Word of the Day
logogriph
noun
an anagram, or a puzzle involving anagrams.
More about logogriph
A logogriph is a special kind of word puzzle in which a word, and other words formed from any or all of its letters, must be guessed from hints given in verses. Lógos is well known in English: the first, most obvious of its many, many meanings is “word,” as in the prologue to St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word (Lógos).” The combining form logo- is very common in Greek (e.g., logopoieîn “to compose, write speeches,” logoprageîn “to write copiously”) and in English (e.g., logocentrism and logorrhea). The tricky word is grîphos (its variant grîpos shows it is not a native Greek word). Grîphos means “(woven) fishing basket, creel,” and metaphorically “something intricate, dark saying, riddle; forfeit paid for failing to guess a riddle.” Grîphos by itself would have been sufficient; adding the combining form logo- specifies its meaning. Logogriph entered English in the late 16th century.
how is logogriph used?
He was most anxious to secure for himself the priority of discovery, and yet he was unwilling to make a premature and possibly incorrect announcement. So he resorted to the ingenious device of a “logogriph,” or puzzle. It appears … as follows: aaaaaaa ccccc d eeeee g h iiiiiii llll mm nnnnnnnnn oooo pp q rr s ttttt uuuuu
That one man should have possessions beyond the capacity of extravagance to squander, and another, able and willing to work, should perish for want of embers, rags and a crust, renders society unintelligible. It makes the charter of human rights a logogriph.
rutilant
adjective
glowing or glittering with ruddy or golden light.
More about rutilant
It is one thing to see greatly varying descendants of Proto-Indo-European words in its daughter languages, as for instance in the very common (and easy to handle) Proto-Indo-European root bher-, bhor- “to carry, bear, bear children,” which appears as bhar- in Sanskrit, pher- in Greek, fer- in Latin, and ber- in Slavic, Armenian, and Germanic (English bear). It is another thing to see wildly variant forms of a Proto-Indo-European root within one language, but Latin offers a good example from the Proto-Indo-European root reudh-, roudh-, rudh- “red.” (The root variant roudh- becomes raud- in Germanic, rēad in Old English (the ēa is a diphthong from au) and red in English.) Roudh- is also the source of Latin rūfus, a dialect word meaning “red, tawny” and also a proper name “Red” (rufous and Rufus in English). Roudh- also yields Latin rōbus “red (of oxen and other animals),” rōbur “oak, red oak” (the adjective rōbustus “of oak, oaken, strong” becomes robust in English). The root variant rudh- yields Latin ruber “red,” rutilus “glowing red,” with its derivative verb rutilāre “to glow with a bright red or golden color,” whose present participle stem rutilant- becomes English rutilant. Rutilant entered English in the 15th century.
how is rutilant used?
Sometimes, when reading one of his works, I wonder whether Mr. Lawrence has not mistaken his medium, and whether it is not a painter he ought to have been, so significant is for him the slaty opalescence of the heron’s wing and so rutilant the death of the sun.
She looks up occasionally, between cross stitches, to gaze upon the steady stream of tourists stopping to admire the rutilant, shimmering sandstone folds unfurling 4,000 feet below.
trimming
noun
anything used or serving to decorate or complete: the trimmings of a Christmas tree.
More about trimming
It is quite a jump to go from Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex, arranging his men in battle order (trymian) against the Vikings (recorded in the magnificent Old English poem The Battle of Maldon) to cranberry sauce and creamed onions with the Thanksgiving turkey. The Old English adjective trum “strong, firm” is the source of the verb trymian, trymman “to encourage, strengthen, prepare.” The Old English noun trymming, derived from the verb, means “strengthening, confirmation, edification, establishment.” The modern spelling trimming first appears in the first half of the 16th century with several meanings. One is “the repair or preparation of equipment, especially fitting out of a ship,” e.g., “trimming of the sails.” A second sense, all but contemporaneous with the first, is “adornment, dressing one’s hair or beard, dressing up.” A third sense of trimming, perhaps associated with the notion of dressing (up), is “a rebuke, a beating,” that is, “a dressing down.” In the early 17th century, trimming, especially in the plural, and typically in the phrase “all the trimmings,” meant “ordinary accessories (as for a house or cooked meat).” In the early 19th century, trimming acquired the meaning “pieces cut off, cuttings, scraps.”
how is trimming used?
It was after eleven when William in his socks made his way to the attic where the trimmings for the tree were stored.
Painting china, carving wood, button-holing butterflies and daisies onto Turkish towelling, and making peacock-feather trimming, amused her for a time …