Words, Meanings, Language & Quotes

also schtarker, shtarka, shtarker, shtorikue, starker[Yid.] 1. a strong, brave man (occas. woman), an important person (esp. used ironically). 2. a thug, a hoodlum. In a series of interviews he seemed to me a redeeming thug, a man creating himself by merging traits of biblical heroes, charismatic rabbis and the shtarkers of Brownsville's Murder Incorporated. New York Times, March 6, 1994 More   

August 21, 2017 Banausic: serving utilitarian purposes only; mechanical;practica l: architecture that was more banausicthan inspired.

marplot [mahr-plot] noun 1. a person who mars or defeats a plot , design, or project by meddling. First recorded in 1700-10 I'm sorry to be such a marplot, but you can take it out in quizzing me afterI'm gone. Rose in Bloom Louisa May Alcott marplot, an officious bungler, who spoils everything he interferes with. The Slang Dictionary John Camden Hotten Our only marplot has been laid by the heels at the very nick of time. Cripps, the Carrier R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore

anoesis noun [an-oh-ee-sis] 1. a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content.

Dickpot is a word from the 1700s referring to the earthenware pots people filled with hot embers or coals to warm their cold tootsies. According to Ann Elizabeth Baker, writing in the 1800s, dickpots were favored by little old ladies who put them under their petticoats to keep them warm while darning, knitting, and tatting lace. Yes, dickpots were a favorite of little old ladies. Hah.

It wouldn't be nice at all if  coverslut  was the word for any bandaid-wearing nudie on the cover of an erotic magazine (truth be told, it's sometimes hard to tell the mainstream mags from the Maxims). In the 1600s, a  coverslut was a kind of apron women wore while out gardening or cooking to conceal the signs of their dirty work (because, how horrid!).  Slut didn't have the pejorative or sexually explicit sense it does today, but it did refer to "untidiness" or "slovenly appearance."

Friday, December 08, 2017 long, full sideburns or muttonchop whiskers. Citations for dundrearies ... Mr. Pierce pulled at his dundrearies and everybody was very jolly and theytalked about the schooner Mary Wentworth and how Colonel Hodgeson and FatherMurphy looked so hard on the cheery glass ...John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel, 1930 ... old Glory Allelujerum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as hecalls her.James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922 Origin of dundrearies Dundreries came to English in the 1860s after the sideburns worn by actorEdward A. Sothern as Lord Dundreary, a character in the play Our AmericanCousin (1858) by Tom Taylor.

buckram 1. stiffness of manner; extreme preciseness or formality. verb (used with object), 1. to strengthen with buckram. QUOTES You think you are doing mighty well with them; that you are laying aside the buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting the character of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow.

Quote ... for genuine proof in concrete matter we require an organon more delicate, versatile, and elastic than verbal argumentation. John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 1870 Origin The Greek noun órganon means “tool, instrument, sensory organ, body part, musical instrument (whence the English name of the musical instrument), surgical instrument, table of calculations, (a concrete) work, work product, and a set of principles for conducting scientific and philosophical work.” This last meaning first occurs in the works of the Peripatetic philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, who lived in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries a.d. and was the most famous ancient Greek commentator on Aristotle. Órganon is a derivative of the Greek root erg-,org- (also dialectal werg-, worg-), from the Proto-Indo-European root werg-,worg-; the Germanic form of this root is werk-, whence English work. Organon in its sense “bodily organ” entered English in the late 16th centur...