Harbinger......


Messenger with news of the future. Something that foreshadows a future event :something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come robins, crocuses, and others are harbingers of spring.....:hangloose:

Hyperbolic is an adjective that comes from the word hyperbole, which means an exaggerated claim.

The Greek root huperbolē means “excess,” and broken down even further the word literally translates as “throw above.”

mondegreen
A word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung An excellent example of this is phrases in songs! "My Eyes Adored You" could become "Sweet Eyes Of Georgia" The old Beatles song "Day Tripper" could become "State Trooper" etc etc ...

and.... Your word is _______?

You don't post a word in THIS thread, that's in "Word Of The Day" thread.

onomatopoeia

Boom! Bang! Crash! When a word is formed from the sound that an associated thing makes, it's an example of onomatopoeia.

In Greek, onomatopoeia (on-uh-mah-tuh-PEE-ah) simply means "word-making," but in English it refers to a very specific process of word-making: an attempt to capture the sound of something. Examples of onomatopoeia in English include burble, buzz, slosh, ratatat, and thud. Words created by onomatopoeia can seem totally natural, but they can be surprisingly different from language to language.

interlocutor........

One who takes part in dialogue or conversation.

Interlocutor derives from the Latin interloqui, meaning "to speak between". Interloqui, in turn, ultimately comes from the words inter-, "between," and loqui, "to speak." Some other words that English borrowed from loqui are loquacious "talkative", circumlocution essentially, "talking around a subject", ventriloquism "talking in such a way that one's voice seems to come from someone or something else", eloquent "capable of fluent or vivid speech, and grandiloquence "extravagant or pompous speech".

heliocentric.........


Having or representing the sun as the center, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system.

talisman..............

An object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, that is thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck. An object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. Something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects.

Do you believe in lucky charms? Language reflects the fact that many people do. We might have borrowed talisman from French, Spanish, or Italian; all three include similar-looking words for a lucky charm. Those three terms derive from a single Arabic word for a charm, tilsam. Tilsam in turn can be traced to the ancient Greek verb telein, which means "to initiate into the mysteries." While the word talisman, in its strictest use, refers to an object, even a human being can be considered a talisman—such as a player on a team whose mere presence somehow causes magical things to happen.

Pillion........


A light saddle for women consisting chiefly of a cushion
A pad or cushion put on behind a man's saddle chiefly for a woman to ride on
A motorcycle or bicycle saddle for a passenger.


Scots Gaelic or Irish; Scottish Gaelic pillean, diminutive of peall covering, couch; Irish pillín, diminutive of peall covering, couch.

gentrification
 

Let's tell folks what exactly gentrification means. Pls. correct me if I miss a point.

A venture capitalist, one who invests in the misfortunes of others, comes into a city, neighborhood, basically any area which has befallen economic hardship. Examples would include Gary/Hammond IN, parts of Pittsburgh and Akron and Cleveland. Detroit would fall in this category which these mega-rich investors come in, offering residents cents on the dollars to acquire these once proven profitable properties. The old neighborhoods were razed with new malls, apartment building which have rents unaffordable by residents, and other services and products out of the residents range.

These prior residents are displaced to more and more unsatisfactory housing. In addition, the items they were forced to leave behind, ancestral photographs, antiques, and glassware, sometimes worth hundreds of thousands dollars if they could have sold the items. They might not be stuck in this cycle of poverty.

OMG i was trying to remember this word, and i couldn’t. What’s it called when you can’t remember the word that means forgetting the names of words??

:seeingstars:

VERY well put.......:hangloose:

I do say this has been one of the biggest contribution to the homelessness problem in American! I really don't want to get on a soapbox here BUT....I firmly believe that many palms have been greased for everything from re-zoning to god only knows what-else so these developers can swoop in, make millions, and then move on to bigger & even more profitable targets!

confabulate
 

Hooligan...
 

A usually young man who does noisy and violent things as part of a group or gang.



1890s, of unknown origin, according to OED, first found in British newspaper police-court reports in the summer of 1898, almost certainly from the variant form of the Irish surname Houlihan, which figured as a characteristic comic Irish name in music hall songs and newspapers of the 1880s and '90s.

epicurean
 

fond of or adapted to luxury or indulgence in sensual pleasures; having luxurious tastes or habits, especially in eating and drinking.


As a noun,,,late 14c., "follower of the philosophical system of Epicurus;" 1570s, "one devoted to pleasure," from Old French Epicurien, or from epicure + -ian. As an adjective, attested from 1580s in the philosophical sense and 1640s with the meaning "pleasure-loving."

papyrus ..............

A tall, aquatic plant, Cyperus papyrus, of the sedge family, native to the Nile valley: the Egyptian subspecies, C. papyrus hadidii, thought to be common in ancient times, now occurs only in several sites.

A material on which to write, prepared from thin strips of the pith of this plant laid together, soaked, pressed, and dried, used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. In ancient Mediterranean times it was also used for making rope, sandals, and boats.

An ancient document, manuscript, or scroll written on this material.

eccedentesiast...

One who fakes a smile or represses his pain by stifling a smile. Or you could say a person who hides his feeling behind a smile.


Word Origin: It is a term that is normally used to define people who go in front of the camera and have to fake a smile for the sake of the audience. The term is suspected to have first been coined by Florence King, an American Novelist and writer for the National Review. She refereed to this term in her column ‘The Misanthrope’s Corner’ when talking about politician’s and TV hosts. This is a great literary term to use if you’re trying to describe a character who tends to be reluctant when it comes to displaying genuine emotion.

tomfoolery............

Playful or foolish behavior.

In the Middle Ages, "Thome Fole" was a name assigned to those perceived to be of little intelligence. This eventually evolved into the spelling tomfool, which, when capitalized, also referred to a professional clown or a buffoon in a play or pageant. The name Tom seems to have been chosen for its common-man quality, much like "Joe Blow" for an ordinary person or "Johnny Reb" for a soldier in the Confederate army, but tomfoolery need not apply strictly to actions by men. In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), for example, Marilla Cuthbert complains of Anne: "She's gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or her duties."

belly-up



Hopelessly ruined or defeated; in business it usually indicates a business as not succeeded!


Sidebar: If you've ever had a goldfish, you probably noticed how it looked when it died: belly-up!

pedestrian


A person who goes or travels on foot; walker.

Lacking in vitality, imagination, distinction, etc.; commonplace; dull.

Word Origin... from Latin pedester, from pēs foot.

1716, "prosaic, dull" (of writing), from Latin pedester (genitive pedestris) "plain, not versified, prosaic,".

paramount


Superior to all others. Most important than anything else; supreme.

Je ne sais quoi


Literally it means "I do not know" in French. But it is actually an euphemism to express a pleasant or desirable trait about something or someone that can't be described or explained. A quality that cannot be described or named easily.

Sapiosexuals


A person who finds the content's of someone else's mind to be their most attractive attribute, above and before their physical characteristics.

From the Latin root "sapien", meaning wise. The term is now becoming mainstream with dating apps giving users the ability to define their sexual orientations as "Sapiosexual."

For many, defining oneself as Sapiosexual is also a statement against the current status quo of hookup culture and superficiality, where looks are prized above all else.

Dalliance



A romantic or sexual relationship that is brief and not serious. An action that is not serious.

Wonky............



Crooked; off-center; askew. Unsteady; shaky. Not functioning correctly; faulty, weak, wobbly.

Cahoots...............


Colluding or conspiring together secretly.


Cahoot is used almost exclusively in the phrase "in cahoots," which means "in an alliance or partnership." In most contexts, it describes the conspiring activity of people up to no good. "Cahoot" may derive from French cahute, meaning "cabin" or "hut," suggesting the notion of two or more people hidden away working together in secret.

Cheerio....


Used as an expression of good wishes on parting; goodbye.


British, 1910, from cheer.

maelstrom.........


A powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius. A restless, disordered, or tumultuous state of affairs.

Maelstrom comes from an early Dutch proper noun that literally meant "turning stream." The original Maelstrom is a channel that has dangerous tidal currents located off the northwest coast of Norway. The word became popularized in the general vocabulary of English in reference to a powerful whirlpool, or something akin to one, in the 19th century. This was partly due to its use by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne (whose writing was widely translated from French) in stories exaggerating the tempestuousness of the Norwegian current and transforming it into a whirling vortex.

Cryptocurrency

An alternate form of currency that is strictly digital.
Works through encryption over the internet making it's use anonymous.
Difficult for the receiver to prove who the sender
was and visa versa. There are 2 main types of cryptocurrency in
use at present, Bitcoin and Ether. There are other less used forms,
but they operate in the same or similar ways.

cryptic......


Having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure. Having or seeming to have a hidden or ambiguous meaning.


The history of "cryptic" starts with "kryptein," a Greek word meaning "to hide."

gander


To look or glance at something. A male goose.



Probably derivative of gander, from the goose-like appearance of a person stretching to look at something or somebody.

besmirch


Damage the reputation of someone or something in the opinion of others.

Since the prefix be- in besmirch means "to make or cause to be," when you besmirch something, you cause it to have a smirch. What's a smirch? A smirch is a stain, and "to smirch" is to stain or make dirty. By extension, "to smirch" came to mean "to bring discredit or disgrace on." "Smirch" and "besmirch," then, mean essentially the same thing. We have William Shakespeare to thank for the variation in form. Shakespeare's 1599 use of the term in Henry V is the first known appearance of "besmirch" in English.

aberrant

Departing from an accepted standard. Diverging from the normal type. Also a
role-playing game created by White Wolf Game Studio in 1999.


Something aberrant has wandered away from the usual path or form. The word is generally used in a negative way; aberrant behavior, for example, may be a symptom of other problems. But the discovery of an aberrant variety of a species can be exciting news to a biologist, and identifying an aberrant gene has led the way to new treatments for diseases.

pragmatist



A person who is guided more by practical considerations than by ideals. An advocate of the approach that evaluates theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.

commingle


To blend thoroughly into a harmonious whole This can be anything from cash, assets, household good, to personal effects! Often times when two people move in together, possessions are commingled!

If you've ever seen the scene in When Harry Met Sally, about the ugly wheel coffee table, it's perhaps best NOT to commingle items.

Ether

1. A C-O-C chemical compound used as a solvent in chemistry that
has a penchant for becoming unstable and having increased
flammability especially after it's expiration date.

2. An anesthesia agent used frequently through the 1960s in the US.
Ether's use in Surgery was discontinued as a result of it's acute
flammability. Other, non-flammable, agents were developed. The
drape erected in the OR between the anesthesiologist and the surgeon
was originally used to prevent a spark caused by surgical equipment
from coming in contact with the flammable anesthetic. The original
name for the drape was the "ether curtain."

3. Ether(s) archaic definition was a term used pertaining to the upper
atmosphere or something traveling through the air, e.g. a scent or
spirit being or traveling through the ethers. A mystical version of
floating through the air.
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