welkin

wel•kin (WEL-kin)  n

Definition:
1. the vault of the sky; firmament
2. the celestial abode of God or the gods; heaven
3. the upper atmosphere



Origin:

12c; from O.E. wolcen "cloud," from P.Gmc. *welk-

Related:
Synonyms: empyrean, sky, the blue, the skies, vault, firmament, heavens, stratosphere
Related Words: walk

Sentence Examples:
• Now that the gloomy shadow of the night,
  Longing to view Orion's drizzling look,
  Leaps from th' antartic world unto the sky,
  And dims the welkin with her pitchy breath,
  Faustus, begin thine incantations,
  And try if devils will obey thy hest,
  Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrific'd to them.
- Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe

• Thus Beatrice: at whose feet inclin'd
  Devout, at her behest, my thought and eyes,
  I, as she bade, directed.  Never fire,
  With so swift motion, forth a stormy cloud
  Leap'd downward from the welkin's farthest bound,
  As I beheld the bird of Jove descending
  Pounce on the tree, and, as he rush'd, the rind,
  Disparting crush beneath him, buds much more
  And leaflets.  On the car with all his might
  He struck, whence, staggering like a ship, it reel'd,
  At random driv'n, to starboard now, o'ercome,
  And now to larboard, by the vaulting waves.
- Purgatory, Dante

• LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts:  a good king he! - Beowulf

• Nay, more than this, I have a garden plot,
  Wherein there wants nor hearbs, nor roots, nor flowers;
  Flowers to smell, roots to eate, hearbs for the pot,
  And dainty shelters when the welkin lowers:
  Sweet-smelling beds of lillies, and of roses,
  Which rosemary banks and lavender incloses.
- The Affectionate Shepherd, Richard Barnfield

• 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night--
  The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
  Nought is seen in the vault on high
  But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
  And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
  A river of light on the welkin blue.
- The Culprit Fay, Joseph Rodman Drake

World Wide Words:

We don’t use this much nowadays — dictionaries usually tag it as archaic or literary — except in the set phrase make the welkin ring, meaning to make a very loud sound. What supposedly rings in this situation is the vault of heaven, the bowl of the sky. In older cosmology this was thought to be one of a set of real crystal spheres that enclosed the Earth, to which the planets and stars were attached, so it would have been capable of ringing like a bell if you made enough noise. The word comes from the Old English wolcen, a cloud, related to the Dutch wolk and German Wolke. Very early on, for example in the epic poem Beowulf of about the eighth century AD, the phrase under wolcen meant under the sky or under heaven (the bard used the plural, wolcnum, but it’s the same word). Ever since, it has had a strong literary or poetic connection. It appears often in Shakespeare and also in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “This day in mirth and revel to dispend, / Till on the welkin shone the starres bright”. In 1739, a book with the title Hymns and Sacred Poems introduced one for Christmas written by Charles Wesley that began: “Hark! how all the welkin rings, / Glory to the King of kings”. If that seems a little familiar, it is because 15 years later it reappeared as “Hark! the herald-angels sing / Glory to the new born king”.

Sources: Merriam-Webster,  Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

wheedle

whee•dle (HWEED-l, WEED-l)  v

Definition:
1. to endeavor to influence (a person) by smooth, flattering, or beguiling words or acts
2. to persuade (a person) by such words or acts
3. to obtain (something) by artful persuasions
wheedled past participle; wheedled past tense; wheedling present participle; wheedles 3rd person singular present

Origin:
1661, origin uncertain, perhaps connected with O.E. wædlian "to beg" (from wædl "poverty"), or borrowed by Eng. soldiers in the 17c. German wars from Ger. wedeln "wag the tail," hence "fawn, flatter"

Related:
Synonyms: blandish, cajole, charm, coax, con, entice, finagle, flatter, inveigle, persuade, worm

Sentence Examples:
• The larger Tidger children took the solids of their breakfast up and down the stone-flagged court outside, coming in occasionally to gulp draughts of very weak tea from a gallipot or two which stood on the table, and to wheedle Mr. Tidger out of any small piece of bloater which he felt generous enough to bestow. - A Golden Venture, W.W. Jacobs

• But I speak for myself only when I say that I would gladly wheedle old, gray-bearded Tempus into making the wheels click backward till I could see again the buffalo-herds darkening the green of Northwestern prairies.  - Raw Gold, Bertrand W. Sinclair

• The strength of the proletarian party was on the streets; that of the small traders' class was in the National Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to wheedle them out of the National Assembly into the street, and to have them break their parliamentary power themselves, before time and opportunity could consolidate them. - The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

weald

(weeld)  n

Definition:
wooded or uncultivated country; woodland


The Weald:
a region of SE England, in Kent, Surrey, and East and West Sussex between the North Downs and the South Downs: formerly forested


Origin:
before 1150; Middle English weeld, O.E. (W.Saxon) weald "forest, woodland," specifically the forest between the North and South Downs in Sussex, Kent, and Surrey; a W.Saxon variant of Anglian wald; perhaps connected to wild

Related:
Synonyms: woodland

Sentence Examples:
• How different is the pursuit of the pheasant with the aid of spaniels in the thick covers of the weald, or tracking him with a single setter among some of the wilder portions of the forest range!—intently observing your dog and anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a snap-shot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at the opposite side of the tree. - Highways & Byways in Sussex, E.V. Lucas

• One's gaze looked forth from it upon the endless middle distances of the oak-clad Weald, with the uncertain blue line of the South Downs in the background. Ridge behind ridge, the long, low hills of paludina limestone stood out in successive tiers, each thrown up against its neighbor by the misty haze that broods eternally over the wooded valley; till, roaming across them all, the eye rested at last on the rearing scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintly pencilled on the furthest skyline. - The Woman Who Did, Grant Allen

• Wide-branched oaks were intermingled with beeches and copsewood of various descriptions so closely in some places as to intercept the sunshine. In others the trees receded from each other, forming wide vistas that gave glimpses of other recesses of sylvan solitude. Down the long sunlit glades the gold belted bees sounded their humming horns through every flowery town of the weald. - In Doublet and Hose, Lucy Foster Madison

Sources: Dictionary.com, Free Dictionary, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

warison

war•i•son (WAR-uh-suhn)  n

Definition:
1. reward; guerdon; requital
2. (erroneously) a war cry played to order the soldiers to attack, normally played on a bugle
3. preparation; protection; provision; supply
4. healing

Origin:
1805;  from Anglo-French warison  "defense, possessions", Old French garison; in the sense of a bugle call to assault, Walter Scott's misinterpretation of now obsolete waryson  "reward, wealth, possessions"

Sentence Examples:
•    Wherefore shoot, archers, for my sake,
     And let sharp arrows flee;
     Minstrels, play up for your warison,
     And well quit it shall be.
-The Book of Old English Ballads, George Wharton Edwards

• He made a cry throughout all the town,
    Whether he be yeoman or knave,
  That could bring him Robin Hood,
    His warison he should have.
-Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws, Frank Sidgwick

•    Having wound up with this sublime comparison,
       Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative,
     And, as my friend Scott says, 'I sound my warison;'
       Scott, the superlative of my comparative—
     Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen,
       Serf, lord, man, with such skill as none would share it, if
     There had not been one Shakspeare and Voltaire,
     Of one or both of whom he seems the heir.
-Don Juan, by Lord Byron

Sources: Wordnik, Dictionary.com

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

wamble

wam•ble (WOM-buhl) 

Definition:
verb intr.
1. to move unsteadily; to totter, waver, roll, etc
2. to feel nausea
3. (of a stomach) To rumble or growl

noun
1. an unsteady motion
2. a feeling of nausea

Origin:
14c; from Middle English wamelen "to feel nausea",  from Indo-European root wem- "to vomit"

Related:
Related Words: vomit, emetic

Sentence Examples:
• I fancy the waves begin to work, for my belly I'm sure begins to wamble. -Blackwood's magazine,1819

• I'll have to take you there. It's a cheery sensation, you know, to find a man who has some imagination, but who has been unspoiled by Interesting People, and take him to hear them wamble. They sit around and growl and rush the growler—I hope you know growler-rushing— and rejoice that they're free spirits. Being Free, of course, they're not allowed to go and play with nice people, for when a person is Free, you know, he is never free to be anything but Free. That may seem confusing, but they understand it at Olympia's. -Our Mr. Wrenn, Sinclair Lewis

• When the Galatian heard these things, and perceived the poison to wamble up and down and indispose his body, he ascended his chariot, hoping to be relieved by the jogging and shaking. -Plutarch's lives

Sources: Wordsmith

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

wroth

wroth (rawth)  adj

Definition:
1. angry; wrathful
2. stormy; violent; turbulent

Origin:
before 12th century; O.E. wrað "angry" (lit. "tormented, twisted”), from P.Gmc. *wraithaz, from PIE *wreit- "to turn"

Related:
Synonyms: angered, apoplectic, ballistic, enraged, furious, incensed, inflamed, infuriated, livid, mad, outraged, rabid, wrathful
Related Words: wrath, writhe, wreathe

Sentence Examples:
• Then was Pharaoh, the king, exceeding wroth, and he gave commandment that an owl be given to Neoncapos, the king's jester, and that he be set forth without the gate of the king's palace, and that he be forbidden to return, or to speak to any in all the land, save only unto the owl which had been given him, until such time as the bird should answer and tell him what he should say.  -Bricks Without Straw, Albion W. Tourgee

• And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? -The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Gustave Dore

• Thereupon I forced my way through the underwood which hindered me from seeing, and when I presently saw Ann coming and had opened my lips to call, something, meseemed, took me by the throat, and I was fain to stand still as though I had taken root there, and could only lend eye and ear, gasping for breath, to what was doing yonder by the highroad.  And verily I knew not whether to rejoice from the bottom of my heart, or to lament and be wroth, and fly forth to put an end to it all. -Margery, Georg Ebers

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

weltschmerz

welt•schmerz (VELT-shmerts)  n
often capitalized

Definition:
1. mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state
2. sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life; sentimental pessimism

Origin:
1864; German, from Welt world + Schmerz pain

Related:
Synonyms: angst, anxiety, depression, uneasiness
Related Words: weltanschauung

Sentence Examples:
• Confounded affectation all this Weltschmerz; you have no right to be anything but a happy man. And if you feel out of spirits, it ought to cheer you up simply to go on deck and look at these seven puppies that come frisking and springing about you, and are ready to tear you to pieces in sheer enjoyment of life. -Farthest North, Fridtjof Nansen

• We allow a great deal of this precious stuff—this Welt-Schmerz of which each generation has need—not only to go unutilized, but to work havoc among the young people themselves. -The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Jane Addams

• Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life. But to the diseases which reflection breeds, still further reflection can oppose effective remedies; and it is of the melancholy and Weltschmerz bred of reflection that I now proceed to speak.  -The Will to Believe, William James

The Storyline
But the face that she saw when she finally looked up wasn't the one she expected. It was the same person, but altered, changed by a weariness and weltschmerz etched into the lines on his face. "Dad?"

Why This Word:

Weltschmerz (from the German, meaning world-pain or world-weariness), is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind. ...It is also used to denote the feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world—compare empathy, theodicy.

The modern meaning of Weltschmerz in the German language is the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone's own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances. Weltschmerz in this meaning can cause depression, resignation and escapism, and can become a mental problem. (Wikipedia)

Sources:  Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

whilom

whi•lom (HWAHY-luhm, WAHY-)

Definition:
–adjective
1. former, erstwhile
–adverb
2. at one time, formerly

Related:
Synonyms: erstwhile, late, old, once, onetime, other, past, quondam, sometime, former
Related Words: while

Sentence Examples:
• I could eat no more, so I turned to my whilom informant to learn as much as I could and sought to draw him out with far-fetched gossip. -The Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter

• The fact that I could not have known my departed relation did not prevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden ladies who had had that privilege, from writing to me in great indignation at my having ventured to travesty my old aunt. They had found me out (I am always being found out), and the vials of their wrath were poured out over me. In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of the darker side of human nature, I actually thought that a disclaimer would settle the matter. -The Lowest Rung, Mary Cholmondeley

The Storyline
"And I ran into Andy, the other day," her mother continued. "He's looking well. He's getting married next June." Anna snapped back to the conversation at the mention of her whilom beau.

Origin:
before 900;  ME; OE hwilum  at times, dative plural of hwil while

The word dates to Old English, at a time when the language was heavily inflected — adjectives, nouns, and verbs taking different endings depending on the job they were doing. Whilom — then spelt hwilom — was the dative plural of hwil, the same word as our modern while. As English progressively lost its inflections, the word became a fossil, with its ending stuck to it permanently; at the same time the meaning shifted to mean something of a former time, a change that was complete by the fifteenth century.

Sources: Dictionary.com
Why This Word:
While whilom has close synonyms and has largely become itself - former, erstwhile - it has a poetry about it. Not just any noun is suited to taking whilom as a modifier. Like the more common erstwhile, whilom carries, by dint of its archaism, a certain nostalgia for the former thing being described.

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

wassail

was•sail     / WAH-sul / 

Definition 
noun

1. an early English toast to someone's health
2. a hot drink that is made with wine, beer, or cider, spices, sugar, and usually baked apples and is traditionally served in a large bowl especially at Christmastime
3. riotous drinking : revelry

verb, intransitive
1. to indulge in wassail : carouse
2. to sing carols from house to house at Christmas

verb, transitive
to drink to the health or thriving of


wassailing present participle

Related

Synonyms: bender, binge, bust, carousal, drunk, jamboree, spree, toot, carouse

Examples
• For we've wassail'd all this day long, and nothing we could find, Except an owl in an ivy bush, and her we left behind, with a wassail &c. 1872
• Of that wassail men told great tale, And wassail when they were at ale, and drinkhail to them that drank, Thus was wassail ta'en to thank. 1856

The Storyline

But whatever nascent clarity Anna was about to be upon was wrenched from her consciousness by the cacophony from the apartment across the hall as the boys were returning from an all night wassail.

Origin

The salutation "wassail," from the Old Norse toast "ves heill" ("be well"), from ves, imperative of vesa "to be" + heill "healthy", has accompanied English toast-making since the 12th century. Use as a drinking phrase appears to have arisen among Danes in England and spread to native inhabitants. By the 13th century, "wassail" was being used for the drink itself, and it eventually came to be used especially of a hot drink (of wine, beer, or cider with spices, sugar, and usually baked apples) drunk around Christmastime. This beverage warmed the stomachs and hearts of many Christmas revelers and was often shared with Christmas carolers. The verb "wassail" was first used in the 14th century to describe the carousing associated with indulgence in the drink; later, it was used of other activities associated with wassail and the holiday season, like caroling. Seventeenth-century farmers added cattle and trees to the wassail tradition by drinking to their health or vitality during wintertime festivities. Meaning "a carousal, reveling" first attested 1602. Wassailing "custom of going caroling house to house at Christmas time" is recorded from 1742.

Sources: Merriam-Webster, Online Etymology

Why This Word:

Here we come a wassailing.

For most of us, if we know it at all, wassail is thoroughly wed to Christmas. And perhaps it is this very association, along with the old-fashioned-ness of the word, that a conveys a certain innocence and allows us, among its other meanings, to refer to a rowdy drunken revelry with the taint of modern judgment.

Word-E: A Word-A-Day