Momma's Word of the Day (check first post every day!)

[General Septem]

She was 5'7", with strong arms, firm yet silky smooth skin, glittery green eyes, and the most angelic dark brown hair he'd ever seen. She'd be perfect if she lost the vitriolic attitude, John thought. But he knew how to deal with that.

[momma]

203.May 11th, 2007tin·tin·nab·u·la·tion-The ringing or sounding of bells

 

-Origin: 1845

 

While uncouth boosters and boasters on the frontier were adding the likes of skedaddle, Sockdolager (1827), and splendacious to the American vocabulary, members of the literary elite contributed an invention of their own: tintinnabulation. It doesn't exactly ring a bell with Americans today--except, perhaps, with readers of Edgar Allan Poe. "Hear the sledges with the bells-- / Silver bells! / What a world of merriment their melody foretells!" begins Poe's poem "The Bells." In the night, Poe says, the stars twinkle, "Keeping time, time, time, / In a sort of Runic rhyme, / To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells from the bells, bells, bells, bells, / Bells, bells, bells...." Only these sleighbells tintinnabulate; the wedding bells, fire bells, and funeral bells later in the poem make other sounds.

 

The poem was published in 1849, the year Poe died. But tintinnabulation was already making the rounds of the American literary community in 1845, when a theology student at Princeton, W. W. Lord, having just published a book entitled Poems, wrote to the literary critic Elizabeth Kinney in nearby Newark, New Jersey, "Others bore a distinct resemblance to the tintinnabulations of jingled cow bells." Poe was not one of Lord's admirers; in a review in the Broadway Journal of May 24, 1845, he said that Lord's Poems showed "a very ordinary species of talent." And Lord's letter to Kinney was not published, so it is unlikely Poe would have read tintinnabulation there. The word must have been in the air when he wrote his own poem on bells a few years later.

 

Similar words had been used in England before this time: tintinnabular and tintinnabulary, "pertaining to bells," since the eighteenth century, and tintinnabulant for "ringing or tinkling" since early in the nineteenth. But tintinnabulation was an American invention. Thanks to Poe, it has been ringing in our ears ever since.

 

-Synonyms: ring, ringing

[momma]

204.May 12th, 2007grad·u·a·tion, n.- 1a. Conferral or receipt of an academic degree or diploma marking completion of studies.

b. A ceremony at which degrees or diplomas are conferred; a commencement.

 

2a. A division or interval on a graduated scale.

b. A mark indicating the boundary of such an interval.

 

3. An arrangement in or a division into stages or degrees.

 

-Synonyms: commencement, commencement exercise, commencement ceremony, graduation exercise

 

-Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the associated ceremony. The date of event is often called degree day. In the United States and Canada, it is also used to refer to the advancement from a primary or secondary school level. Many colleges have different traditions associated with the graduation ceremony, the best-known probably being throwing mortarboards in the air.

 

United States and Canada

 

Graduation ceremonies in the United States are often orchestrated procedures involving a march of students onto the stage, the reading of speeches, the giving of diplomas, and an official moment when the students are declared graduated, also called the commencement exercise. The march is often set to music, usually Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. In respect for the graduates, the audience is asked to rise to their feet during the processional as the graduates enter the auditorium and remain standing through the invocation. In United States colleges and universities, the speakers will include the salutatorian, an alumnus of the institution, possibly a famous speaker not associated with the institution, and the valedictorian. The giving of diplomas usually takes up the longest portion of the ceremony: One by one the graduates come forward as their names and major/minor announced.

 

At many large U.S. institutions, where many hundreds of degrees are being granted at once, the main ceremony (in the sports stadium or other large venue) is followed by smaller ceremonies at sites around campus where faculty of each department distribute diplomas to their graduates. Another means of handling very large numbers of graduates is to have several ceremonies, divided by field of study, at a central site over the course of a weekend instead of one single ceremony. In any case, typically each candidate is given a diploma by an academic administrator or official such as the dean or department head. It is also common for graduates not to receive their actual diploma at the ceremony but instead a certificate indicating that they participated in the ceremony or a booklet to hold the diploma in. At the high school level, this allows teachers to withhold diplomas from students who are unruly during the ceremony; at the college level, this allows students who need an extra quarter or semester to participate in the official ceremony with their classmates.

 

-In the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, students do not usually 'graduate' from school below university level. They will normally leave secondary school, high school or sixth form college (if applicable) with specific qualifications, often GCSEs and A-levels respectively (Standard Grades and Higher National Courses in Scotland). However, these are not diplomas and are not necessarily presented in a formal ceremony.

 

Many university graduation ceremonies in the United Kingdom begin with a procession of academics, wearing academic dress. This procession is accompanied by music, and a ceremonial mace is often carried. However, Pomp and Circumstance is not played, since this is a patriotic hymn. After this, an official reads out the names of the graduates one by one, organized by class of degree or by subject. When their names are called, the graduates walk across the stage to shake hands with a senior official, often the university's nominal Chancellor or the vice-chancellor. Graduates wear the academic dress of the degree they are receiving. Serving members of the armed forces may wear their military uniform underneath. Some of the older universities may hold their graduation ceremonies in Latin, whilst member institutions of the University of Wales hold their graduation ceremonies almost entirely in the Welsh language, even though few students understand either of these languages. The Latin section of the ceremony may include a rendition of an anthem, sometimes called the unofficial anthem of all universities, the De Brevitate Vitae, also known as The Gaudeamus.

 

-Today, I will attend my graduation from Boise State University after 6 long years in college! Hooray!

[momma]

205.May 14th, 2007U, n.-Used as a courtesy title before the name of a man in a Burmese-speaking area.

 

-This word originated in Myanmar

 

How are U? No, that's not what you'd say in Burmese, even though U is a polite word to say when you're addressing a man by name. You use it when addressing a social superior. Someone who is your equal would be Ko, and a subordinate would be Maung. For a woman, the idea of politeness is the same but the words are different. Daw is the polite prefix for the name of a woman who is your social superior, Ma for an equal or subordinate.

 

All well and good, but what does this have to do with English? Well, one of these honorifics was introduced to the whole world in 1961, when U Thant, an educator and head of the Burmese delegation to the United Nations, was appointed U.N. Secretary General after the death of Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden in an airplane crash. Thant went on to serve two full terms as Secretary General, retiring in 1971. His name was always given simply as "U Thant," and the world was given to understand that "U" meant something like "the honorable Mr."

 

In referring to Burmese gentlemen, U has been used in English since at least 1930. It is still used today, as in a 1998 news story referring to a member of the executive committee of the opposition National League for Democracy in Myanmar, U Hla Pe.

 

Burmese belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is the official language of Myanmar, the Burmese word for a country known until 1989 as Burma. About twenty-two million people speak the language. One other Burmese word in English is padauk (1839), the name for a tropical tree with reddish wood. There are also names for local animals like tsine (1880), a wild ox; thamin (1888), a deer; and tucktoo (1896), a lizard.

 

By the way, to ask "How are you?" in Burmese you say "Nay kong ye' lah?" And the reply is "Nay kong bar te'," "I am fine," or "Ma soe ba boo," "Not too bad."

[momma]

206.May 15th, 2007virtual reality, n.-A computer simulation of a real or imaginary system that enables a user to perform operations on the simulated system and shows the effects in real time.

 

-Origin: 1989

 

In the late 1980s, inhabitants of cyberspace (see Cybernetics 1948) were virtually certain they were inventing a new reality. It would be far better than the reality sought by philosophers, poets, and scientists in earlier ages because virtual reality could be custom-made. Medieval philosophers had found reality sometimes in things, sometimes in ideas, sometimes in the mind of God. More recent thinkers had looked to nature, society, or the workings of the human mind. But in the late 1980s, computer geeks were busy constructing their own world of virtual reality, bounded only by the limitations of electronic inner space.

 

This virtual reality had its modest beginnings thirty years earlier in the invention of virtual memory (1959), a method of overcoming the physical limits of a computer by making it think it had more random-access memory (RAM) than it actually did. The computer would use space on a storage drive as if it were its own RAM. That led to the use of virtual for anything involving a computer that was other than it seemed. The proper software could give a computer virtual storage (1966) and other virtual hardware.

 

In the late 1980s, virtual was applied to users of computers too. A community of people who did not meet face to face but only by computer became known as a virtual community. To bring members of a virtual community literally in touch with one another was one of the purposes of virtual reality. It involved haptics, "the use of computer-actuated gloves or body wraps to stimulate the sense of touch." Virtual reality would even enable them to engage in virtual ..

 

As the end of the century neared, virtual reality remained a programmer's dream, but it was coming closer and closer to reality. With continuing improvement in computer technology, it is virtually assured of success.

[momma]

207.May 16th, 2007in·ter·nec·ine, adj.- 1. Of or relating to struggle within a nation, organization, or group.

 

2. Mutually destructive; ruinous or fatal to both sides.

 

3. Characterized by bloodshed or carnage.

 

-When is a mistake not a mistake? In language at least, the answer to this question is “When everyone adopts it,” and on rare occasions, “When it's in the dictionary.” The word internecine presents a case in point. Today, it usually has the meaning “relating to internal struggle,” but in its first recorded use in English, in 1663, it meant “fought to the death.” How it got from one sense to another is an interesting story in the history of English. The Latin source of the word, spelled both internecīnus and internecīvus, meant “fought to the death, murderous.” It is a derivative of the verb necāre, “to kill.” The prefix inter– was here used not in the usual sense “between, mutual” but rather as an intensifier meaning “all the way, to the death.” This piece of knowledge was unknown to Samuel Johnson, however, when he was working on his great dictionary in the 18th century. He included internecine in his dictionary but misunderstood the prefix and defined the word as “endeavoring mutual destruction.” Johnson was not taken to task for this error. On the contrary, his dictionary was so popular and considered so authoritative that this error became widely adopted as correct usage. The error was further compounded when internecine acquired the sense “relating to internal struggle.” This story thus illustrates how dictionaries are often viewed as providing norms and how the ultimate arbiter in language, even for the dictionary itself, is popular usage.

 

-Synonym: mutually ruinous

[momma]

208.May 17th, 2007yab·ber, n. or v.-Jabber

 

V.

 

To jabber (something) or engage in jabbering.

 

-This word originated in Australia

 

G'day! At the September 2000 Olympics in Sydney, with the world's attention on Australia, what do you get from media commentators? Yabber, yabber, yabber. In other words: talk, talk, talk. Every collection of Australian slang agrees that yabber is the Australian name for talk, chat, or conversation. It's not as if we haven't occasionally heard yabber in other parts of the English-speaking world, but non-Australians tend to use it harshly: "Stop your yabbering!" In Australia, on the other hand, yabber is what you do to pass the day. And if you can't yabber with a mate face-to-face, you can always send a paper yabber--a letter.

 

English-speaking Australians have been yabbering about yabber since the mid-nineteenth century. In 1855, regarding an uprising of gold miners at the Eureka Stockade near Melbourne, Raffaello Carboni wrote, "There was further a great waste of yabber-yabber about the diggers not being represented in the Legislative Council."

 

Yabber may seem to have derived from jabber, which has been in English since 1500 (apparently imitating the sound of speaking), and in any other part of the world that would be a good guess as to its origin. But yabber seems to have originated in Australia with yaba meaning "speak" in the Wuywurung aboriginal language. The similarity to jabber undoubtedly helped its migration to English.

 

Another English word from Wuywurung is the name of a tree, the mallee (1845). It is a slow-growing eucalyptus with wood so heavy it doesn't float and stems that grow from water-filled underground roots.

 

But Wuywurung itself is extinct. It was a member of the Pama-Nyungan branch of the Australian language family and was spoken in western Victoria, in the southeastern part of the country.

[shatteredsteel]

Why do customers feel the need do yabber constantly about stupid junk I don't really care about?

[General Septem]

We miss word of the day are you alright?

[momma]

We miss word of the day are you alright?

 

I am fine, but things were a little crazy after graduation. A word of the day will be shortly provided.

[momma]

209.May 24th, 2007jer·e·mi·ad, n.-A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom.

 

-The term comes from the name of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah: the second sense refers to his dire warnings of Jerusalem's coming destruction (fulfilled in 586 BCE) and to his threats against the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines, and others, as recorded in the biblical book ofJeremiah; the first sense refers to the sequence of elegies on Jerusalem's fall in the book of Lamentations. The term has been applied to some literary works that denounce the evils of a civilization: many of the writings of Thomas Carlyle, of H. D. Thoreau, or of D. H. Lawrence would fit this description.

 

-Synonyms: diatribe, fulmination, harangue, philippic, tirade.

[General Septem]

"You're going about this the wrong way," he said. "That security system is an X2000. It works by sending a continuous signal to the system. If you cut the power and the signal is lost, the cops are going to come anyway!"

 

But his comrades didn't listen to his jeremiad, and are now serving a nickel a piece in jail.