WA's [award winning!] Curious Words Page

euonym

[Greek eu-, good + onyma, name]

noun: well chosen name, appropriately chosen name

   Euonym is is the word that clinched the title for explodingly nervous 13-year old spelling whiz Rebecca Sealfon in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, in June of 1997. See her ecstatic victory whoop at left.

   Sealfon was such a nervous wreck that she had to wait offstage between her turns. Other tough words she managed to spell: deliquesence (the act of melting away) and sufflaminate (suffuse with fire or flame?).
- article Queen of the Bee , in Time magazine, 9 June 1997

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

trepanation

[trepan, a heavy boring tool for sinking shafts, quarrying etc.]

noun: the act of drilling a hole in one's head

   "Like most trends, this seems to have started as a joke. Trepanation -- aka drilling a hole in your head -- was the province of conspiracy-theory satirists, who melded talk of the illuminati's third eye with the virtues of brain aeration. But as Umberto Eco so astutely comments, fringe fiction has a way of reinforcing fact. In the case of trepanation, accounts are growing of actual people drilling actual holes in their skulls. Subjects report a feeling of well-being, if not higher consciousness. Perhaps this comes from the sheer relief of surviving acts of idiocy." - column Hype List - Deflating this month's overblown memes, in Wired magazine, March 1998

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

exhortation: Swifter, Higher, Stronger - the motto of the Olympic Games.

   "Citius, Altius, Fortius, and they give you the gold." - article in Time magazine, 9 Feb 1997

   "La version latine de la devise [motto] olympique «Citius, Altius, Fortius» se traduit par «Plus vite, plus haut, plus fort». Le père Didon, un ami de Pierre de Coubertin, fondateur des Jeux de l'ère moderne, enseignait [taught] ces mots à ses élèves. Pierre de Coubertin a choisi cette devise pour les Jeux, en 1920, car c'est celle qui illustrait le mieux à son avis [opinion] les principes de l'Olympisme et de l'esprit olympique. - Website: Le Mouvement Olympique [http://206.47.71.60/teachersfr/movement.html], 10 Feb 98

- The Classic Latin Dictionary, anonymous, 1929.

lumpen

adjective: disenfranchised and / or uprooted. Said of persons or social groups -- especially those regarded with contempt because of their shiftless, unproductiveness, alienation, degeneration, etc.

   "Here, [in George Bellows' painting Both Members of this Club, 1930] literally, is the 'world of fists' described by somewhat earlier Realist novelists like Frank Norris and Jack London -- the lumpen Darwinism that had grabbed the public's imagination, the sense of life determined by clash and struggle." - Robert Hughes, American Visions, Time magazine special issue, Spring, 1997

   "...the lumpen proletariat..." - ?

   "Mack Sennett, the catalytic force who generated almost all the great comic personalities [of silent films], loved this atmosphere of lumpen rebellion."              - J. Kroll, review of American Film Comedy at Museum of Modern Art, in Newsweek magazine, 31 May 1976.

- The Quintessential Dictionary, I. Moyer Hunsberger, 1978.

warren

noun: an enclosure for breeding game or keeping animals, especially rabbits; a building or group of buildings crowded like a rabbit warren.

   "The structure [NYC's Penn Station] was demolished in 1963 to make room for the miserable warren that now bears its name." - Robert Hughes, American Visions, Time magazine special issue, Spring, 1997

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

Generation X

collective noun phrase: the 45 million 'Gen Xers' born in the U.S. between 1965 and 1977 [not to be confused with the 78 million (Baby) Boomers born between 1946 and 1964, and the 68 million 'Matures' born before 1946.]

   "The label that stuck was from Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel, Generation X, a tale of languid youths musing over '...mental ground zero -- the location where one visualizes onself during the dropping of an atomic bomb: frequently a shopping mall.'."

- Time magazine, 9 June 97

tchotchke / tchatchke / tsatske

[Yiddish] noun: something of no special value; trinket. (Used also for cheap trade show giveaways - buttons, pens, mousepads...)

   Following are Leo Rostens's definitions, unexpurgated and verbatim, from his classic The Joys of Yiddish:

     1. A toy, a little plaything.

     2. An inexpensive, unimportant thing; a gewgaw. "He gave her some tsatske or other for her trouble."

     3. A bruise, contusion, wound. "He had a tsatske under each eye."

     4. A nobody, no bargain. "Don't listen to that one; he's some tsatske."

     5. A misfit, an unadjusted child, a problem and a burden to all.

     6. A loose or kept woman.

     7. An ineffectual person, a fifth wheel, a disappointment.

     8. A cute female; a pretty little number; a chick; a babe; a playgirl.

     9. A sexy but brainless broad.

   "iQVC, the online arm of the home-shopping channel, moves $100,000 worth of tchotchkes a day over the Web." - Josh Quittner, article The Once and Future King, Time magazine, 22 Dec 97

   "But graphics are the equivalent of 'Virtual Tchatchkes.' (The term 'virtual' refers to any kind of ordinary chazzerai put into a format where you can see it on a Web Site)." - article at http://uscj.org/metny/middletown/rambam.htm, 21 Oct 97

- The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten, 1968. - additional info from a Jewish ad agency person

honi soit qui mal y pense

French, Evil to him who evil thinks. The motto of the Order of the Garter.

- Foreign Words and Phrases, from The Lincoln Library of Essential Information.

skunk works

noun phrase: top secret laboratory where special, highly advanced projects are conducted

   "Developed at the CIA's behest to spy on the Soviet Union, the plane was created by Lockheed's famed Skunk Works unit (nicknamed after the "Skonk Works" in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner). The aircraft made its first flight in August 1955." - article U-2, the Plane -- Still the Right Stuff, Time, 24 Nov 97

pieces of eight / bits

noun phrase: unit of former Spanish / American currency

   The Spanish Dubloon, widely used in the U.S. in colonial times, was scored like a pie, to make it possible to break it into eight wedge-shaped slices, or pieces of eight.

   This eightwise division is said to underlie the form of our modern stock market quotations, as in "21 and 5/8".

   Pieces of eight were also called bits, as in "Shave and a haircut, two bits.", and "I wouldn't give two bits for it."

   [ ] Can we trace a line of influence from the eight bits of the Spanish Dubloon through to the eight bits of a byte / octet?

- source unknown - I forgot to cite it!

roman à clef

[French, meaning novel with a key. Also spelled roman à clé in the French-speaking world; in either case, pronounced romahn ah clay.]

noun phrase: a novel that presents real characters and events under the pretense of fiction

   "The real-life counterparts of most of the characters [in The Canfield Decision, by Spiro Agnew] ...are ...so easily identified that the readers are even denied the who's who guessing game they have come to expect of the roman à clef. - D. Shaw, article Agnew's 'murders', media and other 'nattering nabobs', Norman [Oklahoma] Transcript, 23 May 1976.

- The Quintessential Dictionary, I. Moyer Hunsberger, 1978.

hipster

Possibly coined by Norman Mailer, in 1957. "[Norman] Mailer published an essay called The White Negro in 1957, in which he coined the word hipster to describe the social mutation he detected among the young."

noun: someone far outside / ahead of the cultural mainstream; someone who is hip to the jive

   "One is hip or one is square. One is a rebel or one conforms, one is a frontiersman in the Wild West of American nightlife, or else a square cell, trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy nilly to conform if one is to succeed." - Norman Mailer, The White Negro, 1957

[Hopefully, Mailer really did use the term hipster as well as hip in his essay, but my source does not offer an instance of it.]

[Square must be much older, I imagine.]

- definition concocted by WA; etymology from LSD and the American Dream, Jay Stevens, 1978.

pentimenti

[Italian, presumably.]

noun: Plural of pentimento. a reappearance in a painting of a design, or design elements, which have been painted over

   "In the Ocean Parks, with their pentimenti and layering left exposed to view, one sees the summation of Diebenkorn's admiration of Matisse's way of leaving the picture with the traces of its own making." - Robert Hughes, article God is in the Vectors - The luminous architecture of Richard Diebenkorn's paintings, Time magazine, 8 Dec 1997.

   "Many of us are engaged these days in examining the pentimenti of old movies in order... to see what was there for us once, what is there for us now."           - C. Michener and M. Kasindorf, article Old Movies Come Alive, Newsweek magazine, 31 May 76.

- The Quintessential Dictionary, I. Moyer Hunsberger, 1978.

Bell, book and candle

noun phrase: dramatic rite of Roman Catholic excommunication

   "A ceremony in the greater excommunication introduced into the Catholic Church in the eighth century. After reading the sentence a bell is rung, a book closed, and a candle extinguished. From that moment the excommunicated person is excluded from the sacraments and even divine worship."

   "Cursing by Bell, book and candle is reading the anathema in the church, then closing the Bible, tolling the bell, and extinguishing all the candles, saying, 'Fiat, fiat! Do-to (close) the Book, quench the candles, ring the bell. Amen, amen.'"

   "Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back." - Shakespeare, King John, iii,3.

   "...in spite of bell, book and candle..." "- in spite of all the opposition which the Christian hierarchy can offer."

- (The First Hypertext Edition of) The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894.

frisson

[French frisson, shudder, shiver, thrill...]

noun: tingling excitement or stimulation

   "...as well as to the attendant school-boy fetishism and clammy mysticism that have always given them [David Lynch's films] a necessary frisson." - Manohla Dargis, article Zombie Land, OC Weekly magazine, 21 Feb 1997.

   "According to one psychological dictionary, a psychopath was any egocentric, impulsive, asocial individual -- a definition equally applicable to an English eccentric or a Beat poet, and one that hardly warranted the frisson of fear the word evoked." - Jay Stevens, LSD and the American Dream, 1987.

- Larousse's French-English, Anglais-Français Dictionnaire, Nov 1955.

defenestration

[From Latin fenestra,window]

noun: a throwing or being thrown out of a window

   "...after my defenestration of its Net PC, I must say that IBM's thin-client strategy is certainly in tatters." - Jim Louderback, article Don't Skimp on RAM or Processing Power, PC Week, 3 Nov 1997.

   The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch - title of a short story by Arthur C. Clarke (in Tales From The White Heart).

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

gallimaufry

[From French galimafrée]

1. noun: a hash made of meat scraps, hence...

2. noun: a hodgepodge; jumbled assortment

   "In the center stood a glimmering mechanical construct. If it resembled anything, it would be a giant collapsing robot waiting for a handyman to straighten it up again. Corque stared at the gallimaufry and then at Manwright." - Alfred Bester, Galatea Galante, the Perfect Popsy, 1979.

   "The scalpel's edge was exactly one atom wide; it delaminated the skin of Hackworth's palm like an airfoil gliding through smoke. He peeled off a strip the size of a nailhead and proffered it to Dr. X, who snatched it with ivory chopsticks, dredged it through an exquisite cloisonné bowl filled with chemical desiccant, and arranged it on a small windowpane of solid diamond... then Dr. X himself quivered up out of his chair and began shuffling around the room, powering up a gallimaufry of contraband technology." - Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, 1995.

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

le dernier cri

[French. Literally, the last cry, shout, shriek]

noun phrase: the latest thing, the last word, in fashion

   "He was wearing a pre-faded jumpsuit, beautifully tailored, the dernier cri in the nostalgic 2100s." - Alfred Bester, Galatea Galante, the Perfect Popsy, 1979.

- Larousse's French-English, Anglais-Français Dictionnaire, Nov 1955.

epicene

[From Greek epikoinos, common]

1. adjective: in grammar, designating a word having only one form for both the masculine and the feminine

2. adjective: belonging to, having characteristics of, or common to both sexes

3. noun: an epicene person

   "An epicene hove into view; tall, slender, elegant in flesh-colored SkinAll with chest, arms, and legs artfully padded to macho dimensions, as was the ornamental codpiece." - Alfred Bester, Galatea Galante, the Perfect Popsy, 1979.

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

dudgeon

[From Anglo-French digeon]

1. A kind of wood, possibly boxwood, used for dagger hilts.   2. A dagger hilt made of this wood.   3. A dagger with such a hilt.

4. [From Anglo-French en digeon, with reference to the hand on the dagger-hilt]   noun: a mood of dark anger or offense; resentment

   "Irena arrived at the rendezvous in high dudgeon, but her comrade Jodt appeared to be relaxed and ready to negotiate." [I made this sample sentence up, but modeled it after two others I've seen recently in which the dudgeon is similarly said to be "high". - ed.]

- Webster's New World Dictionary, Nov 1959.

Anaheim

Contracted from Santa Ana River and German heim -- meaning home.

   Anaheim is a city of about 300,000 in Orange County, CA, settled by a group of 50 farmers from Germany in the 1850s, who purchased 1,165 acres at $2 per acre. California became the 31st state in the Union a few years later, in 1860. Disneyland appeared somewhat later yet, in 1955.

- article in America West magazine, Nov 1997.

iridescence

noun: the effect of dynamic color produced by light scattered by tiny multi-faceted or otherwise complex surfaces

   "...the iridescent colors of the peacock / ...of the oil slick...".

"Here's how iridescence works: We see color when light bounces off things and enters our eyes. Most colors are caused by chemicals called pigments. But some colors aren't caused by pigments. Instead, they're caused by the surfaces of things. These surfaces have tiny ridges or very thin layers in them. When light hits these ridges or layers, it scatters different colors in different directions. As the scattered light enters our eyes, we see shimmery, shiny iridescent colors."

- definition concocted by WA; explanation from Ranger Rick magazine, Dec. 1997.

carking

[Present participle of obsolete cark, to make or be anxious.]

adjective: oppressive; troublesome; annoying

   "the old carking grief..." - Ursula K. LeGuin, The Word for the World is Forest, ca. 1969.

- Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1959.

kipple

noun: decaying entropic trash Coined by Philip K. Dick, apparently, in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

   As electric-pet delivery driver and chickenhead J.R. Isidore explains to half-naked android Pris Stratton, "This building, except for my apartment, is completely kipple-ized... Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."

   "No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization."

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, p.64, 1968.

chickenhead

noun: mentally defective person "Specials" -- individuals genetically damaged by radioactive dust -- often become chickenheads. Both terms coined by Philip K. Dick, apparently, in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

   "He [character J.R. Isidore] had been a special now for over a year, and not merely in regard to the distorted genes which he carried. Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead. Upon him the contempt of three planets descended."

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, p.19, 1968.

katzenjammer

[German (not Yiddish) Katzenjammer, hangover. An extention, presumably, of the word Katze, cat.]

1. a loud, discordant noise

2. a hangover

3. a state of depression or bewilderment

[Remember The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip? They were the creation of one Hy Eisman.]

- Langensheidt's Deutsch-Englishes / Englishes-Deutsch Wörterbuch and Word-a-Day calendar, for 1996, American Heritage Dictionary.

boogie

From the West African Ki-Kongo language word m'bugi meaning "devilishly good".

- Hear that Long Snake Moan by Michael Ventura, in Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987. Ventura in turn cites Robert Farris Thompson's book Flash of the Spirit.  
  [ ] There are, perhaps, competing etymologies for this term?! - ed.

juke

From the West African Mande-Kan language word juke meaning bad. Used ironically to refer to the bad blues and early rock 'n' roll music played in juke joints throughout the South.

- Hear that Long Snake Moan by Michael Ventura, in Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987. Ventura in turn cites Robert Farris Thompson's book Flash of the Spirit.

mojo

From the West African Ki-Kongo language word mojo meaning soul. In the U.S. it has come to mean an object invested with soul power, or spirit power, which thus has the capacity to heal, or especially, to influence, as in Muddy Waters' cry "Got my mojo workin'... but it just don't work on you.".

- Hear that Long Snake Moan by Michael Ventura, in Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987. Ventura in turn cites Robert Farris Thompson's book Flash of the Spirit.

funky

From the West African Ki-Kongo language word lu-fuki meaning "positive sweat". The Bakongo people use this term "to praise persons for the integrity of their art." Song titles indicate the the term has been current in the New Orleans area for at least as far back as 1900.

- Hear that Long Snake Moan by Michael Ventura, in Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987. Ventura in turn cites Robert Farris Thompson's book Flash of the Spirit.  
  [ ] Does anyone have an alternative story for this one? - ed.

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