Words of the Day

"weak, effeminate men", from sis(ter). Singular 'cissy'

Why the spelling with c- (sometimes) in British English?

e.g. in

- He said his name was Ashe with an ‘E’ he added quickly, and Leamas knew he
was lying. He pretended not to be quite sure that Leamas really was Leamas,
so over lunch they opened the parcel and looked at the National Insurance
card like, thought Leamas, a couple of cissies looking at a dirty postcard.
(John le Carre - The spy who came in from the cold)

'to destroy a large part of something'

Etymology: c. 1600, in reference to the practice of punishing mutinous military units by capital execution of one in every 10, by lot; from Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare "the removal or destruction of one-tenth," from decem "ten" (from PIE root *dekm- "ten"). The killing of one in ten, chosen by lots, from a rebellious city or a mutinous army was a common punishment in classical times. The word has been used (incorrectly, to the irritation of pedants) since 1660s for "destroy a large portion of."

Examples:

- However, upon the death of the Baron’s father, Dmitri Harkonnen, the old
Emperor had, through some mental deficiency, granted the seat of power to
the softhearted Abulurd, who had managed to decimate spice production in a
mere seven years. Profits plunged, and he lost control to smugglers and
sabotage. (Herbert - House Atreides)

- Prevented from linking with the land forces waiting to invade England from the Low
Countries, the Armada was forced to flee back to Spain the long way, around
the top of Scotland. Battle damage, bad weather and bad luck decimated what
was left of the fleet, and only 60 of the original 130-odd ships made it
home. (Coates - Dutch)

- The elders and the chiefs met to discuss what they could do about the
wasting disease that was quickly decimating their warriors. (Young - Shack)

call dibs = claim / reserve something (mainly US usage)

From: children's word to express a claim on something, 1915, originally U.S., apparently from earlier senses "a portion or share" and "money" (early 19c. colloquial), probably a contraction of dibstone "a knucklebone or jack in a children's game" (1690s), in which the first element is of unknown origin.

Examples:

- Seven hesitates to move, and since he’s hesitant, Sekani is too. But shoot, I want first dibs on a room. “Where are the bedrooms?” (Angie Thomas - The Hate U Give [recommended!])

- ‘Good idea!’ Tom exclaimed from his side of the table, where he was pushing
around some scrambled eggs. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. ‘A
specialist, maybe! Just let me call Shorty the Chauffeur. Tina’s got dibs
on the Rolls for her tennis lesson at the country club, but I think the
Town Car is available.’ (King - Finders Keepers)

- “If this turns out to be a pagan sacrifice,” Sam said, “dibs I not be the
one to tell O’Kelly.” (French - In the Woods)

recent usage: "make a dent in" , "harm"

- In other words, it’s possible to float factually inaccurate statements and yet not ding your chances of confirmation,” Binder said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/24/scientists-just-published-an-entire-study-refuting-scott-pruitt-on-climate-change/

- In addition, he said that the carrier expects passengers will share their experiences on social media, even ones that may ding the company’s armor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/youre-on-plane-a-situation-is-brewing-you-have-a-camera-do-you-press-record/2017/05/19/31d007e6-350b-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html

blend of 'education' and 'entertainment'

Examples:

- But intertextuality is also reflected in the fluidity of genre boundaries and in the blurring of genres and their functions which is reflected in such recent coinages as ’advertorials’, ’infomercials’, ’edutainment’, ’docudrama’ and ’faction’ (a blend of ’fact’ and 'fiction'). (From a semiotics textbook).

By virtue of having one more letter than antidisestablishmentarianism, this is the longest non-technical English word. A mash up of five Latin roots, it refers to the act of describing something as having little or no value. While it made the cut in the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster volumes refuse to recognize it, chalking up its existence to little more than linguistic ephemera.

Latin floccus (“a wisp”) +‎ naucum (“a trifle”) +‎ nihilum (“nothing”) +‎ pilus (“a hair”) + English -fication

Even more impressive, the output of one morphological rule can
be the input to another, or to itself: one can talk about the unmicro-
waveability of some French fries or a toothbrush-holder fastener box
in which to keep one's toothbrush-holder fasteners. This makes the
number of possible words in a language bigger than immense; like
the number of sentences, it is infinite. Putting aside fanciful coinages
concocted for immortality in Guinness, a candidate for the longest
word to date in English might be floccinaucinihilipilification, defined
in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the categorizing of something as
worthless or trivial." But that is a record meant to be broken:
floccinaucinihilipilificational: pertaining to the categorizing
of something as worthless or trivial
floccinaucinihilipilificationalize: to cause something to pertain
to the categorizing of something as worthless or trivial
floccinaucinihilipilificationalization: the act of causing some-
thing to pertain to the categorizing of something as worth-
less or trivial

"disaster, garbage, etc.. Similar to flop, flunk, blubber, etc.: pejorative meaning by association

E.g.

"exchangeable"

- It is consistent for two identical entities
to become different under deterministic and symmetrical laws. But, for that
to happen, they must initially be more than just exact images of each
other: they must be fungible (the g is pronounced as in 'plunger'), by
which I mean identical in literally every way except that there are two of
them. The concept of fungibility is going to appear repeatedly in my story.
The term is borrowed from legal terminology, where it refers to the legal
fiction that deems certain entities to be identical for purposes such as
paying debts. For example, dollar bills are fungible in law, which means
that, unless otherwise agreed, borrowing a dollar does not require one to
return the specific banknote that one borrowed. Barrels of oil (of a given
grade) are fungible too. Horses are not: borrowing someone's horse means
that one has to return that specific horse; even its identical twin will
not do. (Deutsch - Infinity)

- Sullivan basically ignored this question. The closest he came to an
explanation was a passage saying that “global economic forces” hurt
blue-collar workers in particular, forcing them to compete with lots of
other unskilled and basically fungible human beings around the world. (Taibbi - Insane Clown President)

- It is a sort of by-any-means-necessary, no-sin-is-too-grave, all-facts-are-fungible space in the moral universe where the rules of basic human decency warp.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/opinion/donald-trump-greg-gianforte.html

'person in charge', used in some dialects.

shortened from 'godfather'

Here: police commissioner (head of police department):

- Just for a second, like a fool, I get my hopes up. If a case comes in through the gaffer, instead of through our admin straight to the squad room, it’s because it’s something special. Something that’s going to be so  high-profile, or so tough, or so delicate, it can’t just go to whoever’s next on the rota; it needs the right people. One straight from the gaffer hums through the squad room, makes the lads sit up and take notice. One straight from the gaffer would mean me and Steve have finally, finally, worked our way clear of the losers’ corner of the playground: we’re in. (Tana French - The Trespasser [Dublin])

= gourmet = someone who likes to cook and eat good food

- And since I am a gastronome, I take deep pride in our
national dish. I have survived through famines and situations that were
much worse, but there, in that forsaken country where we didn't know what
was to become of us, it was the lack of kimchi that would bother me the
most. (Kim - Thousand Miles)

- I mean, I wish I were a gourmand or a club gastronomer, but, well,
you see the sort of meals I get!’ (He jabbed a finger into the corner,
where on a little table a small tin plate contained the remnants of a
horrible dish of beefsteak and potatoes.) (Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment)