2011_09_30 votary \VOH-tuh-ree\, noun: A devoted admirer.

votary \VOH-tuh-ree\, noun:
1. One who is devoted, given, or addicted to some particular pursuit, subject, study, or way of life.
2. A devoted admirer.
3. A devout adherent of a religion or cult.
4. A dedicated believer or advocate.
When she held out her hand to receive the glass, she had more the air of a full-grown Bacchante, celebrating the rites of Bacchus, than a votary at the shrine of Hygeia.
-- Pamela Neville-Sington, Fanny Trollope
Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of "diversity" insist on absolute conformity.
-- Tony Snow, "Lifestyle police: Enough already", USA Today, June 10, 1996
It must be remembered that undisguised atrocities on a stupendous scale. . . would be too strong for the stomach of even the most brutalized people, and would tend to bring war into discredit with all but its monomaniac votaries.
-- "The Idea of a League of Nations", The Atlantic, February 1919
Votary comes from Latin votum, "vow," from the past participle of vovere, "to vow, to devote." Related words include vow and vote, originally a vow, hence a prayer or ardent wish, hence an expression of preference, as for a candidate.

2011_09_28 lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb: To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.

lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb:
To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.
At Penn State he'd been welcomed, nurtured, lionized as a track and field star who narrowly missed making our Olympic team in the decathlon
-- James Brady, Further Lane
But it is a good reason to be wary, and to pay some attention to that man behind the curtain -- or, if anyone tries to sell you one, to be cautious about lionizing "some pig" -- however terrific, radiant, and humble -- in a poke.
-- Marjorie B. Garber, Symptoms of Culture
But the urge to lionize him is an indication that we live in a terrible age for pianists. There is today almost no pianist worth crossing the street for.
-- Jay Nordlinger, "Curtain Calls", National Review, May 31, 1999
Lionize, comes from lion, in the sense of "a person of great interest or importance."

2011_09_29 woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

woolgathering \WOOL-gath-(uh)-ring\, noun:
Indulgence in idle daydreaming.
Similarly, in the meadow, if you laze too late into the fall, woolgathering, snow could fill your mouth.
-- Edward Hoagland, "Earth's eye", Sierra, May 1999
It would be easy to slip off into woolgathering and miss a deadline.
-- Jeraldine Saunders, Washington Post, March 4, 2004
Plagued by guilt, they took refuge in wine, women, and woolgathering.
-- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
The soprano roused Fergus from his woolgathering.
-- Sandra Brown, Where There's Smoke
Woolgathering derives from the literal sense, "gathering fragments of wool."
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2011_09_27 gadabout \GAD-uh-bout\, noun: who roams about in search of amusement

gadabout \GAD-uh-bout\, noun:
Someone who roams about in search of amusement or social activity.
In his unorthodox and callow way, he frequently upset and annoyed his countrymen, but they continued to vote for him, perhaps taking a vicarious pleasure in being led by such a world-famous gadabout.
-- "Milestones of 2000", Times (London), December 29, 2000
She hugged him fiercely. "Oh, I love you, Jake Grafton, you worthless gadabout fly-boy, you fool that sails away and leaves me."
-- Jack Anderson, Control
Mr. Hart-Davis, as befits a professional literary man, is something of a gadabout.
-- Daphne Merkin, "From Two Most English Men", New York Times, June 23, 1985
Gadabout is formed from the verb gad, "to rove or go about without purpose or restlessly" (from Middle English gadden, "to hurry") + about.

2011_09_26 sapid \SAP-id\, adjective: Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.

September 26, 2011
sapid \SAP-id\, adjective:
1. Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor.
2. Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.
Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid
-- David William Cheever, "Tobacco", The Atlantic, August 1860
I've raved about the elegant and earthy lobster-and-truffle sausage, the sapid sea bass with coarse salt poached in lobster oil, and the indescribably complex and delectable ballottine of lamb stuffed with ground veal, sweet-breads and truffles.
-- James Villas, "Why Taillevent thrives", Town & Country, March 1, 1998
Sapid comes from Latin sapidus, "savory," from sapere, "to taste."

2011_09_25 tchotchke \CHOCH-kuh\, noun: A trinket; a knickknack.

Word of the Day for Sunday, September 25, 2011
tchotchke \CHOCH-kuh\, noun:
A trinket; a knickknack.
The rare tchotchke aside, our antiquing journeys mainly amounted to wishful foraging, in the spirit of a more roomy and prosperous someday we somehow never really articulated.
-- Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Most Wanted
Of course, you also have arcades, like Funland, and your typical tchotchke vendors, like Ryan's Gems and Junk.
-- Jamie Peck, "Rehoboth Beach", Newsday, May 18, 2001
I'm going nuts with my mother's accumulation of tchotchkes -- it's bad enough she never parted with one she got as a gift -- but why did she have to buy more?
-- "Artifacts of Life", Newsday, December 9, 1996

2011_09_24 lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb: To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.

Word of the Day for Saturday, September 24, 2011
lionize \LY-uh-nyz\, transitive verb:
To treat or regard as an object of great interest or importance.
At Penn State he'd been welcomed, nurtured, lionized as a track and field star who narrowly missed making our Olympic team in the decathlon
-- James Brady, Further Lane
But it is a good reason to be wary, and to pay some attention to that man behind the curtain -- or, if anyone tries to sell you one, to be cautious about lionizing "some pig" -- however terrific, radiant, and humble -- in a poke.
-- Marjorie B. Garber, Symptoms of Culture
But the urge to lionize him is an indication that we live in a terrible age for pianists. There is today almost no pianist worth crossing the street for.
-- Jay Nordlinger, "Curtain Calls", National Review, May 31, 1999
Lionize, comes from lion, in the sense of "a person of great interest or importance."

2011_09_23 copacetic \koh-puh-SET-ik\, adjective: Very satisfactory; fine.

Word of the Day for Friday, September 23, 2011
copacetic \koh-puh-SET-ik\, adjective:
Very satisfactory; fine.
Although all will seem copacetic on the CBS broadcast from Madison Square Garden in New York, there will be a big black cloud hanging over the glitzy proceedings.
-- Patrick MacDonald, "Major labels struggling with huge slump out of tune with listeners", Seattle Times, February 20, 2003
Everything seemed copacetic until a favorite store -- the anchor of the street -- closed suddenly.
-- Heidi Benson, "Yes, We Want No Banana", San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2001
Terry Glenn will return to the Patriots on Monday, but don't think that everything is copacetic as far as the oft-troubled receiver is concerned.
-- Michael Felger, "Glenn out to right wrongs; Ready to return to Pats, despite 'bad blood'", Boston Herald, October 3, 2001

2011_09_22 rapine \RAP-in\, noun: to seize and carry off

Word of the Day for Thursday, September 22, 2011
rapine \RAP-in\, noun:
The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of another's property by force.
He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (translated by N.H. Thomson)
Extortion and rapine are poor providers.
-- Olaudah Equiano, Unchained Voices: an anthology of Black authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century
The war, proclaimed William Lloyd Garrison, was one "of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine - marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity."
-- Robert W. Johannsen, "America's Forgotten War (Mexican War, 1846-1848)", The Wilson Quarterly, Spring 1996
Rapine derives from Latin rapina, from rapere, "to seize and carry off, to snatch or hurry away," which also gives us rapid.

2011_09_21 September 21, 2011 Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable;

September 21, 2011
irrefragable \ih-REF-ruh-guh-buhl\, adjective:
Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable; as, an irrefragable argument; irrefragable evidence.
I had the most irrefragable evidence of the absolute truth and soundness of the principle upon which my invention was based.
-- Sir Henry Bessemer, Autobiography
On June 4, the Citizen featured an interview with the Joneses' lawyer, R. S. Newcombe, who insisted that at the pending manslaughter trial he would bring "positive, absolute, irrefragable proof from . . . the most eminent scientists in the world" to show that both the Bates and Hunt operations were necessary and that no surgeon could have saved their lives.
-- Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Conduct Unbecoming a Woman
Irrefragable derives from Late Latin irrefragabilis, from Latin in-, "not" + refragari, "to oppose."

2011_09_20 acme \ACK-mee\, noun: The highest point of something

September 20, 2011
acme \ACK-mee\, noun:
The highest point of something; the highest level or degree attainable.
In 1990 Iraq's Saddam Hussein aimed to corner the world oil market through military aggression against Kuwait (also aimed at Saudi Arabia); control of oil, a product of land, represented the acme of his ambitions.
-- Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Virtual State
So we drove around looking at daffodils and exploring countryside hamlets instead of lakeside tourist traps. These should not be scorned, however, by a browser interested in the curious categories of British humor, one of which achieves a kind of acme in funny postcards on sale in such places. "The weather's here," went one postcard I saw, "I wish you were lovely."
-- Joseph Lelyveld, "The Poet's Landscape", New York Times, August 3, 1986
Acme comes from Greek akme, point, highest point, culmination.

2001/09/19 revenant \REV-uh-nuhnt\, noun: One who returns after death

Word of the Day for Monday, September 19, 2011
revenant \REV-uh-nuhnt\, noun:
One who returns after death (as a ghost) or after a long absence.
Lazarus, as a revenant, is often used by the religious romance-writers of the middle ages as a vehicle for their conceptions of the lower world.
-- R. C. Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord
He pale, immobile like a revenant himself, looked sometimes out of the window, sometimes closed his eyes.
-- D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love
The folklore of the Irish countryside too, with its hauntings, revenants and changelings... was an integral part of everyday awareness, even in the middle-class world of Yeats's childhood.
-- Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats

20111_09_18 pleonasm \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:

Word of the Day for Sunday, September 18, 2011
pleonasm \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:
1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.
Dougan uses many words where few would do, as if pleonasm were a way of wringing every possibility out of the material he has, and stretching sentences a form of spreading the word.
-- Paula Cocozza, "Book review: How Dynamo Kiev beat the Luftwaffe", Independent, March 2, 2001
Such a phrase from President Nixon's era, much favored by politicians, is "at this moment in time." Presumably these five words mean "now." That pleonasm probably does little harm except, perhaps, to the reputation of the speaker.
-- Eoin McKiernan, "Last Word: Special Relationships", Irish America, August 31, 1994
Pleonasm is from Greek pleonasmos, from pleon, "greater, more."

2011_09_17 postprandial \post-PRAN-dee-uhl\, adjective: done after a meal

Word of the Day for Saturday, September 17, 2011
postprandial \post-PRAN-dee-uhl\, adjective:
Happening or done after a meal.
A gourmand who zealously avoids all exercise as "seriously damaging to one's health," he had caviar for breakfast and was now having oysters for lunch, whetted with wine, as he fueled himself for a postprandial reading at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn.
-- Mel Gussow, "The Man Who Put Horace Rumpole on the Case", New York Times, April 12, 1995
When I wake up in the morning, I can have my usual breakfast -- a slightly bizarre concoction of three kinds of cold cereal topped with grapes and a cup of decaf -- and then stagger back to bed for a postprandial snooze.
-- Sylvan Fox, "It's Less Hectic Staying Put In One Place", Newsday, April 3, 1994
Postprandial is from post- + prandial, from Latin prandium, "a late breakfast or lunch."

2011_09_16 punctilious \puhnk-TIL-ee-uhs\, adjective: Strictly attentive to the details

Word of the Day for Friday, September 16, 2011
punctilious \puhnk-TIL-ee-uhs\, adjective:
Strictly attentive to the details of form in action or conduct; precise; exact in the smallest particulars.
The convert who is more punctilious in his new faith than the lifelong communicant is a familiar figure in Catholic lore.
-- Patrick Allit, Catholic Converts
Nicholas showed us his butterfly collection. He had done a splendid job of spreading them (better than I ever have, let alone at his age). I tried to impress upon him the need for punctilious labeling, a tedious business that raises a butterfly from a mere curio to a specimen of scientific value.
-- Robert Michael Pyle, Chasing Monarchs
Cooper had always been very punctilious about observing the rules laiddown in the . . . brochure.
-- Josef Skvorecky, Two Murders in My Double Life
Punctilious derives from Late Latin punctillum, "a little point," from Latin punctum, "a point," from pungere, "to prick."

9/15/11 bacchanalia \bak-uh-NAIL-yuh\, noun: A riotous, boisterous, or drunken festivity; a revel.

Word of the Day for Thursday, September 15, 2011
bacchanalia \bak-uh-NAIL-yuh\, noun:
1. (plural, capitalized) The ancient Roman festival in honor of Bacchus, celebrated with dancing, song, and revelry.
2. A riotous, boisterous, or drunken festivity; a revel.
Alpha Epsilon brothers began their bacchanalia with an off-campus keg party featuring "funneling," in which beer is shot through a rubber hose into the drinker's mouth.
-- Adam Cohen, "Battle of the Binge", Time, September 8, 1997
This is not at all to suggest that the Revolution was a sort of non-stop bacchanalia, but that partial drunkenness was often an important component in a certain type of revolutionary excitability, particularly in meetings or committees.
-- Richard Cobb, The French and Their Revolution
Bacchanalia comes from Latin, from Bacchus, god of wine, from Greek Bakkhos. The adjective form is bacchanalian. One who celebrates the Bacchanalia, or indulges in drunken revels, is a bacchanal \BAK-uh-nuhl; bak-uh-NAL\, which is also another term for a drunken or riotous celebration.

September 14, 2011 fey \FAY\, adjective: visionary; clairvoyant.

Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 14, 2011
fey \FAY\, adjective:
1. Possessing or displaying a strange and otherworldly aspect or quality; magical or fairylike; elfin.
2. Having power to see into the future; visionary; clairvoyant.
3. Appearing slightly crazy, as if under a spell; touched.
4. (Scots.) Fated to die; doomed.
5. (Scots.) Marked by a sense of approaching death.
. . .the former a gang of dangerous delinquents, fearless, macho, vulgar . . ., the latter a group of mischievous schoolboys, whimsical, fey, sophisticated and daringly experimental.
-- Sean Kelly, "What Did You Expect, the Spanish Inquisition?", New York Times, July 25, 1999
Beneath a fey manner, his mother was highly competitive.
-- Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men
Leo, suddenly fey, sports a rhinestone ascot and black velvet waistcoat, homburg and walking stick.
-- Edward Karam, "Fast and louche", Times, March 29, 2001
Fey comes from Middle English feye, feie, from Old English fæge, "fated to die."

September 13, 2011 -- panache \puh-NASH; -NAHSH\, noun: flamboyance in manner

Word of the Day for Tuesday, September 13, 2011
panache \puh-NASH; -NAHSH\, noun:

1. Dash or flamboyance in manner or style.
2. A plume or bunch of feathers, esp. such a bunch worn on the helmet; any military plume, or ornamental group of feathers.
Dessert included a marvelous bread pudding and a fair bananas Foster,the old-time New Orleans dish, which was prepared with great panache tableside, complete with a flambé moment.
-- Eric Asimov, "New Orleans, a City of Serious Eaters.", New York Times, July 4, 1999
It is... an inevitable hit, a galvanizing eruption of energy, panache and arrogantly sure-footed stage craft that comes at a time when theatrical dance is in the doldrums.
-- Terry Teachout and William Tynan, "Seamy and Steamy.", Time, January 25, 1999
Although Black didn't have many friends and was not among the school's leaders, he was likeable, had panache, and his contemptuous tirades were rarely taken at face value.
-- Richard Siklos, Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire
Panache is from the French, from Medieval French pennache, from Italian pinnacchio, feather, from Late Latin pinnaculum, diminutive of penna, feather. It is related to pen, a writing instrument, originally a feather or quill used for writing.

September 12, 2011 -- dilatory \DIL-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:; Procastination

Word of the Day for Monday, September 12, 2011
dilatory \DIL-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:
1. Tending to put off what ought to be done at once; given to dilatory \DIL-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:
2. Marked by procrastination or delay; intended to cause delay; -- said of actions or measures.
I am inclined to be dilatory, and if I had not enjoyed extraordinary luck in life and love I might have been living with my mother at that very moment, doing nothing.
-- Carroll O'Connor, I Think I'm Outta Here
And what is a slumlord? He is not a man who own expensive property in fashionable neighborhoods, but one who owns only rundown property in the slums, where the rents are lowest and the where the payment is most dilatory, erratic and undependable.
-- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
Dilatory is from Latin dilatorius, from dilator, "a dilatory person, a loiterer," from dilatus, past participle of differre, "to delay, to put off," from dis-, "apart, in different directions" + ferre, "to carry."

September 11, 2011 -- elegiac \el-i-JAHY-uhk\, adjective: Expressing sorrow.

Word of the Day for Sunday, September 11, 2011
elegiac \el-i-JAHY-uhk\, adjective:
1. Relating to the mourning or remembering of the dead.
2. Used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy.
3. Expressing sorrow.
This is an evocative and profoundly elegiacsequence that connects the team in the clubhouse with the field of play and the ballpark.
-- Paul Loukides, Linda K. Fuller, Beyond the Stars: Locales in American popular film
It is this elegiac concept of happiness that transforms existence into a forest preserve of memory for Proust.
-- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
Elegiac stems from the Greek elegos, "poem or song of lament," a word that may date back to the Phrygian language

September 9, 2011 -- chichi \SHEE-shee\, adjective: Affectedly trendy.

Word of the Day for Friday, September 9, 2011
chichi \SHEE-shee\, adjective:
Affectedly trendy.
"Going in gangs to those chichi clubs at Maidenhead."
-- E. Taylor, Game of Hide-&-Seek
"Whether the chichi gender theorists like it or not, sexual duality is a law of nature among all highly evolved life forms."
-- Camille Paglia
"The sort of real delicious Italian country cooking that is a revelation after so much chichi Italian food dished up in London."
-- Daily Telegraph, January 22, 1969
"[Judith] Hope -- who lives in East Hampton, where the Clintons have a lot of chichi friends -- has been getting ink by the barrelful with her regular interviews quoting conversations with the first lady, on subjects ranging from Senate ambitions to summer and post-White House living arrangements."
-- Washington Post, June 4, 1999
From the French word that literally means "curl of false hair"; used figuratively in the phrases faire des chichis, "to have affected manners, to make a fuss"; and gens à chichis, "affected, snobbish people." Sometimes spelled "chi-chi."

September 8, 2011 -- inculcate \in-KUHL-kayt; IN-kuhl-kayt\, transitive verb

Word of the Day for Thursday, September 8, 2011
inculcate \in-KUHL-kayt; IN-kuhl-kayt\, transitive verb:
To teach and impress by frequent repetition or instruction.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to inculcate in those who do not want to know, the curiosity to know; I think it is also impossible to kill this need in those who really want to know.
-- T. V. Rajan, "The Aha! Factor", The Scientist, March 21, 2002
A tragic indication that even the most noble attempts to inculcate children with the basic principles of universal humanism -- that, whatever our differences, we are more alike than unalike -- will founder against the rocks of deeply held prejudices of their parents.
-- Gary Younge, "Sesame sans frontieres", The Guardian, October 14, 2002
But Havelock would insist that the epics constitute the accumulated wisdom of the culture, beyond which the audience (thoroughly inculcated with the teachings of the epics) cannot go.
-- Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman, Information Ages
Inculcate is from Latin inculcare, "to tread upon, to force upon," from in-, "in, on" + calcare, "to trample," from calx, calc-, "heel."

September 7, 2011 aplomb \uh-PLOM\, noun: - confidence; coolness.

Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 7, 2011
aplomb \uh-PLOM\, noun:
Assurance of manner or of action; self-possession; confidence; coolness.
Then, unexpectedly, she picked up a microphone and began to sing. She sang several songs, handling herself with the aplomb of a professional entertainer.
-- "Rediscovering Japanese Life at a Bike's Pace", New York Times, April 24, 1988
In the jostling hubbub of Tim Hammack's kitchen at the Bay Area Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter in an eddy of urban need, it is about taking life as it comes. It means embracing the unexpected arrival of 200 flats of donated organic strawberries, say, or 600 pounds of bologna with equal culinary aplomb.
-- Patricia Leigh Brown, "Finding Purpose in Serving the Needy, Not Just Haute Cuisine", New York Times, June 13, 2009
His initial broadcasting success was due at least as much to his considerable professional aplomb as it was to his father's broadcasting connections.
-- John A. Jackson, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire
Aplomb is from the French word meaning "perpendicularity, equilibrium, steadiness, assurance," from the Old French phrase a plomb, from a, "according to" (from Latin ad) + plomb, "lead weight" (from Latin plumbum, "lead").
Read

gammon \GAM-uhn\, verb: To deceive. noun:Deceitful nonsense.

Word of the Day for Tuesday, September 6, 2011
gammon \GAM-uhn\, verb:
1. To deceive.
noun:
1. In backgammon, a victory in which the winner throws off all his or her pieces before the opponent throws off any.
verb:
1. To win a gammon (in the game of backgammon) over.
noun:
1. A smoked or cured ham.
2. Deceitful nonsense.
"Come," said Perrot to Luned, stopping short; "we will gammon him with a silver bit or so."
-- Ernest Rhys, The whistling maid: A romance
It is all very well for preachers and philosophers to try to gammon people into making the best of a bad lot; but there is a sort of poverty which does nothing but degrade.
-- Justin McCarthy, My enemy's daughter: A novel
This sense of gammon owes its meaning to the Middle English gamen, the ancestor of the Modern English "game."

Sept. 5, 2011 -- paralipsis \par-uh-LIP-sis\, noun:

Word of the Day for Monday, September 5, 2011
paralipsis \par-uh-LIP-sis\, noun:
The suggestion, by deliberately brief treatment of a topic, that much of significance is being omitted, as in "not to mention other faults."
"I need not tell you," he deplored, sinking to paralipsis, "that there resides in almost every one of 'em the unconscious desire not to grow up.
-- Millard Kaufman, Bowl of Cherries: A Novel
"Your question, which is really more paralipsis, than question, suggests that I suspect you, doesn't it?"
-- Rich Jackson, Beyond the Mast
Paralipsis owes its English sense to the Greek paraleíp(ein), "to leave on one side."

Sunday, September 4, 2011 braird \BRAIRD\, verb:

Word of the Day for Sunday, September 4, 2011
braird \BRAIRD\, verb:
1. To sprout; appear above the ground.
noun:
1. The first sprouts or shoots of grass, corn, or other crops; new growth.
Oats require about a fortnight to braird in ordinary weather.
-- Henry Stephens, The book of the farm
And yet, in puny, distorted, phantasmal shapes albeit,/It will braird again; it will force its way up/Through unexpectable fissures.
-- Hugh MacDiarmid, On a Raised Beach
Braird derives from the Old English brerd, "edge, top."

nebulize \NEB-yuh-lahyz\, verb: To become vague, or indistinct.

Word of the Day for Saturday, September 3, 2011
nebulize \NEB-yuh-lahyz\, verb:
1. To become vague, or indistinct.
2. To reduce to a fine spray.
There is, however, not one of the seven that is truly effective as a novel; not one that has balance and sustained force; not one that doesn't break apart into episodes or nebulize into a vague emotion.
-- Walter Bates Rideout, Sherwood Anderson: a collection of critical essays
To argue that class is at heart a temporal category of change and movement can work to nebulize the issue of poverty, dissolving it into categorical indistinctness and impermanence.
-- Gavin Jones, American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945
Nebulize takes the ancient Proto-Indo-European root nebh- "mist," and adds the Greek suffix -lize, "to make." The word first appears in the 1800s.

darkle \DAHR-kuhl\, verb:

Word of the Day for Friday, September 2, 2011
darkle \DAHR-kuhl\, verb:
1. To grow dark, gloomy, etc.
2. To appear dark; show indistinctly.
Beyond the open trunk, the desert seemed to darkle, brighten, darkle rhythmically, but in fact the acuity of his vision sharpened briefly with each systolic thrust of his pounding heart.
-- Dean Koontz, The Husband
And the fire-flies wink and darkle, Crowded swarms that soar and sparkle, And in wildering escort gather!
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: a tragedy
Darkle is a back-formation from the obsolete darkling, "to be in the dark."

substrate \SUHB-streyt\, noun 基板

Word of the Day for Thursday, September 1, 2011
substrate \SUHB-streyt\, noun:
1. Something that is spread or laid under something else.
2. In biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme.
3. In electronics, a supporting material on which a circuit is formed or fabricated.
Perhaps, over millenia of time, periods of very intense erosion would be required to renew the weathering substrate and in effect renew the ecosystem.
-- F. Herbert Bormann, Gene E. Likens, Pattern And Process In a Forested Ecosystem
Under the desk a strange odor rises from the trays of substrate, fumey and metallic.
-- F. G. Priest, Iain Campbell -, Brewing Microbiology
Substrate combines the Latin sub-, "under," and sternere, "to spread."