canorous \kuh-NOR-us; KAN-or-uhs\, adjective:
Richly melodious; pleasant sounding; musical.
I felt a deep contentment listening to the meadowlark's complex melody as he sat on his bragging post calling for a mate, and the soft canorous whistle of the bobwhite as he whistled his name with intermittent lulls.
-- Donna R. La Plante, "Remember When: The prairie after a spring rain", Kansas City Star, March 16, 2003
But birds that are canorous and whose notes we most commend, are of little throats, and short necks, as Nightingales, Finches, Linnets, Canary birds and Larks.
-- Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica
Canorous comes from the Latin canor, "melody," from canere, "to sing." It is related to chant, from French chanter, "to sing," ultimately from Latin canere.
repast \rih-PAST\, noun:
Something taken as food; a meal.
This repast could scarcely have been digested before a "tea" of fresh bread, butter, cheese, cold meat, and cake was served at half past six.
-- Joan Druett, Hen Frigates
On June 1, 1563, in Basel, Thomas sat down to a meal, probably the evening repast.
-- Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Beggar and the Professor (translated by Arthur Goldhammer)
When staying with friends in American in 1949, the philosopher demanded bread and cheese at all meals. Every time the dull repast was laid before him, he would exclaim, as if for the first time, "Hot diggetty!", a phrase he had picked up from the movies.
-- Bee Wilson, "Stomach tracts", New Statesman, January 8, 1999
Repast comes from Old French repaistre, "to feed," from Latin re- + pascere, "to feed." It is related to pasture, "the grass grown for the feeding of grazing animals, or the land used for grazing."
tenebrous \TEN-uh-bruhs\, adjective:
Dark; gloomy.
He found the Earl, who is eight feet tall and has the family trait of a Cyclops eye, standing stock still, dressed from head to foot in deepest black, in one of the most tenebrous groves in all his haunted domains.
-- Peter Simple, "At Mountwarlock", Daily Telegraph, March 20, 1998
We are so used to the tenebrous atmosphere that can be created in indoor theatres that it's a shock to realise that this murkiest of tragedies first saw the literal light of day at the Globe theatre.
-- Paul Taylor, "Cool, calm, disconnected", Independent, June 7, 2001
And lurking behind our every move is the knowledge of our own mortality. It gives life its edgy disquiet, its tenebrous underside.
-- Douglas Kennedy, "Sudden death", Independent, June 3, 1999
Tenebrous derives from Latin tenebrosus, from tenebrae, "darkness."
nescience \NESH-uhn(t)s; NESH-ee-uhn(t)s\, noun:
Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.
The ancients understood that too much knowledge could actually impede human functioning -- this at a time when the encroachments on global nescience were comparatively few.
-- Cullen Murphy, "DNA Fatigue", The Atlantic, November 1997
He fought on our behalf in the war that finally matters: against nescience, against inadvertence, against the supposition that anything is anything else.
-- Hugh Kenner, "On the Centenary of James Joyce", New York Times, January 31, 1982
The notion has taken hold that every barometric fluctuation must demonstrate climate change. This anecdotal case for global warming is mostly nonsense, driven by nescience of a basic point, from statistics and probability, that the weather is always weird somewhere.
-- Gregg Easterbrook, "Warming Up", The New Republic, November 8, 1999
Nescience is from Latin nescire, "not to know," from ne-, "not" + scire, "to know." It is related to science. Nescient is the adjective form.
gewgaw \G(Y)OO-gaw\, noun:
A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble.
Bidders paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless gewgaws--fake pearls, ashtrays, golf clubs--merely, one supposes, because they were touched by the hand of this celebrity of celebrities.
-- Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society
At least, you're tempted until you discover that the price of this gewgaw is $175.
-- Walter Shapiro, "Earn exciting prizes from the Republicans!", USA Today, March 27, 2002
Walk into almost any department store, and there it is -- along with mounds of other gimmicky gadgets and garish gewgaws that (no offense, Vanna) the world can live without.
-- James A. Russell, "What the World Needs Now . . . Is Not Another Gimmicky Gadget or Worthless Doohickey", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 9, 1995
The origin of gewgaw is uncertain.
effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.
The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.
-- "Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington" , December 4, 1908
The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra.
-- Washington Irving, The Alhambra
Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures.
-- Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia: The paintings Matisse did in Nice include some of his best", Time, November 17, 1986
From Latin ex, "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.
exiguity \ek-suh-GYOO-uht-ee\, noun:
Scantiness; smallness; thinness;the quality of being meager.
--EXIGUOUS, adjective
An exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes
-- George Eliot
The soldiers' pay is in the highest degree exiguous; not above three half-pence a day.
-- Carlyle
Exiguity derives from the Latin exiguitas, itself from exiguus, meaning "strictly weighed," which came to signify "too strictly weighed"; hence, "meager." Related to exact ("precisely weighed or determined").
seriatim \sir-ee-AY-tim; -AT-im\, adverb:
In a series; one after another.
Mr. and Mrs. Kenwigs thanked every lady and gentleman, seriatim, for the favour of their company.
-- Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby
Two days from the opening of the impeachment debate, gangs of television crews moved through mostly deserted corridors, doling out their 15 minutes of fame seriatim as individual lawmakers stepped up to batteries of microphones.
-- New York Times, December 16, 1998
In his company one found oneself supposing, on hearing Walters handle German and Spanish, French and Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Russian, that his mind traveled from any one language to any other seriatim, because his mind worked that way, taking it all in.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., "Dick Walters R.I.P.", National Review, February 15, 2002
Seriatim derives from the Latin series, meaning "row, chain," and is formed on the same model as verbatim ("word for word") and literatim ("letter for letter").
tmesis \TMEE-sis\, noun:
In grammar and rhetoric, the separation of the parts of a compound word, now generally done for humorous effect; for example, "what place soever" instead of "whatsoever place," or "abso-bloody-lutely."
If on the first, how heinous e'er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee.
-- Shakespeare, Richard II
His income-tax return, he remarked, was the "most rigged-up marole" he'd ever seen.
-- Frederic Packard
In two words, im possible.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
Tmesis is from Greek tmesis, "a cutting," from temnein, "to cut."
chthonic \THONE-ik\, adjective:
Dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld
"Driven by dæmonic, chthonic Powers."
-- T.S. Eliot
"The chthonic divinity was essentially a god of the regions under the earth; at first of the dark home of the seed, later on of the still darker home of the dead."
-- C. F. Keary
"The chthonic imagery of Norine's apartment, which..was black as a coalhole and heated by the furnace of the hostess' unslaked desires."
-- M. McCarthy
"Two great and contrasted forms of ritual: the Olympian and the Chthonic, the one a ritual of cheerful character, the other a ritual of gloom, and fostering superstition."
Chthonic comes from khthón, the Greek word for earth.
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