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Word of the Day for Monday, May 5, 2008

fustian FUHS-chuhn, noun:

1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.
2. An inflated style of writing or speech; pompous or pretentious language.
3. Made of fustian.
4. Pompous; ridiculously inflated; bombastic.

Don't squander the court's patience puffing your cheeks up on stately bombast and lofty fustian. Speak plainly!
-- Richard Dooling, Brain Storm

His stated motive is to meet "the flood of cant, fustian and emotional nonsense which pollutes the intellectual atmosphere."
-- Walter H. Waggoner, "Joseph W. Bishop Jr., Law Professor and Author", New York Times, May 21, 1985

It would take a stout heart to read through all the loyal effusions and fustian birthday odes of the 18th-century laureates -- Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber and the rest.
-- John Gross, "In Search of a Laureate: Making Book on Britain's Next Official Poet", New York Times, July 15, 1984

Fustian derives from Old French fustaigne, from Medieval Latin fustaneum, but its precise roots beyond that point are uncertain.

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 3, 2008

sub rosa suhb-ROH-zuh, adverb:

1. Secretly; privately; confidentially.
2. Designed to be secret or confidential; secretive; private.

Unlike progressive educators of the past, who openly proclaimed their goals, today's multiculturalists are generally unwilling to engage the wider public in open debate about their methods, preferring to promote their agenda sub rosa.
-- Sol Stern, "Losing Our Language", Commentary, May 1999

Second, Abramson argues that since a certain amount of jury nullification goes on anyway, sub rosa, it should be brought out into the open.
-- Richard A. Posner, "Juries on trial", Commentary, March 1, 1995

The investigators said that a major purpose of the sub-rosa activities was to create so much confusion, suspicion and dissension that the Democrats would be incapable of uniting after choosing a presidential nominee.
-- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats", Washington Post, October 10, 1972

The atmosphere of gloom and dislocation only thickened, though, and Marty found himself in over his head in a world of shadowy fixers, sub-rosa deputies of the C.I.A. and the mob.
-- Stephen Metcalf, "Fraud S&M and St. Francis: A Riotous Bull-Market Fable", New York Observer, March 25, 2002

Sub rosa comes from the Latin, literally "under the rose," from the ancient association of the rose with confidentiality, the origin of which traces to a famous story in which Cupid gave Harpocrates, the god of silence, a rose to bribe him not to betray the confidence of Venus. Hence the ceilings of Roman banquet-rooms were decorated with roses to remind guests that what was spoken sub vino (under the influence of wine) was also sub rosa.

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 1, 2008

cloy KLOY, transitive verb:

1. To weary by excess, especially of sweetness, richness, pleasure, etc.
2. To become distasteful through an excess usually of something originally pleasing.

The opulence, the music, the gouty food -- all start to cloy my senses.
-- Jeffrey Tayler, "The Moscow Rave part two: I Have Payments to Make on My Mink", Atlantic, December 31, 1997

I use orange and lemon zest in the recipe and a drizzle of soured cream at the table to take away its tendency to cloy.
-- Nigel Slater, "Cream tease", The Observer, December 14, 2003

The soft Orvieto Abboccato has just enough sweetness to please but not to cloy, a friendly character that tempts one to linger over a second glass.
-- George Pandi, "Orvieto's pleasures deserve to be savored like its wine", Boston Herald, July 18, 2004

Cloy is short for obsolete accloy, "to clog," alteration of Middle English acloien, "to lame," from Middle French encloer, "to drive a nail into," from Medieval Latin inclavare, from Latin in, "in" + clavus, "nail."