WOTD: conflicted

Today’s word is a feeling, one that I think a lot of us are experiencing concerning the death of Osama bin Laden. To feel conflicted is to be full of conflicting and often contradictory emotions or impulses.

Upon hearing that Osama bin Laden, FBI’s number one most wanted bad guy, the one responsible for the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the July 7, 2005 bombings in London (among others) had been killed in a surgical military operation, well, one can’t help but jump for joy and shout, “YESSSS!!!!!!”

But wait, is that really an appropriate response? I mean, should one be filled with joy over the death of a fellow human being? Even one with such a defiantly uncompromising and completely distorted view of reality? Evil or not, he was still a man, who unfailingly believed he was doing God/Allah’s work by ridding the world of the oppressive infidels. Just like Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden hid himself away, and he held on to his misguided convictions until the very end. And like Hitler, he would rather die than be captured by the enemy. And thus he did.

The fate of Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a fate he wished to avoid at all costs.

WOTD: dysania

I was introduced to his word from His Royal Foxiness only yesterday. It is apparently the state of finding it difficult to get up in the morning. Heh. If this is a real disorder then I and just about everyone I know “suffers” from it.

There may also be an element of alcohol involved, as the Urban Dictionary further defines “dysania” as the “state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning after a hangover.”

However, after failing to find a mention of this supposed disorder on Wikipedia or the online dictionary I regularly use, I’ve come to the conclusion that “dysania” is not a real disorder.

Someone, somewhere, just made it up.

Stay tuned…

WOTD: a “shower of bastards” and other collective nouns…

With many thanks to Cissi for the idea…

According to the Urban Dictionary (the unreliability of the source notwithstanding), the phrase “shower of bastards” is Irish slang for a “group of not altogether nice people.”

As in, “Look at that shower of bastards over there. They’re not even drinking Guinness.” Oi, what a bunch of gobshites.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how many colorful, surprising, and just plain odd collective nouns there are. Wikipedia of course names all of them but here’s a few of my favorites:

A glaring of cats. (Hehe…I’ve certainly been glared at by my cat)

A coffle of asses.

A shrewdness of apes.

A chin of beards. (This one made me laugh out loud.)

A singular of boars.

A cheat of bursars. (A bursar is the person responsible for billing you at a college or university.)

A threat of courtiers.

A murder of crows.

A busyness of ferrets.

A parliament of owls.

A storytelling of crows.

A drunkenship of cobblers. (You know, those guys who make and repair shoes.)

A neverthriving of jugglers. (Does this tell us something about juggling as a possible career choice?)

A number of mathematicians (Hahaha. This one might be a bit dubious.)

An obstinacy of buffalo.

A scathe of zombies.

An ugly of walruses.

And my number one all time favorite:

A sad of emos. (I shit you not)

Until next time…

WOTD: resplendent

With many apologies for not posting a WOTD yesterday but I was too busy being sick and watching coverage of the Royal Wedding. I just love stuff like that. Royal Weddings that is, not being sick. I just find all the negativity and complaints about it to be really sad. “I couldn’t care less!” Well, obviously you do care enough to state that you don’t care. “What a waste of tax-payer money!” Oh moan, bitch, whine, complain. Why can’t you just be happy for the young attractive couple and be happy in general? Also, if you’re really concerned about the cost you can always ask for your 69 pence (each British tax payer’s share of the money spent on the wedding) back from the British government.

But I digress…

I thought I’d choose a word that is inspired by the recent Royal Wedding. Resplendent is an adjective and it’s defined as “shining brilliantly.” It basically means the same thing as dazzling, radiant, gorgeous and magnificent. As in:

Prince William looked resplendent in his bright red wedding coat.

Word of the Day: spatula

Today’s word is not particularly special or meaningful. It’s doesn’t really have any qualities at all. I choose it simply because I think it sounds funny. What an amusing collection of sounds for such an ordinary object that does such an ordinary task.

It’s a noun. It’s Latin. The original word hasn’t changed all that much. Spatula, in Latin means, “broad flat tool or weapon.” Something that is spatula-like can be modified with the adjective spatular. As in, “The car smashed into the spatular part of a snowplow.”

Incidentally, it’s really hard to think of something that rhymes with spatula…

Any other funny-sounding words you can think of?

The Vestibules have a lot of ideas:

Stay tuned…

Word of the Day: obscene, profane, and vulgar

Today’s words are all adjectives and they all have similar meanings, but each word has a different quality.

The word obscene suggests something that is offensive to decency or morality and which is abominable, disgusting, or repulsive. For me the Jerry Springer Show comes to mind as the perfect example of something that is obscene par excellence. However, the word can also be used to describe something that is in greater excess than it ought to be. For example: obscene wealth. A great example of an obscene word is cocksucker, one of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. It’s nicely offensive isn’t it? And it’s certainly indecent and possibly immoral.

Moving on to profane, then. This word in its noun form: profanity, is often used to encapsulate all “bad” and “dirty” words, but the word profane itself has religious connotations. It’s the antonym of the word sacred. Something that is profane is characterized by an irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things. I’ve never been particularly religious, but to me, the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church – pretty much everything they do – but particularly their picketing the funerals of soldiers and marines killed in action. Well, to me that’s just profane. They are the antithesis of everything decent and honest and good in this world.

Finally, the word vulgar pretty much describes much of the content of MTV these days. Vulgarity is characterized by a complete ignorance of or a total lack of good breeding and taste. (See: Jersey Shore) It’s inelegant, unrefined, ribald, low. In Shakespeare’s time, the word vulgar meant “common,” in a Kate Middleton-ish kind of way. Basically not royalty. Even farther back the word vulgar meant “vernacular.” At one time there was huge controversy over the first bible written in a vernacular (non-Latin) language. It was called the “Vulgate” bible. Interesting, huh?

Until next time…

Word of the Day: nostalgia

Interestingly, today’s word was once upon a time considered a medical condition.

Back in 1668, German Physician Johannes Hofer coined the word and defined it as “severe homesickness.” It is derived from the Greek words nostos (homecoming) and algos (pain). I never really thought about it before but the word nostalgia does look and sound like some kind of disease or disorder. (See: myalgia)

The more modern definition of nostalgia as a sort of wistful longing for the past was first recorded in 1920. Nowadays however, the word can also be defined as not necessarily a desire to return to the past, but simply an appreciation for it.

Naturally, this means that the nostalgic tend to look at their particular favorite time in the past through rose-colored glasses, seeing only the good things and disregarding the bad. For example, many people these days long for the simpler times before cell phones and broadband internet connections, but of course they tend to forget how much harder life was back then.

Somehow I got through high school and most of college having used actual books, magazines, and microfiche/film as research material for reports and papers. I remember typing high school homework assignments on a Smith Corona typewriter. Sure, the internet was around in the mid-90s when I started college, but it was all as new and wild as an Old West frontier town. Many of my professors and teachers did not entirely trust the content on the internet (and rightly so) and therefore they simply would not accept internet-based sources.

The young people of today tend to not appreciate how easy they have it, but it’s not at all their fault. Just as Generation Xers like me cannot remember a time when there was no television, the Generation Y kids cannot remember a time when there was no internet.

They were born into the information age.

Stay tuned…

Word Of The Day: Reserection

From Urban Dictionary:

rez-e-rek-shun (noun) a morning wood of biblical proportions.

On the third day, Jesus awoke from the tomb with a raging reserection.

Word of the Day: smörgåsbord

Today’s word is one of the few Swedish words that has been incorporated into the English language. I’ve chosen to use the original Swedish spelling, but of course the English spelling leaves out the Swedish vowels ö and å. One of the hardest aspects of learning Swedish is learning how to pronounce these vowels properly.

The word smörgåsbord is a compound noun, which are commonplace in Swedish but rare in English. It’s comprised of the words smörgås (sandwich) and bord (table) so the word translated literally into English is “a table of sandwiches.” In reality, it’s usually much more than that. The dictionary defines smörgåsbord as “a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d’oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.”

I’ve always thought of a smörgåsbord as a variety of different dishes that don’t necessarily go together. That’s probably because years ago when I was staying with my grandmother, I remember she would say “Let’s have a smörgåsbord lunch.” This meant we would have a buffet of whatever leftovers that happened to be in the fridge. This could be spaghetti, beef stew, Greek salad and pineapple rings.

The word smörgåsbord also has a more figurative meaning, as an extensive array or variety.

For example:

During my last flight to the United States I was subjected to smörgåsbord of problems, everything from lost luggage to frozen toilet water.

Of course in the above example, I’m using the word ‘everything’ metaphorically.

Until next time…