Word of the Day
postprandial
adjective
after a meal, especially after dinner: postprandial oratory; a postprandial brandy.
More about postprandial
The Latin noun prandium means “midday meal, lunch, luncheon”; the verb prandēre “to have breakfast or lunch” is a derivative of prandium. There is no Latin adjective prandiālis “pertaining to breakfast or lunch,” let alone the adjectives preprandiālis (praeprandiālis) or postprandiālis. There is, however, the Late Latin noun prandiculum “breakfast,” which is found only in lexicographical writings–a salutary warning! Postprandial is used in medicine in its literal meaning “done or happening after a meal.” Apart from medical usage postprandial is a jocular word, as in this example from George Bernard Shaw, “The whole thing was mere postprandial brag, war-game and club-fender gossip” (1917). Postprandial entered English in the first half of the 19th century.
how is postprandial used?
Most people seem to switch on the game a few minutes after having wolfed down their fifth slice of pie, but if you do that, there’s the cognitive dissonance of watching professional athletes and cheerleaders vigorously moving their bodies while your own body lies on the couch in a state of postprandial lethargy and bloat.
The postprandial conversation goes on until dawn.
More about stargazer
Stargazer originally had a very derogatory meaning. The word first appears in English in the Geneva Bible, an English translation that appeared between 1557 and 1560. In Isaiah 47:13 in the King James Version, differing only slightly from the earlier Geneva Bible, the text reads “Thou [i.e. the “virgin daughter of Babylon”] art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.” The text is scornful of idolatrous customs. In Daniel Defoe’s A system of magick (1727), we still see the same contemptuous usage as in the Geneva Bible but somewhat qualified to mean astronomer, “The Eminent Dr. H—— may be call’d the King’s Astronomer, or as the more Eminent Mr. Flamstead usually call’d himself, the King’s Star-gazer.” It is only in the first half of the 19th century that stargazer acquires the benign sense of amateur astronomer, “The mere star-gazer who is an Astronomer simply in the respect that he is the owner of a telescope.” Stargazer in the sense “daydreamer, impractical idealist” first occurs in Emerson’s Transcendentalist, “The materialist..mocks at..star-gazers and dreamers.”
how is stargazer used?
The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes that his life is solid,
He was a stargazer in both senses. … a man who questioned givens, resisted the forces of fate and tradition, saw himself as part of the picture.
horologium
noun
a timepiece, as a clock or sundial, or a building supporting or containing a timepiece.
More about horologium
There are nearly a score—20!—spellings in Middle English for horologium, and nearly as many in Old French. Horologium comes from the Latin noun hōrologium “an instrument for showing the time, a dial, sundial, hourglass, clock, clepsydra (water clock).” Hōrologium is a Latin borrowing of Greek hōrológion with the same meaning. Greek hōrológion is a compound of hōrológos “teller of time” and the diminutive noun suffix -ion. Hōrológos is a compound of hṓra “year, season, hour, time, time of day, the right time, time of ripening or florescence,” which was taken into Latin wholesale as hōra with all its meanings (hour comes into English via Old French from Latin). The element or word logos “word, speech, account, computation, reason” is very familiar in English as the suffix –logy, as in philology, theology, paleontology. Horologium entered English in the second half of the 14th century.
how is horologium used?
In this Horologium moves the hand or arrow towards the twenty-four, and to the right of the twenty-four it was yesterday, and to the left, today.
It appears this horologium was an elaborate piece of mechanism furnished with many painted images, which no doubt performed curious evolutions.