Word of the Day: “Cupidity”
Cupidity (noun): "Excessive desire, greed"
Spotted: About 87 different times in Silas Marner, the novel I’m reading right now, .
Word of the Day: “Gainsay”
Gainsay (verb): "To deny, dispute or contradict."
Source: Yesterday’s New York Times Crossword Puzzle which I get worse at by the day.
Word(s) of the Day: “Bread and Circuses”
Bread and Circuses (noun): "Shallow, palliative, feel-good policies aimed at pacifying an electorate in lieu of substantive reform."
Note: You hear this phrase a lot around San Francisco. I can’t believe I never knew what it meant. Or looked it up.
Word of the Day: “Praxis”
Praxis (noun): Convention, practice, custom.
Heard: On an amazing interview with Junoz Diaz on KCRW’s Bookworm.
Word of the Day: “Perfidious”
Perfidious (adj.): Deceitful, underhanded
Usage: My vote for Best Perfidious Sports Moment (BPSM) goes to the Billy Martin Sucker Punch (BMSP).
Lecture Me, Baby!
Because you really needed more evidence that I’m the world’s biggest
nerd, I have a deep, abiding love for lectures. Nothing makes me
happier than a long boring drive, the stale car air filled by an hour
of a really smart person telling me about string theory. Or their new essay collection that I’ll never read.
My moons ago I spotted a link to Listening to Words, a giant clearinghouse of free recorded lectures, on Jason Kottke’s site, forgot to bookmark it and hated myself. But this week I stumbled back across it again and saw that they’ve added rss feeds for the newest and featured lectures.
Still not as convenient as it could be. Still doesn’t let you create a
podcast of the lectures you want and have them downloaded without
having to seek them out. But its still a peek over the cliffs into my personal Brigadoon in the valley below: The voices of a thousand genius cooing "Kevin, listen. Let me teach you something."
Word of the Day: “Prolix”
Prolix (adj): prolonged, protracted, wordy
Seen: In a fantastic column by Meghan Daum.
Word of the Day: “Febrile”
Febrile: (adj.) Characterized by fever, feverish.
Heard: In Anne Fadiman’s lovely new essay collection At Large and At Small.
Word of the Day: “Embellish”
Embellish (verb): “To enhance with fictious additions”
Source: First heard of while reading Superfudge in the first grade when I thought it meant “to get pregnant” because “embell” sounded like something having to do with “belly”. Heard last week on Ugly Betty.