Word of the Day
meunière
adjective
dipped in flour, sautéed in butter, and sprinkled with lemon juice and chopped parsley.
More about meunière
Meunière “dipped in flour, sautéed in butter, and sprinkled with lemon juice” is short for French à la meunière “in the manner of a miller’s wife.” The à la construction in French literally translates as “to the” or “in the,” as in past Word of the Day à la mode “in the fashion,” but is also often used more figuratively to mean “in the manner of.” Meunière, the feminine form of meunier “miller,” comes from Vulgar Latin molīnārius, an agent noun form of Late Latin molīna “mill,” a variant of molīnum. Molīnum is the ultimate source of English mill as well as French moulin, which you may recognize as the name of the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris, easily recognized for the gigantic red windmill on its roof. Meunière was first recorded in English in the 1840s.
how is meunière used?
Fish was crucial to Sarah’s project, for as long as she could coax Daniel and Maxime to eat it, cooking up the flour-dredged sole meunière in sparkling butter while ignoring their demands for meat, she could serve not only an orange crème or chocolate éclair for dessert but also cheese at the end of the meal, picking up a melting piece of the increasingly acceptable Bries available…
There was always that little rich decadent tin of lark pâté in the cupboard if I grew bored, or we could stroll down past the great ponds under the plane trees to the deft, friendly welcome of the Restaurant Thomé and eat a grilled pullet or a trout meunière, and an orange baked à la norvegienne. Or we could stay home and I would try at last the mayonnaise maker I had bought…
victorine
noun
a fur scarf with long tabs at the ends.
More about victorine
Victorine “a fur scarf with long tabs at the ends” is likely a namesake of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, using the descriptive suffix -ine. The name Victoria is an adaptation of Latin victōria “victory” and is spelled variously as Victoria, Viktoria, Viktorija, or Wiktoria in most European languages that use the Roman alphabet. Because of regular sound changes, however, the name becomes Victoire in French and Vittoria in Italian. The Latin noun victōria derives from the verb vincere “to conquer, win,” which has two major stems: vinc-, as in invincible and province, and vict-, as in conviction and evict. Though vincere sounds similar to English win, the two are not related, but you can find a form of vincere in the phrase vēnī, vīdī, vīcī “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Victorine was first recorded in English in the 1840s.
how is victorine used?
‘If you please, my lady,’ said Patty, the little maid, putting in her curly head once more; ‘it’s a gentleman as I never see before. Nayther [sic] the Rector, nor the Curate, nor the General, nor nobody as I know; and he has got fur round his neck…,’ said Patty, with a cough which covered a laugh. ‘It’s just like the thing as they call a victorine.’
So Mrs. Murden departed very much cast down, and very insignificant in her cashmere dress and the fur she had thought so handsome—so it was in her own set; but her eyes had been dwelling upon velvet cloaks and sable victorines the past two hours. Alas! for her last year’s mantle, pretty as it had been; embroidered merinos looked so common—fatal word.
carapace
noun
a bony or chitinous shield, test, or shell covering some or all of the dorsal part of an animal, as of a turtle.
More about carapace
Carapace “a bony shell covering the back of an animal” is a borrowing by way of French from Spanish carapacho, which is of uncertain origin. One theory is that carapacho is a corruption related to English caparison (from Old Spanish caparazón) “a decorative covering for a horse,” which may come from Medieval Latin cappa “hooded cloak, cape” or classical Latin caput “head.” Alternative proposals that carapacho shares an origin with English calabash or calabaza, a type of gourd; Spanish galápago “tortoise,” the namesake of the Galapagos Islands; or Ancient Greek kárabos “kind of beetle,” which is related to scarab, are based only on passing phonetic similarity. Carapace was first recorded in English in the 1830s.
how is carapace used?
Gator snappers are surprisingly large turtles, with wild adult males capable of achieving weights of more than 200 pounds …. The carapace, or top shell, can be up to about 30 inches in length, and by the time one were to measure the head, neck, carapace and tail, the total length can approach a whopping 60 inches. However, most adults are quite a bit smaller with the average carapace length of only 24 inches.
Most fish, from minnows to sharks, have pliant bodies, which they undulate to move through the water. But boxfish sport a set of hard, bony plates, called a carapace. The carapace acts like a suit of armor—protecting them against predators, but restricting their flexibility …. It also gives them their strange shapes: other boxfish species look like purses, Frisbees or ottomans.