DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

minatory / MIN-uh-tor-ee / adjective : 1. Threatening or menacing.

Notes & Etymology: From the Latin minari (to threaten), from minae (threats). Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (project) that is also the source of menace, mountain, eminent, promenade, demean, amenable, and mouth.

Usage: “France has seldom assumed a minatory posture towards India, being much less inclined than other major countries to hector, or push and prod in an attempt to influence policy. "
The Statesman (New Delhi, India); Jan 31, 2008.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

assiduous / uh-SIJ-oo-uhs / adjective : 1. Constant; persistent; industrious.

Notes & Etymology: From the Latin assiduus, from assidere (to attend to, to sit down to), from ad- (toward) + sedere (to sit). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sed- (to sit) that is also the source of sit, chair, saddle, assess, sediment, soot, cathedral, and tetrahedron.

Usage: “The reason for his presence there [a Donald Duck statue in a temple garden] remains a mystery despite the author's most assiduous inquiries. "
Jeff Kingston; Chiang Mai: Thailand's beguiling Rose of the North; The Japan Times (Tokyo); Jun 28, 2009.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

quietus / kwy-EE-tuhs / noun: 1. A final discharge, as of a duty or debt. 2. Removal from activity; rest; death. 3. Something that serves to suppress, check, or eliminate.

Notes & Etymology: From the Medieval Latin quietus (est), "(it is) at rest" (said of an obligation that has been discharged), from Latin quietus, "at rest."

Usage: “During his final illness, someone asked Schiller how he felt: "calmer and calmer" was the reply. It was a quietus he richly deserved ."
Roger Kimball; "Schiller's 'Aesthetic Education"; New Criterion; March 2001

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

sybaritic / sib-uh-rit-ik / adjective: 1. Devoted to or marked by pleasure and luxury. 2 Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Sybaris or its inhabitants.

Notes & Etymology: From the Latin Sybariticus which is taken from Sybaris a celebrated city of Magna Graecia on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto. The wealth of the city in the 6th century B.C. was such that the Sybarites became synonymous with pleasure and luxury.

Usage: “With Homer Simpson out of the way, we celebrities can go back to our lives of sybaritic excess."
J. Stewart Burns; The Simpsons “Homerazzi”; 2007

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

defenestration  / dee-fen-uh-strey-shuhn / noun: 1. the act of throwing a thing or esp. a person out of a window
Notes & Etymology: From the Latin fenestra meaning window. A word invented for one incident: the "Defenestration of Prague," May 21, 1618, when two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window (into a moat) of the castle of Hradshin by Protestant radicals. It marked the start of the Thirty Years War.

Usage: “De Haven's work on survival in defenestrations was instrumental in the development of the seat belt. ."