Word of the Day...

[Felipe]

Hi everyone, a ''little'' word:

Caution: If you have fear of long words don't see this.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, a fear of long words.

Pronunciation: hɪ.pə.pɒ.təˈmɒn.strəˌsɛ.skwɪ.pɪˈdeɪ.lɪəˌfoʊ.bɪə

Etymology: Extension of sesqui(p)pedalophobia with monstrum "monster" and a truncated form of hippopotamus, intended to exaggerate the length of the word itself and the idea of the size of the words being feared. The word consists of 36 letters.

[Haunted]

triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun:

Fear or a phobia concerning the number 13.

Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month.
-- Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967

Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13.
-- "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday", Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996

Despite NASA's seemingly ingrained case of triskaidekaphobia, which forced managers to impose the bizarre, '13-free' numbering system on its flights, the crew of perhaps the most important Shuttle mission to date clearly were unsure if STS-41C was supposed to be unlucky or not.
-- Ben Evans, Space Shuttle Challenger: Ten Journeys into the Unknown

Triskaidekaphobia is from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, thirteen (treis, three + kai, and + deka, ten) + phobos, fear.

Some famous triskaidekaphobes:

Napoleon
Herbert Hoover
Mark Twain
Richard Wagner
Franklin Roosevelt


1. Source: "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday," Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996

[Perse Jr.]

namby-pamby \nam-bee-PAM-bee\ (adjective): lacking in character or substance; insipid; weak, indecisive.

Example Sentence: The candidate criticized her opponent during the debate, calling him a namby-pamby flip-flopper who could not stand up for what he believed in.

The word itself matches the definition perfectly! Namby-pamby!

[Mr. Jingles]

namby-pamby \nam-bee-PAM-bee\ (adjective): lacking in character or substance; insipid; weak, indecisive.

Namby Pamby is also a character in "Drop Dead Fred", one of my FAVE movies ever!!! Rik Mayall is awesome!

[jprendable]

seraphic....a word I often use to describe my wife....it means angelic...

[Samantha_]

frosty adj. 1. Freezing, frozen, icy, glacial, frigid, arctic, wintry, bitter.

2. Unfriendly, cold, unwelcoming, hostile.

Source: Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus & Wordpower Guide

Or ... Frosty, the name of a certain famous snowman

[coolambindang]

Anthropomorphism : attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures, beings, objects, or abstract forms and ideas.

"Such a great word"

[Haunted]

clinquant \KLING-kunt\,

adjective:
1. Glittering with gold or silver; tinseled.

noun:
1. Tinsel; imitation gold leaf.

Leaves flicker celadon in the spring, viridian in summer, clinquant in fall, tallying the sovereign seasons, graying and greening to reiterate the message of snow and sun.
-- Ann Zwinger, Beyond the Aspen Grove

The room had a twelve-foot high ceiling: hanging from it, four dimly lit antique brass chandeliers cast a clinquant glow on this sunless day.
-- Sally Koslow, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx: A Novel

The water, turned clinquant by the sunset, lay rather than stood.
-- William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America

Clinquant is from French, glistening, tinkling, present participle of obsolete clinquer, to clink, perhaps from Middle Dutch klinken.

[Haunted]

aubade \oh-BAHD\, noun:

A song or poem greeting the dawn; also, a composition suggestive of morning.

He was usually still awake when the birds began to warble their aubade.
-- Christopher Buckley, "What was Robert Benchley?", National Review, June 16, 1997

And there he lingered till the crowing cock...Sang his aubade with lusty voice and clear.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emma and Eginhard

Gwynn was up the back, playing a soft aubade on the piano that Feni had installed years ago when business was brisker and he could afford to pay entertainers.
-- K.J. Bishop, The Etched City

Aubade comes from the French, from aube, dawn + the noun suffix -ade: aube ultimately derives from Latin albus, white, pale, as in "alba lux," the "pale light" of dawn.

[Haunted]

quietus \kwy-EE-tuhs\, noun:

1. Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation.
2. Removal from activity; rest; death.
3. Something that serves to suppress or quiet.

I have put a quietus upon that ticking. Depend upon it, the ticking will trouble you no more.
-- Herman Melville, "The Apple-Tree Table"

Consider a small police-blotter report from an 1875 issue of The Grant County Herald in Silver City, N[ew] M[exico]: "We learn that on Friday, Jose Garcia, who lives at the Chino copper mines, caught his wife in flagrante delicto -- we leave the reader to guess the crime -- Jose, then and there, gave her the quietus with an axe."
-- Thomas Kunkel, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Six-Shooter", New York Times, August 30, 1998

It was after eleven when Fanning put the quietus to his day, retreating to the "Hospitality Suite" where he'd been hanging his hat these past weeks.
-- David Long, The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux

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

Quietus is from Medieval Latin quietus (est), "(it is) at rest" (said of an obligation that has been discharged), from Latin quietus, "at rest."