Word of the Day...

[blunthead]

MMMM - is that supposed to make me hungry? That is too weird to be thinking of brains at the same time as wanting something to eat.

I thought if I had had a girl rather than two boys I would have named her "Medulla Oblangata"

Show Spoiler

or maybe Amy

I won't ask your boys' names.

[Haunted]

pseudology \soo-DOL-uh-jee\, noun:

Lying considered as an art.

For example, listening to the life history account of András Albert, a Transylvanian lumberman, the outsider may wonder how to distinguish fact from fiction, poetry from lie, and how to regard the relationship between pseudology and storytelling.
-- Linda Dégh, Narratives in Society

So many people would love to get their hands on a machine that can inhibit pseudology, mendacity and falsehood. The police, Intelligence services, all sorts and conditions of interested agencies and institutions.
-- Stephen Fry, The Liar

Pseudology comes from two Greek roots, pseudo- meaning "false" and -logy meaning "study of." The word does not literally mean "the study of lying" but has come to embody the sense of "the art of lying."

[blunthead]

avatar (ˈa-və-ˌtär) noun, an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) often in a person

I see a world where's there's only cause and effect... A world where every object is an avatar and no gods move behind the scenes.

[Neesy]

Noun

Whispering, murmuring, or rustling: "the susurrus of the stream". From "Gramma" Faintly, he could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the electric clock. The snuffle of the afternoon breeze around the corners of the little house. And then - at the very edge of audibility - the faint, rasping susurrus of skin over cloth ... Gramma's wrinkled, tallowy hand moving on the coverlet.

[Haunted]

pseudepigraphy \soo-duh-PIG-ruh-fee\, noun:

The false ascription of a piece of writing to an author.

But the apocalyptic seers were usually not content with mere anonymity; they generally practiced pseudepigraphy.
-- Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah

Even this gimmick exactly parallels the ancient scriptural practice of pseudepigraphy whereby a later, undistinguished writer, would hide behind the name of a greater figure of the past, claiming venerable authority for his own innovations.
-- R. M. Price, C. A. Smith, The Book of Eibon

Pseudopigraphy was first used in the 1830s, but a related word pseudepigrapha dates back to the 1600s. In Greek, the word epigraph meant "title, ascription to an author." With the prefix pseud, it literally means "false ascription to an author."

[blunthead]

spang (spaŋ) adverb, abruptly, directly, or exactly; Origin: < dial. spang, with a leap

I felt like shoving the heel of my hand up into the shelf of his chin and knocking him spang off the bench.

[Haunted]

hypnopompic \hip-nuh-POM-pik\, adjective:

Of or pertaining to the semiconscious state prior to complete wakefulness.

He shudders, snaps himself out of it; as one can, with effort, do, to escape from a bad dream, working one's way in stages, toward hypnopompic state until finally, fully awake.
-- Mary Caponegro, The Star Cafe

He woke fitfully, from a dream where his work had gone terribly wrong. He was still hypnopompic.
-- Richard Powers, The Echo Maker

Hypnopompic literally means "sending away sleep" in Greek. It was coined in English in the early 1900s from the roots hypno- meaning "sleep" and pomp meaning "sending away."

[Haunted]

Camelot \KAM-uh-lot\, noun:

1. Any idyllic place or period, especially one of great happiness.
2. The legendary site of King Arthur's palace and court, possibly near Exeter, England.
3. The glamorous ambience of Washington, D.C., during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, 1961–63.

A tiny house next to it had been the girl's home for all the summers of her short life. It was her castle, her retreat, her hideaway, her Camelot.
-- Matina Psyhogeos, Reaching for the Sky

His father's voice brought him out of his Camelot reverie. Probably the old man was reading his mind and that would account for his sardonic smile under the raised eyebrows.
-- Ward S. Just, Forgetfulness

Camelot may or may not have ever been a real place. Some have claimed that it corresponds to Camuladonum, the Roman forerunner of Colchester, which was an impressive palace in the Middle Ages, but Elizabethans tended to see it as Cadbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort near Glastonbury. Regardless, it has been associated with a place of wealth and beauty since the 1100s.

[Haunted]

en règle \ahn RE-gluh\, adjective:

In order; according to the rules; correct.

This was all done en règle, and in our work we shall be en règle too. We shall not go so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange.
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula

I told her it was not quite en règle to bring one so far out of our own set; but she said, 'Genius itself is not en règle; it comes into the world to make new rules.'
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

En règle snuck into the English language in the 1810s. It came directly from the French phrase of the same spelling which meant literally "in rule."

[Haunted]

plotz \plots\, verb:

To collapse or faint, as from surprise, excitement, or exhaustion.

And there would be no way to hide the official tail on her parents' manicured, sweeping drive. “God, Mother would plotz.”
-- Elizabeth Lowell, Die in Plain Sight

I mean, the consul would have plotzed, since it would have made him directly involved.
-- Avner Mandelman, Talking to the Enemy

Plotz is an Americanism that first arose in the 1940s. It comes from the Yiddish word platsn which meant "to crack, split, burst." That word in turn originated in the German word blatzen or platzen.