This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
Enthrall
Enthrall. verb: to hold spellbound; charm: Harry Potter enthralled the crowd with his irresistable charm.
Examples: “But [Luke] Bryan didn’t need much trickery to enthrall the crowd, ready to party to ‘Rain is a Good Thing,’ ‘Crash My Party’ and ‘Do I’ among his string of hits.” — Amanda St. Amand, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 15 June 2013
“In this picture she gazes up, her thoughts far from the page, seemingly too enthralled by her photographer to concentrate on her task.” — Megan Marshall, Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, 2017
Did you know? In Middle English, enthrallen meant “to hold in thrall.” Thrall then, as now, meant “bondage” or “slavery”; it comes from an Old Norse word, thraell, which is probably related to an Old High German word for “servant.” An early figurative use of enthrall appeared in the following advice from the 16th century, translated from a Latin text by Thomas Newton: “A man should not … enthrall his credit and honour to Harlots.” But we rarely use even this sense of mental or moral enslavement anymore. Today the word is often used in its participle form, enthralled, which sometimes means “temporarily spellbound” (“we listened, enthralled, to the old woman’s oral history”), but more often suggests a state of being generally captivated, delighted, or taken by some particular thing.
Narcotize
Narcotize. verb: 1. to make dull; stupefy; deaden the awareness of: He had used liquor to narcotize his anxieties. 2. to subject to or treat with a narcotic; stupefy. 3. to act as a narcotic: a remedy that does not heal but merely narcotizes.
Quotes: “I’m not speaking of all that will happen to annoy, bore, irritate, coerce, oppose, tyrannize, narcotize, paralyze, and idiotize a man in marriage, in that struggle of two beings always in one another’s presence, bound forever, who have coupled each other under the strange impression that they were suited. ” — Honoré de Balzac, The Marriage Contract, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, 1885
“Television, one gathers, is facing up to the new realities by flinging out its arms to the past and scheduling more of the same—bright new faces to be sure, handsome production values, glittering decor and facades for stories and situations that can narcotize a nation. ” — Thomas Thompson, “The Crapshoot for Half a Billion,” Life, September 10, 1971
Origin: The Medieval Latin verb narcotizāre “to make drowsy, benumb” was recorded in the 14th century. The Latin verb is formed from the Greek phrase narkōtiká (phármaka) “numbing (drugs),” which occurs in a work by the Greek physician Galen (c130-c200 a.d.). The prolific Late Latin suffix -izāre, an adaptation of the Greek suffix -izein, is the source of the very productive English suffix -ize. Narcotize entered English in the 16th century.
Confrere
Confrere. noun: colleague, comrade, or a very good friend whom you can trust with your entire life.
Examples: “Antonio Sánchez is a drummer of sharp and sweeping talent, best known to some observers as the percussive engine behind the movie ‘Birdman’ and to others as a close confrere of the guitarist Pat Metheny.” — The New York Times, 2 Sept. 2016
“A practiced collaborator …, [Andy] Warhol made other creatives his confreres early on too.… Working with interior designer Suzie Frankfurt, the pair’s ‘Wild Raspberries’ was a silly, mock cookbook accompanied by delightfully oddball illustrations.” — Felicia Feaster, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9 June 2017
Did you know? Confrere arrived in English from Anglo-French in the 15th century, and ultimately derives from the Medieval Latin confrater, meaning “brother” or “fellow.” (Frater, the root of this term, shares an ancient ancestor with our word brother.) English speakers also began using another descendant of confrater in the 15th century: confraternity, meaning “a society devoted to a religious or charitable cause.” In the past, confrere was often used specifically of a fellow member of a confraternity, but these days it is used more generally.
Septenary
Septenary. adjective: 1. of or relating to the number seven or forming a group of seven. 2. septennial. noun: 1. a group or set of seven. 2. a period of seven years. 3. the number seven. 4. Prosody. a line of seven feet.
Quotes: “If she believes that Wiggins with his septenary names is ordained by the seven original pleiades to marry your daughter Cecilia, I should think that by the same token she would have sought a man rejoicing in the noble name of Septimus.” — Meredith Nicholson, The Siege of the Seven Suitors, 1910
“The spears with which the Bashmourite armed his fighting men were referred to as ‘septenary spears’ based on the fact that the blade, which was the same width as the blade of a sword, was three cubits long, while the handle was four cubits long.” — Salwa Bakr, The Man from Bashmour, translated by Nancy Roberts, 2007
Origin: In Latin, the adjective septēnārius “consisting of seven,” a derivative of septem “seven,” has limited use: numerus septēnārius means “the number seven.” Its “least uncommon” usage is versus septēnārius “seven-part verse, septenarius,” for a verse form in Latin comedy. In English septenary is of limited use as well: it has been applied to the seven sacraments of the Christian church, the seven days of the week, and, in music, the seven notes of the diatonic scale. Septenary entered English in the 16th century.
Elysium
Elysium. noun: 1. any place or state of perfect happiness; paradise. 2. Also called Elysian Fields. Classical Mythology. the abode of the blessed after death. 3. any similarly conceived abode or state of the dead. 4. an area in the northern hemisphere of Mars, appearing as a light region when viewed telescopically from the earth.
Quotes: “And, oh! if there is an Elysium on earth, / It is this, it is this. ” — Thomas Moore, “Elysium on Earth,” Lalla Rookh, 1817
“Her brilliant drawing-room, with Dobbs Broughton for a companion, was not an elysium. ” — Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867
Origin: Elysium is the Latin rendering of the Greek adjective Ēlýsion. Everything about Elysium (or the Elysian Fields) is obscure: there is no reliable etymology for the Greek adjective Ēlýsion “Elysian” (though pedíon “field, plain” is clear). The location of Elysium is just as unreliable. In the Odyssey (bk 4. 560 ff.) Homer places Elysium on the western edge of the earth, by the vast stream Oceanus—an imaginary place—where there is no wind or rain or storms, where the just Rhadamanthys (another name with no reliable etymology) is a judge of the Underworld and rules over demigods and heroes, who live a carefree, happy afterlife. Elysium entered English in the late 16th century.
Interstice
Interstice. noun: 1. a space that intervenes between things; especially one between closely spaced things. 2. a short space of time between events.
Examples: “The vehicle of this affirmation—if indeed it is that—is a message that the Mara character writes on a scrap of paper and then jams into an interstice in an archway before painting over it, evoking a prayer wedged in the Western Wall.” — Nick Pinkerton, Artforum, 6 July 2017
“You will find no wittily sardonic yet sympathetic aunts who happen to write fiction in the interstices of the day’s other duties, no talented and unmarried daughters of deceased clergymen negotiating with London publishers from a Hampshire cottage.” — Nicholas Dames, The Atlantic, September 2017
Did you know? You don’t need to read between the lines to understand the history of interstice; its etymology is plain to see. Interstice derives from the Latin interstitium, which is itself formed from the prefix inter-, meaning “between,” and -stes, meaning “standing.” Interstices are the cracks and crevices of life, and the word is often used for both the literal and figurative gaps of the world. In modern uses, interstice can even refer to gaps in time or to special niches in the larger expanse of something else. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used it, for example, to comment, “Dinosaurs held sway for 100 million years while mammals, all the while, lived as small animals in the interstices of their world.”
Lineament
Lineament. noun: 1. Often, lineaments. a feature or detail of a face, body, or figure, considered with respect to its outline or contour: His fine lineaments made him the very image of his father. 2. Usually, lineaments. distinguishing features; distinctive characteristics: the lineaments of sincere repentance. 3. Geology. a linear topographic feature of regional extent that is believed to reflect underlying crustal structure.
Quotes: “Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818
“ … out of you she sees herself more proper / Than any of her lineaments can show her.” — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1623
Origin: Lineament is from late Middle English from Latin līneāmentum “a stroke, plural, features.” This is equivalent to līneā(re) “to draw a line” (derivative of līnea, the noun use of feminine of līneus “flaxen,” which was originally applied to string). It entered English in the early 15th century.
Coalesce
Coalesce. verb: 1. to grow together. 2. (a) to unite into a whole; fuse. (b) to unite for a common end; join forces. 3. to arise from the combination of distinct elements
Examples: “Parties typically struggle to coalesce on complex legislative issues.” — Frances Lee, The Washington Post, 23 July 2017
“Their first gig was at the Kennedy Center. More gigs followed, … and the musicians coalesced into a working band, on the road three weeks out of every month.” — Fred Kaplan, The New Yorker, 22 May 2017
Did you know? Coalesce unites the prefix co- (“together”) and the Latin verb alescere, meaning “to grow.” (The words adolescent and adult also grew from alescere.) Coalesce, which first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, is one of a number of verbs in English (along with mix, commingle, merge, and amalgamate) that refer to the act of combining parts into a whole. In particular, coalesce usually implies the merging of similar parts to form a cohesive unit.
Hesperidium
Hesperidium. noun: 1. Botany. he fruit of a citrus plant, as an orange.
Quotes: “As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal … ” — Woody Allen, “To Err is Human–To Float, Divine,” Mere Anarchy, 2007
“Nay, when we actually mean the fruit in person, not the tree, flower, or color, the picture called up will be different according to the nature of the phrase in which the word occurs. … if I am talking to a botanical friend, my impression is rather that of a cross-section through a succulent fruit (known technically as a hesperidium), and displaying a certain familiar arrangement of cells, dissepiments, placentas, and seeds.” — Grant Allen, “A Thinking Machine,” The Popular Science Monthly, March 1886
Origin: Hesperidium ultimately derives from the Greek noun Hesperídes (the plural of the adjective hesperís “western”), the daughters of Night or Evening who guarded the golden apples that Gaea, the goddess of the earth, gave to Hera at Hera’s marriage. It is uncertain whether the “golden apples” were apples or a kind of citrus fruit, especially the orange. The golden apples grew in a garden at the western edge of the world (the same location as the Elysian Fields). The Greek noun and adjective hésperos (dialect wésperos) “evening, evening star, Venus (the planet), (the god) of evening (i.e., death)” is closely related to Latin vesper “evening, the west.” The Swedish botanist Linnaeus (1707-78), alluding to the golden apples of the Hesperides, gave the taxonomic name Hesperideæ to the botanical order that contains the genus Citrus. Modern botany and chemistry use the combining form hesperid- “derived from citrus fruit.” The suffix -ium is used in scientific terms modeled on Latin. Hesperidium entered English in the 19th century.
Emissary
Emissary. noun: 1. one designated as the agent of another; representative. 2. a secret agent.
Examples: As the company’s emissary to the meeting, Sarah was tasked with presenting the proposal that had been the focus of the team’s work for several months.
“In recent years, emissaries of Belgium’s soccer association have been invited around the planet to advise larger, richer nations on how to develop young players.” — Rory Smith, The New York Times, 4 July 2017
Did you know? An emissary is often a person who is sent somewhere in order to act as a representative. The key word in that sentence is sent; emissary derives from Latin emissus, the past participle of the verb emittere, meaning “to send out.” Emissary first appeared in print in English in the early 1600s, not too long after the arrival of another emittere descendant: emit. In addition, emittere itself comes from Latin mittere (“to send”), which is an ancestor of many English words, including admit, commit, mission, omit, permit, premise, promise, and submit.
Lexicography 