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November 26, 2009

Anent and awesome pronunciations

Today’s word of the day is anent, a preposition meaning “regarding” or “concerning.” It’s largely literary or show-offish. As in, “This question remains a vital consideration anent the debate over the possibility of limiting nuclear war to military objectives.”

Today’s list of the day is “awesome pronunciations,” where Wordies and Wordniks have gone out of their way to record unusual words and things like foreign-language tongue-twisters.

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November 25, 2009

Georgic down on the farm

Today’s word of the day is georgic, relating to agriculture or rural life. In thanks to farmers and farming, we also have things found down on the farm as our list of the day, as well as these additional words of the day.

tilth: cultivation of land; tillage; tilled land.

hopperdozer: an old-fashioned device for killing locusts with tar and kerosene among the crops.

boon-work: work or service freely given to a farmer by his neighbors on some special occasion.

granger: in the upper American Midwest, a farmer.

boss-cockie: in Australia, a farmer whose holding is large enough to require laborers to help work it.

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Photo by Josef Stuefer and used here under a Creative Commons license.

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November 24, 2009

Wrick and -imm-

Today’s word of the day is wrick, which means “to twist or turn” or “a sprain.” A synonym is rick and both are probably related to crick, as in, “There’s a crick in my back. Will you walk on my back for a spell?”

Today’s list of the day is imm, which contains nothing more than words with the letters “imm” somewhere in them: swimming, immodest, gimmick, and more.

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November 23, 2009

Haruspex and sweet tooth fairy

Today’s word of the day is haruspex, which was a priest in ancient Rome who practiced divination by the inspection of the entrails of animals. It’s sometimes used in a literary fashion to refer to any person who tries to predict the future.

Today’s list of the day is Sweet Tooth Fairy, which contains three-part phrases made of two different compound words, so “sweet tooth” and “tooth fairy” combine to form “sweet tooth fairy.” It’s a great road game, too.

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November 22, 2009

We’re back!

Thanks for your patience, we’re back up and running.

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Site updates in progress!

Hi all, you might be surprised to be on this page. We’re updating www.wordnik.com right now, it’ll be back shortly.

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November 20, 2009

Gloaming and the animal identity crisis

The word of the day is gloaming, which means “twilight” or “dusk.”

Today’s list of the day is Animal Identity Crisis, which includes animals who have the name of another type of animal in their common names, such as the elephant bird and the sea cow.

gloaming
Photo by Eric Wüstenhagen and used here under a Creative Commons license.

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