flwyd | Reading

med_cat posting in

...I believe

amaebi told me of this concept, a while back...

The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox and common thought experiment about whether an object (in the most common stating of the paradox, a ship) is the same object after having all of its original components replaced with others over time.

You can read more about it in this Wikipedia article

prettygoodword

turpentine (tur-puhn-TAIN) - n., a yellowish semifluid oleoresin exuded by the terebinth (Pistacia terebinthus); a thin essential oil (C₁₀H₁₆) distilled from various conifers, especially originally the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), used as a thinner or solvent for paints and varnishes.

On to words noticed in Gaudy Night. Originally distilled from exuded pine sap, it's now industrially a byproduct of pulping. Or actually, originally originally distilled from the terebinth resin, but in the middle ages they found that pine sap made a better solvent and was obtainable locally, as terebinth (which note is not a conifer but a shrub belonging to the cashew family) is a Mediterranean plant. We've had the word since around 1300 in the Middle English forms terebentyne/terbentyne/turbentine, alteration of Medieval Latin terebentīna, from Latin terebinthīna, from Ancient Greek terebinthínē, terebinth.

---L.

prettygoodword

embonpoint (ahn-bawn-PWAN) - n., the condition of being plump, stoutness.

With a very strong connotation of "heavy but not unattractively so" -- so in the same range as voluptuous but applicable to men as well as women. Can also be used adjectivally, but this is not common. Taken in the 1650s from French, same meaning, a compression of en bon point, literally "in good condition."

---L.

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Posted by simplyn2deep

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Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Temperance (noun)
temperance [tem-per-uhns, tem-pruhns]

noun
1. moderation or self-restraint in action, statement, etc.; self-control.
2. habitual moderation in the indulgence of a natural appetite or passion, especially in the use of alcoholic liquors.
3. total abstinence from alcoholic liquors.

Other Word Forms
antitemperance, adjective

See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com

Origin: 1200–50; Middle English temperaunce < Anglo-French < Latin temperantia self-control. See temper, -ance

Example Sentences
The woman, Tracy Douglas, 59, of Temperance, Michigan, filed a civil rights complaint with the FBI, according to her attorney.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 6, 2022

Denise Heinze is the author of the historical novel “The Brief and True Report of Temperance Flowerdew.”
From Washington Post • Jun. 3, 2022

I also noticed the other day that one of the old Temperance Town roads was called Eisteddfod St. That would be nice to acknowledge too.
From BBC • Aug. 14, 2021

Temperance Flat, in particular, appears to offer the lowest bang for the buck of any water storage proposal in the state.
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 10, 2021

His name was Temperance Noah, which was odd since he was not a man of moderation at all.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1083809.html

simplyn2deep posting in

1word1day

prettygoodword

pantile (PAN-tail) - n., a roofing tile shaped a) with an elongated S-curve cross-section, laid so the down curve of one tile overlaps the up curve of its neighbor, or b) with a semicircular cross-section, laid alternately curving down and curving up, with each down-curve tile overlapping both up-curved neighbors.

Type a:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Type b:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Often terracotta or similar clay-based material. The word was coined in the 1630s from pan, a shallow container + tile.

---L.

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Posted by calzephyr77

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1083631.html

Looking for Monday words? They are not being cross-posted here.

However, you can catch up on Dreamwidth and the Monday Wordsmith, Stonepicking Okapi: https://1word1day.dreamwidth.org/tag/wordsmith:+stonepicnicking_okapi

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1083631.html

prettygoodword

All the words for the next couple weeks were encountered in works of Dorothy L. Sayers, specifically Have His Carcass, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon. (I also read Strong Poison to complete the quartet, but none of its vocabulary caught my attention.) In order, of course, so the first few are from HHC, starting with:

nenuphar (NEN-yoo-far) - n., a water-lily, esp. the European white water-lily (Nymphaea alba).

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Or as some older dictionaries put it, esp. the Egyptian lotus. This came up when Lord Peter is (as usual) being frivolous with Harriet Vane:

“There’s something in that. But I’ll have to get a decent frock if there is such a thing in Wilvercombe.”

“Well, get a wine-coloured one, then. I’ve always wanted to see you in wine-colour. It suits people with honey-coloured skin. ‘Blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar’—I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.”

The quotation in question is from the poem “The Sphinx” by Oscar Wilde. The word in question is from Medieval Latin nenuphar, from Arabic nīlawfar/nīnūfar, from Middle Persian nīlōpal, lotus/water-lily, from Sanskrit nīlotpala, blue lotus, from nīla, blue + utpala, lotus/water-lily -- so it traveled a fair distance there.

---L.

stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

1word1day

nacreous [ney-kree-uhs]

adjective
resembling mother-of-pearl; lustrous; pearly, iridescent

examples
1. This one is tough--its nacreous, butterfly shell swings shut on its hinges, small black wings locked like a mouth. "Mussels" [poem] by Lucinda Roy.

2. "Looking like a "portal to the next dimension" or possibly a spaceship, the shimmering colours of nacreous cloud were spotted. "Rare 'rainbow cloud' spotted in UK skies." BBC. 21 December 2023

origin
1590s, "type of shellfish that yields mother-of-pearl," from French nacre (Old French nacaire, 14c.), from Italian naccaro (now nacchera), possibly from Arabic naqur "hunting horn" (from nakara "to hollow out"), in reference to the shape of the mollusk shell. Meaning "mother-of-pearl" is from 1718. The French adjectival form nacré was applied in English to decorative objects iridescent like mother of pearl (1895).

May the fourth be with you!

nacreous

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Posted by sallymn

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1083163.html

heresiarch [huh-ree-zee-ahrk, -see-, her-uh-see-]

noun:
a leader in heresy; the leader of a heretical sect.

Examples:

His son labels him a 'Heresiarch,' though this particular heresy is an attack not on religion but on the banality of life. (Ruth Franklin, The Lost, The New Yorker, December 2002)

The Waldenses are so called from their heresiarch, Waldus, who, of his own will (suo spiritu ductus), not sent by God, started a new sect, presuming forsooth to preach without the authority of a Bishop, without the inspiration of God, without learning. (Alan de Insulis, quoted in Henry James Warner, The Albigensian Heresy)

When he discusses Nestorius, the great episcopal heresiarch condemned at Ephesus, he says that his error was to think of himself as "the first and only one to understand Scripture (Thomas Guarino, 'St Vincent of Lerins and the development of Christian doctrine' Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, June 2014)

At first I skipped to the second volume, containing the "Philosophy of Abélard," and, after reading that with the greatest interest, I returned to the first, to the life of the great heresiarch. (Prosper Mérimée, Abbé Aubain and Mosaics)

He is constantly provocative of adverse, even of severe criticism; of half the heresies from which he has suffered - not only that of impressionism - he was himself the unconscious heresiarch. (George Saintsbury, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature)

Origin:
'arch-heretic; leader in heresy,' 1620s, from Church Latin haeresiarcha, from Late Greek hairesiarkhes 'leader of a school;' in classical use chiefly a medical school; in ecclesiastical writers, leader of a sect or heresy (see heresy + arch-)(Online Etymology Dictionary)

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sallymn posting in

1word1day

heresiarch [huh-ree-zee-ahrk, -see-, her-uh-see-]

noun:
a leader in heresy; the leader of a heretical sect.

Examples:

His son labels him a 'Heresiarch,' though this particular heresy is an attack not on religion but on the banality of life. (Ruth Franklin, The Lost, The New Yorker, December 2002)

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Posted by calzephyr77

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Spit the dummy

An Austrlian idiom to describe someone who is overreacting or acting wildly childish.

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1082880.html

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Posted by calzephyr77

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1082692.html

Chronomancy - noun.

My apologies--I was at the comic expo last week and still recovering! Thanks to the magic of chronomancy, I can at least backdate my post :-D

Chronomancy is a fantasy word yet at the same time, yet legit enough for Merriam-Webster!. That's because it has been around a long time, and not just in modern usage. Sometimes called hemerology, the practice of using calendar astrology or divination to determine lucky (or unlucky) days has long been used since ancient times.

https://1word1day.livejournal.com/1082692.html

calzephyr posting in

1word1day

prettygoodword

cuneiform (kyoo-NEE-uh-fawrm, KYOO-nee-uh-fawrm) - adj., wedge-shaped. n., an ancient Mesopotamian writing system of logo-syllabic characters composed of wedge-shaped strokes.

Thanks, WikiMedia!

This came up in a dispute over how to pronounce it -- it turns out, we both were right -- and since I'd not run it before, here we are. Indisputable pictographic writing first developed in Uruk and other Sumerian cities around 3300 BCE, and evolved into a logo-syllablic system by c.2900 BCE that became more and more stylized, and by 2600 BCE it was so stylized it could be written quickly by pressing a wedge-shaped stylus into clay tablets (which could be baked and so preserved). This Sumerian system was later adapted to writing Akkadian, Hittite, Old Persian, and other languages. Interestingly, the last dateable cuneiform text was also from Uruk, written in 80 CE. We took the general adjective from Latin in 1677 (from cuneus, wedge) and applied it to the writing system in the 1850s.

---L.

prettygoodword

halitus (HAL-i-tuhs) - n., an exhaled breath; vapor, mist.

From Latin, from hālāre, to breathe/exhale and by extension bad breath, and is also (combined with -osis, noun suffix of state/condition) the stem of halitosis, bad breath -- which TIL wasn't an invention of mouthwash companies in the 1950s, but actually dates to the 1870s. Huh!

---L.

grim23

You cannot hold on to anything good. You must be continually giving - and getting. You cannot hold on to your seed. You must sow it - and reap anew. You cannot hold on to riches. You must use them and get other riches in return. - Robert Collier

Body/Martial Arts/Physical Improvement/Testing: My weekly Shaolin Kung Fu classes continue, as well as changes in my diet and a 24-hour fast every week. We're working on a basic weapon familiarization with escrima sticks. We completed the Bloomsday 12K, wearing weighted plate carriers this year. I also plan on completing the Manion WOD again (non-GoRuck version).

May's GoRuck "Burn' Challenges dropped, and they are ongoing. The workout is again The Murph, with a one-mile ruck, 200 sandbag Bent-Over Rows, 200 Push-Ups, and 300 squats, and another one-mile ruck, all while wearing my 20-lb. plate carrier. The rucking requirement is to "ruck 1 mile, 3 times a week, wearing the weight you plan to use for Murph". The F*CK is a Farmer's Carry for distance, 60 lbs. in each hand. The book of the month is The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter.

On Week 1, Day 3, we completed the Bloomsday 12K, both wearing our Murph weight, and we decided that would qualify as completing the first week of the ruck requirement.

Mind/Spirit/Centering/Health: I'm working on Ideals of the Samurai by William Scott Wilson, and I'm rereading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. I've finished reading My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, adding it to my professional library, and I'm halfway through Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott.

Maintenance/Shit Got To Be Done: I'm almost finished preparing my books for my CPA. I am reorganizing a lot of my home office. The Whorse is back out of the shop, into temporary storage, and ready for cleaning and rehabilitation. I hope to get started with the cleaning process this week.

In Case of Zombies/Disaster Preparation: I'm continuing Jim Cobb's Countdown to Preparedness book/assignments. Week 22 is firearms, and I still need to check, clean, and practice more with my existing gear. I've found a gunsmith to repair a jamming slide/port, and I should be able to pick up, test-fire, and train this week.

Base Station/Ol' Number 3: No progress.

Travel/Adventure/Doing Stuff: We again attended the OMSI SciFi Film Fest, seeing Logan's Run and Everything Everywhere All at Once this last week. This last weekend, we had a road trip to Spokane and back for the Bloomsday 12k, stopping at the Lewis and Clark Discovery Center in Lewiston, ID, and earning an Idaho State Parks Junior Ranger Badge. The race was warm and sunny, and we completed it with weighted plate carriers (mine was 20 lbs.). Very close to the finish line, I found my 5000th geocache, a 24-year-old virtual cache celebrating the Bloomsday race. We also found three different WA Delorme squares, an old earthcache from one of the original geocachers, and other rare geocaches.

Mood: hopeful
Location: The Hideway
Music: Conjure One: Center of The Sun

med_cat posting in

1word1day

Ranarian [ruh-NAIR-ee-un] (adj.)

- Of, relating to, or resembling frogs; frog-like.

Early 19th century; earliest use found in Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), satirical novelist and poet. From classical Latin rāna frog + -arian.

Used in a sentence:

“Mr. Thistlewick, possessed of a most regrettably ranarian visage, suggested a creature far better suited to a dank and ancient bog than to the refinements of polite society.”

(from The Grandiloquent Word of the Day FB page)

prettygoodword

brunescent (broo-NEH-sent) - adj., becoming brown in color.

Chiefly used in medical contexts, most commonly brunescent cataracts, which are cataracts old enough they've accumulated residues (mostly proteins) that change the color to amber, brown, or even (in especially severe cases) black. From Medieval Latin brunus, brown + -escens, present participle inchoative, indicating becoming.

---L.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Avatar (noun)
avatar [av-uh-tahr, av-uh-tahr]

noun
1. Hinduism. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life: Her complete loss of confidence was particularly unsettling, because generally she is the very avatar of hope.
3. Digital Technology. a static or moving image or other graphic representation that acts as a proxy for a person or is associated with a specific digital account or identity, as on the internet: My friend always chooses warriors as his video game avatars. | Now that spring's here I've switched my Instagram avatar from a stack of books to a robin's egg.
4. Also called avatar mouse,. Also called mouse avatar. a mouse that is implanted with cells or tissue freshly extracted from a human being, as to test drug therapies for an individual patient or to study a disease process: Researchers transplanted samples of the patient’s tumor into specially bred avatars.
5. (in science fiction) a hybrid creature, composed of human and alien DNA and remotely controlled by the mind of a genetically matched human being.

Related Words
apotheosis, archetype, epitome, exemplar, expression, personification, realization, symbol

See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com

Origin: First recorded in 1775–85; from Sanskrit avatāra “a passing down, descent,” from ava “down” + -tāra “a passing over” (akin to Latin trāns “across, beyond, through”; see also through ( def. ))

Example Sentences
The tool has a face and a name: Sky, an AI avatar that appears as a woman with short hair and a blazer in its first iteration.
From Barron's • Apr. 22, 2026

Kendi is an avatar for the battered and bruised fight for racial equality in this country.
From Slate • Apr. 13, 2026

A brainwave interface translating these signals into computer instructions then allowed her to convey which of these movements she wanted her mixed-reality avatar to dance in real-time.
From BBC • Apr. 10, 2026

The movie calls him the Lost Man, a bid for everyman philosophical relevance, and Ninomiya is indeed a sympathetic avatar.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 10, 2026

Aech’s avatar was a tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian male with dark hair and brown eyes.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline

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simplyn2deep posting in

1word1day

prettygoodword

serein (suh-RAN) or (rare/obs.) serene (suh-REEN) - n., a fine rain falling from an apparently clear sky, esp. after sunset.

This was, formerly, the supposed source of dew. The phenomenon is more common in tropical climates than temperate, and possible explanations include the cloud evaporating as it condenses the raindrops and the rain being blown from elsewhere. We got the word in the 1860s from French, from Middle French serain, evening/nightfall, from hypothetical Vulgar Latin form *sērānum, from Latin sērum, a late hour, neuter of sērus, late -- though note that this etymology is complicated by the nearby existence of serene meaning untroubled (from Latin serēnus, clear/cloudless).

---L.

stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

1word1day

ansible [an-suh-buhl]

noun
(in science fiction) a device for instantaneous communication, or other purposes, across cosmic distances

examples
1. I could show them the ansible, but it didn’t make a very convincing Alien Artifact, being so incomprehensible to fit in with hoax as well as with reality. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
2. "What is an anisble, Shevek?"
"An idea." He smiled without much humor. "It will be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space." The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

origin
Shortening of answerable; coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in her novel Rocannon's World (1966)

“Ansible” – a science fiction word with Emory origins? – LITS Archive ...

“Ansible” – a science fiction word with Emory origins? – LITS Archive ...

prettygoodword

ergotism (UR-guh-tiz-uhm) - n., a condition, characterized by cramps, spasms, and a form of gangrene, caused by eating rye or other cereal that is infected with ergot fungus.

Also called St. Anthony's fire, from the tradition of praying to St. Anthony the Great for relief from several skin conditions, including ergotism and shingles, in part because monks (who often relied on rye as a staple) were often especially susceptible, and St. Anthony was considered the founder of Christian monasticism. The fungus Claviceps purpurea grows in the seed heads of rye and closely related grains, especially after cold winters followed by damp springs, and contains a family of alkaloids called ergolines. The connection between the fungus, the toxins, and the disease was untangled around 1840, though word ergot itself came into English in the 1650s, taking the French name for it, from Old French argot, cock's spur, from the distorted shape of infected rye heads.

---L.

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Posted by sallymn

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purlieu [pur-loo, purl-yoo]

noun:
1 a place where one may range at large; confines or bounds.
2 a person's haunt or resort.
3 an outlying district or region, as of a town or city.
4 a piece of land on the edge of a forest, originally land that, after having been included in a royal forest, was restored to private ownership, though still subject, in some respects, to the operation of the forest laws.

Examples:

I walk my new purlieu, the boundaries of our new patch, which overlaps the old in a Venn diagram of localism. With my centre shifted, local farms are revealed from fresh angles. (Nicola Chester, Country diary: The strange familiarity of moving a mile away, The Guardian, November 2025)

Once the purlieu of Montpellier’s well-heeled bourgeoisie, these days the Promenade du Peyrou, a park and tree-lined esplanade on the eastern edge of the city, is the stomping ground of tourists and Instagrammers. (The Heritage of Montpellier: Top 5 Things To See and Do, Framce Today, February 2019)

Added to that, they are often in the purlieu of financially stricken Councils who whenever the word 'arts' comes up, are inundated with letters to the Editor saying money being considered to be spent on that would be better expended on hospitals and schools. (Valerie Lillington, The Vicar of Dibley | Noarlunga Theatre Co, Australian Stage, June 2018)

This favourite purlieu of London has larger books than mine devoted to its history. Through the mists of the past is dimly seen a homestead clearing in the great Middlesex forest, that became a manor of Westminster Abbey and a hunting-ground of our kings; then, by-and-by, a resort of Londoners when they could stroll out safely across the open fields of St Pancras and Marylebone. (G B Stuart, A road-book to old Chelsea)

But such betrayals never escaped him when, in one of his inimitable disguises, he penetrated to the purlieu of Whitechapel, to the dens of Limehouse. (Sax Rohmer, The Golden Scorpion)

Origin:
Middle English purlewe land severed from an English royal forest by perambulation, from Anglo-French puralé perambulation, from puraler to travel through, measure, from pur- thoroughly + aler to go (Merriam-Webster)

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calzephyr posting in

1word1day

Spit the dummy

An Austrlian idiom to describe someone who is overreacting or acting wildly childish.

Watch on YouTube

med_cat posting in

1word1day

Chivvy [CHIV-ee]
(v.)

- To tell (someone) repeatedly to do something; to nag or harass.
From “chevy” (to chase) used as a hunting cry, from “chevy chase” (a running pursuit) probably from the "Ballad of Chevy Chase," a popular song describing a hunting party on the borderland that turned into a battle between the English and the Scots — 1918

Used in a sentence:

“She chivvies her long-suffering husband with unrelenting insistence to remove the trash, clean the garage, and mow the lawn, such that he lives in perpetual dread of her summons.”

(from The Grandiloquent Word of the Day FB page)

I, of course, immediately thought of this example:

"During my school-days I had been intimately associated with a lad named Percy Phelps, who was of much the same age as myself, though he was two classes ahead of me. He was a very brilliant boy, and carried away every prize which the school had to offer, finished his exploits by winning a scholarship which sent him on to continue his triumphant career at Cambridge.

He was, I remember, extremely well connected, and even when we were all little boys together we knew that his mother’s brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school.

On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket."

(poor Percy, I know...)

(Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Naval Treaty")

prettygoodword

adret (a-DRAY) - n., the sun-facing side of a mountain.

So in the northern hemisphere, the southern slope. In Chinese, this is the yang (in the sense of sunny/bright) slope, as opposed to the yin (shaded/dim) slope, and it's also applied to river-banks -- yes, as in yin-and-yang. Adret comes to us from French, from Provençal adreit, from Old Provençal adreg/adret, from a(d)-, on + dreit, good/suitable (from Latin dīrēctus, direct/straight, cognate of adoit), referring originally which side is good for vineyards.

---L.

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Page generated Friday, May 8th, 2026 02:41 am

Dreams With Words

Reading

Thursday Phrase: Ship of Theseus

turpentine

embonpoint

Tuesday word: Temperance

Tuesday word: Temperance

pantile

Monday Word...

nenuphar

Monday Word: Nacreous

Sunday Word: Heresiarch

Sunday Word: Heresiarch

Friday Phrase: Spit the dummy

Friday Word: Chronomancy

Friday Word: Chronomancy

cuneiform

halitus

101/1001 Update - 5000 geocaches!

Wednesday Word: Ranarian

brunescent

Tuesday word: Avatar

Tuesday word: Avatar

serein

Monday Word: Ansible

ergotism

Sunday Word: Purlieu

Sunday Word: Purlieu

Friday Phrase: Spit the dummy

Friday word: Chivvy

adret

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