MW10 says that inanition is (among other definitions) "the exhausted condition that results from lack of food and water."
Useful word!
Seems like the adjective form should be "inane" (as in: "I'm totally inane; I better have some dinner"), but although that comes from the same root (Latin "inanis," meaning "empty"), it doesn't mean the same thing.
According to Wikipedia, "terroir" is "the special characteristics that geography bestow[s] upon particular varieties" of wine, coffee, and tea, based on "the assumption that the land [where] the grapes [or whatever] are grown imparts a unique quality that is specific to that region."
In addition to the literal meaning, I like it as a metaphor for the characteristics (if any) bestowed by someone's homeland.
Turns out that quango, also spelled qango, is an acronym for "quasi non-governmental organization" or "quasi-autonomous NGO." Looks like the term is fairly common in the UK and elsewhere, but I don't think I had ever heard it before.
Pandiculation is "the act of stretching oneself."
The context in which I encountered it indicated that the term is specifically used to refer to the sort of stretching one does when tired, or when waking up after sleeping.
Apparently, "buckraking" refers to a journalist taking a lot of money for a speaking engagement, especially speaking to a group that has a particular agenda; such a payment may cast doubt on the journalist's objectivity.
Despite the etymology (a portmanteau of "buck" and "muckraking"), the term doesn't actually have anything to do with muckraking; the word "muckraking" is apparently a stand-in here for "journalism," plus of course the pun/joke that the journalist is raking in the bucks.
I'd never heard the term before, but apparently it goes back to at least 2002, when NBC banned it. (Though the phrasing of that piece is ambiguous; perhaps NBC banned the practice under a different name.)
Just happened across a remarkably poetic phrase that I've never heard used this way before.
I was reading an article about a woman who stabbed an attacker; the woman fled the scene, and near the end of the article it notes:
The woman was still in the wind Thursday night, police said.
At first I thought that must be a typo of some sort. But a quick search finds some other occurrences, such as this headline from an unrelated article: "Shooting victim shows up at hospital, perp still in the wind."
Urbandictionary suggests that the term can mean various things, including "unable to be found" and "on the run."
The derivation seems obvious, but I do wonder (a) where and when the phrase was first used this way, and (b) why I've never encountered it before.
The other day, I read a submission that included the phrase "Axis Mundi." There were a lot of other unfamiliar phrases in the story, so I figured it was just something the author had made up.
Tonight, I encountered the phrase again, in a different story by a different author.
I Googled it, and found the relevant Wikipedia entry, so now I know what it refers to. (Though that entry appears to contain a great deal of original research and a certain amount of wacky speculation and overinterpretation. Skyscrapers are designed to evoke the axis mundi? Really?)
But I'm nonetheless a little surprised, and intrigued.
Because the term didn't appear at all in any submission we received until early 2005, after four and a half years of submissions. It popped up again in late 2005, then in mid-2006, then in late 2007. Four instances in three years. Didn't appear at all in any submissions in 2008.
But so far in 2009, we've received five stories that use the phrase, by four different authors.
In other words: in the past nine months, this phrase has turned up in more stories than in the entire previous eight and a half years—the lifetime of the magazine.
So now I'm wondering about the term. Has it recently entered the mass public consciousness, perhaps via the design firm or the band that use the name? Or is this just a coincidence?
"Esculent" is apparently a synonym for "edible." It's been appearing in print since 1626, but I only just encountered it for the first time in Wikipedia.
To "snib" a door is to fasten or bar it. Just came across it in a submission; turns out to have been used by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, among others. Chiefly British, says the Free Dictionary; Scottish, says MW3 Unabridged; the story was set in Australia.
I've never previously read A Christmas Carol. Happened across it in an iPhone edition recently, discovered that it's quite short (about 30,000 words—I had always assumed it was hundreds of pages), and started reading it. And I'm struck, as I was years ago when I finally read Oliver Twist, by the moments of charming humor.
I was also struck by a particular phrase when I came across it last night:
Old Fezziwig [...] rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice[....]
"Organ of benevolence" sounded like some kind of a euphemism, so I went and looked it up. Turns out it was one of the organs recognized by phrenology: it was "at the top of the forehead, near where the hair commences" (according to the Graham journal of health and longevity), and the size of one's organ of benevolence determined how benevolent one was (unless overridden by other factors, such as phrenology being meaningless).
My Google search also turned up a use of the phrase in Frederick Marryat's 1836 novel Mr. Midshipman Easy:
"Surely, sir, you would not interfere with the organ of benevolence."
"But indeed I must, Jack. I, myself, am suffering from my organ of benevolence being too large: I must reduce it, and then I shall be capable of greater things, shall not be so terrified by difficulties, shall overlook trifles, and only carry on great schemes for universal equality and the supreme rights of man. I have put myself into that machine every morning for two hours, for these last three months, and I feel now that I am daily losing a great portion."
Turns out Mr. Easy's invention pushes on or sucks on various parts of the skull in order to reshape the phrenological organs therein. I would call that science fiction, of a sort, but it was clearly presented as satire.
Hadn't encountered this idiom before; apparently it means about the same thing as "go over well." (And not at all the same thing as "go down the storm drain.")
I first saw it in the Telegraph: "Vladimir Putin's Poland war speech will go down a storm in Russia." A blog called "Experimental Linguistics" posted some cites back in 2004.
I'm guessing it's common in the UK.
No word has any right to that many vowels.
It means pregnancy fetishism.
