effloresce: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Saturday, April 30, 2011 effloresce \EF-luh-res\, verb: 1. To burst into bloom; blossom. 2. In chemistry, to change either throughout or on the surface to a mealy or powdery substance upon exposure to air, as a to change either throughout or on the surface to a mealy or powdery substance upon exposure to air, as a crystalline substance through loss of water of crystallization. Do I, from scholar, effloresce into literary man, author by profession? -- Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Caxtons; A Family Picture Her leaves do not expand, or her flower-buds effloresce, unless sure of a quantum suff of sunshine. -- Mrs. Gore (Catherine Grace Frances), Cecil: Or, The Adventures of Coxcom: A Novel Effloresce combines the Latin roots ex-, "out of", and florescere, "to blossom." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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Is this goodbye to the typewriter? Learn the love story that helped create the typewriter Typewriter enthusiasts around the globe are probably feeling a bit blue this week after hearing that Godrej and Boyce, one of the world's last operational typewriter factories located in Mumbai, India, closed its doors for the last time after an impressive one-hundred-and-fourteen year run. Once regarded as an indispensable device for any writer, the typewriter... Read more ››
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osmose: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Friday, April 29, 2011 osmose \oz-MOHS\, verb: 1. To gradually or unconsciously assimilate some principle or object. 2. To undergo osmosis. They set off assuming that somehow or other the information that they were on their way would osmose through the settlement or that Mme. Legrand might mention in passing that she'd asked them to come. -- Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly, Irish girls about town Not a man osmose but he hath the wit to lose his hair. -- William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors Osmose comes from the biological term osmosis, "the tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semipermeable membrane into a solution where the solvent concentration is higher, thus equalizing the concentrations of materials on either side of the membrane." Osmosis derives from endosmose, with endo- being French for "inward" and osmos meaning "push, thrust" in Greek. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent? We've explored the meaning behind the "X" in Xmas, Xbox, the X-Men, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence (XOXO).� Now it's time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter "X" is quite... Read more ››
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polymorphous: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Thursday, April 28, 2011 polymorphous \pol-ee-MAWR-fuhs\, adjective: Having, assuming, or passing through many or various forms, stages, or the like. It's a time machine, a polymorphous funk jazz rollercoaster transporting you from Art Blakey's hard bop and Weather Report's jazz rock to more speculative free form fusions. -- Miles Keylock , "The Disconnection is the Connection," Mail & Guardian Online It had surprised me, at first, that a city so polymorphous as Bombay, with its unceasing variety of peoples, languages, and pursuits, tended to such narrow concentrations. -- Gregory David Roberts , Shantaram Polymorphous combines the Greek roots Poly-, "many," and -morphous, "shape." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent? We've explored the meaning behind the "X" in Xmas, Xbox, the X-Men, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence (XOXO).� Now it's time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter "X" is quite... Read more ››
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jamboree: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Wednesday, April 27, 2011 jamboree \JAM-buh-ree\, noun: 1. A carousal; any noisy merrymaking. 2. A large gathering, as of a political party or the teams of a sporting league, often including a program of speeches and entertainment. 3. A large gathering of members of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, usually nationwide or international in scope Several thoughtful riflemen had foregone the shooting jamboree to place themselves as cover guards for the MG. -- James Jones , The thin red line Well, the great jamboree was over at last, not only the jamboree of the two Armistice Days (and really, we could have celebrated a dozen), but of the past several years. -- Charles Jackson , The sunnier side: Arcadian tales Jamboree is an American invention, an apparent blend of jabber and shivaree. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent? We've explored the meaning behind the "X" in Xmas, Xbox, the X-Men, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence (XOXO).� Now it's time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter "X" is quite... Read more ››
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anneal: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 26, 2011 anneal \uh-NEEL\, verb: 1. To toughen or temper. 2. To heat (glass, earthenware, metals, etc.) to remove or prevent internal stress. 3. To free from internal stress by heating and gradually cooling. 4. To fuse colors onto (a vitreous or metallic surface) by heating. Bracelets and spiral-headed pins of copper, and also of gold, which is even easier to anneal, appear almost at once. -- Leon E. Stover, Bruce Kraig, Stonehenge: the Indo-European Heritage The sinister imputations that could be drawn from that damning conversation on the tape, and her acceptance of their treachery, had only served to anneal her mind. -- Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance Anneal has ancient roots in the Old English root anǣlan, "to kindle." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent? We've explored the meaning behind the "X" in Xmas, Xbox, the X-Men, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence�(XOXO).� Now it's time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter "X" is quite a... Read more ››
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marginalia: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Monday, April 25, 2011 marginalia \mahr-juh-NEY-lee-uh\, noun: Notes in the margin of a book, manuscript, or letter. On the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of Borellus, bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in Curwen's hand. -- Howard Phillips Lovecraft, S. T. Joshi, The thing on the doorstep and other weird stories But the scribbled marginalia in Myhre's notebook tells a different tale. -- "Sweat without the Wet?," Popular Science, Vol. 261, No. 3 Marginalia derives from the Latin marginalis, "the space or edge of something, or something of little importance." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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Which nation has stronger English skills, China or India? A recent online survey�claims that China has better English verbal skills�than neighboring India, but just barely. EF Education ranked the world's English proficiency through an online survey between 2007 and 2008. The highest-ranking nation in the survey was Norway, China ranked 29th, and India 30th, while Kazakhstan was last at number 44. The survey was... Read more ››
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yin: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Sunday, April 24, 2011 yin \YIN\, noun: A principle in Chinese philosophy associated with negative, dark, and feminine attributes. Han adds that the principles of yin and yang plus the five elements explain how all things in nature grow on the basis of mutual interactions. -- Reggie Aspiras, "'Kalbi,' 'bulgogi,' 'bibimbap'-the yin and yang of Korean food," Inquirer.net, 2011 The department's ragingly-successful Facebook page needed a communication avenue that would complement its change-a-minute, do-whatever-I-want attitude - a partner in crime, a yin to it's yang, a Starsky to it's Hutch. -- Jake Poole, "Makeover adds tools to Medina Police website," Sun Star Courier, Medina Sun, 2011 Yin, almost always in association with yang, means "bright" in Chinese. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What's the difference between a bunny, a rabbit, and a hare? (What does it have to do with Coney Island?) The religious content of Easter is relatively easy to explain and understand. The holiday's substance starts to blur however, when it comes to a certain anthropomorphized bunny, baskets, pastel colors, and eggs. There's far too much in this semantic basket to tackle; let's start with the crucial question "what's the difference between a rabbit, a... Read more ››
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peregrinate: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Saturday, April 23, 2011 peregrinate \PER-i-gruh-neyt\, verb: 1. To travel or journey, especially to walk on foot. 2. To travel or walk over; traverse. The old show man and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate southwest along the sea coast. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and sketches It was likewise part of her duty to peregrinate the Square and its planted enclosure with little Roland (whose baptism had been a grand affair) for a daily airing, and then there was no mistress to watch her footsteps, or to know what associates she formed beyond the limited range of the drawing room windows. -- Mrs. George Linnaeus Banks, The watchmaker's daughter and other tales Peregrinate derives from the Latin peregrinatus, "in the act of transit." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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What's the difference between a bunny, a rabbit, and a hare? (What does it have to do with Coney Island?) The religious content of Easter is relatively easy to explain and understand. The holiday's substance starts to blur however, when it comes to a certain anthropomorphized bunny, baskets, pastel colors, and eggs. There's far too much in this semantic basket to tackle; let's start with the crucial question "what's the difference between a rabbit, a... Read more ››
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homunculus: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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Word of the Day for Friday, April 22, 2011 homunculus \huh-MUHNG-kyuh-luhs\, noun: 1. An artificially made miniature person or creature, supposedly produced in a flask by an alchemist. 2. A fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon. 3. A diminutive human being. 4. The human fetus. There is no little homunculus up there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed. -- David Brooks, "When Preaching Flops," The New York Times, June 22, 2007 Goethe made the experiment famous in Faust, where an adept grows a homunculus in a bottle, but it is extremely rare in the alchemical literature. -- James Elkins, What Painting Is Homunculus is a borrowing from Latin, literally meaning "little person." homo- equals "man, human being," and -culus is a suffix meaning "small," from which English derives the suffix -cle. Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
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Why do we use capital and lower case letters, and how did both types come to be? Capitalization rules tend to vary by language and can be quite complicated.� It is widely understood that the first word of a sentence and all proper nouns are always capitalized. However, what is not so clear is the origin of the upper case distinction that has become common practice, especially in regards to Modern English.... Read more ››
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