A.W.A.D. - Quotation Words

Guest Wordsmith Fred Shapiro (fred.shapiro yale.edu) writes:

My recently published book, The Yale Book of Quotations (Yale University Press), is intended to supplant Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as the most authoritative quotation dictionary. It is the first major quotation book to emphasize modern sources, including popular culture, children's literature, sports, computers, politics, and law. The Yale Book of Quotations is also the first quotation book of any sort to use state-of-the-art research methods to comprehensively collect famous quotations and to trace quotations to their accurate origins. The Yale Book of Quotations includes hundreds of very famous and popular quotations omitted from other quotation dictionaries, and corrects the standard accounts of how many important quotations originated.

(This week's Guest Wordsmith Fred Shapiro is a librarian and lecturer at the Yale Law School. Anu Garg is traveling.)

anecdotage
(an-ik-DO-tij) noun
1. The telling of anecdotes.
2. Anecdotes collectively.

[From Greek anekdota (things unpublished), from an- (not) + ekdidonai (to publish). Originally applied by the Greek historian Procopius to his unpublished memoirs of the Emperor Justinian and his consort Theodora.]

3. Old age characterized by excessive telling of anecdotes.

[Humorous blend of anecdote and dotage, from dote (to be foolish).]

circumambulate
(sur-kuhm-AM-byuh-layt) verb tr., intr.
To walk around, especially ritually.

[From Latin circum- (around) + ambulate (to walk about), from ambulare (to walk).]

dictatress
(dik-TAY-tres) noun
A female dictator.

[From Latin dictator, from dictare (to dictate), frequentative of dicere (to say). Ultimately from the Indo-European root deik- (to show, to pronounce solemnly) that is also the source of other words such as judge, verdict, vendetta, revenge, indicate, dictate, and paradigm.]

gladsome
(GLAD-suhm) adjective
Causing or showing joy.

[From Old English gloed. Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel-(to shine) that is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, glimpse, glass, arsenic, melancholy, and cholera.]

Words covering 23 - 27 July 2007

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