Monthly Readings for August 2006

August 10, 2006: NPR. You Must Read This: Hooked on the Most Importatnt Food Writer Alife - Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Buford, Bill
August 15, 2006: PC Mag. The Top 101 Classic Web Sites of 2006
August 21, 2006: PCMag. Ten Future Classic Web Sites.

Word of the Day ArchiveMonday August 28, 2006 aegis

aegis \EE-jis\,
noun:1. Protection; support.2. Sponsorship; patronage.3. Guidance, direction, or control.4. A shield or protective armor; -- applied in mythology to the shield of Zeus.

• It is this ideal of the human under the aegis of something higher which seems to me to provide the strongest counterpressure against the fragmentation and barbarization of our world.-- Ted J. Smith III (Editor), In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963
• A third round of talks is scheduled to begin on May 23rd in New York under the aegis of the United Nations.-- "Denktash declared head after rival withdraws", Irish Times, April 21, 2000
• In real life, Lang's father was commercially astute and fantastically hardworking, and under his aegis the construction business flourished.-- Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Aegis derives from the Greek aigis, the shield of Zeus, from aix, aig-, "a goat," many primitive shields being goatskin-covered.

Word of the Day ArchiveTuesday August 29, 2006 sui generis

sui generis \soo-eye-JEN-ur-us; soo-ee-\,

adjective:Being the only example of its kind; constituting a class of its own; unique.

This man, in fact, was sui generis, a true original.-- Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur

They're a special case, a category of their own, sui generis.-- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel

In the degree of their alienation from their society and of their impact on it, the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were a phenomenon almost sui generis.-- Aileen M. Kelly, Toward Another Shore

William Randolph Hearst did not speak often of his father. He preferred to think of himself as sui generis and self-created, which in many ways he was.-- David Nasaw, The Chief

Sui generis is from Latin, literally meaning "of its own kind": sui, "of its own" + generis, genitive form of genus, "kind."