A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
licit (LIS-it)
adjective Legal or
legitimate. From licere
(to be allowed), which also gave us license and leisure. Earliest documented use: 1483
peccable (PEK-uh-buhl)
adjective Imperfect; flawed;
capable of sinning. From Latin peccare
(to err or sin). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root ped- (foot), which also gave us pedal, podium, octopus,
impeach, peccavi, and peccadillo (alluding to a
stumble or fall). Earliest documented
use: 1604.
clement (KLEM-uhnt)
adjective Mild; gentle;
lenient. From Latin clemens (gentle,
mild). Earliest documented use: 1483.
effable (EF-uh-buhl)
adjective Capable of being
expressed. From Latin fari (to
speak). Ultimately from the Indo-European
root bha- (to speak), which also gave us fable, fairy, fate, fame, blame,
confess, and infant (literally, one unable to speak). Earliest documented use: 1637.
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From: Nancy
Charlton Subject: Effable Of course, one thinks of T.S. Eliot, “The Naming of
Cats”. Every cat has three names: the one the family uses daily, the more formal
one, and the one known only to himself.
So he sits, looking to be asleep, but he is actually contemplating his
“ineffable effable effanineffable deep and inscrutable singular NAME.”
From: Pauline Subject: effable
Your list of words brought a smile to my face this week. Whenever my father was ready to go out after
performing his ablutions in the morning he used to say: “I’m couth, ept, and shevelled.”
From: Robert
Martin Subject:
Forgotten positives A passage
from Jasper Fforde’s One
Of Our Thursdays Is Missing: “I
moved quietly to the French windows and stepped out into the garden to release the
Lost Positives that the Lady of Shalott had given me. She had a soft spot for the orphaned
prefixless words and thought they had more chance to thrive in Fiction than in
Poetry. I let the defatigable scamps out
of their box. They were kempt and sheveled
but their behavior was peccable if not mildly gruntled. They started acting petuously and ran around
in circles in a very toward manner.”
From: Penny
Dixon
Subject: peccable There was a wonderful piece by Jack Winter in
The New Yorker of July 25, 1994, “How I Met
My Wife” which used “positives”--some of which likely never appeared on
their own before. The first
sentence: “It had been a rough day, so
when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear
gruntled and consulate.” There is also a
poem by J.H. Parker “A Very
Descript Man”. http://www.kittybrewster.com/descript.htm
From: Ken Doran Subject: disappearing prefixes This week’s theme reminds of this poem, Gloss,
remembered from a high school English class.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2007/ling001/mccord.html
Freezing whole fresh herbs
is very simple. Here's how: Wash the herbs (still on their branches), dry
them thoroughly, strip the leaves from the branches, and put them in labeled
plastic zipper-type freezer bags. With
herbs such as rosemary and thyme, you don't even need to strip the leaves from
the branches. Press out all the air,
seal and freeze. To use the herbs, just
break off what you need straight from the freezer--you don’t even have to
defrost them.
Tango is a partner
dance that originated in the
1880s along the River Plate, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay, and
soon spread to the rest of the world. Early
tango was known as tango
criollo (Creole tango). On August 31, 2009, UNESCO approved a joint proposal by Argentina
and Uruguay to include the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural
Heritage Lists. See different styles of tango and a list of tangos in
films at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries . . . Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone . . . Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). The Complete Works Vol. VIII, Letters and Social Aims 1904 http://www.bartleby.com/90/0806.html
How to make caster (superfine) and
powdered (confectioners) sugar
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-How-to-make-Caster-and-Powdered-Sugar/ Castor or caster sugar is the name
of a very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough
to fit though a sugar "caster" or sprinkler. Because of its fineness, it dissolves more
quickly than regular white sugar, and so is especially useful in meringues and cold liquids. It is not as fine as confectioner’s sugar,
which has been crushed mechanically (and generally mixed with a little starch
to keep it from clumping). http://www.ochef.com/580.htm
vanilla sugar recipe courtesy of Alton Brown http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/vanilla-sugar-recipe.html
lavender sugar recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/vanilla-sugar-recipe.html You may also use 2-3 washed and dried
lavender sprigs in a jar of caster sugar.
Leave t least 24 hours before using.
vanilla lavender sugar recipe
http://thanksforthefood.com/how-to-vanilla-lavender-sugar-recipe/
Muirfield Golf Club has been removed from the host venue rota for the Open Championship
after members of the Scottish club voted against allowing women to join. The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers,
which owns Muirfield, will remain a men-only club after failing to reach the
two-thirds majority required to change the club's membership policy. Muirfield has
held The Open on 16 occasions between 1892 and 2013. http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/15605581/muirfield-loses-open-championship-vote-allowing-women-members
Researchers exploring bio-fiber engineering have unraveled the mechanism behind "Charlotte's
Web" and discovered that the silk made by Charlotte in E.B. White's
classic book would have been remarkable even without the words, "Some
pig." Searching for the mechanism
that enables a spider’s web to spring back into shape without tangling and to
catch heavy insects without being destroyed by their weight, researchers
discovered thousands of glue-like droplets. The sticky lining both helped the spider
capture incoming meals and spontaneously repaired possible tears in the web. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, researchers in Paris and Oxford, England, called the phenomenon "liquid wire." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/05/11/1602451113
“The thousands of tiny droplets
of glue that cover the capture spiral of the spider's orb
web do much more than make the silk sticky and catch the fly,” Professor Fritz
Vollrath of the Oxford Silk Group in the Department of Zoology at Oxford
University said in a press release. “Surprisingly,
each drop packs enough punch in its watery skins to reel in loose bits of
thread. And this winching behaviour is
used to excellent effect to keep the threads tight at all times, as we can all
observe and test in the webs in our gardens.”
Lucy Shouten http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0518/Some-pig.-Scientists-unravel-the-liquid-wire-in-Charlotte-s-Web
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1474
May 20, 2016 On this date in
1570, Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum, the first modern atlas. On this date in 1875, the Metre Convention was signed by 17 nations leading to
the establishment of the International
System of Units.
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