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).