Monthly Readings for May 2006

May 1, 2006: New York Times. Audra McDonald's Degree of Difficulty: Challenging to Scary. Concert review. With Fred Hersch. Holden, Stephen.
May 2, 2006: Extreme VOIP. Senate Bill Attacks Content, VOIP, Analog TVs
May 5, 2006: PC Mag. The Best Products of Q1 2006

Word of the Day for Sunday May 21, 2006

bombinate \BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:To buzz; to hum; to drone.

• He is often drunk. His head hurts. Snatches of conversation, remembered precepts, prefigured cries of terror bombinate about his skull.-- Elspeth Barker, "Nobs and the rabble, all in the same boat", Independent, September 22, 1996
• Sometimes the computer bombinates way into the night, stops for a bit of rest, then resumes its hum at the early hours of the morning.-- Cheryl Glenn and Robert J. Connors, New St. Martins Guide to Teaching Writing

Bombinate is from Late Latin bombinatus, past participle of bombinare, alteration of Latin bombilare, from bombus, "a boom."

Word of the Day for Wednesday May 17, 2006 arrant

arrant \AR-unt\, adjective:Thoroughgoing; downright; out-and-out; confirmed; extreme; notorious.

• More deplorable is his arrant and compulsive hypocrisy . . . Under all the chest hair, he was a hollow man.-- J. D. McClatchy, review of Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, New York Times, December 19, 1999
• I think a pilot would be a most arrant coward, if through fear of bad weather he did not wait for the storm to break but sank his ship on purpose.-- Georges Minois, History Of Suicide translated by Lydia Cochrane
• The moon's an arrant thief,And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.-- Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
• The entire story is a load of arrant nonsense.-- Victor Pelevin, Buddha's Little Finger translated by Andrew Bromfield

Arrant was originally a variant spelling of errant, meaning "wandering." It was first applied to vagabonds, as an arrant (or errant) rogue or thief, and hence passed gradually into its present sense. It ultimately derives from Latin iter, "a journey."

Word of the Day for Thursday May 18, 2006 palimpsest

palimpsest \PAL-imp-sest\, noun:1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface.

• The manuscript is a palimpsest consisting of vellum leaves from which the "fluent and assured script" of the original Archimedes text and 55 diagrams had been washed or scraped off so that the surface could be used for new writings.-- Roger Highfield, "Eureka! Archimedes text is to be sold at auction", Daily Telegraph, October 3, 1998
• Each is a palimpsest, one improvisation partly burying another but leaving hints of it behind.-- Robert Hughes, "Delight for Its Own Sake", Time, January 22, 1996
• It's a mysterious many-layered palimpsest of a metropolis where generations of natives and visitors have left their mark, from Boadicea and the Romans, through the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan era to the present.-- Philip French, "Jack the knife", The Observer, February 10, 2002

Palimpsest is from Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsestos, "scraped or rubbed again," from palin, "again" + psen, "to rub (away)."

May 18, 2006: Minutes - Upcoming Engineering Institute Projects Review

Raytheon business Wilma Calderone Amby Nangeroni Learning Solutions Stephen Milam

May 17, 2006: New Leader Assimilation Notes

Raytheon business Wilma Calderone Maureen Syzmanski

May 8, 2006: Development Team Staff Meeting Notes

Raytheon business Wilma Calderone

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 9, 2006 otiose

otiose \OH-shee-ohs; OH-tee-\, adjective:

1. Ineffective; futile.

2. Being at leisure; lazy; indolent; idle.

3. Of no use.

• Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991
• Although the wild outer movements and the angular Minuet can take such clockwork precision, the Andante, with its obsessive, claustrophobic dialogues between strings and bassoons, seemed sluggish and otiose.-- Tim Ashley, "VPO/Maazel", The Guardian, April 16, 2002
• The umlaut he affected, which made no difference to the pronunciation of his name, was as otiose as a pair of strategically positioned beauty spots.-- Peter Conrad, "Hidden shallows", New Statesman, October 14, 2002
• One hazard for religions in which all professional intermediaries are dispensed with, and in which the individual is enjoined to 'work out your own salvation' and is regarded as fully capable of doing so, is that belief and practice become independent of formal organized structures which may in such a context come to be perceived as otiose.-- Lorne L. Dawson, "The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai", Sociology of Religion, Fall 2001

Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."

Word of the Day for Tuesday May 2, 2006 daedal

daedal \DEE-duhl\, adjective:1. Complex or ingenious in form or function; intricate.2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious.3. Rich; adorned with many things.

• Most Web-site designers realize that large image maps and daedal layouts are to be avoided, and the leading World Wide Web designers have reacted to users' objections to highly graphical, slow sites by using uncluttered, easy-to-use layouts.-- "Fixing Web-site usability", InfoWorld, December 15, 1997
• He gathered toward the end of his life a very extensive collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts, and took heightened pleasure in their daedal patterns as his own strength declined.-- Florence S. Boos, preface to The Collected Letters of William Morris
• I sang of the dancing stars,I sang of the daedal earth,And of heaven, and the giant wars,And love, and death, and birth.-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn Of Pan"

Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."