George Eliot thought that the world was going to get better - but not as good as possible; and that is the fine difference between meliorism and optimism. Other words from melior are ameliorate (uh MEEL yuh rate, -ee uh-), to improve; amelioration (uh meel yuh RAY shun), improvement generally, but with a special use in linguistics: semantic change to a better, i.e., more favorable meaning, the way Okie, once a pejorative term for a migrant farm worker, usually from Oklahoma, became merely a colloquial nickname for any Oklahoman, and exactly opposite to the way egregious (from Latin egregius, extraordinary, preeminent, based on prefix e-, out of, plus grege, a form of grex, herd, i.e., out of the herd) changed from preeminent to glaring, flagrant, notorious, as in an egregious blunder. But caution: meliority (meel YOR ih tee, mee lee OR-) hs nothing to do with attitudes about which way the world is moving; it is only an uncommon synonym for superiority.

My example: The death of Al-Zarqawi inspired meliorism in almost everyone except the media, members of the Democratic Party leadership and other professional pejorists.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

With my pending semi-seclusion (see previous post), I'll hope to tide you over linguistically with not just one, but two Challenging Words of the Week. I'm up to the "Ls" in my book (for those paying attention, there simply wasn't much of note to choose from in the "Ks"), and here are two words that might liven up your political discourse:

Lamia
(LAY mee uh)noun

The lamiae, in classical mythology, were a race of monsters with female heads and breasts and the bodies of serpents, who enticed young people and little children in order to devour them. The story went that the original lamia was a Queen of Libya with whom Jupiter fell in love. Juno became furiously jealous and stole the children of the queen, who went mad and vowed vengeance on all children. Lamia became a term for any vampire or she-demon. The literal meaning of lamia in Greek is "female man-eater." In medieval times, witches were sometimes called lamiae. The English poet John Keats (1795-1821) wrote a poem entitled Lamia a short time before his untimely death. In it, a bride, recognized as a lamia by the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana (born shortly before the birth of Christ), vanishes instantaneously. Keats based his theme on an incident related in The Anatomy of Melancholy of the English churchman and writer Robert Burton (1577-1640), who took it from The Life of Apollonius by the Greek philosopher Flavius Philostratus (born c. 170). The enticement or devouring of the young has long been a theme in legend, all the way from the Minotaur of Crete to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. There were no Missing Persons Bureaus in those days to trace the Hamelin kiddies.

My example: There appears to be no shortage of women in both the conservative and liberal ranks who arouse strong feelings amongst their opposition. The next time you want to lambaste a child-devouring she-devil don't reach for the b-word like some 'Kos-kid imitating their Greek; go with the Greek and call her a lamia.

Lapidate
(LAP ih date) verb

To lapidate is to stone to death, an old Biblical penalty first suggested by the Lord to Moses, as set forth in Leviticus, for various crimes including adultery, incest, homosexuality, and other such naughty practices, and latterly instituted by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for similar offenses. Jesus was gentler: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7.) Whatever one's views may be on the question of capital punishment, lapidation (lap ih DAY shun) is beyond the pale; and never, never associate it with those honest gem cutters and stone engravers discussed under lapidary, even though it comes from the same source, lapid-, the stem of the Latin noun lapis (stone). Further, lapidate has nothing to do with dilapidate or its more familiar form, dilapidated, which comes from Latin dilapidatus, past participle of dilapidare (to demolish), based on the prefix di- (asunder; variant of dis- before certain consonants) plus the same old lapid-. From "dismantled, stone by stone," dilapidated has come to mean "fallen into decay," through neglect or abuse, and can apply to things having no connection with stones, from wooden houses to clothing in rags to moldy furniture and books, to say nothing of ravaged bodies.

My example:Despite the Old Testament and Ayatollah references above, lapidation today appears to be largely a Liberal activity. Or maybe it's desired by both sides, but Liberals are just so much better at it, as anyone who has observed the lapses and subsequent, yet opposite, reprisals suffered by Lawrence Summers and Ward Churchill. The lesson: watch your step around the lamia in academia.

Jeremiad
(jer uh MYE ud) noun

A jeremiad is a tale of woe, a lamentation, a doleful complaint, a plea for compassion, deriving its name from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet of the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. A book of the Bible attributed to him bears his name. He called for moral reform, threatening doom if his message went unheeded. It is the prediction of doom and disaster that we associate with his name. "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow!...She weepeth sore in the night...all her friends...are become her enemies...Jerusalem hath greviously sinned...The joy of our heart is ceased...O Lord...wherefore dost thou...forsakes us...thou art very wroth against us." Thus spake Jeremiah; but how very boring it can be to be forced to listen to the jeremiads of one's trouble-prone acquaintances! Jeremiah is a name given to any person who takes a gloomy view of his times and denounces what is going on in the world.

My example: Oh, the jeremiads of the modern major generals (ret.)!

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Haruspex
(huh RUS peks, HAIR uh speks) noun

This was the title, in ancient Rome, of a lower order of priests who prophesied by examining the entrails of animals killed in sacrifice. The custom was handed down by the Etruscans. The practice is known as haruspication (hair us puh KAY shun) or haruspicy (huh RUS puh see). The verb is haruspicate (huh RUS puh kate). Haruspex is a Latin word, base on Etruscan haru, Latin hira (entrail) plus specere (to look at: spexi means "I have inspected'). The Roman Censor (a government official) Cato (234-149 B.C.) was not impressed by this type of divination. He said: "I wonder how one haruspex can keep from laughing when he sees another." This made him very unpopular with haruspices.

My example: The modern haruspex has replaced animal entrails with complex computer models for economic forecasts. The resulting prophesies, while similarly apt to be self-fulfilling, aren't necessarily more accurate — but they are certainly less messy. Today's haruspices, like their earlier counterparts, have perfected the ability to take each other seriously, at least in public.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Gargantuan
(gar GAN choo un) adjective

Anyone or anything described as gargantuan is huge, gigantic, vast, or of enormous proportions. The adjective, often capitalized, is derived from Gargantua, the amiable giant king whose exploits are recorded in the novel of that name, one of the two great satirical works by Francois Rabelais (1494-1553). His books, full of coarse, broad, boisterous wit and humor, are characterized by the type of licentious language associated with the adjective Rabelaisian. Gargantua was noted for his incredibly voracious appetite (garganta is Spanish for “gullet”; cf. French gargoille, throat, and English derivatives gargle and gargoyle), so great that on one occasion the insatiable guzzler swallowed whole five pilgrims – with their staves! – mixed in a salad. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act III, Scene 2), Rosalind asks Celia a torrent of questions about Orlando and winds up: “Answer me in one word.” Celia replies: “You must borrow me* Gargantua’s mouth first: ‘tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size…” One can speak of the gargantuan appetite of a trencherman, the gargantuan length of one of those endless historical novels, or the gargantuan task of cleaning up after a hurricane.

* (Note: Shakespearean scholars have apparently overlooked this indication of the bard's Minnesota upbringing. NW)

My example: As with Gargantua, the gargantuan federal budget could stand to mix in a salad.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Pecksniffian
(pek SNIF ee un) adjective

This wonderfully expressive word is applicable to any hypocrite endeavoring to impress upon his fellows that he is a person of great benevolence or high moral standards. It comes from a character named Seth Pecksniff, in Martin Chuzzlewit (another great name) by English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who described Pecksniff as having "...affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other." The American writer and critic H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), in The American Language, called Philadelphia "the most pecksniffian of cities." He was quite the inventor of words; for example, bibliobibulus, menaing "one who gets drunk on books" (biblio-, as in bibliophile, plus bibulous, addicted to drik): "There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men who are drunk on whiskey or religion." This passage is from his Mencken Chrestomathy.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: The candidate's call for impeachment was a blatantly pecksniffian move to energize potential supporters.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Demit
(dih MIT) verb

This verb is used both transitively and intransitively and is found most commonly in Scotland, but used elsewhere as well. To demit a position is to resign it, to give it up or relinquish it, and it often refers to public office. Intransitively, to demit is simply to resign. It comes from Latin demittare (to send down), based on the prefix di-, a variant of dis (away, apart) plus mittere (to send). Because of his need for "the woman I love," Edward VIII of England (1894-1972) demitted his throne in 1936 — i.e., he abdicted.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: Many are calling for Minnesota DFLer Dean Johnson to demit his position as Senate Majority Leader after either lying outright about conversations he claims to have had with Minnesota Supreme Court justices or, alternatively, casting aspersions on the impartiality of the Court. He may be able to withstand Republican ballyragging on the issue, but if the situation becomes too hot he could be defenestrated by his own party (which so far seems more interested in jugulating the person who leaked the recording than holding the Speaker to account).

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Cavil
(KAV uhl) noun, verb

To cavil is to carp or quibble, to raise picayune, inconsequential, and usually irritating objections, to offer gratuitious criticisms, to find fault for the sake of finding fault. As a noun, a cavil is that sort of annoying trivial objection, a bit of pointless carping, that adds nothing but irritation. In Latin, cavillari means to "scoff" or "jeer," the nouns cavilla and cavillatio mean "raillery" and a cavillator is a quibbler; cavilla gratia cavillae (like ars gratia artis, as it were). In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (Act III, Scene 1) there is a furious argument between Hotspur and Owen Glendower about the division of some land, and Hotspur cries:

I do not care: I'll give thrice so much land
to any well-deserving friend:
But in way of a bargain, mark ye me,
I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

Note cavil on; nowadays it's cavil at or cavil about. The Irish statesman and writer Edmund Burke (1729-1797) condemned "cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders." Lawyers are known to cavil tirelessly and endlessly at the terms of an agreement.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: In today's White House, the press corps and Howard Dean cavil while the world burns. In being married to Hillary, former president Clinton was also known to have received cavillatio while in office.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Ballyrag (or Bullyrag)
(BAL ee rag) (BOOL ee rag) verb

To ballyrag or bullyrag someone is to harass or abuse him, in the more violent sense of the word, or less dramatically, to tease him. Fowler says that the derivation is unknown, and that ballyrag is the far more common and preferable form, but other dictionaries give bullyrag as the first choice. To rag someone is to tease him, in American usage, but in British usage, to do rather more than that: to persecute him with crude practical jokes, with rag also a noun denoting that kind of tormenting behavior. The bullyrag form probably has some connection with bully, embellished by rag. In any case, bally- or bullyragging is reprehensible abusive horseplay and badgering, the kind employed, for example, in the sort of fraternity hazing that is a practice now mercifully fading from the scene.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: Scott McClellan is a better man than I to daily subject himself to the ballyragging of the White House Press Corps.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Update:

Leo has a new ballyragious header over at Psycmeistr's Ice Palace!

Atticism
(AT ih siz um) noun

Atticism (often with a lowercase a) is concise, superior, polished discourse and diction. The adjective attic describes elegant, subtle, incisive expression and articulation, with a strong admixture of subtle wit. The English poet John Milton (1608 - 1674) wrote:

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, of Attic taste...

Attica was the name of a region in the southeasterly part of ancient Greece. It was under the rule and influence of Athens, whose culture reached its height around the middle of the fifth century B.C. — the age of Pericles, the great poets, dramatists, sculptors and architects. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (23-79) wrote of "sal atticum" (Attic wit — literally, Attic salt; sal (salt) was used figuratively by the Romans to mean "wit"). Attic wit is dry, delicate, subtle wit. The Romans had a verb atticisare ("atticise") to describe the imitation of Athenian diction and expression. Atticism, then, is the art of the elegant, well-timed expression, refined simplicity laced with sophistication and wit. In more modern times, the distinction between these two styles has been described in a learned article by Bryan A. Garne in Volume X, No. 3 of Verbatim, the Language Quarterly, which includes this passage:

English inherited two strains of literary exression, both deriving ultimately from Ciceronian Latin. One the one hand is the plain style now in vogue, characterized by unadorned vocabulary, directness, unelaborate syntax, and earthiness. (This syle is known to scholars as Atticism). On the other hand we have the grand style, which exemplifies floridity, allusivenss, formal sometimes abstruse diction, and rhetorical ornament. Proponents of this verbally richer style (called Asiaticism) proudly claim that the nuances available in the "oriental profusion" of English synonyms make the language an ideal putty for the skilled linguistic craftsman to mold and shape precisely in accordance with his conceptions.

Well may you ask, what has this to do with the attic of a house, the room or story just under thre roof? Here is the answer: In the residences of the rich in old Attica, there was often a small row of columns or pilasters placed on the roof, as a decorative feature. Neo-Grecian architecture became fashionable in England in the 17th century. In error, the top floor of a building fashioned in the Attic style was called the "Attic storey" (story meaning, "floor of a house," has an e before the y in British English). Error, because the Attic feature was a facade, whereas the English imitation was an eclosed floor. In time, the upper case A became a small a, the "storey" was dropped, and we wond up with, simply, attic.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: There's no better place in the MOB to find atticism practiced than at The Attic which regularly features superior, polished discourse in its more direct and concise form as demonstrated by drjonz or by the more florid and rhetorically ornamental Joey.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Petard
(pi TARD) n.

A petard was a heavy explosive engine of war, filled with gunpowder and fastened to gates to blow them in or to walls, barricades, etc., to smash them and form a breach. The soldier whose job it was to fire the device was always in danger of blowing himself up as well, in which case he would wind up hoist with his own petard. In Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act III, scene 4) the prince says to the queen:

...'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar...
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.

(Shakespeare spelt it petar, possibly influenced by the French pronunciation of petard in which the -d is silent.) Hamlet was speaking of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, commissioned by King Claudius to escort him to England and see to his death; but as the play develops, it is they who will be done in, and thus hoist with their own petard. To be thus hoist is to be caught in the trap laid for someone else. This was indeed the fate of certain inventors of torture devices and dreadful places of imprisonment, like the Bastille built by Hugh Aubriot, Provost of Paris c. 1360, where he was the first to be imprisoned. In the Book of Esther 7:9 Haman was hanged on the high gallow he had devised for the hanging of Mordecai, and the witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins, tried for witchcraft under the rules he had set up, was himself executed as a wizard in 1647. Petard has an amusing derivation: via Middle French petard, related to peter (to fart), from the Latin peditum (breaking wind), neuter form of peditus, past participle of pedere (to fart). In this age of jet propulsion, doesn't that derivation give hoist with one's own petard a new twist?

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: The Democrats may have been hoist with their own petard in 2004 when they turned the Wellstone funeral into a campaign rally.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Umbrageous
(um BRAY just) adj.

Umbrageous has two entirely distinct meanings. Its principal meaning is "shady," in the sense of creating or providing shade, like the famus "...spreading chestnut tree..." (in the poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882) under which "...the village smithy stands..." An umbrageous tree, then, is a shade tree. But an umbrageous person (umbrageous here refers back to the word umbrage, a feeling of offense, resentment, and annoyance, usually found in the expression to take umbrage) is one quick to take offense. When umbrageousness reaches the point of mental disorder, it becomes paranoia. Umbrageous is from Latin umbratus, past participle of umbrare (to shade or overshadow), and it may be the feeling of being overshadowed that creates the umbrage. Umbrageous trees provide shade; umbrageous people feel overshadowed.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example:People with umbrageous tendencies should avoid reading editorial cartoons.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Numinous
(NOOH muh nus, NYOOH-) n. adj.

Anything described as numinous is spiritual, has a sacred quality, is mysterious and awe-inspiring. Numen (NOOH mun) is literally, "nod" in Latin, related to the verb nutare (to nod, or keep nodding), and by extension came to mean "divine will" (as indicated by the nod of a god). Numen was taken over intact, to mean "divine power" or "spirit," and gave rise to the adjective numinous, which denotes a quality that is divine, especially in the sense that it is beyond human understanding. There is something numinous in the late quartets of Beethoven. Dark forests have a numinous quality that inspires reverence and awe. The Roman satirist Juvenal (60-c. 130) wrote that if people had foresight, Fortuna wouldn't be a goddess — she would have no numen.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: Violent Islamists claim to be acting upon a numinous mandate. One has to wonder, however, how much numen their god possesses if he needs their intervention to settle his scores.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Foofaraw
(FOOH fuh raw) n.

This bit of informal American, as well as its variant fofarraw (FOH fuh raw), has two distinct meanings; a big fuss about very little, i.e., much ado about nothing; or flashy finery, too many frills. Literary policeman’s question: “What’s going on here? What’s all the foofaraw about?” Or, in the second sense, from a lady wearing a lorgnette (if you can find one): “She could certainly dispense with all the foofaraw!” A lovely-sounding word and, say the authorities, origin unknown; but in the first sense, could it be a corruption of free-for-all (in baby-talk)? The British appear not to use this word, but, in the to-do sense, have a nice equivalent: gefuffle, also spelt kerfuffle and cufuffle, all loosely used as synonyms for their word shemozzle, which is also spelt shemozzl, chimozzle, and at least half-a-dozen other ways — you takes your choice.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

My example: The calls by Senators Kennedy and Kerry for a filibuster on Justice Alito's confirmation seem certain to lead to a self-inflicted and embarrassing foofaraw.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Update:

Jeff at Peace Like a River is a quick study, describing the foofaraw over the Colleen Rowley gaff. (And somewhere, Blois Olson is smiling).

Defenestration
(dee fen ih STRAY shun) n.

Defenestration is the act of throwing someone (yes, someone!) or something out of a window. To defenestrate a person or a thing is to engage in that activity — a strange one indeed, since these words are more commonly applied to situations where what is thrown out of the window is a person, rather than a thing. It is surprising, in view of what must be the infrequency of this type of activity, that there exists a word for it, but then, there exists a word for just about everything. There is a famous incident in history when an act of defenestration of people was committed: the Defenestration of Prague. It seems that, just before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618, the two principal Roman Catholic members of the Bohemian National Council were thrown out of a window of the castle at Prague by the Protestant members — one way to settle an argument. They weren't killed. The castle had a moat in which the defenestrated twain were lucky enough to land, with only minor injuries. Strangely enough, it is once more to Prague that we have to travel to find a more recent (and this time fatal) instance of what might been defenestration. Jan Masaryk (1886-1948, son of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, first president of Czechoslovakia) was foreign minister of the Czech government-in-exile in London during World War II. He returned to Prague, retaining that post, when that war ended. A short time after the communist coup in 1948, he fell to his death from a window. Despite the official explanation of suicide, the circumstances have never eliminated the possibility of dastardly defenestration. In A Time of Gifts (John Murray, London, 1977), the English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor (b. 1915) tells us of the martyrdom of St. Johannes Nepomuk in 1393 by the henchman of King Wenceslas IV. They hurled Johannes into the River Vltava (also known as the Moldau) from a bridge in Prague. Mr. Fermor adds in a footnote: “there are several instances of defenestration in Czech history, and it has continued into modern times [referring, no doubt, to poor Masaryk]. The martyrdom of St. Johannes is the only case of depontification, but it must be part of the same Tarpeian tendency.” Mr. Fermor is referring to the Tarpeian Rock — the Mons Tarpeius — on the Capitoline Hill in ancient Rome, from which criminals and traitors were hurled to their death.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Fustian
(FUS chun) n., adj.

A strange word, fustian, in the diversity and apparent dissociation of its several meanings. First of all, fustian is the name of a thick twilled cotton fabric, or a blend of cotton and flax or low grade wool with a short nap, usually dyed a dark color, and as an adjective, fustian describes cloth so made. But fustian is now used chiefly in a wholly different sense, miles from cloth or fabric: It means “bombast,” written or spoken, “turgid, inflated language, purple prose,” and finally, “claptrap, rant, hogwash, palaver, prattle, drivel”; and, as an adjective, “pompous, bombastic, nonsensical, worthless.” Fustian is a Middle English word, from Old French fustaigne, derived from Middle Latin fustaneus , referring to cloth made in El-Fustat, a suburb of Cairo. This peculiar dichotomy of meanings suggests that the material from El-Fustat was of pretty poor value. Shall we complicate matters further? Fustian is also the name of a drink made of white wine, egg yolk, lemon, spices and other miscellaneous ingredients – a concoction with possibilities. To fustianize (FUS chun ize) is to write in a bombastic manner, and a writer who descends to that level is a fustianist (FUS chun ist). From the pen of the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, out of his Prologue to Imitations of Horace, flow these words: “Means not, but blunders round about meaning; and he whose fustian’s so bad, it is not poetry, but prose run mad.”

Shakespeare used fustian in Othello (Act II, Scene 3) when Cassio, in despair after Othello cashiers him, cries: “I will rather sue to be despised rather than deceive so good a commander…Drunk!...and squabble, swagger, swear and discourse fustian with one’s own shadow!” In Henry IV, Part 2 (Act II, Scene 4), Doll Tearsheet tells Bardolph: “For God’s sake, thrust him (Pistol) down stairs! I cannot endure such a fustian rascal!” And in Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene 5), after hearing Malvolio’s doggerel, Fabian exclaims, “A fustian riddle!” All these uses refer to bombast, prattle and drivel.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

freebooter
(FREE booh tur) noun

A freebooter is a pirate or buccaneer, one who roves about freely in search of booty; an anglicization of the Dutch noun vrijbuiter, based on vriji (free) plus buit (booty). Vrijbuiter gave rise to another word, filibuster, first applied to the pirates of the West Indies in the 17th century, and later to the unlawful groups organized from the United States to invade and foment revolution in some Spanish-American regions, e.g., those of Cuba in 1850-51, Sonora in 1853-54 and Lower California in 1855. Filibuster was metamorphosed into a term for obstructive tactics in legislative proceedings through endless speeches.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

bête noire
(bet nuh WAHR) n., adj.

This is a French expression (literally, black beast) taken into English to describe anything that is a pet aversion, a bugbear, a thorn in one’s side. A bête noire can be a person, an object, a chore, anyone or anything that one simply can’t stand. To a child, spinach can be a bête noire. The caption under a Carl Rose cartoon in the December 8, 1928, issue of The New Yorker (mother and child) reads:

“It’s broccoli, dear.”
“I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”

To some, Wagner may be a bête noire; to others, hard rock may qualify. Contemporary painting is a bête noire to countless thousands, nay, millions. Choose your own: ballet, corned beef and cabbage, Liberace, politicians, wine connoisseurs; long airplane trips, missiles, New Year’s Eve parties, children in TV commercials, all TV commercials, books about words…

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.