the worthless word for the day is: tohubohu

[fr. Heb. tohu, confusion + bohu, emptiness]
/TOW hu BOW hu/
chaos, confusion

"But of [man's] latent capacity for bringing order
out of the tohubohu of human relations we know very
little because he is not seriously trying."
  - Walter Lippman, The Yale Review, V. 11

"He built a criminal empire that profited on the
meaningless tohubohu beyond the theoretical walls.."
  - Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: shammes

[fr. Hebrew shamash, servant]  /SHAH mes/
   (rhymes with promise)  Yiddish
1) the sexton or caretaker of a synagogue
2) Am. slang : a detective, a policeman;
   a 'private eye'  (see Irish shamus)
3) an unimportant menial
   <a shammes in a pickle factory>
4) a sycophant, a hanger-on
5) an informer: stool-pigeon
6) the ninth candle of the Chanukah menorah,
   used to light the others


"The divinely inspired shammes, or custodian,
of the synagogue."
  - The New Yorker, 29 Mar. 1976

"Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shammes
in the District of Sitka, the man who solved
the murder of the beautiful Froma Lefkowitz by
her furrier husband, and caught Podolsky the
Hospital Killer."
  - Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
                                           (2007)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: pistic

[fr. Gk pistikos, faithful < pistos, faith]   /PIS tik/
of, relating to, or exhibiting faith  <pistic nard>

"understand by pistic nard.. the genuine nard,
faithfully prepared"
  - James Morrison, Mark's Memoirs..  (1873)

"Imagine a big old spruce tree... The pistic modality
can be illustrated in our different beliefs on how the
tree has come into being."
  - Systems Research and Behavioral Sci., 2002

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is:  volitant

[fr. L. volitare, to fly to and fro]  /VOL i tnt/
1) flying or capable of flying
2) moving about rapidly, to and fro

"The bat is a volitant quadruped."
  - Century Dictionary  (1891)

"The tremulous volitant motion of breeze upon wave."
  - Fraser's Mag.  July, 1857

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: aposematic

[fr. Gk apo-, away from + sema, sign]
Zool : being conspicuous and serving to warn
(applied to coloration of animals)

"In effect, then, aposematic coloration is negative
advertising."
  - Steven B. Carroll, Ecology for Gardeners  (2004)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: redeless

[fr. G. rede + -less]
archaic : without counsel or advice; foolish,
heedless; resourceless, perplexed, confused

"The treasury being empty, owing to the
extravagance of Richard, Parliament meets in
accordance with the royal summons, but it is a
packed Parliament, and the poet thus describes
it, in "Richard the Redeless"..."
  - William Langland(?), Piers Plowman  (ca. 1378)

"Ethelred, so redeless, From westward course
restrained me."
  - Eirik the Red  (tr. by Gwyn Jones, 1961)

"The marriage Unn arranged.. produced the villain
of Njáls saga.., while Gunnars' redeless marriage
to Hallgerd enabled its central feud."
  - W. I. Miller, Bloodtaking & Peacemaking  (1990)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: zyxt

[fr. Kentish zi, ze : to see]
obs. Kentish : thou seest  (also zixt, zist)

"'Zyxt' will be the last word in the New English
Dictionary [OED], the monumental ten-volume work
which is being carried to completion by the Oxford
University Press."
  - The Living Age,  [Spring] 1921

"The New York Times put the fact on the front page
the next morning, [Jan 1, 1928] - that with the
inclusion of the Old Kentish word zyxt - the second
indicative present tense.. of the verb to see - the
work was done, the alphabet was exhausted, and the
full text was now wholly in the printers' hands."
  - Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
                                              (1998)

"Given that in the new online edition [zyxt] has
been stripped of its headword status and moved to
the middle of a heap of variant spellings of see, it
seems unlikely that it will ever return to vogue."
  - Ammon Shea, Reading the OED  (2008)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: zythum

[fr. Gk zuthos, beer]  /ZAI thum/
in ancient Egypt: a kind of malt beer
(much of the word's continuing use is due to
its status as the last word listed in several
dictionaries, as in the online OED)

"For the thousands of years that the Egyptians
were building pyramids they were brewing zythum
to quench their thirsts, to satisfy their gods,
nourish their appetites and to help them relax."
  - (Newcastle) Journal   June 28, 2001

"And, there's someone in the pub we refer to as
Zythum. He always has the last word."
  - ibid.

---

NOTE: the last word in W3 is 'zyzzogeton', a
genus of large South American leafhoppers

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: fremescent

[fr. L. fremere, to roar]  /fre MES ent/
archaic, rare : murmuring, growing noisy and indignant

"Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle, to comfort
the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent: then
descends; departs with protest..."
  - Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution  (1837)

"On either side fremescent crowds jostle and growl."
  - Scotsmann  May 4, 1881

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: antipriscianisticall

[fr. Priscian-us, a celebrated Roman grammarian]
obs. nonce-word : ungrammatical

"Againe he was unlearned, because the Latin which he
did speake was such incongruall and disjoynted stuffe,
such antipriscianisticall eloquence..."
  - Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crambe  (1611)

"Coryate describes the woodcutter's mode of speech as
'antipriscianisticall'.. meaning ungrammatical, an
adjective of his own manufacture which has justifiably
failed to find a place in the Oxford English Dictionary."
  - Michael Strachan,
      The life and adventures of Thomas Coryate"  (1962)

(thanx to Cecile)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: huckery

(today's word is esp. for Stuart in NZ..)
[fr. huckster, or origin unknown]
1) obs. ME : the business of a huckster  {OED2}
2) NZ slang: ugly  {Collins Eng. Dict. 5th Ed.};
   often used to describe a woman or moll  {Partridge}

"Collins, Chambers, OED, they're all useless anyway,
since none of them offer a defintion or etymology for
NZ English "huckery", which means run-down, decrepit,
in a state of poor repair, etc. So I say that none of
them are worth the paper they're no [longer] being
printed on."
  - Stuart, languagehat.com  Sept. 24, 2008

"She hath holden hokkerye al hire lyf tyme."
  - William Langland, Piers Plowman  (ca. 1377)

"Jools looking pretty huckery in dun frock and
plastic sandals."
  - (Wellington) Dominion, 25 Mar. 1993
      (quoted in New Partridge Dict. of Slang, 2006)

"..everybody seems to be in agreement that this year's
batch are pretty ordinary, so much so that you could
rename this show America's Next Huckery Moll."
  - America's Next Top Model (blog)  June 3, 2007

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: flamfew

[corruption of F. fanfelue(?)]
also flamefew, Sc. flamfoo
obs. rare
1) a gewgaw, trifle, trinket
2) Naut. : moonlight reflected on water  (cf. moonglade)

"a top drawer filled with costume-jewelry flamfew"
  - David Grambs, The Endangered English Dict. (1997)

"Flam-few.  The glimmer of the moon on the water."
  - A Naval Encyclopædia  (1880)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: plumpendicular

[blend of plumb line + perpendicular (fr. L. pendeo, to hang)]
obs. dial. : perpendicular (to the ground); hanging perpen-
dicularly

"A plumpendicular gulch is a sudden, awkward and heavy fall."
  - A dictionary of archaic and provincial words  (1855)

"[I]t will be a bad day indeed, and the sun must be
"plumpendicular down in dere eyes,".. if your industry is not
rewarded by a dozen of sporting fish..."
  - The New Sporting Magazine  (1870)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: flapadosha

[origin unknown]  an eccentric, showy, superficial person

"Need some verbal firepower to flatten an obnoxious
stuffed shirt? Try the supremely supercilious flapadosha,
which applies to any vain, ostentatious, shallow person."
  - Charles H. Elster, There's a Word for It!  (1996)

this week: expect the unexpected

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: crumenically

[fr. L. crumena, purse]
humorous nonce-word : in relation to the purse;
related to money

"A Work.. in which I am greatly interested, morally
and crumenically."
  - S. T. Coleridge  (letter to a friend, Mar. 20 1825)

"It is a different matter if every individual begins to
consider what in his own case is crumenically expedient."
  - The Christian Observer, 1834

(reminds me a bit of the Simpson's 'cromulent'..)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: energumenist

[fr. Gk energoumenos, possessed by an evil spirit]
obs. rare : one possessed by demons

"The meerly passive be simply deemoniacks, but
not energumenists."
  - John Gaule, Select Cases of Conscience  (1646)

"Who is the energumenist who comes up with these,
or is it a committee, or is it--"
  - W. F. Buckley  (to M. Thatcher, on Firing Line,
                                     Sept. 20 1975)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: impigrity

[fr. im- + L. piger : slow, dull, sluggish]
obs. rare : quickness; diligence

The omni parent of all arts am I,
My forms and motions do surpass
The Delian twins impigrity,
Of the fam'd mirror glass.
  - D. Roscoe, A Pindarick* Enigma
           (fr. The Diarian Miscellany, 1775)

*in the style of the Greek poet Pindar

this week: really rare words, or Google this!

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: infrendiate

[fr. L. infrendere]   obs. rare : to gnash the teeth

"As everyone knows, the words marked obsolete or
archaic in unabridged dictionaries are the best words
of all... the dazzled reader will learn that "bloncket"
means "gray, or a light grayish blue" and "infrendiate"
to "gnash the teeth" and "discerp" to "tear something
to shreds."
  - The Washington Post  Oct 19, 2003

this week: really rare words, or Google this!

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: villatic

[fr. L. villaticus, of a country house < villa]
/vi LAD ik/  of a farm or village: rural, rustic

And as an evening dragon came
Assailant on the perched roosts
And nests in order ranged
Of tame villatic fowl..
  - John Milton, Samson Agonistes  (1671)

"I suppose you think a hummingbird would dare
stick its beak into this arctic tundra, this
endless twilight, this . . . this villatic
barbican!"
  - Jan Karon, Out to Canaan  (1998)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: obluctation

[fr. L. obluctari, to offer resistance]
obs. rare : the action of striving or struggling
against something
'a struggling or striving against; resistance'
                                  {Webster, 1828}
(not to be confused with oblectation!)

"To use that artificial obluctation, and facing
out of the matter."
  - Martin Fotherby,  Atheomastix  (1619)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: humicubation

[fr. L. humi, on the ground + cubare, to lie down]
/hyu mik yoo BAY shun/  obs., rare
lying on the ground, especially in penitence or
humiliation

"Fasting and sackcloth, and ashes, and tears, and
humicubations, used to be companions of Repentance."
  - Bp. John Bramhall, Hobbes' Animadversions  (1658)

"He is afraid, that 'this doctrine' of fasting, and
mourning, and tears, and humicubation, and sackcloth,
and ashes, 'pertaineth to the establishment of Romish
penance.'"
  - Bp. Bramhall, ibid.

"I had to submit to humicubations in abatures during
my pernoctations..."
  - S. K. Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant  (1856)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: humectation

[fr. L. (h)umecto, to moisten]  /hyu mek TAY shun/
archaic : the act or process of moistening or wetting;
irrigation; the condition of being moistened or wet

"Health consisting in his view in the humectation and
suppleness of the parts, he advised water in great
abundance as the "universal menstruum..."
  - C. B. Burr, The Physician as a character in fiction
     (from the American Journal of Insanity, July 1906)

bonus word: menstruum - solvent

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: Sprachgefuhl

[G., fr. sprache speech + gefuhl feeling]
/SHPRAKH  guh fyl/
an intuitive grasp of the spirit of a language, esp.
consciousness of what is acceptable usage;
linguistic instinct

"..whose Sprachgefuhl and orexis will find more
than fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages."
  - Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused,
           Mispronounced Words (Foreword, 1972)

"The Sprachgefuhl, feeling for speech, exercises a
pervasive influence in a language so long cultivated
as English."
  - Eric Partridge, World of Words  (1938)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: orexis

[Gk orexis, desire]  /aw REK sis/
Psych. : the aspect of mental activity concerned
with emotion and desire rather than cognition;
appetite, desire

"..whose Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than
fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages."
  - Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused,
               Mispronounced Words (Foreword, 1972)

"Aristotle coined the Greek noun orexis from.. orego,
which means "to reach out." Orexis is the soul's
"reaching out" for something in the world.
  - Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right  (1998)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: legerity

[fr. F. legereté, lightness (fr. L. leviarius?]
/luh JER ud ee/  agility of mind or of limb: nimbleness

"This is not a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy
of nullifidians. Rather it is hoped that the haecceity of
this enchiridion of arcane and recondite sesquipedalian
items will appeal to the oniomania of an eximious
Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose
Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than fugacious
fulfillment among its felicific pages."
  - Laurence Urdang, Misunderstood, Misused, Mispro-
                    nounced Words (Foreword, 1972)

"..the legerity of the French mind made the Gallic visitor
quick to comprehend his desire for solitude, and the very
transparency of the masking rendered it invulnerable."
  - Elinor Wylie, The Venetian Glass Nephew  (1925)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: contrafibularities

[fr. contra-, against + fibula, a bone in the lower leg]
while sounding congratulatory, the elements suggest
pulling someone's leg

Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will
not object if I also offer the Doctor my most
enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: What?
Blackadder: '"Contrafribularites", sir? It is a common
word down our way.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Damn! [writes in the book]
  - Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder the Third

"Contrafibularities was one of several nonce [or nonsense]
words used by the fictional Edmund Blackadder to confuse
the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, whom Blackadder
despised. Among the others were anaspeptic, phrasmotic,
pericombobulations, interphrastically and extra-
muralization."
  - wikipedia [at entry for nonce word]

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: hackette

[hack + -ette]
a jocular or disparaging term for a female journalist

"I, innocent hackette on my first foreign assignment,
passed up the chance of becoming part of the action
of Frederick Forsyth's life."
  - The Sunday Times, 18 Feb. 1990

"[Barbara] Amiel has been busy penning yet another
letter to The Spectator in her ongoing row with
Sunday Times hackette Eleanor Mills."
  - The Evening Standard (London), Feb 19, 2004

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: stupex

[fr. stupid]
jocular, obs. : a fool

"The light of nature would show that to any one
but a stupex."
  - Charlotte Mary Yonge, The Trial  (1864)

"..we had fairly to place the morsel in his mouth
and call him a little stupex for his pains."
  - Beatrice Batty, Mätzchen and his Mistresses  (1881)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: frostification

jocular : the process of becoming frosty

(this week: nonsense and jokes)

"..a certain frostification in progress among most
elaborately tended whiskers..."
  - John Wilson, Blackwood's Magazine  (1831)

"[I]t is an act of great barbarity to leave the
persons of the plot stoically and heroically facing
the gathering storm - feet in imminent peril of
frostification and the very words of their converse
snapping from their tongues like broken icicles."
  - Michael Loftus, The Pots of Mcphail  (2008)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

the worthless word for the day is: hedgehoggy

[hedgehog + -y]
having a prickly nature, of a forbidding appearance
or manner; tending to arouse aversion
(hence, hedgehogginess)

"So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and
over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to
their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is."
  - John Ruskin, The Ethics of the Dust  (1866)

"'Why is it that we English, when we meet abroad, are so
very friendly, and when we reappear in London are so
very hedgehoggy?' I told her that the reason why there
was no hedgehogginess on this occasion was because I
was not an Englishman."
  - John L. Motley, Correspondence (a. 1877)

-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd