bovarism

bo•va•ris•m (BOH-vuh-riz-uhm)  n

Definition:
1. an exaggerated, especially glamorized, estimate of oneself; conceit
     esp : domination of one's general behavior by such an unreal conception of oneself that it results in dramatic personal conflict (as in tragedy), in markedly unusual behavior (as in paranoia), or in great achievement
2. an anxiety to escape from a social or sentimental condition judged to be unsatisfactory, sometimes by building a fictitious personality (psychology)

Origin:
1900–05;  from French bovaryisme,  after Emma Bovary,  a character in Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary

Sentence Examples:
• Flaubert, on the other hand, is indicted for having created an inverted kind of bovarism, one in which emulation of his narrator leads to persistent refusal to give in to representation, while yielding to it by the very process of imitating his stance. Flaubertism is also a form of bovarism, one from which Carpentier seems incapable of escaping. - Poetics of the Americas: race, founding, and textuality, Bainard Cowan, Jefferson Humphries

• Whether the distinguished French philosopher still complacently accepts the permanence of war in human affairs, or whether he now suspects that his defence of war was a manifestation of that Bovarism he so luminously defined, there is no public evidence to show. - The philosophy of conflict: and other essays in war-time, Havelock Ellis

• With her unquenchable bovarism, Oriane needed to find a new role for me. ... She soon found it: I became for her 'mon juene ecrivain', her young writer, whose career she nursed. - Quicksands, Sybille Bedford

Sources: Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

busk

busk (busk)


Definition:
v intr
1. to entertain in a public place for donations
2. to make a showy or noisy appeal (Canada)

busked past participle; busked past tense; busking present participle; busks 3rd person singular present; busker noun

Definition: 
v tr
1. to make ready; prepare
2. to dress or adorn 

busked past participle; busked past tense; busking present participle; busks 3rd person singular present

Definition: 
n

a strip of whalebone, wood, steel, etc, inserted into the front of a corset to stiffen it

Origin:
"to offer goods for sale only in bars and taprooms," 1851 (in Mayhew), perhaps from busk "to cruise as a pirate," which was used in a figurative sense by 1841, in reference to people living shifless and peripatetic lives; the nautical term is attested from 1660s (in a general sense of "to tack, to beat to windward"), apparently from obs. Fr. busquer "to shift, filch, prowl," which is related to It. buscare "to filch, prowl," Sp. buscar (from O.Sp. boscar), perhaps originally from bosco "wood" (see bush), with a hunting notion of "beating a wood" to flush game

"to prepare, to dress oneself," also "to go, set out," c.1300, probably from O.N. buask "to prepare oneself," reflexive of bua "to prepare"; most common in northern M.E. and surviving chiefly in Scottish and northern English dialect







"whalebone" 16th C; from Old French busc , probably from Old Italian busco  "splinter, stick", of Germanic origin

Sentence Examples:
• We chatted very pleasantly on the road, and it was agreed, with no dissentient, that I should call at the first tavern we came to in Brighouse, and do a bit of busking. - Adventures and Recollections, Bill o'th'Hoylus End

• They clung to the skirts of the theatre for a bit. But the theatre, aching to be "in it", flung them off. The intellectual drama had no use for them, no use at all. And so they found themselves (out of it indeed) busking on the pavement, doing tricks and tumbling and singing silly songs to the unresponsive profiles of long lines of ladies (high-nosed or stumpy-nosed ladies), waiting admittance to the matinées of some highly intellectual play. - The Harlequinade, Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

• When the affair has been brought to a happy issue, she attends, in an official capacity, the busking of the victim; and when she sees her at length assume the (lace) veil, and prepare to go forth to be actually married—a contingency she had till that moment denied in her secret heart to be within the bounds of possibility—she falls upon her neck as hysterically as a regard for the frocks of both will allow, and indulges in a silent fit of tears, and terror, and triumph. - Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, 1852

• At that moment the Master of Horse suddenly left the Duke and turned toward the stables. "Busk yourselves for the road, fair sirs," he called, as he passed. "We march after matins to-morrow. - Beatrix of Clare, by John Reed Scott

Sources: Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

bouleversement

boul•e•verse•ment (bool-uh-vers-MAHn)  n

Definition:
1. a reversal
2. a violent uproar; a tumult
Origin:
1782; French, from Old French bouleverser "to overturn", from  boule "ball",  from Latin bulla + verser, "to overturn", from Old French, from Latin versre, frequentative of vertere, to turn; from PIE wer

Related:
Related Words: bowl, bullet; versed, versus

Sentence Examples:
• He tried to imagine himself in Hartley's place, Hartley in his, and he gave a little shiver. He knew that if that bouleversement were actually to take place he would be as glad for his friend's sake as poor Hartley was now for his, but he knew also that the smile of congratulation would be a grimace of almost intolerable pain, and so he knew what Hartley's black hour must be like. - Jason, Justus Miles Forman
• It is needless to dwell upon the chagrin of Honora's maternal grandfather, Howard Allison Esquire, over this turn of affairs, this unexpected bouleversement, as he spoke of it in private to his friends in his Parisian club.  - A Modern Chronicle, Winston Churchill
• In the first place, because first in order of realisation, there is its value as a mental bouleversement, a revolution in ideas, a sort of moral and intellectual cold shower-bath, a nervous shock to the system generally. The patient or pupil gets so thoroughly upset in all his preconceived ideas; he finds all round him a life so different from the life to which he has been accustomed in colder regions, that he wakes up suddenly, rubs his eyes hard, and begins to look about him for some general explanation of the world he lives in.  - Science in Arcady, Grant Allen


Sources: Free Dictionary

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

bombinate

bom•bi•nate (BOM-buh-neyt)  v

Definition:
to buzz, hum or drone

bombination noun

Origin:
1880; from L. bombinare, corrupted from bombitare "to hum, buzz," from bombus "a deep, hollow sound; hum, buzz"

Related:
Synonyms:buzz, hum, drone
Related Words: bomb

Sentence Examples:
•For the same reasons for which the theatre cannot be a power for good, it cannot be a power for evil. The comedian, unless he wishes to bombinate in a vacuum — which is not the goal of the ordinary comedian's desire—can no more afford to be more immoral than he can afford to be more moral than his audience. - Rousseau and the women he loved, Francis Henry Gribble

• Like his co-workers he had been somewhat stampeded by Dorn's imitative faculties, faculties which enabled the former journalist to bombinate twice as loud in a void three times as great as any of his colleagues. - Erik Dorn, Ben Hecht

• The question as to the closer connection between ourselves and the engineers is a very broad one, and it would be unwise for us to commit ourselves at this moment to anything upon it. We must leave it to bombinate in our heads and in those of our engineering friends for some time to come. - Sessional Papers of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1865

Sources: Free Dictionary, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

balneal

wo•rd•e (BAL-nee-uhl)  adj

Definition:
of or relating to baths or bathing
balneary adjective; balneation noun
Origin:
from Latin balneum "bath", from Greek balaneion "bathing room, bath"

Sentence Examples:
• But, perhaps the most natural supposition is, that this may be a balneal chair; for lying immediately within the frame of it were found the strigils, and also the little earthenware cup or urn. The strigils, it need hardly be said, were instruments chiefly used in the baths; Juvenal describing preparations for the bath, says, sonat unctis strigilibus. -Archaeologia: or miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity, 1836

• Being here for a distillation of Rheum that pains me in one of my Arms, and having had about three thousand strokes of a pump upon me in the Queen's Bath; and having been here now divers days, and view'd the several qualities of these Waters, I fell to contemplate a little what should be the reason of such extraordinary actual heat, and medicinal Virtue in them. ... I find that some impute it to Wind, or Air, or some Exhalations shut up in the Bowels of the Earth, which either by their own nature, or by their violent motion and agitation, or attrition upon rocks, and narrow passages, do gather heat, and so impart it to the Waters. Others attribute this balneal heat to the Sun, whose allsearching Beams penetrating the pores of the Earth, do heat the Waters. -Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, James Howell

• Of these, the most important was undoubtedly Ad Mediam, where the springs were tapped and pipes, pools and buildings for balneal treatment were constructed. -Leisure, pleasure, and healing,Esti Dvorjetski


Sources: Free Dictionary

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

Byronic

By•ron•ic (bahy-RON-ik)  adj

Definition:
1. of or relating to George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron, the British Romantic poet
2. having characteristics of Byron, such as being melancholic, passionate,  melodramatic, dark, romantically brooding or having disregard for societal norms

Byronism noun; Byronically adverb

Origin:
1815–25;  Byron  + -ic; after poet Lord Byron (1788-1824), who displayed such characteristics, as did his poetry, i.e. a flawed character marked by great passion who exhibits disrespect for social institutions and is self-destructive.


Sentence Examples:
• With thoughtful gray eyes set deep under a jut of brows and a nose as finely cut as a woman's, it was of a type that, in more sophisticated localities, men would have said had risen to meet the Byronic ideal of which the world was just then enamored. But there was nothing Byronic or self-conscious about David Crystal. He had been born and bred in what was then the Far West, and that he should read poetry and regard life as an undertaking that a man must face with all honor and resoluteness was not so surprising for the time and place.  -The Emigrant Trail, Geraldine Bonner

• There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked--or rather must have been; only, alas! in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be"; and to be wicked on a small income is impossible. -The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, Jerome K. Jerome

• It was a glorious sight, yet I know not that I felt more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and royalty, than when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early thoughts with the Byronic "silent rages" of misanthropy. -Summer on the Lakes, S.M. Fuller

Sources: Free Dictionary, Wordsmith

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

banausic

ba•nau•sic (buh-NAW-sik)  adj

Definition:
1. serving utilitarian purposes only; mechanical; practical; materialistic, uncultured, routine
2. relating to or concerned with earning a living
3. of or relating to a mechanic


Origin:
1845; from Gk. banausikos "pertaining to mechanics," from banausos "artisan, mere mechanical," hence (to the Greeks) "base, ignoble;" perhaps lit. "working by fire," from baunos "furnace, forge" (but Klein dismisses this as folk etymology and calls it "of uncertain origin")

Related:
Synonyms: prosaic, mundane, utilitarian, practical, mechanical, materialistic, uncultured, routine, ordinary


Sentence Examples:
• To very many men, indeed, who go up to the Universities with the intention of following teaching as a profession, a high degree is a mere investment, the one instinct in them which is not quite banausic being the conscientious thoroughness with which they impart what they have been taught.  -Ephemera Critica, John Churton Collins

• The Genoese, cavalier, are a banausic race, and penurious at that; they will go where the devil cannot, which is between the oak and the rind; opportunity given, they would sneak the breeches off a highlander: they divide their time between commercialism and a licentiousness of which, sordid as it is, they habitually beat down the price. -Sir John Constantine, Prosper Paleologus Constantine

• In most of the cities that were centres of intellectual life, the plebeians arose and replaced the formerly highly cultured patricians. The burghers began to tune the melodies of a new music: a banausic artisan song.  -Women of the Teutonic Nations, Hermann Schoenfeld

Sources: Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Wordnik, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

bibacious

bi•ba•cious (by-BAY-shuhs)  adj

Definition:
overly fond or addicted to drinking; disposed to imbibe

Origin:
from Latin bibere "to drink"

Related:
Synonyms: bibulous, drunken, alcoholic, boozy
Related Words: bib, bibulous, imbrue, beverage, imbibe, beer

Sentence Examples:
• "It's moonlight, I reckon," said Mike, who was just meditating over his last draught, and his consequent departure from this bibacious paradise.  - Traditions of Lancashire, John Roby

• But I had the impression that the author of the Spectator was afflicted with a dropsy, or some such inflated malady, to which persons of sedentary and bibacious habits are liable. -The Poet at the Breakfast Table, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

• Now the original proposition, commencing with the word “take,” was meant by its propounder to achieve its climax in “a seat on one of the hall chairs;” but the liquid inferences of A1, with a dark lantern, had the desired effect, and induced a command from Mr. Adolphus Casay to the small essential essence of condensed valetanism in the person of Jim Pipkin, to produce the case-bottles for the discussion of the said A1, with the dark lantern, who gained considerably in the good opinion of Mr. James Pipkin, by requesting the favour of his company in the bibacious avocation he so much delighted in.- Punch, or The London Charivari

Sources: Wordsmith, Wordnik, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

brumal

bru•mal (BROO-muhl)  adj

Definition:
1. belonging to winter; winter-like
2. characteristic or related to winter
3. occurring in winter

Origin:
1513; from L. brumalis, from bruma "winter" (perhaps with an original sense "season of the shortest day," from *brevima, contracted from brevissima, superl. of brevis "short"). Source of Brumaire, second month (Oct. 22-Nov. 20) in calendar of the French Republic, lit. "the foggy month," coined 1793 by Fabre d'Eglantine from Fr. brume "fog," from L. bruma

Related:
Synonyms: hibernal, hiemal, wintry
Related Words: brume, brumous

Sentence Examples:
• But we were now in the very heart of winter, and after much frost scarcely a single wretched brumal flower lingered and languished. -Shelley at Oxford, Thomas Jefferson Hogg

• The robin returns from the land of fire, and therefore he feels the cold of winter far more than his brother birds. He shivers in the brumal blast; hungry, he chirps before your door. Oh! my child, then, in gratitude throw a few crumbs to poor red-breast.

•         "Old longings nomadic leap,
          Chafing at custom's chain;
          Again from its brumal sleep
          Wakens the ferine strain."
-The Call of the Wild, Jack London

The Storyline
Anna felt cold. Outside it was summer. But in that office the climate was brumal.

Sources: Wiktionary, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

battology

bat•tol•o•gy (buh-TOL-uh-jee)  n

Definition:
continual unnecessary reiteration of the same words, phrases, or ideas

battologist noun; battological adjective

Origin:
1595–1605; from Gk. battologia "a speaking stammeringly," from battos "stammerer," of imitative origin, + -logia

Sentence Examples:
• The frequent repetition, therefore, of these, is as excusable as frequent preaching; and they that nauseate it as loathsome battology, do love novelty better than verity, and playing with words to please the fancy, rather than closing with Christ to save the soul. -Select practical writings of Richard Baxter

• Away then with all silly theorems concerning population, the battology of statistics, with many words making nothing understood. -The Quarterly review, 1818

• Therefore, although I shewed that he had done that from malice, I could not take away from him every pretext for attacking us. It was my duty to give satisfaction on the score of battologies. But by no means have I admitted that there was here any useless battology, or mere contending about words. I confessed, however, that I would not have spoken unless I had been forced by his wickedness to do so. -Letters of John Calvin

The Storyline
Still in a foul mood, Anna returned to her office to finish her inventory reports shooting her assistant a look to stave off another battology regarding the schedule.

Sources: Wordnik, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

beatific

be•a•tif•ic (bee-uh-TIF-ik)  adj

Definition:
1. bestowing bliss, blessings, happiness, or the like
2. blissful; saintly

beatifically adverb

Origin:
1630s, from L.L. beatificus, from L. beatus "blessed"

Related:
Synonyms: serene, exalted, angelic, blissful, euphoric, happy, joyful
Related Words: beatify, beatitude

Sentence Examples:
• Come then, let us unite our ideas, let us speak together, but let us yet mention as present, those beatific thoughts and imaginings which are indeed past. Let us ever remember and cherish in our heart of hearts those golden fore-tastes of future eternity, or those rapturous reminiscences of past, which prove beyond logical demonstration, the existence of some vital principle in man, godlike in faculties, in essence immaterial, in duration, immortal! - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, 1829

• A fumbling is heard outside the door.  It is opened suddenly; Jack Barthwick seems to fall into the room.  He stands holding by the door knob, staring before him, with a beatific smile. He is in evening dress and opera hat, and carries in his hand a sky-blue velvet lady's reticule.  His boyish face is freshly coloured and clean-shaven.  An overcoat is hanging on his arm. -The Silver Box, John Galsworthy

• The increasing crowd stares with beatific placidity. People emerge impatiently from the bowels of the throbbing motor-bus and slip down from its back, and either join the crowd or vanish. -The Author's Craft, Arnold Bennett

The Storyline
She tried to paste on her best beatific smile.

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

benison

ben•i•son (BEN-uh-suhn)  n

Definition:
a blessing, beatitude, benediction

Related:
Synonyms: blessing, beatitude, benediction
Antonyms: malison
Related Words: benediction, benefit, benefactor

Sentence Examples:
• It is my greatest and best book. It is the one that will live for weeks after other books have passed away. Even to those who cannot read, it will come like a benison when there is no benison in the house. To the ignorant, the pictures will be pleasing. The wise will revel in its wisdom, and the housekeeper will find that with it she may easily emphasize a statement or kill a cockroach. -Remarks, Bill Nye

• "At any rate, my dear," she said that evening, as she paused, candle in hand, by her bedroom door, "at any rate I hope you'll do nothing that is unbecoming to a gentlewoman." Such was her benison. -Septimus, William J. Locke

• On these roads the lark in summer is continually heard; nests are plentiful in the hedges and dry ditches; and on the grassy banks, and at the feet of the bowed dikes, the blue-eyed speedwell smiles its benison on the passing wayfarer. -Dreamthorp, Alexander Smith

The Storyline
"You should find another boy like that. You will, just you see," was both her mother's benison and instruction.

Origin:
 c.1300, from O.Fr. beneiçon "blessing, benediction," from L. benedictionem (nom. benedictio), noun of action from pp. stem of benedicere "to speak well of, bless," from bene "well"

Sources: Wiktionary, Online Etymology

Why This Word:
Molto bene! Benison comes to us from the Latin for benediction, by way of French, and means much the same. Despite its ecclesiastical origin and connotations, however, in usage it seems to have a more secularized meaning. While it seem odd to think of a benediction outside a religious context, you may offer your benison in any context, like a blessing. Unlike blessing, it is not also freighted with the sense of sanction.

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

bivious

biv•i•ous  (biv"i*ous)   adj

Definition
having, or leading, two ways

bivously adverb

Related

Synonyms: none found
Related Words: all by way of sharing the root via: obvious, impervious, devious, deviate, previous

Examples

• In bivious theorems, and Janus-faced doctrines, let virtuous considerations state the determination. 1635
• Beneath the burthen of a bivious brest where bivious seems to mean "hesitating between two courses". 1887

Origin

L. bivius; bis twice + via way

Sources: Dictionary.com

Why This Word:

During later Renaissance leading up to the Industrial Revolution, the need for new words to express new ideas and discuss new knowledge spurred the coining from Latin words and roots a plethora of new English words, many of them commonly used today.

Bivious wasn't one of them. It was created circa 1635 by Sir Thomas Browne. It enjoyed a mild flourish in the 19th Century, secured its spot in Webster's 1828 Dictionary, and in dictionaries thereafter and fell into abeyance.

But ask yourself these questions: Do we have a use for a word expressing having or leading two ways? Do we have another word expressing having or leading two ways? I think the answers are obvious, bivious needs to be saved from oblivion.

Word-E: A Word-A-Day