Today’s word of the day is jesting-beam, which is, in building, a beam introduced for appearance, and not for use. It’s related to jest, a playful or amusing act, and jesting-stock, a laughingstock or a butt for ridicule.
Tag Archives: Word of the Day
Wordnik word of the day: pavonine
Today’s word of the day is pavonine, meaning “resembling, or like, a peacock.” A synonym is pavonian. The collective noun for a flock of peacocks is a muster. Peacock-blue, sometimes unhyphenated as peacock blue, is a dark, greenish blue, though some of the feathers of a peacock are smaragdine, an emerald-green also called smaragd.
Wordnik word of the day: sobersides
Today’s word of the day is sobersides, a sedate or serious person. Like yesterday’s word of the day, sobersides is both the singular and plural form. It literally refers to someone whose sides—the face, for example—are sober in the meaning “plain or subdued.” In another era, such a grave and serious person might be said to have “visited the cave of Trophonious,” which was an oracle which left supplicants “pale and dejected.”
Wordnik word of the day: jane-of-apes
Today’s word of the day is jane-of-apes, a silly pert girl and the female counterpart of jackanapes, from which the word jane-of-apes was modeled. A jackanapes, which, despite the “s” ending, is not plural, is an impertinent or conceited fellow or a coxcomb. Jackanapes definitely appeared first in Middle English and is usually connected to William de la Pole, Fourth Earl and First Duke of Suffolk (1396-1450), who had the nickname “Jack Napis.”
Wordnik word of the day: ruelle
Today’s word of the day is ruelle, which means “the space between a bed and the wall” or “a private circle or assembly at a private house; a circle.” A note by Henri Van Laun to the play Les Précieuses Ridicules (The Pretentious Young Ladies) in The Dramatic Works of Molière Vol. I describes how ruelle went from meaning “small street” or any narrow passage or space in French to describing a part of a room used in the company of précieuses, fashionable women who held salons to socialize and discuss the question of love: “The Précieuses at that time received their visitors lying dressed in a bed, which was placed in an alcove and upon a raised platform. Their fashionable friends (alcovistes) took their places between the bed and the wall, and thus the name ruelle came to be given to all fashionable assemblies.”
Wordnik word of the day: arenose
Today’s word of the day is arenose, an adjective meaning “full of sand” or “sandy.” It comes from the same Latin root as the word arena, which originally meant “a sandy place” and was often used to mean “a sand-strewn place of combat in an amphitheater.” It’s most often used to describe soil or land. James Bell in his Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara wrote in 1848, “The soil of the Fezzan oases is indeed mostly arenose, and the dates are nearly all impregnated with fine particles of sand, which takes place when they are ripe, and very much lowers their value.” Words that are approximateley synonymous with arenose include arenaceous, arenarious, arenilitic, and arenulous.
Wordnik word of the day: mirliton
Today’s word of the day is mirliton, noun, a kind of musical toy into which one sings, hums, or speaks, producing a coarse, reedy sound. It resembles a kazoo. The word mirliton comes to English through Louisiana French, from standard French, in which it can refer to anything from a reed pipe, a party whistle such as those used at Carnival time, or any kind of rudimentary instrument. It shares its name with a type of edible gourd, which goes not only by the name mirliton, but also by chayote, christophene, sayote, choko, and others. The Christian Science Monitor has an article about one man’s attempt to bring the mirliton back to New Orleans.