Word of the Week 12/29/19: Pall

From Merriam-Webster:

(verb)
1. to lose strength or effectiveness
2. to lose in interest or attraction
3: dwindle
4. to cause to become insipid
5. to deprive of pleasure in something by satiating
6. to cover with a drape

(noun)
1a. a square of linen usually stiffened with cardboard that is used to cover a chalice
1b(i): a heavy cloth draped over a coffin
1b(ii): a coffin especially when holding a body
2a: something that covers or conceals
especially : an overspreading element that produces an effect of gloom
2b: a feeling of gloom

From Vocabulary.com:

The noun pall comes from the Latin word, pallium, “covering or cloak.”

Merry Christmas 2019

Word of the Week 12/22/19: Gyre

From Merriam-Webster:

(noun) : a circular or spiral motion or form
especially : a giant circular oceanic surface current
(verb) to move in a circle or spiral

William Butler Yeats opens his 1920 poem, "The Second Coming," with the following lines: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…." Often found in poetic or literary contexts as an alternative to the more familiar "circle" or "spiral," "gyre" comes via the Latin gyrus from the Greek gyros, meaning "ring" or "circle." Today, "gyre" is most frequently encountered as an oceanographic term that refers to vast circular systems of ocean currents, such as the North Atlantic Gyre, a system of currents circling clockwise between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. "Gyre" is also sometimes used of more localized vortices such as those produced by whirlpools or tornados.

From Wikipedia:

In oceanography, a gyre is any large system of circulating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity along with horizontal and vertical friction, determine the circulation patterns from the wind stress curl (torque).

From NOAA.gov:

There are five major gyres, which are large systems of rotating ocean currents. The ocean churns up various types of currents. Together, these larger and more permanent currents make up the systems of currents known as gyres.

Wind, tides, and differences in temperature and salinity drive ocean currents. The ocean churns up different types of currents, such as eddies, whirlpools, or deep ocean currents. Larger, sustained currents—the Gulf Stream, for example—go by proper names. Taken together, these larger and more permanent currents make up the systems of currents known as gyres.

There are five major gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre.

In some instances, the term “gyre” is used to refer to the collections of plastic waste and other debris found in higher concentrations in certain parts of the ocean. While this use of "gyre" is increasingly common, the term traditionally refers simply to large, rotating ocean currents.

ed. note: pronounced with a soft 'g', rhymes with 'wire'

Word of the Week 12/15/19: Penultimate

From Dictionary.com:

1. Next to the last
2. Of or relating to a penult, or the next to the last syllable in a word

From Wiktionary:

From Latin paenultimus, from paene (“almost”) + ultimus (“last”).

From Thoughtco.com:

The words penultimate and ultimate have related meanings, but they're not synonyms. As both an adjective and a noun, penultimate means next to the last. (Penultimate is not more ultimate than ultimate.) The adjective ultimate means last, final, elemental, fundamental, or maximum. As a noun, ultimate refers to a final point or result.

"Properly used, penultimate means 'next to last,' as the penultimate game of the season and the penultimate syllable in a word. It is sometimes used incorrectly where the word ultimate is called for, especially when meaning 'representing or exhibiting the greatest possible development or sophistication,' as in This car is the penultimate in engineering and design. This mistake may reflect the misconception that pen- is a prefix that acts as an intensifier of the word ultimate. But pen- actually derives from the Latin word paene, meaning 'almost.' (Pen- is also found in the word peninsula, which means, etymologically at least, 'almost an island.') People who know the correct meaning of penultimate reject its use as a synonym of ultimate and may be disposed to view the speaker or writer as ignorant or even pretentious."

Word of the Week 12/08/19: Maunder

From Dictionary.com:

1. to talk in a rambling, foolish, or meaningless way
2. to move, go, or act in an aimless, confused manner

From Merriam-Webster:

Maunder looks a lot like meander, and that's not all the two words have in common - both mean "to wander aimlessly," either physically or in speech. Some critics have suggested that while meander can describe a person's verbal and physical rambling, in addition to the wanderings of things like paths and streams, maunder should be limited to wandering words. The problem with that reasoning is that maunder has been used of the physical movements of people since at least 1775, whereas meander didn't acquire that use until around 1831. 

Word of the Week 12/01/19: Incel

From Wikipedia:

Incels, a portmanteau of "involuntary celibates", are members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.

Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity, self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people. The American nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups.

At least four mass murders, resulting in 45 deaths, have been committed in North America by men who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and writings in their private writings or Internet postings. Incel communities have been criticized by the media and researchers for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and radicalizing their members.

Punk Died in the 70s: A Book Review

What did I just read?
The book is called Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. It was collected and curated by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

What made this book interesting?
Please Kill Me attempts to piece together a linear narrative about the evolution of punk rock in America in 1970s. It does this by collecting and ordering interviews with primary and secondary figures on the scene, both musicians and support personnel.

What did I learn from this book?
Many of the big names in the early punk scene have attained a mythical status, but the authors portray these figures in a humanizing way, often to the subjects' detriment. This was both disappointing to learn, as I had idolized many of them, but also interesting, as it made them seem more like people instead of punk rock gods.

Who was my favorite character?
Iggy Pop was the most compelling, not only because of how early he and his band are considered part of the scene, but also the way he portrays himself as a victim both of circumstance and of his own poorly controlled impulses. The early Ramones were bored teenagers completely lacking in morals, and the British scene felt like a caricature of the New York scene, but Iggy Pop seemed connected everywhere, almost as though he were accidentally orchestrating something.

Final thoughts?

Word of the Week 11/24/19: Mendacity

From Wiktionary:

1. The fact or condition of being untruthful; dishonesty.
2. A deceit, falsehood, or lie. 

From Late Latin mendacitas, from Latin mendāx (“deceitful, deceptive, lying”). Mendāx is derived from mentior (“to deceive, lie”) (from mēns, mentis (“mind; intellect; judgment, reasoning”), from Proto-Indo-European *méntis (“thought”)), or from Proto-Indo-European *mend- (“to fault”).

Word of the Week 11/17/19: Recapitulation

From Dictionary.com (D) /Wiktionary (W):
1. to review by a brief summary, as at the end of a speech or discussion; summarize. (D)
2. Biology. (of an organism) During an individual's development, to pass through stages (W) corresponding to the species' stages of evolutionary development.
3. Music. to restate (the exposition) in a sonata-form movement. (D)

From Merriam-Webster:
Capitulation originally meant the organizing of material under headings. So recapitulation usually involves the gathering of the main ideas in a brief summary. But a recapitulation may be a complete restatement as well. In many pieces of classical music, the recapitulation, or recap, is the long final section of a movement, where the earlier music is restated in the main key.

Late Latin recapitulatus, past participle of recapitulare to restate by heads, sum up, from Latin re- + capitulum division of a book

Word of the Week 11/10/19: Talisman

From Collins Dictionary:

1. something, as a ring or stone, bearing engraved figures or symbols thought to bring good luck, keep away evil, etc.; amulet
2. anything thought to have magic power; a charm

From Wikipedia:

A talisman is word taken from the Greek telesma meaning an object or an idea that completes another to make it whole.In the modern days it is said to be an object that has magical properties that provide particular power, energy, and specific benefits to the possessor.

According to the organization Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a talisman is defined as "a magical figure charged with the force which it is intended to represent."

From Merriam-Webster:

We might have borrowed talisman from French, Spanish, or Italian; all three include similar-looking words for a lucky charm. Those three terms derive from a single Arabic word for a charm, tilsam. Tilsam in turn can be traced to the ancient Greek verb telein, which means "to initiate into the mysteries." While the word talisman, in its strictest use, refers to an object, a human being can also be considered a talisman.

Word of the Week 11/03/19: Frisson

From Wikipedia:

Frisson, also known as aesthetic chills, musical chills, and colloquially as a skin orgasm, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding auditory and/or visual stimuli that induces a pleasurable affective state and transient paresthesia (skin tingling or chills), sometimes along with piloerection (goose bumps) and mydriasis (pupil dilation).

Frisson is of short duration, lasting only a few seconds. Typical stimuli include loud passages of music and passages that violate some level of musical expectation. During a frisson, a sensation of chills or tingling felt on the skin of the lower back, shoulders, neck, and/or arms. The sensation of chills is sometimes experienced as a series of 'waves' moving up the back in rapid succession and commonly described as "shivers up the spine". Hair follicles may also undergo piloerection.

Halloween Pumpkin 2019

Word of the Week 10/27/19: Promiscuous

From Merriam-Webster:

Promiscuous (from Latin promiscuus “without distinction, taken from every different type”) has a range of meanings in English. The oldest of these is “composed of all sorts of persons and things” (as in “a promiscuous array of books” or “the promiscuous company at the tavern”). This meaning suggests a random assortment, not necessarily with negative implications.

Within the last few hundred years, promiscuous has added the usually negatively-tinged meanings “indiscriminate” (“promiscuous destruction by bombing”), “casual or careless” (“the president’s promiscuous dishonesty”), and of course, “not restricted to one sexual partner.”

Does this mean that the word itself is promiscuous? Not at all. It is not uncommon for English words to display this polysemous (“having multiple meanings”) character, and promiscuous is actually on the tidy end of the spectrum, as far as these things go.

From Wiktionary:

From Latin prōmiscuus (“mixed, not separated”), from prō (“forth”) + misceō (“mix”).
1. Made up of various disparate elements mixed together; of disorderly composition.
Synonym: motley
2. Made without careful choice; indiscriminate.
3. (derogatory) Indiscriminate in choice of sexual partners, or having many sexual partners.

Word of the Week 10/20/19: Bugbear

From Merriam-Webster:

1. an imaginary goblin or specter used to excite fear
2a: an object or source of dread
b: a continuing source of irritation

Bugbear sounds like some kind of grotesque hybrid creature from fable or folklore, and that very well may be what the word's creator was trying to evoke. When the word entered English in the 16th century, it referred to any kind of creature made up to frighten someone-most often a child; in 1592, Thomas Nashe wrote of "Meere bugge-beares to scare boyes." In the late 20th century, the word found new life as the name of a particular kind of creature in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

From Wikipedia:

A bugbear is a legendary creature or type of hobgoblin comparable to the bogeyman (or bugaboo or babau or cucuy), and other creatures of folklore, all of which were historically used in some cultures to frighten disobedient children.

Its name is derived from the Middle English word bugge (a frightening thing), or perhaps the old Welsh word bwg (evil spirit or goblin), or old Scots bogill (goblin), and has cognates in German bögge or böggel-mann (goblin), and most probably also English "bogeyman" and American English "bugaboo".

Word of the Week 10/13/19: Sibyl

From Lexico:

1. A woman in ancient times who was thought to utter the prophecies of a god.
2. (literary) A woman able to foretell the future.

From Old French sibile or medieval Latin sibilla, via Latin from Greek sibulla.

From Merriam-Webster:

Ancient writers refer to the existence of various women in such countries as Babylonia, Greece, Italy, and Egypt, through whom the gods regularly spoke. These sibyls were easy to confuse with the oracles, women who were likewise mouthpieces of the gods, at such sites as Apollo's temple at Delphi. The most famous sibyl was the Sibyl of Cumae in Italy, a withered crone who lived in a cave. Her prophecies were collected into twelve books, three of which survived to be consulted by the Romans in times of national emergencies. She is one of the five sibyls memorably depicted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

From Wikipedia:

Until the literary elaborations of Roman writers, sibyls were not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their temenos, or shrine.

Word of the Week 10/06/19: Fecalith

From Medicine Net:

Fecalith: A hard stony mass of feces in the intestinal tract. A fecalith can obstruct the appendix, leading to appendicitis. Fecaliths can also obstruct diverticuli. Also known as coprolith and stercolith.

From Wikipedia:

A fecalith is a stone made of feces. It is a hardening of feces into lumps of varying size and may occur anywhere in the intestinal tract but is typically found in the colon. It is also called appendicolith when it occurs in the appendix and is sometimes concomitant with appendicitis. They can also obstruct diverticula. It can possibly form secondary to fecal impaction. A fecaloma is a more severe form of fecal impaction, and a hardened fecaloma may be considered to be a giant fecalith. The term is from Greek líthos=stone.

Coprolith is also used to mean geologically fossilized feces

From the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) paper, Association between the appendix and the fecalith in adults:

Background
We sought to determine the association between the presence of a fecalith and acute/nonperforated appendicitis, gangrenous/perforated appendicitis and the healthy appendix.

Conclusion
Our data confirm the theory of a statistical association between the presence of a fecalith and acute (nonperforated) appendicitis in adults. There was also a significant association between the healthy appendix and asymptomatic fecaliths. There was no correlation between a gangrenous/perforated appendix and the presence of a fecalith. We conclude that the fecalith is merely an incidental finding and is not the primary cause of acute (nonperforated) or gangrenous (perforated) appendicitis, but merely an association. We postulate that the underlying cause is most often related to some other factor when fecaliths are found in patients with perforated or gangrenous appendices.

Word of the Week 09/29/19: Dowse

From Dictionary.com:

To search for underground water, minerals, etc, using a divining rod.

From Wikipedia:

Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials without the use of scientific apparatus.

Word of the Week 09/22/19: Germane

From Dictionary.com:

1. closely or significantly related; relevant; pertinent:
2. Obsolete. closely related.

From Vocabulary.com:

You can thank Shakespeare for the modern meaning of the adjective germane. The word originally referred to people who have the same parents. Shakespeare added the word's figurative meaning of objects being closely related or relevant when he used it in the play Hamlet.

From Wiktionary:

Variant form of german, adapted in this sense in allusions to its use in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
 - Having the same mother and father; a full (brother or sister). "brother-german"

From Merriam-Webster:

Relevant, Germane, Material, Pertinent, Apposite, Applicable, Apropos mean relating to or bearing upon the matter in hand. Relevant implies a traceable, significant, logical connection. Germane may additionally imply a fitness for or appropriateness to the situation or occasion. Material implies so close a relationship that it cannot be dispensed with without serious alteration of the case. Pertinent stresses a clear and decisive relevance. Apposite suggests a felicitous relevance. Applicable suggests the fitness of bringing a general rule or principle to bear upon a particular case. Apropos suggests being both relevant and opportune.

"Wert thou a Leopard, thou wert Germane to the Lion." So wrote Shakespeare in Timon of Athens (circa 1607), using an old (and now obsolete) sense of germane meaning "closely akin." Germane derives from the Latin word germen, meaning "bud" or "sprout," which is also at the root of our verb germinate, meaning "to sprout" or "begin to develop." An early sense of germane referred specifically to children of the same parents.

Word of the Week 09/15/19: Limpid

From Merriam-Webster:
1a. Marked by transparency
 b. Clear and simple in style
2. Absolutely serene and untroubled

Clear, Transparent, Translucent, Limpid mean capable of being seen through. Clear implies absence of cloudiness, haziness, or muddiness.  clear water  Transparent implies being so clear that objects can be seen distinctly.  a transparent sheet of film  Translucent implies the passage of light but not a clear view of what lies beyond.  translucent frosted glass  Limpid  suggests the soft clearness of pure water.  her eyes were limpid pools of blue

Since the early 1600s, "limpid" has been used in English to describe things that have the soft clearness of pure water. The aquatic connection is not incidental; language scholars believe that "limpid" probably traces to "lympha," a Latin word meaning "water." That same Latin root is also the source of the word lymph, the English name for the pale liquid that helps maintain the body's fluid balance and that removes bacteria from tissues.

From Dictionary.com:
First recorded in 1605–15, limpid is from the Latin word limpidus clear.

From Vocabulary.com:
1. clear and bright
2. transmitting light; able to be seen through with clarity
3. (of language) transparently clear; easily understandable

Word of the Week 09/08/19: Scintillating

From Vocabulary.com:

1. having brief brilliant points or flashes of light
2. marked by high spirits or excitement
3. brilliantly clever

From Dictionary.com:

First recorded in 1615–25, scintillate is from the Latin word scintillātus (past participle of scintillāre to send out sparks, flash)

ed. note: pronounced with a silent "c"

Word of the Week 09/01/19: Gimcrack

"Love is but a flitting shadow, a lure, a gimcrack, a kickshaw." - Nathanael West

From Dictionary.com:

A showy, useless trifle; gewgaw.

From Wiktionary:

Showy but of poor quality; worthless.

From World Wide Words.org:

Gimcrack used to describe some kind of inlaid work in wood but later changed to mean a fanciful notion or mechanical contrivance. It became popular in the eighteenth century in the modern sense.

ed note: pronounced with a soft "g"

The Pale Blue Dot

In 1990, at the suggestion of astronomer Carl Sagan, NASA used the Voyager 1 space probe to take a picture of Earth as the probe was leaving the Solar System. From 3.7 billion miles away, the Earth appeared as a pale blue dot against the vastness of space, among bands of light reflected by the camera. During a lecture at Cornell University in 1994, Sagan shared his thoughts about the photograph and its larger implications:

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. 

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. 

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Word of the Week 08/25/19: Plenipotentiary

From Merriam-Webster:

1. invested with full power
2. a person and especially a diplomatic agent invested with full power to transact business

The adjective plenipotentiary is typically used, as in our second example, after the noun it modifies in the ranking of diplomatic hierarchy. Plenipotentiary gets its power from its Latin roots: plenus, meaning "full," and potens, "powerful." When government leaders dispatch their ambassador plenipotentiary, minister plenipotentiary, or envoy plenipotentiary, they are not just sending an agent to deal with foreign affairs but one having full power to act on the behalf of his or her country and government. The word extraordinary is also found in titles of government representatives-sometimes in combination with plenipotentiary (as in "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary")-to denote an agent assigned to a particular (or extraordinary) diplomatic mission. Both the adjective and the noun plenipotentiary (meaning "a person invested with full power to transact business") appeared in the mid-17th century.

From Wikipedia:

Before the era of rapid international transport or essentially instantaneous communication (such as telegraph in the mid-19th century and then radio), diplomatic mission chiefs were granted full (plenipotentiary) powers to represent their government in negotiations with their host nation. Conventionally, any representations made or agreements reached with a plenipotentiary would be recognized and complied with by their government.

Historically, the common generic term for high diplomats of the crown or state was minister. It therefore became customary to style the chiefs of full ranking missions as Minister Plenipotentiary. This position was roughly equivalent to the modern Ambassador, a term that historically was reserved mainly for missions between the great powers and also relating to the dogal (city) state of Venice.

Permanent missions at a bilateral level were chiefly limited to relations between large, neighboring or closely allied powers, rarely to the very numerous small principalities, hardly worth the expense. However, diplomatic missions were dispatched for specific tasks, such as negotiating a treaty bilaterally, or via a conference, such as the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. In such cases, it was normal to send a representative minister empowered to cast votes. For example, in the Peace Treaty of Versailles (1783), ending the American Revolution, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay were named "minister plenipotentiary of the United States" to the Netherlands, France and Spain, respectively.

Word of the Week 08/18/19: Execrable

From Dictionary.com:

1. utterly detestable; abominable; abhorrent.

From Vocabulary.com:

1. unequivocally detestable
2. of very poor quality or condition
3. deserving a curse

From Lexico.com:

1. Extremely bad or unpleasant

From Merriam-Webster:

He or she who is cursed faces execrable conditions. Keep this in mind to remember that execrable is a descendant of the Latin verb exsecrari, meaning "to put under a curse." Since its earliest uses in English, beginning in the 14th century, execrable has meant "deserving or fit to be execrated," the reference being to things so abominable as to be worthy of formal denouncement (such as "execrable crimes"). But in the 19th century we lightened it up a bit, and our "indescribably bad" sense has since been applied to everything from roads ("execrable London pavement" - Sir Walter Scott) to food ("The coffee in the station house was ... execrable." - Clarence Day) to, inevitably, the weather ("the execrable weather of the past fortnight" - The (London) Evening Standard).

Word of the Week 08/11/19: Wry

From Cambridge Dictionary:

Showing that you find a bad or difficult situation slightly amusing.

From Merriam-Webster:

1. (verb) twist, writhe
2. (verb)  to pull out of or as if out of proper shape : make awry
3. (adj) bent, twisted, or turned usually abnormally to one side
4. (adj) made by a deliberate distortion of the facial muscles often to express irony or mockery
5. (adj) wrongheaded
6. (adj) cleverly and often ironically or grimly humorous 

Middle English wrien, from Old English wrigian to turn; akin to Middle High German rigel kerchief wound around the head, Greek rhiknos shriveled, Avestan urvisyeiti he turns

From Dictionary.com:

adj. use of wry to twist, Middle English wryen, Old English wrīgian to go, strive, tend, swerve; cognate with Dutch wrijgen to twist; akin to Old English wrigels, Latin rīcula veil, Greek rhoikós crooked

Word of the Week 08/04/19: Kingmaker

(in the context of game theory):

From Wikipedia:

A kingmaker scenario in a game of three or more players, is an endgame situation where a player who is unable to win has the capacity to determine which player among others will. Said player is referred to as the kingmaker or spoiler. No longer playing for themselves, they may make game decisions to favor a player who played more favorably (to them) earlier in the game. Except in games where interpersonal politics, by design, play a decisive role, this is undesirable.

Consider this simple game: Three gladiators play, with strengths 3, 4, 5. In turn, each gladiator must engage another, and they begin combat. The result of combat is that the weaker player is eliminated, and the stronger player loses strength equal to that of the weaker player. (For example, if "5" attacks "3", "3" will die and "5" will have strength 2.) The winning gladiator is the last one standing.

Each round of combat eliminates one gladiator, so there will be two rounds of combat. The first round of combat will eliminate one participant and weaken the other to a strength no greater than 2. The nonparticipant's strength is at least 3, so they are guaranteed to win the second round of combat, and the entire contest. Therefore, the game collapses: The winning gladiator is the one not involved in the first battle.

Hence, the gladiator whose turn comes first is the kingmaker. They must be involved in the first battle, hence cannot win, but with the liberty of choosing their opponent in that battle, can elect either of the other two players to be the winner of the contest.

Because they allow the outcome of the game to be determined by a player of (presumably) inferior strategy, kingmaker scenarios are usually considered undesirable, though to some extent they may be unavoidable in strategy games. Of course the argument can be made that this means the winner, chosen by the kingmaker, played with the additional restriction of not annoying the other players as much, presumably a more difficult task. In these games, the game mechanics, players' outcomes and strategies are often so interconnected that to eliminate all possibilities of this situation is almost impossible.

In tournament situations where for instance the first few teams proceed to the next round, a player that is already guaranteed to proceed can experience a situation similar to a kingmaker. They can sometimes influence who of the remaining players comes in second (when 2 players proceed). For such a player it can be profitable to make sure the weakest player proceeds, because this reduces his competition in subsequent rounds. This is often seen as undesirable because it conflicts with the concept that the strongest few are allowed to proceed to the next round.

Word of the Week 07/28/19: Cartouche

From Tour Egypt.net:

In ancient Egypt, kings, and sometimes others, encircled their name hieroglyphs with a design that we now call a cartouche. While we may find it rarely used to enclose the name of non-kings, for the most part, the cartouche's presence identifies the name it encloses as the king of Egypt. A cartouche is an oval ring that is a hieroglyph representation of a length of rope folded and tied at one end. It symbolized everything that the sun encircled and is thus an indication of the king's rule of the cosmos. Later, in the demotic script, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of parentheses and a vertical line.

The term, "cartouche" is a relatively modern one coined by the soldiers of Napoleon's expedition in Egypt, who saw in the sign the likeness of the cartridges, or "cartouche" used in their own guns. The cartouche, known in ancient Egypt as the shenu, is derived from the Egyptian verb, Sheni, which means to encircle. It is very similar to the shen sign, a more circular form, and in fact the earliest use of the cartouche in which the king's name was written were circular and identical with that sign.

The circular shen sign, or ring evokes the concept of eternity through its form, having no beginning or end, and its solar aspect is symbolized by the sun disk often depicted in the center of the circle. It was also a symbol of protection, and as a hieroglyphic symbol in Egyptian art, it can have the meanings of both "eternity" and "protection". As a sign of "eternity", the shen is frequently associated with representations of Heh, the god of eternity, and often forms the base of the notched palm-branches symbolizing "years," which is held by this deity. It is also mirrored in the shape of the ouroboros, the serpent which bites its own tail.

Word of the Week 07/21/19: Extirpation

From Biology Dictionary.net:

Extirpation (also known as ‘local extinction’) describes the situation in which a species or population no longer exists within a certain geographical location. Unlike extinction, whereby a species no longer exists anywhere, extirpation means that at least one other population of the species still persists in other areas.

Most species of plants and animals have a number of different breeding populations, which exist either globally or within a defined region or habitat. This means that when a population ceases to exist in a certain area, the other populations remain to keep the species extant (still in existence).

Since the entire species is not extinct, it is possible for populations to recolonize after extirpation. However, this can sometimes lead to a reduction in genetic diversity.

The habitat ranges of populations may also naturally shift in response to changes in abiotic factors (e.g., climatic changes) or changes in biotic factors (e.g., the availability of food, or the presence of predators and competitive species). Therefore, when a population migrates and no longer exists within a certain range, it has been extirpated from that area.

Human activities are largely responsible for local extinctions, either directly through hunting or trapping, or indirectly through processes such as habitat disturbance and destruction, introducing invasive species, removing or damaging resources, and polluting.

The extirpation of organisms from a habitat can have significant ecological effects. For example, the removal of predators from a habitat can result in increased population sizes of species in lower trophic levels, which can further increase pressure on other resources such as vegetation; this effect is called a trophic cascade.

A common example of extirpation is the human-caused local extinction of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) from around two-thirds of their historic natural habitat range. Gray wolves used to be distributed widely across the Northern Hemisphere, throughout North America, Canada, Europe and Asia. However, due to conflict with humans over livestock predation and fear of attacks, populations were extirpated from many of their habitats.

In the early 1900s, the American government declared wolves as vermin, and humans targeted the wolves directly as an organized extermination effort. This reduced the American populations of gray wolves dramatically and resulted in their extirpation from all but two states—a population of around 300 individuals remained in Minnesota and Michigan.

In areas such as the Yellowstone National Park, where the wolves had been completely eradicated—the last remaining wolves were shot in 1926—populations of elk and other natural prey became uncontrollably large. The herbivore populations grazed intensely on vegetation, which affected the available resources and thus the presence of other animals such as beavers and bears. The removal of wolves had caused a trophic cascade.

Word of the Week 07/14/19: Pusillanimous

From Merriam-Webster:

Lacking courage and resolution : marked by contemptible timidity

The Latin roots of this derisive adjective are pusillus, meaning "very small" (and related to pusus, meaning "boy") and animus, which means "spirit" and is the ancestor to many words in our language, including "animal" and "animate." Pusillanimous first appeared in English in the 16th century, but it gained prominence in the 1970s when Vice President Spiro Agnew famously accused his ideological rivals of "pusillanimous pussyfooting."

Cowardly, Pusillanimous, Craven, Dastardly mean having or showing a lack of courage. Cowardly implies a weak or ignoble lack of courage. Pusillanimous suggests a contemptible lack of courage. Craven suggests extreme defeatism and complete lack of resistance.  Dastardly often implies behavior that is both cowardly and treacherous or skulking or outrageous.

From Dictionary.com:

1. lacking courage or resolution; cowardly; faint-hearted; timid.
2. proceeding from or indicating a cowardly spirit.

Word of the Week 07/07/19: Syncretism

From Wikipedia:

Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, while blending practices of various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.

The English word is first attested in the early 17th century, from Modern Latin syncretismus, drawing on Greek synkretismos, supposedly meaning "Cretan federation", but this is a spurious etymology from the naive idea in Plutarch's 1st-century AD essay on "Fraternal Love (Peri Philadelphias)" in his collection Moralia. He cites the example of the Cretans, who compromised and reconciled their differences and came together in alliance when faced with external dangers. "And that is their so-called Syncretism [Union of Cretans]". More likely as an etymology is sun- ("with") plus kerannumi ("mix") and its related noun, "krasis," "mixture."

Erasmus probably coined the modern usage of the Latin word in his Adagia ("Adages"), published in the winter of 1517–1518, to designate the coherence of dissenters in spite of their differences in theological opinions. In a letter to Melanchthon of April 22, 1519, Erasmus specifically adduced the Cretans of Plutarch as an example of his adage "Concord is a mighty rampart".

Overt syncretism in folk belief may show cultural acceptance of an alien or previous tradition, but the "other" cult may survive or infiltrate without authorized syncresis nevertheless. For example, some Conversos developed a sort of cult for martyr-victims of the Spanish Inquisition, thus incorporating elements of Catholicism while resisting it.

Syncretism was common during the Hellenistic period, with rulers regularly identifying local deities in various parts of their domains with the relevant god or goddess of the Greek Pantheon, as a means of increasing the cohesion of the Kingdom. This practice was accepted in most locations, but vehemently rejected by the Jews who considered the identification of Yahwe with the Greek Zeus as the worst of blasphemy. The Roman Empire continued this practice - first by the identification of traditional Roman deities with Greek ones, producing a single Graeco-Roman Pantheon and then identifying members of that pantheon with the local deities of various Roman provinces. An undeclared form of Syncretism was the transfer of many attributes of the goddess Isis - whose worship was widespread in the Later Roman Empire - to the Christian Virgin Mary. Some religious movements have embraced overt syncretism, such as the case of melding Shintō beliefs into Buddhism or the amalgamation of Germanic and Celtic pagan views into Christianity during its spread into Gaul, the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. In later times, Christian missionaries in North America identified Manitou - the spiritual and fundamental life force in the traditional beliefs of the Algonquian groups - with the God of Christianity. Similar identifications were made by missionaries at other locations in the Americas and Africa, whenever encountering a local belief in a Supreme God or Supreme Spirit of some kind.

Syncretism tends to facilitate coexistence and unity between otherwise different cultures and world-views (intercultural competence), a factor that has recommended it to rulers of multi-ethnic realms. Conversely, the rejection of syncretism, usually in the name of "piety" and "orthodoxy", may help to generate, bolster or authenticate a sense of un-compromised cultural unity in a well-defined minority or majority.

Religious syncretism exhibits blending of two or more religious belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation into a religious tradition of beliefs from unrelated traditions. This can occur for many reasons, and the latter scenario happens quite commonly in areas where multiple religious traditions exist in proximity and function actively in a culture, or when a culture is conquered, and the conquerors bring their religious beliefs with them, but do not succeed in entirely eradicating the old beliefs or (especially) practices.

Religions may have syncretic elements to their beliefs or history, but adherents of so-labeled systems often frown on applying the label, especially adherents who belong to "revealed" religious systems, such as the Abrahamic religions, or any system that exhibits an exclusivist approach. Such adherents sometimes see syncretism as a betrayal of their pure truth. By this reasoning, adding an incompatible belief corrupts the original religion, rendering it no longer true. Indeed, critics of a specific syncretistic trend may sometimes use the word "syncretism" as a disparaging epithet, as a charge implying that those who seek to incorporate a new view, belief, or practice into a religious system actually distort the original faith. Non-exclusivist systems of belief, on the other hand, may feel quite free to incorporate other traditions into their own. Keith Ferdinando notes that the term "syncretism" is an elusive one, and can apply to refer to substitution or modification of the central elements of a religion by beliefs or practices introduced from elsewhere. The consequence under such a definition, according to Ferdinando, can lead to a fatal "compromise" of the original religion's "integrity".

In modern secular society, religious innovators sometimes construct new religions syncretically as a mechanism to reduce inter-religious tension and enmity, often with the effect of offending the original religions in question. Such religions, however, do maintain some appeal to a less exclusivist audience. Note the Living Church in Soviet Russia and the German Evangelical Church in Nazi Germany.

From New Advent.com's Catholic Encyclopedia:

Syncretism is sometimes used to designate the fusion of pagan religions. In the East the intermixture of the civilizations of different nations began at a very early period. When the East was hellenized under Alexander the Great and the Diadochi in the fourth century B.C., the Grecian and Oriental civilizations were brought into contact, and a compromise to a large extent effected. The foreign deities were identified with the native (e.g. Serapis = Zeus, Dionysus) and a fusion of the cults succeeded. After the Romans had conquered the Greeks, the victors, as is known, succumbed to the culture of the vanquished, and the ancient Roman religion became completely hellenized. Later the Romans gradually received all the religions of the peoples whom they subdued, so that Rome became the "temple of the whole world". Syncretism reached its culmination in the third century A.D. under the emperors Caracalla, Heliogabalus, and Alexander Severus (211-35). The countless cults of the Roman Empire were regarded as unessential forms of the same thing—a view which doubtless strengthened the tendency towards Monotheism. Heliogabalus even sought to combine Christianity and Judaism with his religion, the cult of the sun-god. Julia Mamæa, the mother of Alexander Severus, attended in Alexandria the lectures of Origen, and Alexander placed in his lararium the images of Abraham and Christ.

From Dictionary.com:

(Grammar). the merging, as by historical change in a language, of two or more categories in a specified environment into one, as, in nonstandard English, the use of was with both singular and plural subjects, while in standard English was is used with singular subjects (except for you in the second person singular) and were with plural subjects.

Word of the Week 06/30/19: Probity

From Merriam-Webster:

Adherence to the highest principles and ideals. 

Probity and its synonyms honesty, honor, and integrity all mean uprightness of character or action, with some slight differences in emphasis. Honesty implies a refusal to lie or deceive in any way. Honor suggests an active or anxious regard for the standards of one's profession, calling, or position. Integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge. Probity, which descends from Latin probus, meaning "honest," implies tried and proven honesty or integrity.

From Wiktionary:

Integrity, especially of the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency. From Middle French probité, from Latin probitas (“uprightness, honesty”), from probus (“good, excellent, honest”).

Word of the Week 06/23/19: Élan

From Merriam-Webster:

Vigorous spirit or enthusiasm 

Once upon a time, English speakers did not have "élan." We had, however, "elance," a verb meaning "to hurl" that was used specifically for throwing lances and darts. "Elance" derived from Middle French (s')eslancer ("to rush or dash"), itself from lancer, meaning "to hurl." With the decline of lance-throwing, we tossed out "elance" a century and half ago. Just about that time we found "élan," a noun that traces to "(s')eslancer." We copied "élan" in form from the French, but we dispensed with the French sense of a literal "rush" or "dash," retaining the sense of enthusiastic animation that we sometimes characterize as "dash."

From Cambridge Dictionary:

A combination of style and energetic confidence, especially in performances or manner

From The Free Dictionary:

1. Enthusiastic vigor and liveliness
2. Distinctive style or flair
3. Dash or vivacity; verve

Word of the Week 06/16/19: Inscrutable

From Dictionary.com:

1. incapable of being investigated, analyzed, or scrutinized; impenetrable.
2. not easily understood; mysterious; unfathomable:
3. incapable of being seen through physically; physically impenetrable:

From Cambridge Dictionary:

1. very difficult to understand or get to know
2. not showing emotions or thoughts and therefore very difficult to understand or get to know

From Vocabulary.com:

of an obscure nature

From Merriam-Webster:

You may have to scrutinize this word closely in order to speculate as to its origins, but there is at least one clue in this sentence. Inscrutable derives from the Late Latin adjective inscrutabilis, which can be traced back to the verb scrutari, meaning "to search or to examine." "Scrutari" is also the source of the English words "scrutinize" and "scrutiny."

Word of the Week 06/09/19: Bucolic

From Dictionary.com:

1. of or relating to shepherds; pastoral
2. of, relating to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life

From Merriam-Webster:

We get bucolic from the Latin word bucolicus, which is ultimately from the Greek word boukolos, meaning "cowherd." When bucolic was first used in English in the early 17th century, it meant "pastoral" in a narrow sense - that is, it referred to things related to shepherds or herdsmen and in particular to pastoral poetry. Later in the 19th century, it was applied more broadly to things rural or rustic. Bucolic has also been occasionally used as a noun meaning "a pastoral poem" or "a bucolic person."

Word(s) of the Week 06/02/19: Animal adjectives using the -ine suffix

acarine (mite, tick)
aedine, anopheline, culucine (mosquito)
alcelaphine, antilopine, bubaline (antelope)
anguine, anguilline, aspine, ophidian, serpentine, viperine (snake)
 - colubrine (gartersnake, king snake)
 - crotaline (rattlesnake)
 - elapine (cobra, coral snake, mamba)
 - pythonine (python)
arietine (ram)
asinine (donkey)

Word of the Week 05/26/19: Imbroglio

From Merriam-Webster:

1a: an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding
  b: scandal
  c: a violently confused or bitterly complicated altercation
  d: an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel)
2: a confused mass 

Imbroglio and "embroilment" are more than just synonyms; they're also linked through etymology. Both descend from the Middle French verb embrouiller (same meaning as "embroil"), from the prefix em-, meaning "thoroughly," plus brouiller, meaning "to mix" or "to confuse." ("Brouiller" is itself a descendant of an Old French word for broth.) Early in the 17th century, English speakers began using "embroil," a direct adaptation of "embrouiller." Our noun "embroilment," which also entered the language in the early 17th century, comes from the same source. Meanwhile, the Italians were using their own alteration of "embrouiller" : imbrogliare, meaning "to entangle." In the mid-18th century, English speakers embraced the Italian noun imbroglio as well.

From Vocabulary.com:

an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation

Word of the Week 05/19/19: Abstemious

From Merriam-Webster:

Marked by restraint especially in the eating of food or drinking of alcohol.

Abstemious and "abstain" look alike, and both have meanings involving self-restraint or self-denial. Both get their start from the Latin prefix abs-, meaning "from" or "away," but "abstain" traces to "abs-" plus the Latin verb tenēre (meaning "to hold"), while "abstemious" gets its "-temious" from a suffix akin to the Latin noun temetum, meaning "intoxicating drink."

From Dictionary.com:

c.1600, from Latin abstemius "sober, temperate," from ab(s)- "from" (see ab-) + stem of temetum "strong drink," related to temulentus "drunken." Technically, of liquor, but extended in Latin to temperance in living generally.

NB from Vocabulary.com:

This word has the vowels a, e, i, o and u in alphabetical order; the adverb abstemiously adds the y.

Word of the Week 05/12/19: Cromulent

From Wiktionary:
"Lisa the Iconoclast" is the sixteenth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 18, 1996. The episode features two neologisms, embiggen and cromulent, which were intended to sound like real words but are in fact completely fabricated (although it was later discovered that C. A. Ward had used "embiggen" in 1884). Embiggen, coined by Dan Greaney, has since been used in several scientific publications, while cromulent, coined by David X. Cohen, appeared in Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon.

The showrunners asked the writers if they could come up with two words which sounded like real words, and these were what they came up with. The Springfield town motto is "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." Schoolteacher Edna Krabappel comments that she had never heard the word embiggen until she moved to Springfield. Ms. Hoover, another teacher, replies, "I don't know why; it’s a perfectly cromulent word." Later in the episode, while talking about Homer's audition for the role of town crier, Principal Skinner states, "He's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance."

The meaning of cromulent is inferred only from its usage, which indicates that it is a positive attribute. Dictionary.com defines it as meaning fine or acceptable. Ben Macintyre has written that it means "valid or acceptable".

Word of the Week 05/05/19: Obsequious

From Grammarist:

Obsequious means servile, excessively obedient, overly-eager to please in a groveling manner. Obsequious enters the English language in the fifteenth century meaning prompt to serve, derived from the Latin word obsequiosus which means compliant, obedient, and from the Latin word obsequi meaning to accommodate oneself to the will of another. Obsequious behavior goes beyond compliance or obedience; it carries an unseemly connotation.

From Merriam-Webster:

An obsequious person is more likely to be a follower than a leader. Bear in mind that the word comes from the Latin root sequi, meaning "to follow." (The other contributor is the prefix ob-, meaning "toward.") "Sequi" is the source of a number of other English words, too, including "consequence" (a result that follows from an action), "sequel" (a novel, film, or TV show that follows an original version), and "non sequitur" (a conclusion that doesn’t follow from what was said before).

From Macmillan Dictionary:

Too eager to please someone, in a way that does not seem sincere

NB: not to be confused with obsequies, which are funeral rites

Word of the Week 04/28/19: Glib

From Dictionary.com:

1. Readily fluent, often thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely so
2. Easy or unconstrained, as actions or manners.
3. (Archaic) Agile; spry.

From Grammarist.com:

Glib describes someone who is a smooth talker, someone who speaks easily and fluently, someone who is convincing in speech. However, someone who is speaking in a glib manner is usually insincere, and is trying to convince someone that something is better or more important than it is, or is trying to perpetrate a fraud of some sort. Glib describes an eloquent speaker, but usually one who has an ulterior motive. To call someone glib is usually a minor insult, or a challenge. The word glib is derived from the German word glibberig which means slippery or slimy.

Word of the Week 04/21/19: Colloquy

From Wiktionary:

A conversation or dialogue. [from 16th c.]
A formal conference. [16th-17th c.]
A church court held by certain Reformed denominations. [from 17th c.]
A written discourse. [from 18th c.]
A discussion during a trial in which a judge ensures that the defendant understands what is taking place in the trial and what their rights are.

From Wikipedia:

In law, a colloquy is a routine, highly formalized conversation. Conversations among the judge and lawyers (as opposed to testimony under oath) are colloquys.

From Merriam-Webster:

Colloquy may make you think of "colloquial," and there is indeed a connection between the two words. As a matter of fact, "colloquy" is the parent word from which "colloquial" was coined in the mid-18th century. "Colloquy" itself, though now the less common of the two words, has been a part of the English language since the 15th century. It is a descendant of Latin loqui, meaning "to speak." Other descendants of "loqui" in English include "eloquent," "loquacious," "ventriloquism," and "soliloquy," as well as "elocution" and "interlocutor."

Word of the Week 04/14/19: Aloof

From Merriam-Webster:

removed or distant either physically or emotionally

Indifferent, Unconcerned, Incurious, Aloof, Detached, Disinterested mean not showing or feeling interest. Indifferent implies neutrality of attitude from lack of inclination, preference, or prejudice. Unconcerned suggests a lack of sensitivity or regard for others' needs or troubles. Incurious implies an inability to take a normal interest due to dullness of mind or to self-centeredness. Aloof suggests a cool reserve arising from a sense of superiority or disdain for inferiors or from shyness. Detached implies an objective attitude achieved through absence of prejudice or selfishness. Disinterested implies a circumstantial freedom from concern for personal or especially financial advantage that enables one to judge or advise without bias.

From Wiktionary:

At or from a distance, but within view, or at a small distance; apart; away.
Without sympathy; unfavorably
From Middle English loof (“weather gage, windward direction”), probably from Middle Dutch (Compare Dutch loef (“the weather side of a ship”)), originally a nautical order to keep the ship's head to the wind, thus to stay clear of a lee-shore or some other quarter, hence the figurative sense of "at a distance, apart"

Word of the Week 04/07/19: Offal

From Wikipedia:

Offal (/ˈɒfəl/), also called variety meats, pluck or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs excluding muscle and bone. Some cultures strongly consider offal as food to be taboo, while others use it as everyday food, or in delicacies. Certain offal dishes—including foie gras, pâté and sweetbread—are considered gourmet food in international cuisine. Others remain part of traditional regional cuisine and may be consumed especially in connection with holidays. This includes Scottish haggis, Jewish chopped liver, U.S. chitterlings, Mexican menudo as well as many other dishes. Intestines are traditionally used as casing for sausages.

Depending on the context, offal may refer to those parts of an animal carcass discarded after butchering or skinning; it may also refer to the by-products of milled grains, such as corn or wheat. Offal not used directly for human or animal food is often processed in a rendering plant, producing material that is used for fertilizer or fuel; or in some cases, it may be added to commercially produced pet food.

In earlier times, mobs sometimes threw offal and other rubbish at condemned criminals as a show of public disapproval.

From Merriam-Webster:

In its original sense, offal refers to something that has fallen or been cast away from some process of preparation or manufacture, and it has been used to describe such things as the stalks and dust from tobacco leaves, the less valuable portions of an animal hide, the by-products of milling grain, and the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal. The word offal, however, is not an etymological cast-off, but is an English original that arose in the late 14th century as a combination of of (the Middle English spelling of "off") and fall, aptly naming that which "falls off" or is cast aside from something else. Since the late 16th century, offal has also been used as a synonym for trash, garbage, and rubbish.

Word of the Week 3/31/2019: Gaslighting

From Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations, in which a man dims the gas lights in his home and then persuades his wife that she is imagining the change.

Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics to abuse and undermine their victims. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both lying to the other and attempting to undermine perceptions.

An abuser's ultimate goal is to make their victim second guess their every choice and question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. A tactic which further degrades a target's self-esteem is for the abuser to ignore, then attend to, then ignore the victim again, so that the victim lowers their personal bar for what constitutes affection and perceives themselves as less worthy of affection.

There are two characteristics of gaslighting: The abuser wants full control of feelings, thoughts, or actions of the victim; and the abuser discreetly emotionally abuses the victim in hostile, abusive, or coercive ways.

Signs of gaslighting include:
- Withholding information from victim;
- Countering information to fit the abuser's perspective;
- Discounting information;
- Verbal abuse, usually in the form of jokes;
- Blocking and diverting the victim's attention from outside sources;
- Trivializing the victim's worth; and,
- Undermining victim by gradually weakening them and their thought process.

Three most common methods of gaslighting are:
- Hiding: The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves.
- Changing: The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough.
- Control: The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim's thoughts and actions. The abuser gets pleasure from knowing the victim is being fully controlled by them.

Word of the Week 3/24/19: Sanctimonious

From Merriam-Webster:

Hypocritically pious or devout

There's nothing sacred about "sanctimonious," but in the early 1600s, the English adjective was still used to describe someone truly holy or pious (a sense that recalls the meaning of the word's Latin parent, sanctimonia). Shakespeare used both the "holy" and "holier-than-thou" senses in his work, referring in The Tempest to the "sanctimonious" (that is, "holy") ceremonies of marriage, and in Measure for Measure to describe "the sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments but scraped one out of the table." (Apparently, the pirate found the restriction on stealing a bit too inconvenient.)

Word of the Week 3/17/19: Insipid

From Wiktionary:

Unappetizingly flavorless.
Flat; lacking character or definition.
Cloyingly sweet or sentimental.

From Vocabulary.com:

1. lacking interest or significance or impact
2. lacking taste or flavor or tang

Insipid comes from the Latin insipidus, the opposite of sapidus which means flavorful. The most common use of the word is in a metaphorical sense for dull or flat.

Word of the Week 3/10/19: Demesne

From Wikipedia:

In the feudal system, the demesne was all the land which was retained by a lord of the manor for his own use and occupation or support, under his own management, as distinguished from land sub-enfeoffed by him to others as sub-tenants. In England, royal demesne is the land held by the Crown, and ancient demesne is the legal term for the land held by the king at the time of the Domesday Book.

In this feudal system the demesne was all the land retained under his own management by a lord of the manor for his own use and support. It was not necessarily all contiguous to the manor house. A portion of the demesne lands, called the lord's waste, served as public roads and common pasture land for the lord and his tenants. Most of the remainder of the land in the manor was sub-enfeoffed by the lord to others as sub-tenants.

Immediately following the Norman Conquest of 1066, all land in England was claimed by King William the Conqueror as his absolute title by allodial right, being the commencement of the royal demesne, also known as Crown land. The king made grants of very large parcels of land under various forms of feudal tenure from his demesne, generally in the form of feudal baronies. The land not so enfeoffed, for example royal manors administered by royal stewards and royal hunting forests, thus remained within the royal demesne. In the Domesday Book of 1086, this land is referred to as terra regis (literally "the king's land"), and in English common law the term ancient demesne refers to the land that was held by the Crown at the time of the Domesday Book.

The royal demesne was not a static portfolio: it could be increased, for example, as a result of escheat or forfeiture where a feudal tenure would end and revert to its natural state in the royal demesne, or it could be reduced by later grants of land. During the reign of King George III (1760–1820), Parliament appropriated most of the royal demesne, in exchange for a fixed annual sum thenceforth payable to the monarch, called the Civil List. The position of the royal estate of Windsor, still occupied by the monarch and never alienated since 1066, may be a rare remnant of the royal demesne.

Since the demesne surrounded the principal seat of the lord, it came to be loosely used of any proprietary territory: "the works of Shakespeare are this scholar's demesne."

Word of the Week 3/3/19: Cant

From Wiktionary:

Etymology 1
From Latin cantō probably via Old Northern French canter (“sing, tell”). Doublet of chant.
(noun)An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
Empty, hypocritical talk.
Whining speech, such as that used by beggars.
A blazon of a coat of arms that makes a pun upon the name (or, less often, some attribute or function) of the bearer, canting arms.
A call for bidders at a public fair; an auction.

Etymology 2
From Middle English cant (“edge, brink”), from Middle Dutch cant (“point, side, edge”) (Modern Dutch kant (“side, edge”)), ultimately of Celtic or Latin origin. Related to Medieval Latin cantus (“corner, side”), from Latin canthus.
(noun)Side, edge, corner, niche.
Slope, the angle at which something is set
A corner (of a building).
An outer or external angle.
An inclination from a horizontal or vertical line; a slope or bevel; a tilt.
A movement or throw that overturns something.
A sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so given.
A segment forming a side piece in the head of a cask. (coopering)
A segment of the rim of a wooden cogwheel.
A piece of wood laid upon the deck of a vessel to support the bulkheads. (nautical)

Etymology 3
From Middle English, presumably from Middle Low German kant
(adjective) lively, lusty, hearty, merry.

Word of the Week 2/24/19: Codicil

From LawDepot.com

A codicil is a document that acts as an addendum to a Last Will and Testament, meaning it can make changes to an existing Will (with additions, substitutions, and/or deletions).

Only the creator of a Last Will (the testator or principal) can make changes to their Last Will and Testament. This means that even if someone has Power of Attorney, they cannot create a Codicil to make changes to the principal's Will.

Some common things people change in their Last Wills using Codicils include:
- Beneficiaries of their estate, assets, and/or gifts
- Guardians for their children
- Executor of their Will

The requirements can differ from state to state, but typically Codicils do not have to be notarized. They do, however, have to be signed by witnesses who are not listed as beneficiaries in the Last Will. The number of witnesses can differ between states as well, but usually the number is no less than two.

From Investopedia.com:

Codicils derive their name from the Middle English term codicill, which is from the Anglo-French codicille and the Latin codicillus, which meant a writing tablet and codex, which meant book. Therefore, the term codicil translates into the literal meaning of a little codex, or little book, which is a little bit of writing on a small piece of writing material, used to add to or change something about a larger piece of writing. In this case, the codicil is adding, subtracting, or changing the provisions of a will.

Word of the Week 2/17/19: Gibbous

From Collins Dictionary:

1. protuberant; rounded and bulging
2. designating the moon, a planet, etc. in that phase in which more than half, but not all, of the face reflects sunlight to the earth
3. humpbacked; kyphotic

From Vocabulary.com

1. (used of the moon) more than half full
2. characteristic of or suffering from kyphosis, an abnormality of the vertebral column

From Merriam-Webster:

The adjective gibbous has its origins in the Latin noun gibbus, meaning "hump," and in the Late Latin adjective gibbosus, meaning "humpbacked," which Middle English adopted in the 14th century as gibbous. Gibbous has been used to describe the rounded body parts of humans and animals (such as the back of a camel) or to describe the shape of certain flowers (such as snapdragons). The term is most often identified, however, with the study of astronomy. A gibbous moon is one that is more than a half-moon but less than full.

ed. note: pronounce with a 'hard G'

Word of the Week 2/10/19: Orthogonal

From Merriam-Webster:

1. intersecting or lying at right angles
2. having perpendicular slopes or tangents at the point of intersection

From Vocabulary.com:

1. having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at right angles
2. not pertinent to the matter under consideration 

Two lines that are orthogonal are perpendicular or intersecting at a right angle, like a t-square used by draftsmen. 

The word orthogonal comes from the Greek orthogōnios meaning "right-angled." While this word is used to describe lines that meet at a right angle, it also describes events that are statistically independent, or do not affect one another in terms of outcome.

From Wikipedia:

In board games such as chess which feature a grid of squares, 'orthogonal' is used to mean "in the same row/'rank' or column/'file'". This is the counterpart to squares which are "diagonally adjacent".

ed. note: there are also math-related definitions of this word that, no matter how many explanations I read, I don't understand, so I omitted them - JD

Word of the Week 2/3/19: Plinth

From Oxford Dictionaries.com:
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin plinthus, from Greek plinthos ‘tile, brick, squared stone’.


From Merriam-Webster:
"But stay! these walls—these ivy-clad arcades—
These mouldering plinths—these sad and blackened shafts—
These vague entablatures—this crumbling frieze—
These shattered cornices—this wreck—this ruin—
These stones—alas! these gray stones—are they all—
All of the famed, and the colossal left
By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me?"
In these lines from "The Coliseum," Edgar Allan Poe alludes to a practical feature of classical architecture. The plinth serves the important purpose of raising the base of the column it supports above the ground, thus protecting it from dampness and mold. The humble plinth is usually a thick block. The word's meaning was later extended to bases for statues, vases, or busts.


From Dictionary.com:
a slablike member beneath the base of a column or pier.
a square base or a lower block, as of a pedestal.
Also called plinth course . a projecting course of stones at the base of a wall; earth table.
(in joinery) a flat member at the bottom of an architrave, dado, baseboard, or the like.


From Vocabulary.com:
While it's most common for a plinth to support a pillar or column, it can also be used as a base or slab underneath a statue, a bust, or a decorative vase, and in engineering a plinth is the support for a dam.


From Wikipedia:
A pedestal or plinth is the support of a statue or a vase.

Although in Syria, Asia Minor and Tunisia the Romans occasionally raised the columns of their temples or propylaea on square pedestals, in Rome itself they were employed only to give greater importance to isolated columns, such as those of Trajan and Antoninus, or as a podium to the columns employed decoratively in the Roman triumphal arches.

The architects of the Italian revival, however, conceived the idea that no order was complete without a pedestal, and as the orders were by them employed to divide up and decorate a building in several stories, the cornice of the pedestal was carried through and formed the sills of their windows, or, in open arcades, round a court, the balustrade of the arcade. They also would seem to have considered that the height of the pedestal should correspond in its proportion with that of the column or pilaster it supported; thus in the church of Saint John Lateran, where the applied order is of considerable dimensions, the pedestal is 13 feet (4.0 m) high instead of the ordinary height of 3 to 5 feet (1.5 m).

Word of the Week 1/27/19: Lassitude

From Merriam-Webster:

1. a condition of weariness or debility : fatigue
2. a condition characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit : langour

Lethargy, Languor, Lassitude, Stupor, Torpor mean physical or mental inertness. Lethargy implies such drowsiness or aversion to activity as is induced by disease, injury, or drugs.  Languor suggests inertia induced by an enervating climate or illness or love.  Lassitude stresses listlessness or indifference resulting from fatigue or poor health. Stupor implies a deadening of the mind and senses by shock, narcotics, or intoxicants. Torpor implies a state of suspended animation as of hibernating animals but may suggest merely extreme sluggishness.

Lassitude and weariness make an interesting pair. As with many nearly synonymous pairs of words in English, one is derived from Latin and the other from Old English. Even though they both mean “the condition of being tired,” they are used in different ways. Following a common pattern, the Latinate word tends to be used in technical, medical, and formal writing, and the Old English-derived word is used when referring to physical, emotional, and spiritual qualities.

Though it is sometimes a fancy word for fatigue in medical contexts, lassitude is also used in ways that are metaphorical and closer in meaning to “negligence”

From Vocabulary.com:

A state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness)

Word of the Week 1/20/19: Trenchant

From Merriam-Webster:

The word trenchant comes from the Anglo-French verb trencher, meaning "to cut," and may ultimately derive from the Vulgar Latin trinicare, meaning "to cut in three." Hence, a trenchant sword is one with a keen edge; a trenchant remark is one that cuts deep; and a trenchant observation is one that cuts to the heart of the matter. Relatives of trenchant in English include the noun trench ("a long ditch cut into the ground") and the verb retrench ("to cut down or pare away" or "to cut down expenses").

From Collins Dictionary:

1. cutting; sharp; caustic
2. keen; penetrating; incisive; sharply perceptive
3. forceful; vigorous; effective and articulate
4. clear-cut; distinct

From Cambridge Dictionary:

1. of something said or written) forcefully and effectively expressed, and often in few words
2. severe, expressing strong criticism or forceful opinions

From Vocabulary.com:

The word trenchant originates from tranchant, which in French means "sharp" or "cutting," related to the word trench, which originally meant a line carved in wood and later came to mean a ditch carved into the earth. The word is often used to describe political commentary or cultural criticism.

Word of the Week 1/13/19: Hegemony

From Merriam-Webster:

1. : preponderant influence or authority over others : domination
2 : the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group

Hegemony comes to English from the Greek hēgemonia, a noun formed from the verb hēgeisthai ("to lead"), which also gave us the word exegesis ("exposition" or "explanation"). The word was first used in English in the mid-16th century in reference to the control once wielded by the ancient Greek states, and it was reapplied in later centuries as other nations subsequently rose to power. By the 20th century, it had acquired a second sense referring to the social or cultural influence wielded by a dominant member over others of its kind, such as the domination within an industry by a business conglomerate over smaller businesses.

From Vocabulary.com:

Wealthy lender nations hoping to determine political outcomes and trade decisions have established hegemony over the debtor nations they lend to. As well as the dominance of one group or nation over others, hegemony is also the term for the leading group or nation itself. 

From Wikipedia:

In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society".

Cake or Death: A Book Review

   At a party in 2008, my wife mentioned that I was in a "metal phase" right now. Ten years later, I've finished reading a third book on extreme metal subgenres. This doesn't sound very impressive as I write it, but keep in mind that I've listened to every album mentioned in these books. Sixteen months ago I finished a book and a playlist that focused on black metal, Dayal Patterson's Black Metal: The Evolution of the Cult. The book was a quick read; the playlist took about two and a half years. (review here) When I started the book, I knew quite a bit about the scene after finishing Søderlind and Moynihan's Lords of Chaos, but very little of the music. When I was finished listening to every album mentioned in Patterson's book, I felt qualified to argue with anyone in town about what was trve and what was kvlt, and how none of that mattered. I also knew what sound I was after in the black metal band I had formed with some friends. 

   The book was originally a gift, but by the time I was finished, I had enjoyed the process enough that I wanted to do it again. I bought Albert Mudrian's Choosing Death and started over. There was a surprising amount of crossover between these books, especially during the early years of the metal scene as heavy metal pushed itself into extreme metal with its many sub-genres. I learned several things from this book. Choosing Death bills itself as a history of both grindcore and death metal. I learned I like death metal more than grindcore, though not exclusively. I also learned just how many early death metal bands originated in England; I had expected a lot more from Florida and Scandinavia. I learned to recognize a classic death metal guitar tone with one guitar effects pedal, the Boss HM-2.

Word of the Week 1/6/19: Bespoke

From Merriam-Webster:

1a. custom made
1b. dealing in or producing custom-made articles
2. dialect: engaged

In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including "to speak," "to accuse," and "to complain." In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another meaning - "to order or arrange in advance." It is from that sense that we get the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made. 

From Wikipedia:

The word bespoke has evolved from a verb meaning "to speak for something" to its contemporary usage as an adjective that has changed from describing first tailor-made suits and shoes, and later, to anything commissioned to a particular specification (altered or tailored to the customs, tastes, or usage of an individual purchaser), and finally to a general marketing and branding concept implying exclusivity and appealing to snobbery.

Bespoke is derived from the verb bespeak, meaning to "speak for something". The particular meaning of the verb form is first cited from 1583 and given in the Oxford English Dictionary: "to speak for, to arrange for, engage beforehand: to 'order' (goods)." The adjective "bespoken" means "ordered, commissioned, arranged for" and is first cited from 1607.

According to Collins English Dictionary, the term is generally British English. American English tends to use the word custom instead, as in custom car or custom motorcycle. Nevertheless, bespoke has seen increased usage in American English during the 21st century.

The word bespoke is most known for its "centuries-old relationship" with tailor-made suits, but the Oxford English Dictionary also ties the word to shoemaking in the mid-1800s. According to a spokesperson for Collins English Dictionary, it later came to mean to discuss, and then to the adjective describing something that was discussed in advance, which is how it came to be associated with tailor-made apparel. The word was used as an adjective in A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke, the 1755 autobiography of the actress Charlotte Charke, which refers to The Beaux' Stratagem as "a bespoke play". After that, the adjective was generally associated with men's tailor-made suits.

Before about the 19th century, most clothing was made to measure, or bespoke, whether made by professional tailors or dressmakers, or as often, at home. The same applied to many other types of goods. With the advent of industrialised ready to wear clothing, bespoke became largely restricted to the top end of the market, and is now normally considerably more expensive, at least in developed countries. At some point after that, the word bespoke came to be applied to more than tailoring, although it is unclear exactly when. Mark-Evan Blackman of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York told the Wall Street Journal in 2012 that the "bespoke proliferation may be tied to young Hollywood types becoming enamored with custom suits about a decade ago".

Lastly, here's a cute little article from the New York Times about modern usage and semantic drift:

Bespoke This, Bespoke That. Enough Already.