I wrote this down a couple days ago with a note to myself to add it to the list. I can’t recall where I encountered the word though. It was probably another word from Revelation Space, but skipping back through the last dozen pages or so I haven’t found it.… Read the rest
Prosody, or more properly Prosody IM is the name of an open source Jabber/XMPP server which was recommended to me as a replacement for the Jabber server I use. My current server isn’t connecting properly to my StatusNet installation at status.smscotten.com. When I searched for information about it, I found a number of search results that were clearly not related to instant messaging software. … Read the rest
Yet another word gleaned from Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space.… Read the rest
Rebecca mentioned it being her new favorite word in her comment about my last vocabulary entry. Darned if I knew what it meant, so I looked it up. And that’s my criterion for adding words to this list: if I have to look it up, I add it. … Read the rest
I guess I’d always assumed that would be heaved. I came across this in Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space.… Read the rest
Yeah, «bright and shining» for a pretentious nincompoop in love with his thesaurus. In this case, Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the [novelization of the movie *Star Trek*]([canonical-url:2010/01/02/set-phasers-weak] ‘Set phasers on weak’), where I found this word. Even worse than his use of this word where «radiant» would have worked was the context in which it was used. «Refulgent hopes». Are you kidding me? I used to like Alan Dean Foster, but now I … Read the rest
Last night I was reading The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 – 1789 when I came across this word, in a sentence referring to the prorogue of Parliament in (I think) 1766. Usually when I come across a word that is new to me I have some idea what it might mean from the context or familiar roots, but this one was entirely new to me.… Read the rest
Found in River of Doubt, a book about Theodore Roosevelt’s exploration of the South American river which today bears his name, six years after leaving the White House. Roosevelt was a naturalist with great understanding of natural sciences and no fear of the unknown.
I’ve also recently read the article written by Roosevelt for the February 1916 issue of National Geographic entitled, «How Old Is Man?» I’ve commented before that it’s somewhat mindblowing to think that once upon a … Read the rest
This was a job for the OED. Neither the Oxford American (included in the Dictionary dashboard widget on my Mackertosh) nor the Merriam-Webster Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (the usually adequate dictionary kept on my Palm) had a listing for this word, introduced to me today by my father (thanks Dad!) by way of its derivative adjective apricity. Luckily I have access to the OED through the San Francisco Public Library, even though my library card appears to … Read the rest