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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]