A.W.A.D. - I'm not Sure of the Theme

with Anu Garg


stenotopic
PRONUNCIATION: (sten-uh-TOP-ik)
MEANING: adjective: Able to adapt only to a small range of environmental conditions

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek steno- (narrow, small) + topos (place). Opposite is eurytopic

USAGE: "Like any gathering of aged immigrants, this was one helluva stenotopic congregation." Haim Chertok; Beating Blindness, and Bureaucracy, in Beersheba; The Jerusalem Post (Israel); Feb 9, 1996.


menticide
PRONUNCIATION: (MEN-tuh-syd)
MEANING: noun: The systematic undermining of a person's beliefs, attitudes, and values

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin ment- (mind) + -cide (killing)

USAGE: "Our compliance with the dictates of Donor Agencies and environmentalists not to use DDT amounts to suicide or at least menticide of our people." Dr. Matthias Offoboche; Tackling Malaria the DDT Way; This Day (Lagos, Nigeria); Nov 29, 2005.


eurybathic
PRONUNCIATION: (yoor-uh-BATH-ik)
MEANING: adjective:: Capable of living in a wide range of depths in water

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek eury- (wide) + bathos (depth). The opposite is stenobathic

USAGE: "Eurybathic species are abundant over most of the depth range down to 600-700 m." Guido di Prisco and Eva Pisano; Fishes of Antarctica; Springer; 1998.


exogenous
PRONUNCIATION: (ek-SOJ-uh-nuhs)
MEANING: adjective: Originating from outside

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek exo- (outside) + -gen (relating to producing). Opposite is endogenous

USAGE: "The key to understanding this crisis -- the worst since the 1930s -- is to see that it was generated within the financial system itself. What we are witnessing is not the result of some exogenous shock that knocked things off balance." George Soros; A New Motor For the World Economy; The Bangkok Post (Thailand); Oct 18, 2008.

cacography
PRONUNCIATION: (kuh-KOG-ruh-fee)
MEANING: noun:
1. Bad handwriting
2. Incorrect spelling

ETYMOLOGY: From caco- (bad), from Greek kakos (bad) + -graphy (writing). Caco is ultimately from the Indo-European root kakka-/kaka- (to defecate) which also gave us poppycock, cacophony, and cucking stool. Opposites of today's word are calligraphy (beautiful handwriting) and orthography (correct spelling). A related word is cacology.

USAGE: "Before I could think of quitting, my boss enlightened me on the virtues of my handwriting, which was sheer cacography: 'Your writing is in direct competition with the Harappan script that still had the hope of being deciphered in the distant future.'" Vikram Kumar; Positions Very Vacant; The Hindustan Times (New Delhi, India); Apr 15, 2008.

"They [Nerds Inc.] have taken advantage of cacography in a novel way. ... They registered more than 90 of the most probable misspellings of popular Web addresses afforded by the QWERTY keyboard, for processing by typo.net." Thomas W. Holcomb Jr.; Nerds Inc. Turns Typos Into On-Line Advertising; The New York Times; Jun 2, 1997.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interesting Aftermath a From Season Five of "MasterChef"

Image
Do I agree with this? You will have to read it first and decide for yourself. I had long since made up my mind before finding this article. MasterChef Season 5 Fixed: Courtney Lapresi Won Finale After Getting Preferential Treatment – Former Stripper Favoritism BY  STORMY ELIZABETH  ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 "They say if you can’t take the heat, you should get out of the kitchen, but what if you like it hot? If you’ve been watching  MasterChef this season 5 , you may have noticed that one contestant in particular seems to  be “winning” challenges  when her dishes don’t seem to be quite up to it.  Courtney Lapresi  has been billed as an “aerial dancer” on the show. So what exactly is that, you ask? It’s a fancy word for stripper. You may term what she does as burlesque, but nekked is nekked and she takes off her  clothes  when she dances, so you have to call them as you see them. Plus is it really fair that she’s up for a MasterChef win aft
Read more

A.W.A.D. - 14-Letter Words, 14-Letter Definitions

Back in 1994, when I founded Wordsmith.org on a Pi Day (March 14), I had no idea that one day we'd be celebrating its quadridecennial. Here's what the last 14 years look in numbers: So far we have sent out 3,782 unique words and 297 AWADmail compilations to 640,000 present subscribers in 200 countries, that is more than 1.6 billion pieces of email. Well, this week we're seeing all things 14. We'll feature words that are 14 letters long, and define each of them in 14 letters. acritochromacy (uh-KRIT-o-kro-muh-see) noun Color blindness. [From Greek akritos (undistinguishing) + chroma (color).] tintinnabulate (tin-ti-NAB-yuh-layt) verb intr. To ring; to tinkle. [From Latin tintinnabulum (bell), from tintinnare (to jingle).] tinctumutation (tinkt-myoo-TAY-shuhn) noun Change of colour. [From Latin tinctus (a dyeing) + mutation (changing).] Brobdingnagian (brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn) adjective Of gigantic size. [After Brobdingnag, the fictional region where everything was enormous
Read more

An Interesting Wife Swap...

Image
I'm catching up on our Wife Swap recordings. I'm watching the epiode Burroughs/Padovan-Hickman one that aired on 17 April 2009. The one I watched just before was really quite satisfying - the families both learned a lot and seemed to really take it to heart. This one, however, is back to the familiar mold of putting families that are so totally diametrically opposite families together that they almost can't get along. This is interesting, though, because the Padovan-Hickmans have electricity but don't use it, don't flush often, go for a week without showering and then the whole family uses the same bathwater... I can see where that would be hard, especially for me in that I have very oily skin and hair and would look rather wretched after the next day. But the family themselves are very likable and fun, the father looks more like a kindly grandfather, but really is quite intelligent and pleasant. I would have trouble with the clean thing and I'd miss my iPod
Read more