“Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals
have an intimate connection.”

- Thomas Jefferson

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.