Gloaming \GLOH-ming\, noun:

Twilight; dusk.

The children squealed and waved and smiled, their teeth flashing white in the gloaming.
– Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life

It was the gloaming, when a man cannot make out if the nebulous figure he glimpses in the shadows is angel or demon, when the face of evening is stained by red clouds and wounded by lights.
– Homero Aridjis, 1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile (translated by Betty Ferber)

Arrived at the village station on a wintry evening, when the gloaming is punctuated by the cheery household lamps, shining here and there like golden stars, through the leafless trees.
– Margaret Sangster

Gloaming comes from Old English glomung, from glom, “dusk.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for gloaming

Here’s a suitably creepy and pretty video for Halloween!

Hubris \HYOO-bruhs\, noun:

Overbearing pride or presumption.

During his long tenure in the financial world, Friedman has watched dozens of his competitors’ businesses killed by hubris born of success rather than by unsound business decisions or adverse market conditions.
– Lisa Endlich, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success

This is the actor’s hubris, to imagine the world possessed of a single, avid eye fixed solely and always on him.
– John Banville, Eclipse

With dizzying hubris, Shelley elevated the vocation of the poet above that of priest and statesman.
– Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars

Hubris comes from Greek hybris, “excessive pride, wanton violence.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for hubris

The wonderful Jonathan Coulton rambles between songs, sounding a little hubritical.

The link made him famous.

Do yourself a favor and do a youtube search for Jonathan Coulton.

Bivouac \BIV-wak, BIV-uh-wak\, noun:

1. An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter.
2. To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

Rob had made his emergency bivouac just below the South Summit.
– David Breashears, “Death on the mountain”, The Observer, March 30, 2003

They were stopped by savage winds and forced to bivouac 153 m below the day’s goal.
– Erik Weihenmayer, “Men of the Mountain”, Time Pacific, February 4, 2002

Bivouac comes from French bivouac, from German Beiwache, “a watching or guarding,” from bei, “by, near” + wachen, “to watch.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for bivouac

It’s not quite Veteran’s Day yet, but this was my first find, and considering the military origin of today’s word, I couldn’t imagine finding anything better or complementary to this beautifully written and read poem.

The Link of the Free and Home of the Brave.

There was apparently some kind of mix-up that caused there not to be a word for yesterday.

Execrable \EK-sih-kruh-buhl\, adjective:

1. Deserving to be execrated; detestable; abominable.
2. Extremely bad; of very poor quality; very inferior.

His human-rights record was abysmal. His relations with Washington were adversarial. He rivaled Zimbabwe’s execrable Robert Mugabe for the title “Africa’s Saddam.”
– James S. Robbins, “The Liberian Opportunity”, National Review, July 8, 2003

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.
– Laura Miller, “Slush, slush, sweet Stephen”, Salon, July 25, 2000

Any theatergoer who has ever felt the urge to murder an actor for an execrable performance should get a kick out of two backstage mysteries that do the deed with a nice theatrical flourish.
– Marilyn Stasio, review of The Gold Gamble, by Herbert Resnicow and Death Mask, by Jane Dentinger, New York Times, October 30, 1988

The decision to level the ancient cathedral is described candidly by one latter-day authoritative guidebook as having demonstrated “execrable taste.”
– Dick Grogan, “Pillars speak out to save cathedral”, Irish Times, June 11, 1997

Execrable derives from Latin exsecrabilis, execrabilis, from exsecrari, execrari, “to execrate, to curse,” from ex-, “out of, away from, outside of” + sacer, “sacred.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for execrable

Considering the ridiculously heavy rotation these commercials got, the sheer annoyance of the character and the oversaturation of him, these commercials surely qualify as execrable. I don’t know how this comes up on a search for the word though.

The link-a bus is coming, and everybody’s jumpin’…

Genuflect \JEN-yuh-flekt\, intransitive verb:

1. To bend the knee or touch one knee to the ground, as in worship.
2. To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel.

After graduation I talked my way into a job at Ionic Development Corporation, a legendary place in Cambridge on the Charles River, a huge brick building with a lobby the size of a cathedral; every time I walked in, I felt as if I should genuflect.
– Daniel Lyons, Dog Days

People worship capital, adore its aura, genuflect before Porsches and Tokyo land values.
– Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)

Chen said recently he was proud to be a Chinese, a signal to Beijing that he is willing to be conciliatory. The communists, however, apparently want him to genuflect more unambiguously.
– Sin-Ming Shaw, “Give This Guy a Break!”, Time Asia, October 30, 2000

Genuflect is from Late Latin genuflectere, from Latin genu, “knee” + flectere, “to bend.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for genuflect

I could NOT agree with this guy MORE! I have to say I kind of dig the idea of a RePUNKlican, btw. To me it harkens back to the belief in the value of the individual that lies at the heart of the GOP principles. If only they’d shed all that stupid social interference … of course, then they’d be Libertarians - aka, Republicans who like sex.

Quandary \KWAHN-duh-ree; -dree\, noun:

A state of difficulty, perplexity, doubt, or uncertainty.

Don . . . told me of the quandary that the authorities were in. Should the ruins be left untouched or should they be reconstructed for a new wave of tourists?
– Benjamin Hopkins, “How to avoid the tourists in Peru”, Times (London), May 6, 2000

The school commissioners . . . were in a quandary over the needful size of an “open-air playground.”
– Jacob A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum

Once or twice as I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary.
– H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

Quandary is of unknown origin.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for quandary

I find it interesting that the etymology of this word is unknown. It sounds like it has cognates or at least shared ancestors in other languages. But I’m a WordNerd, not an etymologist.

After the last two days, it’s nice to find a decent word again.

Anyone who has ever had to share a laundary facility before will be familiar with this quandary. However, I will say, if it’s in the dryer, that means it’s clean.

Soak, rinse, spin, link.

Best Video Game Ever.

UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, B, A, SELECT, SELECT, LINK!

Limn \LIM\, transitive verb:

1. To depict by drawing or painting.
2. To portray in words; to describe.

Oh, yes, I write, as I limn the familiar perfections of his profile, “you look very well.”
– Kimberly Elkins, “What Is Visible”, The Atlantic, March 2003

In telling these people’s stories Mr. Butler draws upon the same gifts of empathy and insight, the same ability to limn an entire life in a couple of pages.
– Michiko Kakutani, “Earthlings May Endanger Your Peaceful Rationality”, New York Times, March 10, 2000

But used faithfully and correctly, language can “limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.”
– John Darnton, “In Sweden, Proof of The Power Of Words”, New York Times, December 8, 1993

Limn is from Middle English limnen, alteration of luminen, from enluminen, from Medieval French enluminer, from Late Latin illuminare, “to illuminate,” ultimately from Latin lumen, “light.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for limn

Ugh! Another cruel word to finish out the work week. Unpleasant. Only one decent one again today. And it’s not even that great if you don’t like surrealistic art.

!kniL

Plenary \PLEE-nuh-ree; PLEN-uh-ree\, adjective:

1. Full in all respects; complete; absolute; as, plenary authority.
2. Fully attended by all qualified members.

Judges like to quote a 1936 Supreme Court opinion that spoke of “the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the Federal Government in the field of international relations.”
– “Like Interpreting the Dreams of Pharaoh”, New York Times, November 6, 1988

Tito called a plenary session of the Central Committee.
– Milovan Djilas, Fall of the New Class

Plenary comes from Late Latin plenarius, from Latin plenus, “full.” It is related to plenty.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for plenary

OK, this was brutal. Plenary is also used, apparently, as a sort of shorthand for opening or closing session or speech, in addition to being some kind of religious holiday, in addition to being part of the name of Plenary Hall in the Phillipines. It was nearly impossible to find a video that wasn’t some boring panel discussion or speech, or, frankly uninteresting. I found one by refining the search to “plenary funny,” a desperation move, for sure - for which there were a mere 8 hits out of 16,000 hits for plenary alone. And one was funny. So, for that, you only get the one video today.

Geeky. Very geeky.

The day the link died … we were singing …

Synecdoche \si-NEK-duh-kee\, noun:

a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole or whole for a part or general for the special or vice versa

Photographers had to resort to visual synecdoche, hoping that a small part of the scene — a wailing child, an emaciated mother, a pile of corpses in a freshly dug trench — would suggest the horrors of the whole.
– Paul Gray, Looking At Cataclysms, Time, August 1, 1994

We’re using the part-for-whole type of synecdoche, for instance, when we describe a smart person as a “brain.”
– We Live by the Brand, Hartford Courant, August 9, 1995

By 1388, from Middle Latin synodoche, from Late Latin synecdoche, from Greek synekdokhe, literally “a receiving together or jointly,” from synekdekhesthai “supply a thought or word, take with something else,” from syn- “with” + ek “out” + dekhesthai “to receive,” related to dokein “seem good”.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for synecdoche

Oddly, Dictionary.com used this word two days in a row, so I’ll skip the second day’s usage and move on the the following day’s word. Maybe I should try to post twice as many as usual for this word? Let’s see how that goes.

I love when people use odd words as their user names. It makes my job so much easier!

My Link Fu is Mighty!

This is just kind of a weird Clockwork Orange-like montage of weirdly nostalgic moments from my childhood.

The links, man, the links!

The Internet is full of weird …

“Nevermore,” quoth the Link.

Oobi meets Bollywood meets Shall We Dance. I … I don’t have words …

Do you Lead the link, or does it lead you?

Malfeasance \mal-FEE-zuhn(t)s\, noun:

Wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.

But more often than not the same board members who were removed by the chancellor for malfeasance subsequently manage to get reelected in a political process that defies any form of accountability.
– Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, New Schools for a New Century

Cagney family conjecture was that Grandpop Nelson, with the temper of a dozen Furies, had likely committed some malfeasance in his native town forcing him to change his name when he left.
– John McCabe, Cagney

Malfeasance is derived from Old French malfaisant, present participle of malfaire, “to do evil,” from Latin malefacere, from male, “badly” + facere, “to do.”

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for malfeasance

I believe this man to be playing this very tongue-in-cheek, and I’m not sure where he’s going with the 9/11 and reality tv stuff, but his plan sure sounds solid to me… uh, whatever that plan might have been…

Link to the ISSUES, man, the ISSUES!!!

Like a Ninja!

Dumb criminals tried to steal this link!