Wordnik word of the day: crotchet

Today’s word of the day is crotchet, noun, “an odd, whimsical, or stubborn notion.” It came to Middle English from the Old French, a diminutive form of croche. Most people know the more common adjective form, crotchety, “characterized by odd fancies or crotchets; fantastic or eccentric in thought; whimsical.” William Temple Hornaday used it to describe giraffes in The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: “Each one has its own headful of notions, and rarely will two be found quite alike in temperament and views of life. Some are sanguine and sensible, others are nervous, crotchety, and full of senseless fears.”

Wordnik word of the day: rux

Today’s word of the day is rux, meaning “to bother; fret; work (oneself) up.” Origin unknown but perhaps related to ruction, “a vexation or annoyance; also, a disturbance; a row or rumpus,” ruckus, “a disturbance; a commotion,” or one meaning of ruck: “a crowd or throng; especially, a closely packed and indiscriminate crowd or mass of persons or things; a jam; a press,” also known as a loose scrum in rugby.

Wordnik word of the day: slitheroo

Today’s word of the day is slitheroo, meaning “to slide with a slow gliding motion; slidder.” The verb slidder, in turn, means “to slip; slide; especially, to slide clumsily or in a gingerly, timorous way” or “to slide with interruption.” Naturally, both words are related to slither, slide, sled, sledge, and sleigh. Rudyard Kipling is one of few people to use the verb slitheroo in print, though thickness of dialect makes even normal language in Captains Courageous hard to decipher.

Hurrah! We Have a Word-of-the-Day Widget!

Wordnik now has a word-of-the-day (henceforth WOTD) widget!


Wordnik WOTD widget


You can check it out and grab the code here.


With our new widget you can display the Wordnik WOTD on your blog or website, for the entertainment and edification of your readers!


If you’d rather follow the WOTD through RSS you can use this link. (You can also follow us on Twitter for WOTDs, interesting language links, and more.)


We’ve also added a new graph to some word pages—a punctuation profile!


Hurrah!


The punctuation profile gives you an idea of how often a word is followed by an exclamation point, a question mark, or a period at the end of a sentence, as compared with the average for all words.


As you can see, an exclamation like hurrah is more likely than average to be followed by an exclamation point, and less likely to be followed by a question mark.


The punctuation profiles are turning up some interesting conundrums: for instance, why is the tally of question marks so high for the word peanut?


peanut?


(It can’t all be because of Wordnik’s favorite movie…)


We hope you enjoy the words of the day and the punctuation profiles! If you’d like to email us suggestions for future WOTD candidates, you can do so at feedback@wordnik.com.

Wordnik word of the day: witticaster

Today’s word of the day is witticaster, “an inferior or pretended wit; a witling.” In other words, someone who thinks they’re funny even though they’re not. The word is formed by a combination of witty + -aster, the latter part a suffix that indicates approximation, rough similarity, or pretended resemblance. You may have seen it in poetaster, “a petty poet: a feeble rimester, or a writer of indifferent verses,” but it also occurs in a number of less common words. A philsophaster is “a pretender to philosophical knowledge; an incompetent philosopher.” A criticaster is “an inferior or incompetent critic; a petty censurer.” A grammaticaster is “a petty or pitiful grammarian; one who insists upon the minutest grammatical niceties.” A politicaster is “a petty politician; a pretender to political knowledge or influence.” A medicaster is “a pretender to medical knowledge or skill; an ignorant doctor.” A theologaster is “a quack in theology; a shallow or pretended theologian.” Of a slightly different nature—referring to something other than a person—are parasitaster, “an insignificant parasite,” oleaster, a type of wild tree that looks like a type of cultivated olive tree but isn’t, and verticillaster, a flowering part of a plant that looks whorl-like but isn’t a true whorl.

Wordnik word of the day: latration

Today’s word of the day is the noun latration, which is “barking,” usually of a dog. It’s a rare word but one used with distinction in this most apt description of political argument: “porcine squealing, answered always by counter-latration.” The verb, latrate, and its synonyms allatrate and oblatrate, come to us from the Latin latratus, the past participle of latrare, ‘to bark.’ Latrant, of course, is “barking or clamoring noisily” as used in Matthew Green’s The Spleen in 1737: “Whose latrant stomachs oft molest / The deep-laid plans their dreams suggest.”

Wordnik word of the day: chapfallen

Today’s word of the day is chapfallen, “having the lower chap or jaw depressed; hence, dejected; dispirited; silenced; chagrined.” A less common variant is chopfallen. Both “chap” and “chop” here mean “the upper or lower part of the mouth; the jaw,” also found in the expression “bust someone’s chops,” which is “to tease, taunt, or playfully torment someone,” and mutton chop, “facial hair that has grown down the side of a man’s face in front of the ears (especially when the rest of the beard is shaved off).” Perhaps only pictures can do justice to their glory.