Word of the Day...

[Haunted]

kef \keyf\, noun:

1. A state of drowsy contentment
2. Also, keef. a substance, especially a smoking preparation of hemp leaves, used to produce this state.

I need not add that my kef—my noon rest, did not pass without interruption.
-- Karl Friedrich May, Through the Desert

...I tied on my hat and lit it down and held up my umbrella for shade, and fell into kef, being incapable of sustained thought.
-- William Cory, Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory

Kef comes from the Arabic word kaif meaning “well-being or pleasure.”

[Haunted]

panegyrize \PAN-i-juh-rahyz\, verb:

1. To eulogize; to deliver or write a panegyric about.
2. To indulge in panegyric; bestow praises.

I allowed then as how I had been moved to panegyrize Lieutenant Locke.
-- Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye

Judge Story was a profound admirer of Chief Justice Marshall, and could rarely hear his name mentioned without digressing to panegyrize his learning and intellectual power.
-- William Matthews, Hours with Men and Books

From Greek, panegyrize originally meant “belonging to a public assembly” from pan meaning “all” and egyris, “gathering.”

[Haunted]

appetence \AP-i-tuhns\, noun:

1. Intense desire; strong natural craving; appetite.
2. Instinctive inclination or natural tendency.
3. Material or chemical attraction or affinity.

A sudden step and desire to reach back in time to change the circumstances, to re-write and re-route all those ferocious columns, an appetence to change what had been done and said.
-- Charles D. Ellison, Tantrum

How immense is their thirst for life! A youthful nation in its entirety, a new mankind, inspired with an eager appetence for knowledge and truth.
-- Stefan Zweig and Laurence Mintz, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky: Master Builders of the Spirit

Appetence, from the same root as appetite, comes from the Latin appete meaning “to seek for or long for.”

[Haunted]

procrustean \proh-KRUHS-tee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Tending to produce conformity by violent or arbitrary means.
2. Pertaining to or suggestive of Procrustes.

Soon they were operating a sort of procrustean ferry where the fares were tailored to accommodate the purses of the travelers. Ultimately all pretense was dropped and the immigrants were robbed outright.
-- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

To force them into the machine would require a Procrustean mutilation of their basic humanity.
-- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Procrustean refers to the Greek myth of Procrustes, who was a robber who tortured his victims. According to mythology, he was killed by Theseus.

[blunthead]

sere (ˈsir) adjective, being dried and withered.

The Marin headlands were brown and sere ahead of her.

[JohnDalglish]

2. Also, keef. a substance, especially a smoking preparation of hemp leaves, used to produce this

Hi,

When Keith Richards, guitarist with the Stones, discovered this he was like a dog with two tails and immediately became the 'Keef''we know and love today.

Long days and pleasant nights

[Haunted]

serry \SER-ee\, verb:

To crowd closely together.

Serry means to crowd and is spelled serry.
-- Mildred Colvin, Missouri Brides

To keep unsettled the questions upon which these united with the Liberation Society, —accustom a powerful contingent to work together with “political Dissenters,”—to serry friends and foes into hostile phalanx, —to accept battle on a weak ground where it is only possible to rally half the forces...
-- S. Wellington, The Spectator, Vol. 6

Serry is from the Middle French serré which was the past participle of serrer meaning “to press tightly together.”

[larchi]

my favourite word is opopanax (a herb, mainly grows in the med)- i love the spelling so much!
unfortunately my word of the day would be endoplasmic reticulum..........horrible word

[blunthead]

chronosynclastic infundibulum (krono-sin-'kla-stik in-fun-'dib-u-lum) noun, 1a. time with a curvature at a given point and in a particular direction that is the same as the curvature at that point in perpendicular direction; 1b. time warped into a funnel-shaped passage or cavity; 2. a place, or a moment, where all the different kinds of truths fit together, and where there are many different ways to be absolutely right about everything.

You might think it would be nice to go to a chronosynclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do.

[J.T. Adams]

chronosynclastic infundibulum (krono-sin-'kla-stik in-fun-'dib-u-lum) noun, 1a. time with a curvature at a given point and in a particular direction that is the same as the curvature at that point in perpendicular direction; 1b. time warped into a funnel-shaped passage or cavity; 2. a place, or a moment, where all the different kinds of truths fit together, and where there are many different ways to be absolutely right about everything.

You might think it would be nice to go to a chronosynclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do.

LOL great, Frank. You could probably say that word at random in someone's presence and just about watch em drop over dumb.