Saccade

"Remember, the first scientist to experiment with change blindness was making changes to the page while people were looking directly at it. He was able to do it by introducing the changes during saccadic movement."
["5 Ways Your Brain Is Messing With Your Head" by Brian Walton, Cracked.com*]

NOUN: A rapid intermittent eye movement, as that which occurs when the eyes fix on one point after another in the visual field.
ETYMOLOGY: French, twitch, from Old French, from Old North French saqiuer, to pull, from sac, sack. See sac.
ADJECTIVE: sac·cadic
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Harridan

"'How had she ended up like this, imprisoned in the role of harridan?' Ms. Heller writes of Audrey. 'Once upon a time, her brash manner had been a mere posture — a convenient and amusing way for an insecure teenage bride, newly arrived in America, to disguise her crippling shyness. People had actually enjoyed her vituperation back then, encouraged it and celebrated it. She had carved out a minor distinction for herself as a ‘character’: the cute little English girl with the chutzpah and the longshoreman’s mouth.'"
["Fighting Demons From Left and Right" by Michiko Katutani, NY Times, March 2, 2009 *]

NOUN: A woman regarded as scolding and vicious.
ETYMOLOGY: Possibly from French haridelle, gaunt woman, old horse, nag.
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Outlier

"Diamonds in the rough, though, remain the outliers. “For every thousand titles that get self-published, maybe there’s two that should have been published,” said Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, who said she had been inundated by requests from self-published authors to sell their books."
["Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab", by Motoko Rich, NY Times, January 27, 2009*]

NOUN: 1. One whose domicile lies at an appreciable distance from his or her place of business. 2. A value far from most others in a set of data: “Outliers make statistical analyses difficult” (Harvey Motulsky, GraphPad Insight (from website) Number 12, Spring 1997 ). 3. Geology A portion of stratified rock separated from a main formation by erosion.
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Disembogue

"With Earth Day upon us, we head down to the last in the trinity of public access points on the lower Jordan River, Kasr el Yehud, just above where the Jordan disembogues into the Dead Sea."
[Yahoo Adventures: Jordan River*]

VERB: Inflected forms: dis·em·bogued, dis·em·bogu·ing, dis·em·bogues
INTRANSITIVE VERB: To flow out or empty, as water from a channel: “the river whose dirty waters disembogue into the harbor” (John Updike).
TRANSITIVE VERB: To discharge or pour forth (water, for example).
ETYMOLOGY: From Spanish desembogue, mouth of a river, from desembocar, to flow out : des-, reversal (from Latin dis-) + embocar, to put into the mouth (from Latin in-) + boca, mouth (from Latin bucca, cheek).
OTHER FORMS: disem·boguement —NOUN
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Syncretism

"The religion of the Yazidis is a highly syncretistic one: Sufi influence and imagery can be seen in their religious vocabulary, especially in the terminology of their esoteric literature, but much of the mythology is non-Islamic, and their cosmogonies apparently have many points in common with those of ancient Iranian religions."
[Wikipedia entry on Yazidi*]

NOUN: 1. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous. 2. Linguistics The merging of two or more originally different inflectional forms.
ETYMOLOGY: Greek for union
OTHER FORMS: syn·cretic, syncre·tistic —ADJECTIVE, syncre·tist —NOUN
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Rogatory

"But Mr. Fiorilli said the delegation from the Culture Ministry would be reiterating what Italy has told the Met in earlier rogatories ... that they believe these specific works were illegally excavated and exported from Italy."
["Confrontation With Italy Looms at the Met", NYTimes, Novemeber 21, 2005*]

ADJECTIVE: Law Requesting information. Used especially of a request by one court of another, often foreign court for aid in obtaining desired information: a rogatory letter.
ETYMOLOGY: French rogatoire, from Medieval Latin, from Latin, to ask.
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Exigency

"Had it emerged earlier in the term, I might have assumed that this liaison was a mistake: another one of those short-lived pacts dictated by exigency rather than true fellow feeling. But given how long Sheba had maintained a stately separateness from the rest of the staff, the friendship had to be acknowledged as a considered and deliberate choice on her part."
[What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller, p34, First Picador Edition, June 2004]

NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. ex·i·gen·cies
1. The state or quality of requiring much effort or immediate action. 2. A pressing or urgent situation. See synonyms at crisis. 3. Urgent requirements; pressing needs. Often used in the plural.
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Boondoggle

"Bush officials said Wilson’s trip was a boondoggle, and was set up by his wife, [Valerie] Plame Wilson, who worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction."
[Second Cheney aide cooperating in leak probe, those close to case say by Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna*]

NOUN: 1. Informal An unnecessary or wasteful project or activity. 2a. A braided leather cord worn as a decoration especially by Boy Scouts. b. A cord of braided leather, fabric, or plastic strips made by a child as a project to keep busy. [Note from Renice: Napoleon Dynamite's friend Deb is a boondoggle entrepreneur.]
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: boon·dog·gled, boon·dog·gling, boon·dog·gles; To waste time or money on a boondoggle.
ETYMOLOGY: Coined by Robert H. Link (died 1957), American scoutmaster.
OTHER FORMS: boondoggler —NOUN
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Deliquesce

"But yesterday, three days after his death, as they lugged the Pope's body around on that cross (!) between a litter and a bier, his body had begun to lose its individuality. Embalmed or not, it's subsiding into a thing, becoming faceless and deliquescent, its nose drooping like a melting icicle, its feet jiggling obscenely to the pallbearers' steps."
["Get It OUT of Here" on AmbivaBlog*]

INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: del·i·quesced, del·i·quesc·ing, del·i·quesc·es
1a. To melt away. b. To disappear as if by melting. 2. Chemistry To dissolve and become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air. 3. Botany a. To branch out into numerous subdivisions that lack a main axis, as the stem of an elm. b. To become fluid or soft on maturing, as certain fungi.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin, to melt, inchoative of liquere, to be liquid.
OTHER FORMS: deli·quescence —NOUN
deli·quescent —ADJECTIVE
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Fusty

"We have now invented the word postmodern, as if we could finally fix modern in time, but even postmodern (first recorded in 1949) will seem fusty in the end, perhaps sooner than modern will."
[from Modern: Word History, American History Dictionary*]

ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: fus·ti·er, fus·ti·est
1. Smelling of mildew or decay; musty. 2. Old-fashioned; antique.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French fust, piece of wood, wine cask, from Latin for stick, club.
OTHER FORMS: fusti·ly —ADVERB; fusti·ness —NOUN
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Bespoke

"English Cut: The website of Thomas Mahon, bespoke savile row tailor, London."
[from blog banner text*]

ADJECTIVE: 1. Custom-made. Said especially of clothes. 2. Making or selling custom-made clothes: a bespoke tailor.
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Pyrrhic victory

"Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion."
[The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers*]

NOUN: A victory that is offset by staggering losses.
ETYMOLOGY: After Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (306–302 and 297–272) who defeated the Romans at Heraclea (280) and Asculum (279) despite his own staggering losses.
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Plenitude

"She is warm, her hair is silken, and she nestles perfectly into the curve of your torso. You experience something like plenitude..."
[NY Times OpEd by Judith Warner, "I Love Them, I Love Him Not"*]

NOUN: 1. An ample amount or quantity; an abundance: a region blessed with a plenitude of natural resources. 2. The condition of being full, ample, or complete.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin, full.
OTHER FORMS: pleni·tudi·nous —ADJECTIVE
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Rapacious

"Grievances, including friction between kitchen and dining room staff, rapacious management and near-universal bitterness over tipping, are being revealed with gusto on the Internet by restaurant staff members."
[NY Times, "The Waiter You Stiffed Has Not Forgotten" by Julia Moskin*]

ADJECTIVE: 1. Taking by force; plundering. 2. Greedy; ravenous. See synonyms at voracious. 3. Subsisting on live prey.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin, from rapere, to seize.
OTHER FORMS: ra·pacious·ly —ADVERB
ra·paci·ty, ra·pacious·ness —NOUN
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Congeries

"Their (the abandoned children of Nishi-Sugamo) tale is a rich, awful congeries of primal and distinctly modern fears, from the universal childhood fantasy of parental abandonment to the more grown-up suspicion that big cities are places of cruel isolation and indifference."
[NY Times movie review]

NOUN: A collection; an aggregation (used with a sing. verb)
From Latin, congerere, to heap up.
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Exoteric

"While other branches of Islam generally focus on exoteric aspects of religion, Sufism is mainly focused on the direct perception of Truth or God through mystic practices based on divine love."
[Wikipedia entry on Sufism*]

ADJECTIVE: 1. Not confined to an inner circle of disciples or initiates. 2. Comprehensible to or suited to the public; popular. 3. Of or relating to the outside; external.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin, external, from Greek comparative of outside.
OTHER FORMS: exo·teri·cal·ly —ADVERB
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