WORD|of the day

[peccant] adjective; guilty of a moral offense; violating a principle or rule

QUOTE|of the day

[Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.]

Ayn Rand

WORD|of the day

[resplendent] adjective; shining brilliantly, characterized by a glowing splendor

QUOTE|of the day

[The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.]

Quentin Crisp

WORD|of the day

[terraqueous] adjective; consisting of land and water

QUOTE|of the day

[The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man--who has no gills.]

Ambrose Bierce

WORD|of the day

[reinscribe] transitive verb; to reestablish or rename in a new and especially stronger form or context

QUOTE|of the day

[Maybe this world is another planet's hell.]

Aldous Huxley

WORD|of the day

[prolix] adjective; unduly prolonged or drawn out, too long; marked by or using an excess of words

QUOTE|of the day

[A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

WORD|of the day

[increscent] adjective; becoming gradually greater; waxing

QUOTE|of the day

[At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations, which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.]

P.G. Wodehouse

WORD|of the day

[forfend] transitive verb; to ward off, prevent, protect, preserve

QUOTE|of the day

[It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.]

W. Somerset Maugham

WORD|of the day

[appurtenances] plural noun; accessory objects

QUOTE|of the day

[Every time you open your wardrobe, you look at your clothes and you wonder what you are going to wear. What you are really saying is, "Who am I going to be today?".]

Fay Weldon

WORD|of the day

[panoply] noun; a full suit of armor; ceremonial attire; something forming a protective covering; a magnificent or impressive array; a display of all appropriate appurtenances

QUOTE|of the day

[War does not determine who's right--only who's left.]

Bertrand Russell

WORD|of the day

[renitency] noun; resistance, opposition

QUOTE|of the day

[When one makes enemies, one knows that one's dangerous where it's necessary to be dangerous.]

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

WORD|of the day

[dog days] plural noun; the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere; a period of stagnation or inactivity

QUOTE|of the day

[The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.]

Arnold Bennett

WORD|of the day

[siege mentality] noun; a defensive or overly fearful attitude

QUOTE|of the day

[Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.]

Benjamin Franklin

WORD|of the day

[sylvan] adjective; living or located in the woods/forest; of, relating to, or characteristic of the woods/forest; abounding in woods, groves, trees—wooded

QUOTE|of the day

[Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.]

John Ruskin

WORD|of the day

[trenchant] adjective; keen, sharp, vigorously effective and articulate

QUOTE|of the day

[The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.]

Max Eastman

WORD|of the day

[vamoose] intransitive verb; to depart quickly

QUOTE|of the day

[I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.]

Blaise Pascal

WORD|of the day

[zeugma] noun; the use of a word to modify two or more words in such a way that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one

QUOTE|of the day

[Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.]

Alexander Pope

Last line is an example of zeugma -- both a bubble and a world are described as having "burst."

WORD|of the day

[kibitzer] noun; one who looks on and offers unwanted advice or comment; broadly, one who offers opinions

QUOTE|of the day

[The covers of this book are too far apart.]

Ambrose Bierce

WORD|of the day

[proclivity] noun; an inclination or predisposition toward something

QUOTE|of the day

[What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.]

Dave Barry

WORD|of the day

[cloying] adjective; disgusting or distasteful by reason of excess; also, excessively sweet or sentimental

QUOTE|of the day

[Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.]

Evelyn Waugh

WORD|of the day

[periphrasis] noun; use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression

I often try to help clients cut down on the use of "periphrasis" if there is a more concise way to say something.

QUOTE|of the day

[I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.]

Beryl Pfizer

WORD|of the day

[corvine] adjective; of, or relating to, crows; resembling a crow

The seagulls here have a surprising "corvine" quality to their cries. You really don't expect a seagull to sound like that; maybe it's all the smog out here :-)

QUOTE|of the day

[Where there is no imagination there is no horror.]

Arthur Conan Doyle

Isn't this true? If you can't take your mind outside the ordinary, everyday to a scary place then you can't be frightened.

WORD|of the day

[cavalcade] noun; a procession of riders, carriages, vehicles, or ships; a dramatic sequence or procession/series

QUOTE|of the day

[The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.]

Mark Twain

WORD|of the day

[miff] verb; to put into an ill humor, offend

QUOTE|of the day

[In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.]

Douglas Adams

WORD|of the day

[foment] verb; to promote the growth or development of

QUOTE|of the day

[I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.]

Franklin P. Adams

WORD|of the day

[hysteroid] adjective; resembling or tending toward hysteria

QUOTE|of the day

[Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.]

Cynthia Nelms

WORD|of the day

[interdigitate] verb; to become interlocked like the fingers of a folded hand

QUOTE|of the day

[The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.]

Alexandra Penney

WORD|of the day

[lustrum] plural noun; a period of five years (also refers to the Roman census, which was taken every five years)

QUOTE|of the day

[Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.]

Oscar Wilde

WORD|of the day

[desultory] adjective; marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, purpose; not connected with the main subject; disappointing in progress, performance, or quality

After I get my hands on a client's work, it will never be considered "desultory."

QUOTE|of the day

[What we need is to take the gas and hot air out of the real business of living and send it sizzling off in sky-rockets for the entertainment of our idle hours.]

Marjorie Barstow Greenbie

WORD|of the day

[ramose] adjective; consisting of or having branches

My hippy neighbor's dreadlocks give her head a "ramose" look. It's really quite unique.

QUOTE|of the day

[Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.]

Bill Vaughn

WORD|of the day

[solecism] noun; an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence; a minor blunder in speech; something deviating from the normal/proper order; a breach of etiquette or decorum

As an editor I help people avoid "solecisms" in their writing.

QUOTE|of the day

[It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.]

Oscar Wilde

WORD|of the day

[conation] noun; an inclination to act purposefully; impulse

When my husband and I (and the dogs) made a trip to San Diego this past Christmas, we returned with an urgent "conation" to move here as soon as possible.

QUOTE|of the day

[The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.]

Oscar Wilde