3 Paws Saloon Attic

bleb \bleb\, noun:

1. A bubble.
2. Medicine/Medical. A blister or vesicle.

One day, as he was bathing her, a bleb of shampoo had streamed into her eye, and she had kept a hand pressed to it for the rest of the day, quailing away from him whenever he walked past.
-- Kevin Brockmeier, Things That Fall From the Sky

His gaze skims over the computer out the side-yard window, to rest on a fat avocado, a bleb of green light hanging from a branch.
-- Diana Abu-Jaber, Birds of Paradise

Bleb was first used in the early 1600s. It is considered imitative of a blister itself. It is also related to the Middle English word blob.

mettle \MET-l\, noun:

1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.

Who is so ignorant as not to know that knights-errant are beyond all jurisdiction, their only law their swords, while their charter is their mettle and their will is their decrees?
-- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

"--must do something to justify your existence," Marlene was saying to Tim, "and now is the chance to show your mettle."
-- Muriel Spark, The Bachelors

Mettle was used interchangeably with the material metal until the early 1700s. Mettle continued to be used in the figurative sense of "stuff of which a person is made" even as the spellings diverged.

My word of the day:  Scorn

Scorn Scorn, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Scorned} (sk[^o]rnd); p. pr.
     & vb. n. {Scoring}.] [OE. scornen, scarnen, schornen, OF.
     escarnir, escharnir. See {Scorn}, n.]
     1. To hold in extreme contempt; to reject as unworthy of
        regard; to despise; to contemn; to disdain.
        [1913 Webster]

              I scorn thy meat; 't would choke me.

I was bored so I tried to do what you do Beanie, it wasn't like yours.  Yours are more interesting.......

Till Beanie comes back my word of the day:

kabbalah , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah (kəˈbɑːlə)
— n
1.	an ancient Jewish mystical tradition based on an esoteric interpretation of the Old Testament
2.	any secret or occult doctrine or science
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]
kabbala , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah
— n
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]
kabala , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah
— n
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]
cabbala , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah
— n
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]
cabala , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah
— n
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]
qabalah , kabbala , kabala , cabbala , cabala or qabalah
— n
[C16: from Medieval Latin, from Hebrew qabbālāh tradition, what is received, from qābal to receive]



peroration \per-uh-REY-shuhn\, noun:

1. A long speech characterized by lofty and often pompous language.
2. Rhetoric. The concluding part of a speech or discourse, in which the speaker or writer recapitulates the principal points and urges them with greater earnestness and force.

Thus he apostrophised his house and race in terms of the most moving eloquence; but when it came to the peroration—and what is eloquence that lacks a peroration?—he fumbled. He would have liked to have ended with a flourish to the effect that he would follow in their footsteps and add another stone to their building.
-- Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

This person always provides a dramatic peroration; it is expected of him and he seldom disappoints. Tamsour is the theme; and the substance is usually personal aggrandizement, sometimes a bit of self-pity, but never apologies for past misdeeds, real or imaginary.
-- Jack Vance, Night Lamp

Peroration comes from the Latin word perōrātiōn which meant "a closing speech."

caprice \kuh-PREES\, noun:

1. A sudden, unpredictable change, as of one's mind or the weather.
2. A tendency to change one's mind without apparent or adequate motive; whimsicality; capriciousness.
3. Music. Capriccio.

Does she turn, thought he, thus, from one to the other, with no preference but of accident or caprice? Is her favour thus light of circulation?
-- Fanny Burney, Camilla, or a Picture of Youth

You lose, you gain—it's all caprice. The omnipotence of caprice. The likelihood of reversal. Yes, the unpredictable reversal and its power.
-- Philip Roth, The Humbling

Caprice is from the Italian word capriccio which means a sudden start or motion. It comes from the word capro meaning goat.

Interesting.....

screed \skreed\, noun:

1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.
2. An informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.
3. Building Trades. A. A strip of plaster or wood applied to a surface to be plastered to serve as a guide for making a true surface. B. A wooden strip serving as a guide for making a true level surface on a concrete pavement or the like. C. A board or metal strip dragged across a freshly poured concrete slab to give it its proper level.
4. British Dialect. A fragment or shred, as of cloth.
5. Scot. A. A tear or rip, especially in cloth. B. A drinking bout.

verb:
1. Scot. To tear, rip, or shred, as cloth.

By the time this screed gets to you the drafts may have come, but as I've heard nothing yet and been writing for two months now, you'd better have a look anyway. Will you please?
-- Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters

I bet I could turn out a rattling good screed. Why, last year I almost got the prize. I sent in fearfully hot stuff.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, The Prefect's Uncle

Screed is related to the Old English word for shred. Its alternate sense of a long speech was first recorded in 1789 and may be related to the sense of the word meaning a long lists of names.

burled \burld\, adjective:

Having small knots that produce a distorted grain in wood.

It was Friday evening, and the master of Turpmtine, Charlie Croker, was presiding over dinner at the burled tupelo maple table Ronald Vine had devised for the Gun Room, which was the showpiece of the plantation's new Gun House.
-- Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

Then they passed underneath two burled trees that leaned against each other and stopped at the edge of an empty glade.
-- Christopher Paolini, Eldest

Burled comes from the Old French word bourle, which meant a tuft of wool, from the Latin word for wool, burra. It is also the root of the word "burr."

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

mammonism \MAM-uh-niz-uhm\, noun:

The greedy pursuit of riches.

We will bring to mind a young man or young woman bitterly awakened from a fancy dream of accomplishment, action or glory, forced instead to come to terms with a considerably reduced status, a betrayed love, and a hideously bourgeois world of crass mammonism and philistine taste.
-- Rudyard Kipling, Kim

Claiming mutual “affection and confidence” with his collaborating reader whom he expects to agree, Dickens also indicts the false religion of Mammonism.
-- Linda M. Lewis, Dickens, His Parables, and His Readers

Mammonism is an odd combination of Aramaic and Greek. The word mammon meant wealth in Aramaic, and the suffix -ism forms a noun from a verb, as in criticism and plagiarism.

pachyderm \PAK-i-durm\, noun:

1. A person who is not sensitive to criticism, ridicule, etc.
2. Any of the thick-skinned, nonruminant ungulates, as the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros.
3. An elephant.

He writhed as he saw himself finally a toughened pachyderm in Eliza's world—sprucing up confidently, throwing his shoulders back proudly, making people “think he was somebody” as he cordially acknowledged an introduction by producing a card setting forth the joys of life in Altamont and Dixieland...
-- Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeword, Angel

To judge by his work, our writer is unquestionably a stubborn man, said the Serb, he's stubborn as a mule, as a pachyderm...
-- Roberto Bolaño, 2666, Volume 1

Pachyderm clearly comes from the Greek roots pachý meaning "thick" and dermatos meaning "skin." Its metaphorical meaning of a person with thick skin is attested to in the 1860s.

bespeak \bih-SPEEK\, verb:

1. To show; indicate.
2. To ask for in advance.
3. To reserve beforehand; engage in advance; make arrangements for.
4. Literary. To speak to; address.
5. Obsolete. To foretell; forebode.

Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in straightness — to seek the light.
-- Allen Ginsberg, Journals Mid-Fifties

In the execution of this universal gesture, most people bring down their thumb to signify the hammer's dropping, but Sean actually pulls his trigger finger, which I find much more threatening, since it seems to bespeak a genuine familiarity with the real thing.
-- Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

Bespeak is derived from the Old English word besprecan. It developed a wide range of meanings, such as request, discuss, or arrange.

hircine \HUR-sahyn\, adjective:

1. of, pertaining to, or resembling a goat.
2. Having a goatish odor.
3. Lustful; libidinous.

The hircine stink in the air that he had sucked in while running was replaced by a cool dampness.
-- Jonathan Wilson, A Palestine Affair

Dad was thick-haired, bowlegged, bottom-heavy; he wore a tangly, hircine beard; a cigar depended from his lips at all times, the aromatic stub of a flute; panic was his state of nature.
-- Michael Griffith, Spikes

Hircine comes from the Latin word meaning of a goat, hircīnus.

flexuous \FLEK-shoo-uhs\, adjective:

Full of bends or curves; sinuous.

Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story.
-- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

What is anomalous about Nietzsche in this context is scarcely the hold this plot has on him, but indeed the flexuous sweetness with which sometimes he uniquely invests it...
-- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet

Flexuous is derived from the Latin word flexuōsus which meant full of turns or crooked. This is an interesting example where the suffix changes the implication of the word. Unlike the more common word flexible, which means "capable of being bent" because of the suffix -ible, flexuous has the suffix, -ous meaning "full of."

quadrennial \kwo-DREN-ee-uhl\, adjective:

1. Occurring every four years.
2. Of or lasting for four years.

noun:
1. An event occurring every four years, as an anniversary or its celebration.

...all we merely have here is just what Rod might call an exaggerated example of a quadrennial problem any administration with vision is going to have to face eventually anyway.
-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

The inauguration of a President of the United States, I think, has always been treated as a great quadrennial ceremonial.
-- United States Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on the District of Columbia, Suffrage Parade

Clearly, quadrennial comes from the Latin words quadri- meaning four and annus meaning years, with the suffix -ial meaning pertaining to.

cant \kant\, verb:

1. To talk hypocritically.
2. To speak in the whining or singsong tone of a beggar; beg.

noun:
1. Insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness, or piety.
2. The private language of the underworld.
3. The phraseology peculiar to a particular class, party, profession, etc.
4. Whining or singsong speech, especially of beggars.

I don't deny but that may sooner teach a Man to Cant and talk Gibberish, or use fair, smooth, formal Phrases, and religious Words.
-- Richard Ward and Sarah Hutton, The Life of Henry More

A philanthropist by nature, he is not one of those dreamers who hate all that will not aid their one pet scheme, and cant about a general brotherhood which exempts them from particular charity.
-- Robert Alfred Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics

Cant comes from the same Latin word as chant, the Latin word for song, cantus. The sense of "insincere talk" arose in the early 1700s.

profluent \PROF-loo-uhnt\, adjective:

Flowing smoothly or abundantly forth.

Half the congregation — Gwen's family and friends — reached the door ahead of me, their nonchalance more powerful, more profluent than my most intense desire. I could only crawl toward the chapel doors.
-- Stephanie Grant, The Passion of Alice

In southern Arizona, it rains in summer, and I'm impatient for the monsoon torrents of August, for an indulgence of water, a baptism that will roister over rocks and swell profluent down the mountainside, roll through the rubble of the canyon floor...
-- Caitlin L. Gannon, Southwestern Women: New Voices

Profluent is derived from the Latin word prōfluere, which meant "to flow forth."

pococurante \poh-koh-koo-RAN-tee\, noun:

1. Caring little; indifferent; nonchalant.

adjective:
1. A careless or indifferent person.

“She is a charming lady who happened to be born in Vitebsk, and no more than that,” he kept thinking, trying to convince himself that he would be a pococurante person when it came to Nina.
-- Johnny Wright, The Lost Chagall

Already he could see Alfred's blonde head making its way toward him, and he was smiling to himself at the thought of the contemptuous objurgations his friend would address to him at his absurd pococurante affectation, for so Alfred always called Guston's indifference, when his eyes fell upon a woman's profile seated within a few feet of him.
-- Ernest Roland, "Lèse-Amour," The Galaxy

Pococurante came directly from Italian into English in the 1750s. It literally meant "caring little."

astringent \uh-STRIN-juhnt\, adjective:

1. Sharply incisive; pungent.
2. Medicine/Medical. Contracting; constrictive; styptic.
3. Harshly biting; caustic: his astringent criticism.
4. Stern or severe; austere.

noun:
1. Medicine/Medical. A substance that contracts the tissues or canals of the body, thereby diminishing discharges, as of mucus or blood.
2. A cosmetic that cleans the skin and constricts the pores.

One endeavors to correct, flushing out error and misconception with the astringent power of historical detail; the other treats the myth as meaningful cultural phenomenon in its own right, accounting for its emergence and tracing its development across time.
-- Beth Newman, Emily Brontë, "Introduction," Wuthering Heights

But here too she was thinner, and going unripe, astringent.
-- D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

Related to the words strain and string, astringent comes from the Latin root stringere which meant "to draw tight."

brisance \bri-ZAHNS\, noun:

The shattering effect of a high explosive.

The 'There' turned out to be crucial for the sense of brisance and closure and resolving issues of impotent rage and powerless fear that like accrued in Lenz all day being trapped in the northeastern portions of a squalid halfway house all day fearing for his life, Lenz felt.
-- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

But this was sustained explosion, reaching now and then a quite unendurable brisance. Yet he endured it, not so much because it was her will as, unbelievably, what had become her need.
-- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

Brisance is a relatively new English word. It started being used commonly in the 1910s, but it can be traced to the Celtic word brissim meaning "to break."

adroit \uh-DROIT\, adjective:

1. Cleverly skillful, resourceful, or ingenious.
2. Expert or nimble in the use of the hands or body.

He knows that Jory is handsome, talented, and most of all, adroit. Bart is not adroit at anything but pretending.
-- V.C. Andrews, If There Be Thorns

It requires finesse. She was very adroit — oh, very adroit — but Hercule Poirot, my good George, is of a cleverness quite exceptional.
-- Agatha Christie, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

Adroit is from the Old French meaning "elegant, skillful" from the roots a- meaning "increase" and droit meaning "correct."

chelonian \ki-LOH-nee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Belonging or pertaining to the order Chelonia, comprising the turtles.

noun:
1. A turtle.

At the truly chelonian pace of somewhat under two miles per hour, the passengers and crew onboard would cover the twenty-seven hundred miles in just over two months.
-- Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers

The study door crashed back and a seventy-year-old politician stood there, top hat firmly on his head, collar awry around his scrawny, chelonian neck.
-- M. J. Trow, Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring

What pair of messiahs could differ more harshly than Hiram and Magnus, the one a pedantic little fellow with a chelonian paunch and gold eye-glasses and the other a rough, shaggy, carnivorous revivalist from the dreadful steppes?
-- H. L. Mencken, "Editorial," American Mercury Magazine, Jan. to Apr. 1924

Chelonian comes from the Greek word for turtle, chelṓn.