Word a DAY
just to pick a certain word by showing
its meaning,sources,and some examples
...

Today's Word: actuate

(transitive verb)
[AK-choo-ayt']

1. to put (a device) into mechanical motion or action; activate: "With trembling hands and a fluttering stomach, Janice pressed the power button to actuate her new robot."

2. to move or incite to action; 'actuate dissent'

noun form: actuation

Origin:
Approximately 1596; borrowed from Medieval Latin, 'actuatus,' past participle of 'actuare': to execute; from Latin, 'actus': act.

In action:
"100 Centre Street's limited resources were apparent in the episode 'A Shot in the Dark'. The story concerned a young white policeman charged with killing a black suspect claimed by reliable witnesses to have been shot in the back after arrest. It was prima facie a case of cold-blooded racial murder. Bobby Esposito, handling the case for the prosecution, has doubts and decides to re-interview the witnesses. When Esposito probes the witnesses' accounts and the accused officer's claims that he had no intention of firing his gun - that it was all an accident - Esposito sifts the facts thoroughly. We don't see him doing this; he simply announces his ultimate findings to the policeman and his counsel: Because the rookie officer had not handled this type of firearm before, he wasn't aware that it took very little pressure on the trigger to make it fire. The killing had been accidental and the charge could now be dropped from murder to inadvertent homicide.

Note that Bobby's conclusion was explained to the defendant (and us). Had this been an episode from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, we would have followed every aspect of the gun's examination in detail. Jorja Fox or Emily Procter would have peered down microscopes, checked the grooves in the bullets, fired test shots in a shooting range, conducted experiments to determine the pressure needed to actuate the gun, attended the victim's autopsy and taken lots of photos. The screen would have been restless with action and activity."

John C. Murray. "100 Centre Street," [TV Review] The Age [Australia] (December 11, 2003).

"But the power from Pontiac's venerable supercharged 3800 is not to be questioned. Power delivery can be either through a traditional floor-mounted automatic or a thumb-actuated automanual; the automanual, however, forced me to stretch my hand to actuate the shift toggles. It took getting used to, but going through the gears was possible. This GP is well enough balanced on the road, giving the driver a sense of both comfort and command, and GM must be commended for the attention to interior detail. It is getting much better and is rapidly becoming an environment that's replete with pleasing materials throughout."

"2004 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP," [Car Review] Autoweek (November 24, 2003).

Today's Word: bagnio

(noun)



1. a building where prostitutes are available; a brothel: "It seems that every city has always featured at least one seedy corner, famous for its gambling, bagnios, and drugs."

2. (especially in Italy or Turkey) a building containing public baths

3. (obsolete) a prison for slaves, especially in Asian countries

[B]Origin:
Approximately 1600; from Italian, 'bagno': bath; from Latin, 'balneum'; from Greek, 'balaneion': bath or bathroom.

In Action:
"To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip."

James Joyce (1882-1941). Irish novelist. 'Ulysses' (written from 1914 to 1921).

"Here in St. Louis, as in London or Paris or Vienna -- those effete European cities -- girls walked the streets for hire, and the section where they walked, Olive Street between 6th and 12th and about the post office, was quickly pointed out to me by my fellow craftsmen, who were youthfully interested in these matters. Again there was a truly amazing bagnio

Theodore Dreiser, Edited by T.D. Nostwich. 'Newspaper Days.' district, stretching from 12th and Chestnut to 22nd or 23rd and Chestnut, occupying both sides of the street and literally lined with 'houses' where the sexually restless and unsatisfied were free to repair and for a comparatively modest price satisfy their needs."

Today's Word: deracinate


(transitive verb)
[dah-RAS-ah-nate']

1. to pull out by the roots; to extirpate or uproot "In any band of hooligans, there is always a core group of mal.......s, without which the band would fall apart. By targeting the core, you effectively deracinate the group."

2. to isolate or displace a person from their native or accustomed environment; "The ugly side of the economic upturn has been the cost of living increase in many urban areas, which has deracinated huge segments of people that may never be able to afford to return."

noun form: deracination
Origin:
Approximately 1600; from French, 'deraciner'; from Old French, 'desraciner' ('des': de + 'racine': root).
In Action:
"By the 1830s, there were more than 2 million slaves in America; their blue-book value was greater than a billion dollars, by far the largest concentration of capital in our nation. (In contrast, government revenue totaled less than 28 million.) America's rapid development and prosperity was unattainable without their unrequited labor. Slavery helped determine the conduct and outcome of the Revolution, and was the tension wire running through our volatile westward expansion--events every American schoolchild experiences through a nostalgic, deracinated haze of recited poems and heroic movies."

Debra Dickerson. "Pride and Prejudice," The Village Voice, Voice Literary Supplement (October 21 - 27, 1998).

"Most of my Jewish friends were taught by upwardly mobile parents that, in America, to fade is to survive. To vanish into whiteness--keeping your identity confined to private observances and perhaps a tasteful piece of jewelry--is to be spared the nightmare of your ancestors, which is social isolation unto death. But this fate remains embedded in the mind of every Jew, no matter how deracinated; call it a historical template. Lieberman recovers that memory. By pushing his identity, he forces Jews to confront the residue of a past that still haunts them. Projecting that inner sense of danger, they assume the worst--if not the threat of death, than the mortification of defeat. It's a plausible fear, but as long as you live by it, you'll never know when the danger is finally past."

Richard Goldstein. "Fear of Joseph Lieberman: Why His Candidacy Gives Some Jews Shpilkes," The Village Voice (August 16 - 22, 2000).

Today's Word: provender

(noun)
[PROV-ahn-dahr]

1. food for domestic livestock; feed

2. a stock or supply of foods: "Slightly paranoid about natural disasters, Chuck kept several sizable batches of provender in closets throughout the house."
Origin:
Approximately 1300; from Middle English, 'provendre': allowance paid each chapter member of a cathedral, food, provisions; originally from Latin, 'praebenda': (things) to be given, from 'praebere': to furnish, to offer; from Old Latin 'praehibere': to hold before, from 'prae-': before, pre- + 'habere': to hold.
In action:
"A major food source for eagles, hawks, coyotes, wolves, badgers, and ferrets, the diminishing numbers of prairie dogs has resulted in decreasing numbers of these predators. Ninety percent of the black-footed ferret's diet is prairie dogs.

With its food source greatly decreased, the ferret has become an endangered species.

Besides being provender, prairie dogs provide homes when other wildlife such as owls, horned lizards, rabbits, hares, and snakes occupy their abandoned burrows.

They also keep prairies viable by controlling the undesirable spread of trees, brush, and grasses."

Sandy Simpson. "Garden Gnome," Haddon Herald.com (November 10, 2004).

"On the other side of the cement mixer, you can have too many workers with you for too long. Central heating defects in our house led to workers practically living there over three months while trying to hammer out the problem and crack open a solution.

For a time, it was like having an extended family; we got to know their domestic problems, hopes, fears, zodiac signs and, of course, their choice from our extempore menu of drinks and snacks, but we were glad when last orders came and they left our delicate morsels and paper napkins for work and provender elsewhere."

Albert Morris. "Builders take the biscuit for a job well done," News.Scotsman.com (November 22, 2004).

"There are 30 people that help, at least,' Mr. Dorr said. 'There are a lot of local volunteers.'

His wife agreed. 'It's hard to name people without leaving someone out,' said Patricia Dorr.

Some of the provender has already been laid in, with squash bought from Equinox Nursery and corn and cider from Dutton's."

Stephanie L. Ryan. "Dorrs dish up Thanksgiving tradition," The Manchester Journal (November 19, 2004).

Today's word is CERISE


(noun)
[sah-REES, sah-REEZ]


1. a deep, bright red color tinted with pink: "The cerise boots are too loud for the office."

adjective form: cerise



Origin:
Approximately 1850; from French, 'cerise': cherry; from Greek, 'kerasos': cherry tree.


In action:
"At the Jekyll Island Club -- now a hotel open to the public, yet looking very much the same as it did a century ago -- it is now impossible to guess the origins of the guests in the room or cottage next door, and why would you want to? At the club a few weeks ago, the major sport -- besides croquet and golf -- might be called not birding but briding. While some guests were having Victorian tea in the elliptical parlor, a couple were being married under a chuppah on the lawn.

As they took their vows, another bride, wearing a strapless evening dress, passed by with her groom and some ushers; the brides nodded to each other. A few buildings away, a group of marines practiced raising their swords in front of a shingled chapel; on the beach, at another rehearsal, a plaid-shirted father followed the minister's instructions and walked his blue-jeaned daughter toward the ocean. (The next day, only cerise-and-white carnation petals remained, scattered on the sand.)"

Tracie Rozhon. "Symbols of the Gilded Age, With a 21st-Century Luster," The New York Times (November 24, 2006).

"I have seven late-flowering varieties on trial, which should be perfect for picking at Christmas: the Shoesmith Series, in crimson, salmon, gold, orange and bronze, and the Medallion Series, in red and cerise. None is yet showing colour in our frost-free, unheated greenhouse."

Sarah Raven. "Autumn reveals its true colours," [For a late-season fireworks display, chrysanthemums are hard to beat.] Telegraph.co.uk (November 25, 2006).

"The second man wore a woollen hat, a cerise scarf around his face and a long grey jacket and white trainers."

"Armed men threaten couple at home," [Two men who forced their way into a house and threatened the occupants are being hunted by police in Essex.] BBC News (November 19, 2006).

Today's Word: torrent

(noun)
[TOR-ahnt]


1. a violently fast stream of water (or other liquid): "The flood unleashed a torrent of water, mud and debris that caused immense destruction."

2. a heavy rain

3. an overwhelming number or amount; 'a torrent of abuse'

Origin:
Approximately 1601; borrowed from French, 'torrent'; from Latin, 'torrentem': rushing stream, originally roaring, boiling, burning (nominative 'torrens'), present participle of 'torrere': to parch, to burn.

In action:
"So it went, month after month. When Pirozzi started receiving other people's 1099 tax forms in January, he sent an e-mail to several high-level officials at Walker Title explaining the situation and demanding that someone intervene to stop the torrent of misdirected mail. He got no response.

The e-mail, Pirozzi was later told, had been blocked by a company spam filter and no one at Walker had received it.

Pirozzi had not opened a single misdirected letter after the first one, and instead began dropping them back in the mail after scrawling on each envelope: 'Return to sender. Please don't send me other people's banking information.'"

Griff Witte. "Your bank statements went where?" [How a clerk's slip-up put 73 people's data at risk.] MSNBC (February 6, 2005).

"I arrived in the evening during a rainstorm, and the staff couldn't have been nicer. 'Did you know your headlight is out?' said the bellman. 'Here, take this umbrella,' said the concierge. 'Right this way,' said the restaurant hostess, whisking me to my table with a smile. Even my waiter apologized profusely when the kitchen ran out of prime rib, and gave me extra tastes of wine (I settled on Harrison Cabernet Franc) to accompany my second entree choice, medallions of beef with vegetables and crispy artichoke risotto cakes.

My room, a small one facing the residential neighborhood (on special, $149 a night), was snug against the torrent lashing at the windows, even if it wasn't the most well-appointed I'd ever stayed in. The bedding was brand new: Egyptian cotton sheets, duvet cover and plump pillows by Amalfi, as were the fine white towels in the spotless but decades-old bathroom. The salmon-colored walls tried to be bright, but seemed straight out of Santa Fe. Combined with the nicked furniture and carpet, starting to show signs of age, it seemed that the Grande Dame -- despite her good, historic bones and a beautiful garden in the outdoor courtyard -- could use a face lift."

Carolyne Zinko. "A stroll through classic CARMEL: Quaint exteriors, renovated interiors part of town's charm," [Travel Review: Carmel-by-the-Sea ] San Francisco Chronicle (February 6, 2005).

Today's Word: immaculate‏

adjective





1. impeccably clean; spotlessly clean: "I landed a posh window space on the ground floor by convincing my boss that I would maintain an immaculate desk."

2. free from stain or blemish; undefiled; pure

3. free from fault or error; flawless: "Jane finished her term paper a week ahead of the due date to make sure that it was immaculate before handing it in."

4. (as in biology) having no spots or markings

adverb form: immaculately
noun form: immaculateness

Origin:
Approximately 1441; from Middle English, 'immaculat'; borrowed from Latin, 'immaculatus' (prefix 'im': not + 'maculatus': spotted or blemished, from 'maculare': to spot or blemish, from 'macula': spot or blemish).

In action:
"Tomorrow is reputedly the 1,999th birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified leader of Christianity, the globe's largest creed. Many of the faithful followers of this man-Messiah believe that he was birthed from the womb of a virgin, despite scientists' claim that this phenomenon, called parthenogenesis, occurs only in low-level species.

Many annoying insects such as ants, bees, wasps and aphids as well as some fleas and ticks create progeny in a manner similar to the legendary Virgin Mary, i.e., without any assistance from sperm. A few scaly fish and reptiles are also capable of immaculate conception."

[I]Hank Hyena. "Self-sexing insects and other cases of parthenogenesis: What's so divine about a virgin birth?" Salon.com (December 24, 1999).

"Okra?-love it or hate it. While some recipes strive to obscure its mucilaginous properties, others hose you with slime. Khartoum delights in the latter. This Sudanese café recently appeared on Fulton Street's thriving Muslim strip, where robed and skullcapped vendors hawk religious wares, even soul food spots offer halal meats, and a grand new mosque is planned at the corner of Bedford Street. The immaculate interior of the restaurant features scarlet curtains, white plastic tablecloths that mimic lace, and a spate of mirrors that dizzyingly multiply all objects to infinity. As you sit down to dinner, the sound of the muezzin calling the evening prayer drifts in the door."

Robert Sietsema. "Counter Culture: Slimed!" The Village Voice (August 30, 2001).

Today's Word:vaunt



transitive verb, intransitive verb, noun
[vont]


transitive verb

1. to boast about something such as achievements or possessions; to boast about: "I had to listen to Yael vaunt about her promotion for a full hour today."

intransitive verb

2. to speak boastfully

noun

3. a boastful remark or display

additional noun form: vaunter
adverb form: vauntingly

Origin:
Approximately 1340; from Late Latin, 'vanitare': to be vain; frequentative of Latin, 'vanare': to utter empty words, from 'vanus': idle, empty.
In action:
"The time is coming when all men will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. [Delivered before the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge.] Address (July 15, 1838).

"The worst was in the habit of prefacing his remarks with the observation that he considered himself 'a bit of an expert' on whatever happened to be under discussion.

It is possible that his knowledge base was as catholic as he indicated; he might well have been an expert on everything from car engines to foreign accents to the War Measures Act. But it is not what he knew that I remember from my time in his classroom. What stays with me is that he seemed boastful, puffed up.

I don't do well with boastful. Give me soft over loud any day, reticent over resonant, modest over vaunting.

Modesty, I believe, is an undervalued attribute. Once associated with restraint, propriety and unostentatious behaviour, modesty has come to seem like an obsolete virtue - a Victorian relic, Christine Horn observed last year in the New Atlantis, a journal of technology and society published by the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in the United States. Although 84 per cent of those polled the previous October in the Harris Interactive Survey said they believe people put far less emphasis on modesty than they did a generation ago, 56 per cent of them said they still agree with the statement, 'Modesty is the best policy.'

Judith Martin, known better as the syndicated columnist Miss Manners, has said of modesty that it calls for 'decently covering one's midriff and one's achievements when not among intimates who find them exciting.'"

Susan Schwartz. "A modest proposal: keep your achievements to yourself," Montreal Gazette (November 26, 2007).

"Momin paused to remember that Gertrude worked in the Studio School building, which was home to the first Whitney Museum. Today, Whitney's own art collection is gathering dust in the museum basement (so to speak), 95 percent of it in storage. The museum's Marcel Breuer building, in all its 80,000 square feet of Brutalist glory, is now considered insufficiently spacious, and the Whitney plans a vaunting new structure in Chelsea. 'Change' Momin says, 'can be a good thing.' Indeed. Her own bailiwick, the branch museum in the lobby of the Altria building on East 42nd Street, is not long for this world [see 'Undone at Altria,' Oct. 31, 2007]."

Julia Morton. "Eye Candy V. Hard Candy," Artnet (Dec 2007-Feb 2008).

"By 1905 progressive folks saw the automobile as the magic carpet to a brave new world. But lots of benighted types saw the newfangled gasoline buggies as hazardous nuisances to life and society and toys of the idle rich. Those two points of view came to a head with the early Glidden Tours.

The Glidden Tours were named after Charles Glidden, a wealthy industrialist who offered a $2,000 prize to the newly formed American Automobile Association for the winner of a long auto race...

The journey to New Hampshire seems to have gone well, without problems. But on July 20, 1905, a date that was to live in infamy as far as motorists were concerned, a group of Glidden tourists who had been on the return leg appeared before Judge Samuel Utley in Worcester Central District Court on the charge that they had been exceeding the Leicester speed limit. Seven of them were fined $15 apiece and given a tongue lashing from the bench.

'These people' said Judge Utley, 'came here knowing perfectly well that there was a law and knowing about what it was. I can see no excuse for violating it. These rich people came here, vaunting their wealth and spreading themselves around on races. They revile the citizens of as good a town as there is under the sky because they want the laws enforced. They abuse the officers for enforcing the laws and accuse them of setting traps.' (Actually, Chief Quinn became famous over the years for his ingenious speed traps at the bottom of Leicester Hill.)"

Albert B. Southwick. "Rocky road in Leicester for the first Glidden Tours," [Commentary] Worcester Telegram (November 11, 2007).

ululate \UL-yuh-layt; YOOL-\, intransitive verb:

To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals.He had often dreamed of his grieving family visiting his grave, ululating as only the relatives of martyrs may.
-- Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary IranShe wanted to be on the tarmac, to ululate and raise her hands to the heavens.
-- Deborah Sontag, "Palestinian Airport Opens to Jubilation", New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/), November 25, 1998She used harrowing, penetrating nasal tones and a rasp that approached Janis Joplin (http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,107506%2B1%2B105269,00.html?ref=A02020)'s double-stops; she made notes break and ululate.
-- Jon Pareles, "On the Third Day There Was Whooping and There Was Moshing", New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/), August 18, 1998Ululate derives from Latin ululare, to howl, to yell, ultimately of imitative origin. The noun form is ululation; the adjective form is ululant.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for ululate (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ululate?r=10)