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February 3, 2008

Moot (adjective)

Pronunciation: ['mut]

Definition 1: (Noun) A hypothetical case argued by law students or a town meeting where issues are debated.

Usage 1: The noun "moot" refers to an assembly of people, particularly if the assembly is for debate or law-making, a meaning employed by JRR Tolkien when he described his Ents meeting in an "Entmoot." But in the 16th century, the noun took on a specifically legal meaning, the meeting of law students at the Inns of Court in London, in order to debate hypothetical legal cases. So the first meaning of the adjective "moot" refers to opening an issue to discussion and argument.

Definition 2: (Adjective) Settled; having been previously debated and decided; irrelevant, pointless.

Usage 2: The association with legal hypotheticals has persisted and has led, mainly in the USA, to the adoption of a second adjectival usage, indicating an argument that is ultimately pointless. As might be expected, the verb "to moot" originally meant to argue or discuss, but it has now shifted its ground to mean "to bring up for debate." A topic that is open to discussion is "mootable;" the person who broaches such a topic is its "mooter."

Suggested Usage: Be aware of the conflicting meanings of this word, and restrict its use to situations in which the sense is clear from context. A moot question may be one open for debate or one already decided by debate. The boss may be willing to accept that his latest scheme is open to argument, but not that it is irrelevant: "Your usage of 'moot' here is somewhat moot, Noreen."

Etymology: From Old English mót "an assembly" comes from Old English motan "to have an occasion, to be permitted," related, of course, to the verb "meet" from Old English "metan." Both these verbs derived from the Proto-Indo-European *med-/mod- "(take) measure(s)," from which all our medical words comes from ("medicine," "medicate," "remedy") via Latin mederi "care for, heal, cure." The o-variant shows up in various forms borrowed from Latin, such as "model," "moderate," and "modest," all of which reflect some sort of measure. That final [d] on the original root becomes [t] in the Germanic languages (of which English is one), hence "moot" and "meet."

February 4, 2008

Hornswoggle (verb)

Pronunciation: ['horn-swah-gêl]

Definition: (Slang) To cheat, swindle, hoodwink, or bamboozle.

Usage: The participle, "hornswoggling" may be used as an adjective or noun and someone who hornswoggles, of course, is a hornswoggler. "Well, I'll be hornswoggled!" is a slang expression of surprise in the U.S.

Suggested Usage: Hornswoggling usually involves money, "Victoria hornswoggled me out of $2,000 before I found out she was not an investment broker," or "Hubert hornswoggled 40 of us with his scheme to develop property in the Sonoma Desert." However, the involvement of money is not crucial, "Juanita hornswoggled Marvin into marrying her by telling him she loved housework."

Etymology: We do not know the origin of hornswoggle. It belongs to a group of “fancified” words that were particularly popular in the American West in the 19th century, words exhibiting the frontier skepticism toward educated speech. "Hornswoggle" first appeared in print in Kentucky in 1929. Other words of this ilk are "stick-to-it-iveness," first appearing in 1867, "skedaddle," which appeared in 1861 somewhere in Missouri, and "discombobulate," in 1916. "Bamboozle" first appeared in England around 1700, indicating an earlier tradition of such concocted words. 

February 5, 2008

Panache (noun)

Pronunciation: [pê-'næsh]

Definition: A plume of feathers, especially in a hat or helmet; dash, flamboyance, verve.

Usage: Today's word is a near-orphan. One rarely used adjective, "panached," indicates a set of multi-colored stripes, as panached pansies, since panaches in helmets and hats tended to be multi-colored. Don't forget that the [sh] sound comes from the French pronunciation of [ch] followed by a 'silent' [e].

Suggested Usage: In the 19th and early 20th centuries Native Americans of the plains were notable for their colorful panaches in the original sense but Europeans of that age loved them, too: "When I was young, the most elegant of women's hats had to be adorned with a remarkable panache." That kind of panache remains among us today only metaphorically, "Michael Jordan not only stuffed the (basket)ball through the net, he did it with panache."

Etymology: French "plume, verve" from Italian pennacchio "plume" (Spanish "penacho") from Late Latin pinnaculum "little feather," the diminutive of pinna or penna "feather, wing." "Pinnacle" also comes from Latin "pinnaculum," whose meaning had changed to "gable, small wing" before Latin split into French, Italian, and Spanish. The Proto-Indo-European root was *pet- "feather, wing," also at the root of "pen," the writing instrument which originally was a feather (from Latin penna "feather"). Of course, the PIE [p] became [f] and the [t], [th] in English, so the same root, with the suffix –er, turns up in English as "feather."

February 6, 2008

Oust (verb)

Pronunciation: [awst]

Definition: To remove or eject from a position or place, as to oust someone from their apartment; to replace someone in a position.

Usage: Today's word is odd, for the action noun derived from this verb is ouster "removal," created with a suffix usually denoting a person. Usually, action nouns are formed by the suffix -ing added to stems like this one. In fact, an "ouster" is also a person who ousts.

Suggested Usage: Today's word might sound a bit slangy, but it isn't; it has been around continuously since borrowed from Old French. So you may use it in the most formal of situations, "Mikhail Gorbachev was ousted from office by Boris Yeltsin in 1991." However, informal usage is not precluded, "Forget the company picnic; our current president needs an ousting more than an outing."

Etymology:  Today's word has nothing to do with "out." It comes from Anglo-French ouste-r from Old French oster (Modern French ôter "to remove, deprive") which devolved from Latin obstare "to stand in the way of, obstruct," based on ob "against" + stare "to stand" (the source of English "obstacle"). The original stem, *sta- "stand," turns up in many other words throughout the Indo-European world, including English "stallion" (stall animal), "stud," and "stall" itself, dealing with places where animals are kept, "stool," stead "place" as "instead of" and Yiddish "shtetl," from German Stadt "city, place" plus a diminutive ending. Other words from the same origin include "stool," Russian stol "table" and, with nasalization, stan- "stand up, become", English "stand," and German "stehen." The Russian word for "old," staryi, apparently began with the sense of "long-standing."

February 7, 2008

Queue (noun)

Pronunciation: [kyu]

Definition: A line, a row of people taking their turn at something; a pig-tail.

Usage: Nowhere else in the English language does it take so many vowel letters to express one vowel sound: the same sound expressed with only two vowels in "cue" (the stick used in billiards), which comes from the same source. The British stand in a queue but Americans, except New Yorkers, stand in line. New Yorkers, for some odd reason, stand on line.

Suggested Usage: Remember, we borrowed this word to refer to pig-tails (see Etymology), "The new philosophy professor had a tattoo of Kant and Turing on his arm, three nose rings, and a frizzy queue dangling down his back." But most often it specifies a row of people waiting their turn at something: "I never stand in a queue without an umbrella for protection against the queue-jumpers."

Etymology: When English speakers stand in queue, we hardly think of forming a "tail," but the Old French word "cue" (now spelled "queue"), the source of today's word, comes from the Latin coda "tail." It was borrowed from French around 1748 to refer to the regulation plait of hair required by the British navy for all sailors until the mid-19th century. It also refers to the tail end of other things, such as musical compositions and intonation patterns in linguistics. People stand in tails (queues) in many countries: in Serbia it is a rep and in Russia, a khvost.

February 8, 2008

Galore (ajective)

Pronunciation: [gê-'lor]

Definition: In great abundance; a great many.

Usage: This is an odd word because of its placement in a sentence; "galore" is a postpositive adjective; that is, it follows the noun that it modifies. In French, of course, most adjectives come after their nouns, but it is highly uncommon in the English language. (But then we have exceptions galore in English, so this one comes as no surprise.)

Suggested Usage: This is a common enough word, featured today because of its positioning in sentence and history. Since it is so widely understood, you can use it almost anywhere, in formal and informal contexts. "No, thank you; we have truffles and champagne galore" will be suitable at the next embassy party that you attend. yourDictionary.com is where you come to find words galore.

Etymology: Like a few other words featured in our Word of the Day ("donnybrook" and "whiskey" come to mind), "galore" comes to English from Irish Gaelic. It derives from go léor "enough." "Léor" comes from Old Irish roar "enough" rooted in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *wero- "true". *Wero- is also the source of Latin verus "true" which underlies English "veracity," "verify," "very (truly)," and "voir dire," the preliminary examination of prospective jurors.

February 9, 2008

Fraught (adjective)

Pronunciation: [frat or frawt]

Definition: Loaded, filled, weighed down (with).

Usage: Today's is another endangered word teetering on the brink of extinction. The verb "fraught" has already vanished and the noun (a fraught of water = "two pails of water") was last heard in Scotland, the last hope of so many interesting English words.

Suggested Usage: Today's word is most frequently used in a metaphorical sense that can veil its true meaning: "Face-to-face with the neighbor's cat, whose hair was standing on end, Rover immediately sensed a situation fraught with danger." However, the literal sense remains available, "After dinner he fell promptly asleep, his stomach fraught with more than his share of the smorgasbord."

Etymology: The past participle of Middle English fraughten “to load” from fraght “cargo, freight.” This verb apparently comes from Middle Dutch vrachten “to load” based on vracht “freight.” The Dutch word devolved from Old Teutonic *fra-aihti-z, originally a compound based on *fra- “for” + *aihti “own, property,” a root akin to English “ought” and German eigen “own.”