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WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.

Here are our favorites from last week:

You may remember that starting this month, once a month, we’ll be giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players. This month’s winners are, drumroll please. . .Larry Kunz and Christa Kinde! Congratulations! We’ll be in touch to get your T-shirt sizes and addresses. The next T-shirt winners will be announced at the end of July.

As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

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Orwellian Soup

On this day in 1903, British novelist and journalist George Orwell was born. While Orwell “wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism,” he was best known for his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In celebration, we’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite Orwellianisms, words that Orwell coined or popularized.

Big Brother

“My, how you’ve changed, Big Brother. What happened to the sourpuss in ‘1984,’ George Orwell’s grim novel about a thought-controlled future? Gone are the piercing eyes and the perennial threat: ‘Big Brother is Watching.’ You’ve had quite the fashion update. I like how you dress in T-shirts and sweats, just like the proles. I like your boyish grin. No longer a tyrant without a name, you’re now Facebook’s founder and supreme leader, Mark Zuckerberg.”

Froma Harrop, “Big Brother is ‘sharing’ on Facebook,” The Seattle Times, February 10, 2012

Orwell coined the term, Big Brother, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, referring to “the nominal leader of Oceania,” the novel’s version of London. Big Brother is now also any “authoritarian leader and invader of privacy.”

crimethink

“What bothers me about this kind of secularism is that it sounds so much like ‘1984’ with its ‘Big Brother is Watching You’; inspections of people without warning; superior ruling group (The Inner Party), whose numbers are limited to six million; ‘The Ministry of Plenty,’ which actually inflicts starvation; the denial of human passion and the notion it would be ‘crimethink‘ for a couple to even dream about a third child.”

“1984 World,” The News-Dispatch, December 2, 1971

Crimethink, “the crime of having unorthodox or unofficial thoughts,” is another word Orwell coined in his dystopian novel: “All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word CRIMETHINK, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word OLDTHINK.”

doublespeak

“Robert Denham, director of English programs for the Modern Language Association in New York, says doublespeak contains a fair amount of propaganda, too. ‘We’re trying to hide what the real truth is about a situation by masking it behind some gobbledygook,’ he says. Many forms of the lingo are innocent but some are downright dangerous, he says.”

“Doublespeak terms not based on reality,” The Palm Beach Post, June 21, 1988

While often attributed to Orwell, he didn’t coin the word doublespeak, “any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity.” Also known as double talk, doublespeak was coined in the mid-1950s, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, modeled on Orwell’s doublethink.

doublethink

“So we’re left with the Orwellian concept of Doublethink: Holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says he will not reactivate offshore processing on Nauru because it won’t break the people-smugglers’ business model. . . .Yet in the same breath he says it is too harsh . . .As Orwell wrote: ‘To know and not to know.’”

“Doublethink on asylum seekers won’t fool anyone,” The Australian, June 7, 2011

Doublethink is “thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination.”

duckspeak

“Duckspeak, of course, is the language celebrated in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ Characterized by mindless invocation and the repetition of slogans, it was the highest form of speech in Orwell’s nightmare demolition of the English language, Newspeak.”

Christopher Ketcham, “George W. Bush, the doubleplusgood doublespeaker!” Salon, February 10, 2004

Duckspeak, “thoughtless or formulaic speech,” is imitative of a duck’s repetitive quacking.

newspeak

“As in ‘1984,’ today’s agents of Newspeak play on the fears of concerned citizens over what’s ‘out there.’  The future, multiculturalism and anybody-not-like-us are presented as reasons for the nation’s apparent race toward political and cultural ruin. Newspeak’s high-priests present topics as black and white, right and wrong, liberal and conservative, in a manner leaving little room for any objective discussions of issues.”

Edward Dwyer, “Speaking Newspeak,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 14, 1994

In Ninety Eighty-Four, Newspeak is “the fictional language devised to meet the needs of Ingsoc,” or English Socialism, and is “designed to restrict the words, and hence the thoughts, of the citizens of Oceania.” In contrast is Oldspeak, which refers to standard English. By extension, newspeak is, in general, “deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public.”

Newspeak also gave us the combining form –speak, which can “indicate the language or special vocabulary of a group,” says World Wide Words. Examples include geekspeak, lolspeak, and adspeak. (More –speak words.)

Orwellian

“Critics on the left hear Orwellian resonances in phrase like ‘weapons of mass protection,’ for nonlethal arms, or in names like the Patriot Act or the Homeland Security Department’s Operation Liberty Shield, which authorizes indefinite detention of asylum-seekers from certain nations. Critics on the right hear them in phrases like ‘reproductive health services,’ ‘Office of Equality Assurance’ and ‘English Plus,’ for bilingual education.”

Geoffrey Nunberg, “Simpler Terms; If It’s ‘Orwellian,’ It’s Probably Not,” The New York Times, June 22, 2003

Orwellian means “of, relating to, or evocative of the works of George Orwell, especially the satirical novel 1984, which depicts a futuristic totalitarian state,” and is an eponym, a word derived from the name of a person.

prole

“Anyway, pureblood prole that I am, I was alarmed to find myself teetering on the verge of poshness because I know what prosecco is.”

Suzanne Moore, “Me, a pureblood prole, one of the new posh?” The Daily Mail, June 5, 2010

Orwell popularized this back-formation of the word proletariat, “the class of wage-workers dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the lowest and poorest class in the community,” which was coined around 1853 and came from the French prolétariat. Before proletariat was proletarian, coined in the mid-17th century. Prole is attested from 1887.

thoughtcrime

“British citizens will be extradited for what critics have called a ‘thought crime’ under a new European arrest warrant, the Government has conceded. Campaigners fear they could even face trial for broadcasting ‘xenophobic or racist’ remarks – such as denying the Holocaust – on an internet chatroom in another country.”

Philip Johnston, “Britons face extradition for ‘thought crime’ on net,” The Telegraph, February 18, 2003

A thoughtcrime is “a crime committed by having unorthodox or unofficial thoughts.” Thought police, “a group that aims to control what other people think,” originated around 1946, before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and was originally in reference to “pre-war Japanese Special Higher Police.”

unperson

“Nikita Khrushchev has become an unperson. For a week now there has been no public indication in the nation he long dominated that such a man ever existed. His picture has disappeared from public places. His books are no longer heaped in display in stores.”

“Khrushchev Is ‘Unperson’ In Own Nation,” Lawrence Journal-World, October 23, 1964

Orwell coined this term which means “a human who has been stripped of rights, identity or humanity.”

For even more things Orwellian, check out his essay on new words in English, and these lists, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Newspeak.

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Word Soup Wednesday

While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV.

assassitunity

Jon Stewart: “Remember when you oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden? You must have known this photo would go viral. You had to think of it as an assassitunity.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 13, 2012

Assassitunity, a blend of assassinate and opportunity, refers to using the assassination of Osama bin Laden as a PR opportunity. See other opportunity portmanteaus, disadvertunity, hobbyturnity, and talk-portunity.

Baba-Nyonya

Anthony Bourdain: “The Baba-Nyonya are descendents of the original Chinese merchants who settled [in Penang] hundreds of years ago. Over time they took on a lot of flavors and ingredients of their new environment. The resulting cuisine is a truly unique mutation, a fusion of local southeast Asian ingredients and taste preferences with Chinese technique and preparation.”

“Penang,” No Reservations, June 4, 2012

The Baba-Nyonya are also known as Peranakan or “descendents.” The word Baba-Nyonya translates as “men-women,” where baba refers to men and is a “Persian loan-word borrowed by Malaysian,” and nyonya, referring to women, is “a Javanese loan-word honorific.”

balitong

Anthony Bourdain: “What is it about the food here that makes it so damned magical, beyond the incredible mix of influences? The ingredients. Case in point, these cute little sea snails, somewhere between a periwinkle and a whelk, called balitong.”

“Penang,” No Reservations, June 4, 2012

Balitong, which may come from the name of a Javanese king, is also known as the obtuse horn shell; in Malay, siput sedut, which translates as either “snail suction” or “snail breathe”; and, in Hokkein, chut-chut, imitative of the sound of sucking out the snail from its shell.

dressage

Stephen Colbert: “But folks, the image of Romney as a privileged princeling ends today, because now Mitt is just your average blue-collar fan of dressage. Of course that word may sound high-falutin’, but don’t worry, it also goes by the street name ‘horse ballet.’”

The Colbert Report, June 12, 2012

Dressage is “the guiding of a horse through a series of complex maneuvers by slight movements of the rider’s hands, legs, and weight,” and comes from the French dresser, “to set up, arrange, train.” More horse-related words.

free lunch

Stephen Colbert: “But sadly folks, one public union recently scored a major victory, and that brings us to tonight’s word: free lunch. . . .These unionized lunch lady thugs now have the right to free expired cafeteria food, and given the quality of cafeteria food, expired is an improvement.”

The Colbert Report, June 13, 2012

A free lunch is “something acquired without due effort or without cost,” and was originally a mid-19th century term, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, that referred to free food “offered in bars to draw in business.” Related is the phrase there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, sometimes abbreviated as TANSTAAFL, which seems to have originated in the 1930s or 1940s.

gaffestronomist

Jon Stewart: “All that remains is the bloody gaffe carcass to be picked over by our nation’s most esteemed gaffestronomists, who will measure the gaffe using the exact science of gaffestronomy.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 11, 2012

Gaffestronomist is a play on gastronomist, also known as gastronomer, “one versed in gastronomy,” or “the art of preparing and serving rich or delicate and appetizing food.” Gaffe, “a foolish and embarrassing error, especially one made in public,” may come from the French gaffe, “clumsy remark” which originally meant “boat hook.” The sense connection may be, says World Wide Words, “because the emotional effect [of a blunder] is like being gaffed,” or pulled by a hook.

hot tooth

Joan: “Are you under the weather?”
Don: “I’ve got a hot tooth.”

“The Phantom,” Mad Men, June 10, 2012

A hot tooth is “a painful tooth” in which “the nerve is alive, but badly inflamed.”

kill list

News announcer: “The New York Times reports that the president has given himself the final word in a top secret nominating process to place terror suspects on a kill list.”
Jon Stewart: “Obama has a kill list? Assuming this goes with a marry list and a fuck list.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 13, 2012

The marry, fuck, and kill lists are presumably in reference to the “game,” Marry-Fuck-Kill, or MFK, in which players list people they would marry, fuck, or kill.

laksa

Anthony Bourdain: “Every time I come to Malaysia, there’s one thing I gotta have: laksa. It’s everything I love in one bowl.”

“Penang,” No Reservations, June 4, 2012

Laksa is a spicy noodle soup. The word laksa may come from the “Hindi/Persian lakhshah, referring to a type of vermicelli, which in turn may be derived from the Sanskrit lakshas. . .meaning ‘one hundred thousand’ (lakh),” or else from the Chinese word “meaning ‘spicy sand’ due to the ground dried prawns which gives a sandy or gritty texture to the sauce.”

otak-otak

Anthony Bourdain: “But [the Baba-Nyonya] cuisine is in danger of disappearing as so many of the ingredients are difficult to source, and because dishes like this, otak-otak, a fish custard wrapped in banana leaf, are so labor-intensive to prepare.”

“Penang,” No Reservations, June 4, 2012

Otak translates from Malay as “brain.” Otak-otak seems to have gotten its name from the fish custard’s resemblance to brains.

selenium

Aasif Mandvi [regarding picture of two-headed fish]: “What is causing that?”
Marv Hoyt: “It’s the selenium in the water.”
Aasif Mandvi [after spit-taking a glass of water]: “Selenium is a toxic byproduct of phosphate mining, and in southeast Idaho, one company loves mining phosphate.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 14, 2012

Selenium is a “a toxic nonmetallic element related to sulfur and tellurium.” The word comes from the Greek selēnē, “moon.” The company referred to here is Simplot, “one of the largest privately held agri-business companies in the world.”

tostilocos

Javier Plascencia: “You know Tostitos, right? The border culture has made something crazy. They call it tostilocos, which is tortilla chips, nuts, cucumber, salsa, and uncooked pig skin.”

“Baja,” No Reservations, May 28, 2012

Tostitos are a brand of tortilla chips, presumably a blend of tortilla and Frito or Dorito, while loco is Spanish for “crazy.” Border culture refers to culture at the U.S.-Mexico border.

walk back

Jon Stewart: “But of course as surely as winter follows fall, a full-grown gaffe must someday be walked back.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 11, 2012

To walk back means “to withdraw or back-pedal on a statement or promise; retract.” Walk back may also take on a noun form, walk-back: “Welcome to the walk-back — a strained, three-act political exercise of speaking candidly, then shamelessly buckling under pressure.”

xenomorph

Stephen Colbert: “But nation, I’m not just annoyed, I’m terrified, because if [astrophysicist] Neil deGrasse Tyson points out everything inaccurate in movies and this was the only mistake he found, that can mean only one thing: everything else in Prometheus is true! The xenomorphs are coming for us!”

The Colbert Report, June 11, 2012

Xenomorph may refer to the extraterrestrial creatures in the Aliens movies, a monstrous creature in general, a strange form, or an allotriomorph, “a mineral that did not develop its otherwise typical external crystal form because of late crystallization between earlier formed crystals.” Xeno comes from the Greek xenos, “a guest, stranger, foreigner,” while morph comes from the Greek morphe, “shape, form.”

That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!

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WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.

Here are our favorites from last week:

Remember, starting this month we’ll be giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players once a month. For June, the winners will be announced on the last Monday, June 25.

And to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Thanks for playing!

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Welcome Omar!

Welcome Omar!

Omar is Wordnik’s newest recruit and first Product Designer. Little is known about him: he is a man shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The few facts we do have: he started his career in Los Angeles as a part of small creative boutiques, only to be swooped up by Sapient. He’s worked on brands ranging from Disney and Sony to Logitech and ESPN. He’s never one to be satisfied and always looking to evolve. If asked about what he does he simply says “I just want to make honest design that subtly educates and delights the audience. That’s my contribution to the world.”

We’re very happy to have Omar at Wordnik! (If you find out any other details about him, please leave them in a plain white #10 envelope under the statue of Leon the Giraffe in San Mateo’s Central Park.)

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

In The New York Times, Philip Corbett noted words The Times’ writers love too much; Constance Hale remembered loving the sound of a sentence; and Erin McKean wrote about “madeupical” words. The New Yorker invited readers to make up their own words, while at The New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith expounded on the essentialness of a local library and bookshop.

In American politics, a third spelling error arose in Mitt Romney’s campaign (if you’re keeping count, that’s Amercia, sneak-peak, and offical). Ben Zimmer discussed the new, overly friendly political speech and the controversy over the definition of marriage. Geoff Pullum and the Virtual Linguist both wrote about the death of the Queen’s English Society. Meanwhile, the language wars continued with a post from Arrant Pedantry on what descriptivism is and isn’t and from Mark “Descriptive Destroyer” Liberman.

At the Language Log, Mark discussed pronounceable snack ingredients, the case of “vinyls,” and e-publishing string replacement gone wrong. Ben Zimmer also posted on unfortunate search and replace results, namely Nookd for kindled and deDeputys for devices. Barbara Partee considered the negative event, and Victor Mair had some cheese bacon mushroom face.

At Lingua Franca, Allan Metcalf considered not; Geoff Pullum explored the however myth; and Ben Yagoda rounded up some comma comments, broke down the anatomy of a catchphrase, and examined the phrase, yeah, no. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Orin Hargraves got granular, Robert Lane Greene talked go, and Stan Carey considered commas and at Sentence First taught us how to stop confusing pore and pour. Meanwhile, Motivated Grammar compared “than I” and than me” and the Grammar Monkeys told us about style and grammar, and why lots of things aren’t “wrong.”

In the week in words, Erin McKean spotted desquamation, a condition in which “all your skin falls off”; chinoise, a type of sieve for cooking; gaokao, China’s “grueling college entrance exam”; and miche, a type of bread. Fritinancy noted blazerati, “officials of amateur sports associations who are identified by their colored blazers”; and prochronism, “a chronological error in which an event or usage is dated earlier than its actual occurrence.”

Fritinancy also described how General Tso’s chicken got its name, while we learned that in Paris “there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than ‘très Brooklyn,’ a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality.”

Sesquiotica was entertained by gecko, get-go, and get; got into some frenzy words; and corroborated on a corroboree. Lynneguist compared the American and British ways of introducing oneself. The Virtual Linguist traced the origins of jubilee and nemesia and nemesis, and rounded up some bun phrases. The Dialect Blog dropped some Hs, measured –ness, and discussed the profane conversion of dick.

We loved these Star Wars alphabet prints and these of London in the 1850s, and were terrified by these French children’s books. And we still can’t get enough of anachronisms in Mad Men and Downton Abbey.

That’s it for this week! Yeah, no, really.

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Word Soup: James Joyce

This Saturday, June 16 is Bloomsday, an annual celebration of Irish writer James Joyce and his novel, Ulysses.

Want to join the festivities? Follow in Leopold Bloom’s footsteps and take a walking tour of Dublin. Learn about the Irish capital through an app that “maps the locations of James Joyce’s modernist novel.” Attend a readathon with “more than one hundred Irish writers [reading] consecutively over 28 hours,” or listen to BBC Radio 4’s “five-and-a-half-hour adaptation of the novel.” Read Ulysses in its entirety (finally) at the Irish National Library. Or just enjoy this roundup of ten of our favorite Ulyssesean and Joycean words.

honorificabilitudinitatibus

“Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Honorificabilitudinitatibus means “the state of being able to achieve honors.” According to World Wide Words, Joyce borrowed it from Shakespeare, “who in turn borrowed it from Latin”:

I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon.

Love’s Labor Lost

But Shakespeare didn’t coin the word. Its first appearance, “in the form honōrificābilitūdo” was “in a charter of 1187 and as honōrificābilitūdinitās in a work by the Italian Albertinus Mussatus about 1300.” The word was also used “by Dante and Rabelais and turns up in an anonymous Scots work of 1548, The Complaynt of Scotland.”

inwit

“Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Inwit, meaning “inward knowledge; understanding; conscience,” was coined in the 13th century, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and comes from in plus wit. World Wide Words goes on to say that the word “had gone out of the language around the middle of the fifteenth century” and “would have remained a historical curiosity had not Joyce and a few other writers of his time found something in it that was worth the risk of puzzling his readers.”

The phrase agenbite of inwit echoes Ayenbite of Inwyt, a Middle English “confessional prose work.” Ayenbite or agenbite is “literally ‘again-bite’, a literal translation of the Latin word meaning ‘remorse’,” says World Wide Words.

monomyth

“At the carryfour with awlus plawshus, their happy-ass cloudious! And then and too the trivials! And their bivouac! And his monomyth! Ah ho! Say no more about it! I’m sorry! I saw. I’m sorry! I’m sorry to say I saw!”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Monomyth, a word that Joyce coined, is “a cyclical journey or quest undertaken by a mythical hero,” and today is most famously applied to Joseph Campbell’s concept in his writings about heroes, stories, and myth.

Mr. Right

“Be sure now and write to me. And I’ll write to you. Now won’t you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along, then meet once in a blue moon.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Mr. Right refers to “a perfect, ideal or suitable mate or husband,” and, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, first appeared in Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. However, we found Mr. Right in this context (not as someone’s name) in what appears to be a song from around 1826:

Mr. Right! Mr. Right!
Oh, sweet Mr. Right!
The girls find they’re wrong when they find Mr. Right
There’s some love the young, and the young love the old,
There’s some love for love, and some love for gold.
Many Pretty young girls get hold of a fright,
And all their excuse is – I’ve found Mr. Right.

If anyone has any additional information on the origin of Mr. Right, let us know!

poppysmic

“Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Poppysmic refers to the sound “produced by smacking the lips.” The word comes from the Latin poppysma, says World Wide Words. The Romans used the word to refer to “a kind of lip-smacking, clucking noise that signified satisfaction and approval, especially during lovemaking,” and that “in French, it referred to the tongue-clicking tsk-tsk sound that riders use to encourage their mounts.”

pud

“For your own good, you understand, for the man who lifts his pud to a woman is saving the way for kindness.”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

A pud is a “a paw; fist; hand,” but is also apparently meant as slang for penis, says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Pud is short for pudding, which originally referred to “minced meat, or blood, properly seasoned, stuffed into an intestine, and cooked by boiling,” also known as sausage. Pudding gained the slang sense of penis in 1719.

quark

“— Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Quark is a nonsense word that Joyce coined in his novel, Finnegans Wake. Physicist Murray Gell-Mann, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, applied quark to “any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons.”

schlep

“Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

While Joyce didn’t coin the word schlep, which comes from Yiddish shlepn, “to drag, pull,” its first known appearance in English seems to have been in Ulysses.

Ulysses

“In ‘Ulysses,’ Joyce follows Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman, around Dublin through the course of one day in 1904 – June 16, a date that is now annually celebrated by Joyce scholars and admirers as ‘Bloomsday.’”

Herbert Mitgang, “Joyce Typescript Moves to Texas,” The New York Times, June 16, 1990

Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, in Greek mythology, “the king of Ithaca, a leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War, who reached home after ten years of wandering.” The Odyssey and Odysseus gave us odyssey, “an extended adventurous voyage or trip”, or “an intellectual or spiritual quest.”

Ulysses contract

“The new paper takes precommitment strategies much further, advocating, for example, a ‘Ulysses contract’ — or a ‘commitment memorandum’ that spells out what to do when the markets move 25 percent up or down.”

Jeff Sommer, “The Benefits of Telling the Ugly Truth,” The New York Times, April 30, 2011

A Ulysses contract, says The Wall Street Journal, is a promise

not to act hastily in volatile markets. Just as Ulysses had his crew tie him down so he could resist the Sirens’ deadly song, Prof. Benartzi…would have investors promise not to overreact to sharp market moves in either direction.

Erin McKean says that Ulysses’s wife, Penelope, “also lends her name to a number of objects, including Penelope canvas (used for needlework), and to the verb penelopize, ‘to pull work apart to do it over again, in order to gain time.’”

Still jonesing for more Ulysses words? Check out this list and this one, and for more nonsense words like quark, check out this one.