Word of the Day
viscid
adjective
having a glutinous consistency; sticky; adhesive.
More about viscid
Viscid “having a glutinous consistency” derives from Latin viscum “mistletoe” and the adjectival suffix -idus. We’re sorry to burst your bubble, but despite mistletoe’s common association with romance and cheerful celebrations, it is in fact a parasitic plant that attaches itself to host trees and drains them of their nutrients. Mistletoe is also known for its sticky seeds, which are coated in a substance called viscin that can be repurposed into a material called birdlime, the avian equivalent of flypaper. Be careful not to confuse viscum with viscus (stem viscer-) “internal organ,” which is the source of visceral and eviscerate; the two words, though nearly identical, are not related. Viscid was first recorded in English circa 1630.
how is viscid used?
Dr. Cruger saw a “continual procession” of bees thus crawling out of their involuntary bath. The passage is narrow, and is roofed over by the column, so that a bee, in forcing its way out, first rubs its back against the viscid stigma and then against the viscid glands of the pollen-masses. The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the bee which first happens to crawl out through the passage of a lately expanded flower, and are thus carried away.
The viscid layer of smoke that had draped itself over much of southern British Columbia has slowly begun to dissipate thanks to a blast of cool Pacific air. The air quality was so bad in Victoria, Vancouver and surrounding environs on the weekend and into Monday… that people with underlying health conditions were urged to stay inside. Smoke caused by the historic wildfires raging south of the border blocked out the sun, helping cast an apocalyptic orange hue over the entire region.
esemplastic
adjective
having the ability to shape diverse elements or concepts into a unified whole.
More about esemplastic
Esemplastic “having the ability to shape diverse elements into a unified whole” is a coinage by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of such works as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge, inspired by German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s own coinage Ineinsbildung (literally “into one formation”), based esemplastic on three Ancient Greek elements. The first of these is es-, a variant of eis- “into, to”; compare the name of the city Istanbul, which emerged as a corruption of the Byzantine Greek phrase eis tḕn Pólin “to the City.” The second of these elements is (h)én, the neuter of heîs “one,” which has largely been replaced in English by mono-, from Ancient Greek mónos “alone.” The final element is plastikós “moldable,” from plássein “to form.” Esemplastic was first recorded in English in the 1810s.
how is esemplastic used?
He was really all about the work, every single thing he saw he processed as potential fodder for the project. He was one of these totally…esemplastic kind of guys—y’know, he had a very synthetic, very practical and resourceful kind of sensibility, always about cobbling together the most disparate, miscellaneous things.
[A]n esemplastic, eclectic, deep and complex mind such as we can ascribe to [Wole] Soyinka, … must contradict himself occasionally. In fact, holding on to an opinion even after one has found reason to change it is not a virtue. It is a vice that hints at bigotry, a disease of the mind symptomized by its rigidity.
hieroglyphic
adjective
designating or pertaining to a pictographic script, particularly that of the ancient Egyptians, in which many of the symbols are conventionalized, recognizable pictures of the things represented.
More about hieroglyphic
Hieroglyphic “designating or pertaining to a pictographic script” derives by way of Late Latin hieroglyphicus from Ancient Greek hieroglyphikós “pertaining to sacred writing,” which is a compound of hierós “holy, sacred” and glyphḗ “carving.” The adjective hierós is likely a cognate of Latin īra “anger” (compare irate and irascible); both appear to come from a Proto-Indo-European root that indicates words of passion. The noun glyphḗ derives from the verb glýphein “to carve, hollow out,” which has a few unexpected cognates in English. Grimm’s law, which we learned about from our recent Words of the Day cordiform, togated, and transcendental, states that Ancient Greek g often corresponds to English c and k. With this in mind, compare Ancient Greek glýphein with English cleave, cleft, and cloven, all three of which involve splitting something apart. Hieroglyphic was first recorded in English circa 1580.
how is hieroglyphic used?
The ancient language also offers clues as to how … iron was perceived by Egyptians–and that they knew meteorites were a source of the metal …. From the beginning of the 19th Dynasty (approximately 1295 BC) a new hieroglyphic word for iron appeared: “bi-A-n-pt,” which literally translates as “iron from the sky.” Why this new word appears in this exact form at this time is unknown but it was later applied to all metallic iron. An obvious explanation for the sudden emergence of the word would be a major impact event or large shower of meteorites.
Thousands of years after the Egyptians wrote the first hieroglyphic scripts, the spread of emoji seems to be bringing us back to a picture-based writing system. That may look like a retrograde step to a more primitive, childish form of communication. But it isn’t, because both hieroglyphs and emoji are far more powerful than they appear.