Word of the Day: miasma

miasma \my-AZ-muh; mee-\, noun:

1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.
2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog.

The critics, he says, "will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a miasma of toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette."
-- Charles E. Little, "No One Communes Anymore", New York Times, October 17, 1993

To destroy such prejudices, which many a time rise and spread themselves like a miasma, is an imperative duty of theory, for the misbegotten offspring of human reason can also be in turn destroyed by pure reason.
-- Carl von Clausewitz, On War (translated by Colonel James John Graham)

He spends whatever money he has on hash and eventually heroin . . . and proceeds to sink into a miasma of anger and alienation.
-- Jhumpa Lahiri, "Money Talks in Pakistan", New York Times, March 12, 2000

Girls of my generation stumbled through much of our early adolescence in a dense miasma of longing.
-- Ellen Pall, "She had a Crush on Them", New York Times, July 29, 1990

Miasma comes from Greek miasma, "pollution," from miainein, "to pollute."

Word of the Day: camarilla

camarilla \kam-uh-RIL-uh; -REE-yuh\, noun:

A group of secret and often scheming advisers, as of a king; a cabal or clique.

Mr Kiselev likened Yeltsin's entourage to a "camarilla" . . . which would turn Russia "into a gigantic banana republic corrupted from top to bottom by a rotten clique of demagogues".
-- Marcus Warren, "Moguls at war over control of Kremlin", Daily Telegraph, July 23, 1999

The arrest in October 1976 of Mao's radical camarilla, the so-called Gang of Four, led by his maniacal widow, Jiang Qing, was the second "liberation," delivering the Chinese from the most extreme forms of ideological conditioning.
-- Willem Van Kemenade, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Inc.

Camarilla comes from Spanish, literally, "a small room," from Late Latin camera, "chamber" ("vault; arched roof" in Latin), from Greek kamara, "vault."

Word of the Day: woebegone

woebegone \WOE-bee-gon\, adjective:

1. Beset or overwhelmed with woe; immersed in grief or sorrow; woeful.
2. Being in a sorry condition; dismal-looking; dilapidated; run-down.

Socrates, condemned to death by the people of Athens, prepares to drink a cup of hemlock, surrounded by woebegone friends.
-- Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

This woebegone lot includes Henry, a real-estate developer whose dream project has, like his marriage, slipped into bankruptcy; Henry's sister, Wiloma, who has hurled herself headlong into the arms of a New Age church to survive her own divorce; and Henry and Wiloma's decrepit Uncle Brendan, a former monk whose faith has eroded along with his health, stranding him in a nursing home.
-- Jennifer Howard, review of The Forms of Water by Andrea Barrett, New York Times, June 13, 1996

After 40 years as a producer he thinks of himself as a battered, scarred but well-armoured animal, "like an old turtle"; and if such creatures could speak they would probably sound like [him], a bit woebegone but drolly unsurprised by life's vicissitudes.
-- "Time for another Hugo hit", Times (London), May 22, 2000

Woebegone is from Middle English wo begon, from wo (from Old English wa, used to express grief) + begon, past participle of begon, "to go about, to beset," from Old English began, bigan, from bi-, "around, about" + gan, "to go."

Word of the Day: bellwether

bellwether \BEL-weth-uhr\, noun:

A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.

Raised to believe they were among their generation's best and brightest, my class can be seen as a bellwether for a generation caught without a compass on the cutting edge of uncharted territory.
-- Elizabeth Fishel, Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became

Before that election, Maine's proud citizens had fancied their state to be a sort of bellwether, a notion embodied in the saying "As Maine goes, so goes the nation."
-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union

Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, "a male sheep, usually castrated"; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.

Word of the Day: jollification

jollification \jol-ih-fuh-KAY-shuhn\, noun:

Merrymaking; festivity; revelry.

Some inform; some prompt the conscience; some entertain, while having more than jollification in mind.
-- Stuart Klawans, "A Greek Bearing Gifts", The Nation, June 21, 1999

In July, expect the usual impertinent jollifications in Key West: look-alike and Key-lime-pie-eating contests, arm-wrestling tournaments.
-- David Gates, "Resurrecting Papa", Newsweek, April 12, 1999

Jollification is from jolly (from Old French joli, jolif, "joyful, merry") + Latin -ficare, combining form of facere, "to make."