Word of the Day
tripping
adjective
proceeding with a light, easy movement or rhythm.
More about tripping
The adjective tripping “light and quick, nimble” and, by extension, “proceeding with a light, easy movement or rhythm” is a derivative of the verb trip. The verb comes via Old French treper, triper, tripper “to leap, dance, trample, hit with the feet,” from Low German, and is akin to Middle Dutch trippen “to hop, skip.” Tripping entered English in the 16th century.
how is tripping used?
The one before us has a light, tripping melody in 3/8 rhythm, the treatment of which is remarkably fanciful and delicate throughout.
To have the ability to seize upon some little incident of experience and by the exquisite nicety and humor of a few pithy and striking phrases elevate it to the dignity of easy and tripping conversation, that is a feat to which provincial self-complacency can never attain.
Svengali
noun
a person who completely dominates another, usually with selfish or sinister motives.
More about Svengali
Two terms survive from George du Maurier’s novel Trilby (1894). The first is Svengali, the evil musician who hypnotizes, controls, and exploits Trilby O’Ferrall, a young Irish girl, and makes her a great singer who is unable to perform without his help. In the stage version of the novel, the actress who played Trilby wore a sort of soft felt hat with an indented crown, now called a trilby or trilby hat. The trilby is now commonly mistaken for a different hat, the fedora. Svengali in its extended sense of “a person who completely dominates another, usually with selfish or sinister motives” is recorded by the early 1900s.
how is Svengali used?
Lou Pearlman, who died on Friday in federal prison in Miami, at the age of sixty-two, was arguably the great pop Svengali of our time.
Though he comes across in his own writings as witty and self-aware, the picture that emerges decades later is of a moody, manipulative Svengali, blinded by his ego to what was really happening on the raft.
ben trovato
adjective
appropriate and characteristic even if untrue; happily invented or discovered.
More about ben trovato
Ben trovato, an Italian phrase meaning “well found,” comes from the sentence Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato “If it isn’t true, it is very well found, happily invented.” The saying seems to have been common in Italy in the 16th century but is especially associated with the pantheistic philosopher (and therefore heretic) and poet Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). Ben trovato entered English in the late 18th century.
how is ben trovato used?
There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I believe to be a lie; or rather, it is a myth, ben trovato, involving a tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr …
There is, when we are willing to be deceived, but small difference between the “vero” and the “ben trovato“ …