Word of the Day
backlins
adverb
Scot. and North England.
backward; back.
More about backlins
The extremely rare Scottish and northern English dialect adverb backlins, “back, backward,” comes from the equally rare Old English adverb bæcling, used only in the adverbial phrase on bæcling “on the back, behind, backward.” On bæcling, moreover, occurs only in the Rushworth Gospels (ca. 975), in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English—not even in late West Saxon, the standard literary dialect of Old English. Backlins is formed from the noun back, the uncommon adverb suffix –ling, as in middling, and the native English adverb suffix –s, as in always, sometimes.
how is backlins used?
Then backlins we hastened weel pleased wi the day, / Though some of our brithers had wandered away.
An auld man’s howff’s a tapsalteerie touer: / Time backlins gaes, my warld turns withershins, / Glaur’s in the lift, sterns skeenkle in the stour …
plaudit
noun
Usually plaudits.
an enthusiastic expression of approval: Her portrayal of Juliet won the plaudits of the critics.
More about plaudit
The noun plaudit, “a round of applause; an enthusiastic expression of approval,” first appears in print in English in 1600. It comes from the slightly earlier noun plaudite (pronounced as three syllables and probably pronounced plawditee), which appears in 1567. Plaudite comes straight from Latin plaudite “applaud!”, the second person plural imperative of the verb plaudere “to clap, clap (in approval), pat (on the back), beat (wings).” Roman comic actors would cry plaudite to the audience at the end of a play. Plaudere, which has no reliable etymology, has an alternative form plōdere, as in explōdere, “to drive off the stage (by clapping, hissing, hooting), reject, eject” (the modern sense “to burst violently; blow up” does not exist in Latin).
how is plaudit used?
On Tuesday, Dustin Hoffman and Mila Kunis became the latest A-listers to get plaudits for their recent acts of decency.
The ideologically divided [Supreme] court zigs left or right and earns cheers from the winning partisans. Then it zags in the other direction, and the plaudits turn to brickbats.
tome
noun
a book, especially a very heavy, large, or learned book.
More about tome
The noun tome comes from Middle French tome, from Latin tomus “a cut, slice, or bit; a piece or length of papyrus; a book (in general).” Tomus is a borrowing of Greek tómos “a slice” (e.g., of ham, cheese), (in geometry) “the frustum” (e.g., of a cylinder), “a beam” (of wood). By the 3rd century b.c. and in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, dating between the 3rd and 1st centuries b.c.), tómos had also come to mean “(papyrus) roll,” and by the 1st century a.d. “tome, volume” (in the modern sense). Tómos is a derivative of the verb témnein “to cut,” from the Proto-Indo-European root tem-, tom– (with its extensions tend-, tond-) “to cut.” From the variant tem-, Latin derives templum “shrine, temple” (because the property has been cut out from, set apart from profane use). The variant tond- forms Latin tondēre “to cut or clip (hair), shear (a sheep)” and the agent noun tonsor (stem tonsōr-) “barber,” with its derivative adjective tonsōrius, from which English derives the not very serious adjective tonsorial “of or relating to a barber or barbering.” Tome entered English in the first half of the 16th century.
how is tome used?
That eight-hundred-page tome (with an additional three hundred pages of downloadable essays to accompany it) includes the whole Caesarian corpus, as well as hundreds of maps and illustrations.
The 240-page tome is less of a tourist guide than it is a primer for a future Washington “Jeopardy” category.