ungulate

un•gu•late (UHNG-gyuh-lit, -leyt)

Definition:
n
1. a hoofed mammal

adj
2. having hoofs
3. hooflike
4. belonging or pertaining to the Ungulata, a former order of all hoofed mammals, now divided into the odd-toed perissodactyls and even-toed artiodactyls
Origin:
1802; from L.L. ungulatus "hoofed," from ungula "hoof, claw, talon," dim. (in form but not sense) of unguis "nail"

Sentence Examples:
• The giraffe is separated from all living ungulates by the primitive character of its so-called "horns," which are not horns in the usual sense, but simply bony prominences of the skull covered with hair.  - American Big Game in Its Haunts

• A few moments later, a rifle flash and a bang, and then a fusillade brought Jack’s heart into his throat. The pickup car jetted toward it; by the time it reached the spot, the shooting had stopped, and a crowd was gathering around something white on the ground. He had to force himself to look, then gave a shuddering breath of relief. It was a zaragoat, a three-horned domesticated ungulate. - Little Fuzzy, Henry Beam Piper

• Professor Cope, the American paleontologist, was a strong believer in the effect of activity, both upon the individual and upon his descendants. He believed that the insistent beating of the foot of an animal upon the hard soil of the drying Tertiary plateau, had influenced the production of a firmer nail, which spread around the entire end of the toe and made the hoof of the ungulate. - The Meaning of Evolution, Samuel Christian Schmucker

Wikipedia:

Ungulates are several groups of mammals, most of which use the tips of their toes, usually hoofed, to sustain their whole body weight while moving. They make up several orders of mammals, of which six to eight survive. There is some dispute as to whether Ungulata is a cladistic (evolution-based) group, or merely a phenetic group or folk taxon (similar, but not necessarily related), because not all ungulates appear as closely related as once believed. 

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

urticate

ur•ti•cate (UR-ti-keyt)

Definition:
v tr
to sting or whip with or as if with nettles
v intr
to produce a stinging or itching sensation
adj
characterized by the presence of hives
urticated past participle; urticated past tense; urticating present participle; urticates 3rd person singular present; urtication noun; urticant adjective

Origin:
1835–45;  from Medieval Latin urticatus, past participle of urticare  "to sting", from Latin urtica "nettle from urere “to burn”

Related:
Related Words: combustion

Sentence Examples:
• In spite of their prominence and the fear which they arouse there are few accurate data regarding these American tarantulas. It has often been shown experimentally that they can kill small birds and mammals, though it is doubtful if these form the normal prey of any of the species, as has been claimed. There is no question but that the mere mechanical injury which they may inflict, and the consequent chances of secondary infection, justify, in part, their bad reputation. In addition to the injury from their bite, it is claimed that the body hairs of several of the South American species are readily detached and are urticating. - Handbook of Medical Entomology, William Albert Riley and Oskar Augustus Johanssen

• In the case of the jelly-fishes, it has been pointed out that their well-known urticating or stinging powers would make them at least unpleasant, if not dangerous, food for fishes; and that consequently the luminosity by which so many of them are characterized at night may serve at once as a warning to predatory fishes and as a protection to themselves.  - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky

• When beacons urticate each eye,
  Noctivagous ghouls haste to stroke
  Each goblin shank of hoary sage.
- Betelguese, Jean Louis de Esque

Sources: Free Dictionary, Dictionary.com

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

usance

u•sance (YOO-zuhns)  n

Definition:
1. a length of time, exclusive of days of grace and varying in different places, allowed by custom or usage for the payment of foreign bills of exchange (commerce)
2. the income of benefits of every kind derived from the ownership of wealth; interest paid on borrowed money (economics)
3. use; custom; habit (archaic)

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English usaunce  from Old French usance,  probably from Medieval Latin usantia,  derivative of Latin usant (stem of usans), present participle of usare  "to use"

Related:
Related Words: use

Sentence Examples:
• The busy and sagacious bees fixed their republic in the clefts of the rocks and hollows of the trees, offering without usance the plenteous produce of their fragrant toil to every hand. - The History of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

• Come, then, you do know something, my lad. But it has been a tiresome business, with its investigation of titles and rights of usance, and court copyhold fines, and—Bother the business, it has taken up no end of time. But there, it’s all over, and you and I can go and make the dust fly and set the millstones spinning as much as we like. Thumpers they are, Tom, three feet in diameter. I wish to goodness they had been discs of glass instead of stone. - The Vast Abyss, George Manville Fenn

• So God me help, said Palomides, this is a shameful custom, and a villainous usance for a queen to use, and namely to make such war upon her own lord, that is called the Flower of Chivalry that is christian or heathen; and with all my heart I would destroy that shameful custom. - Le Morte D'Arthur, Thomas Malory

Sources: Dictionary.com

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

ukase

u•kase (yoo-KAYS, -KAYZ; YOO-kays, -kayz)  n

Definition:
1. an authoritative order or decree; an edict
2. a proclamation of a czar having the force of law in imperial Russia

Origin:

1729; from Russian ukaz "edict," from ukazat' "to show, decree," from Old Church Slavic ukazati, from u-, intens. prefix, + kazati "to show, order," which is related to the first element of Casimir

Related:
Synonyms: command, commandment, declaration, decretum, dictum, edict, order, ordinance, precept, prescript, proclamation, promulgation, ruling, diktat

Sentence Examples:
• That official was charged with the ukase depriving Feodor of his rank, and appointing his brother Zeno to the post of frigate-captain in his place. The crew were looking on in gloomy silence, ready for any turn which events might take. "Throw both ukase and messenger into the sea!" shouted Feodor.  -The Tower of Dago, Mor Jokai

• A Russian told me that the Empress Elizabeth had done the journey in fifty-two hours. "You mean that she issued a ukase to the effect that she had done it," said a Russian of the old school; "and if she had liked she could have travelled more quickly still; it was only a question of the wording of the ukase."  -Russia and Poland, Jacques Casanova

• During the reign of Louis XIII this great and fatal truth had not yet been impressed upon the French nation, for the popular voice was stifled beneath the ukase of despotism; and even the tiers-état--important as the loyalty of that portion of a kingdom must ever be to its rulers--were treated with disdain and contumely; but beneath all the workings of his government (or rather the government of his minister, for the son of Marie de Medicis was a monarch only in name), may be traced the undercurrent of popular indignation and discontent, which, gradually swelling and rising during the two succeeding reigns, finally overthrew with its giant waves the last frail barrier which still upreared itself before a time-honoured throne. -The Life of Marie de Medicis, Julia Pardoe

Why This Word:

A ukase, in Imperial Russia, was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leader (patriarch) that had the force of law. Adequate translations are "edict" or "decree" of Roman law.  After the Russian Revolution, a government proclamation of wide meaning was called a "decree"; more specific proclamations were called ukaz. Both terms are usually translated as "decree". According to the Russian Federation's 1993 constitution, a ukaz is a Presidential decree. Such ukazes have the power of laws, but may not alter the regulations of existing laws, and may be superseded by laws passed by the Federal Assembly.

Sources: Free Dictionary, Online Etymology, Wikipedia

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

unguinous

un•gui•nous (UHNG-gwi-nuhs)  adj

Definition:
resembling, containing, or consisting of fat or oil; greasy; oily

Origin:
1595–1605; from Latin unguinosus,  equivalent to unguin-  (stem of unguen ) "ointment" + -osus  -ous

Related:
Synonyms: fatty, greasy, adipose, butyraceous, lubricous, oleaginous, unctuous
Related Words: ointment, anoint, unction, unctuous

Sentence Examples:
• Carson swore that the words, "we are betrayed" in her unguinous message referred to the intimate relationship between Carson and Mitchell, not to the robbery.12 Despite her lawyer Zeligman Philips's arguments that the court was at fault for trying accessories to a crime before it tried the principals, Carson was pronounced guilty as charged and sentenced to two years in prison. -Dangerous to know, Susan Branson

• It did not help that Evelyn fed Darren bitter stories about Warren's relatives, with whom Evelyn herself maintained, during those first years, an honorary civility. Evelyn welcomed them in her various homes with unguinous familiarity, but the boy remain mute and rebarbative in their presence. -Depraved Indifference, Gary Indiana

• His hair slicked back, unguinous. It was greased completely to prevent any stray locks from escaping. The black shimmer of his crown contrasted with his natural dull eyebrows. It gave the unsettling impression of borrowed hair. -Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring, Zach Plague

Sources: Dictionary.com

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

ullage

ull•age (UHL-ij)  n

Definition:
1. the amount by which the contents fall short of filling a container, as a cask or bottle
2. the quantity of wine, liquor, or the like, remaining in a container that has lost part of its contents by evaporation, leakage, or use
3. the volume of a loaded tank of liquid propellant in excess of the volume of the propellant; the space provided for thermal expansion of the propellant and the accumulation of gases evolved from it

ullaged adjective

Origin:

The word comes ultimately from the Latin oculus, “eye”, which was used in a figurative sense by the Romans for the bung hole of a barrel. This was taken into French in the medieval period as oeil, from which a verb ouiller was created, to fill a barrel up to the bung hole. In turn, a noun ouillage was created, which was the immediate source of our word, first recorded in Norman English about 1300, at first in the sense of the amount of liquid needed to fill a barrel up to the bung hole.
By an obvious extension, ullage came to refer to any amount by which a barrel is unfilled, perhaps because some of the contents have been used. And it is also applied to the unfilled air space at the top of a bottle of wine, which in this case is essential to allow for expansion of the contents as the temperature changes.

Related:
Related Words: oeillade “an oogling stare, an amorous gaze”

Sentence Examples:
• In the lowest cellars reserved wine in cask is stored, as it best retains its natural freshness and purity in a very cool place. All air is carefully excluded from the casks, any ullage is immediately checked, and as evaporation is continually going on the casks are examined every fortnight, when any deficiency is at once replenished.

• "At all events, I'm not ashamed to look mine enemy in the face—so hand us out the bottle."
Moonshine put the bottle on the table.
"Now, Bob," said Cockle, "what d'ye say to a seven bell-er? Why, hallo! what's become of all the grog?"
"All drank last night, Massa Cockle," replied Moonshine.
"Now, you ebony thief, I'll swear that there was half a bottle left when I took my last glass; for I held the bottle up to the candle to ascertain the ullage."
-Olla Podrida, Frederick Marryat

The Storyline
This was definitely shaping up to be one of those days that is more ullage than wine.

Why This Word:
We may not think much about the empty space in a bottle or container for liquids, but judging from my search results, engineers sure do.
I like this word for two reasons. Firstly, it's an interesting example of language change. Ullage went from the hole, the "eye", in cask, to the amount of wine it took to fill the cask to the hole, to the amount of space left in the cask above the hole, to the amount generally of empty space in a closed vessel for liquids. Thus the word for the empty space in a wine bottle is related to the words monocle and binocular. See?
Secondly, like kerf, another word for what isn't there, and limen, a word for the space in between, it's a word ripe with untapped metaphorical meaning. Ullage is empty space, but it's purposeful empty space.

Sources: Dictionary.com, Wikipedia

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

ubiety

u•bi•e•ty (yoo-bahy-i-tee) / y-b-t/   n

Definition
the property of having a definite location at any given time; state of existing and being localized in space

ubietous, adjective

Related
Related Words: ubiquity

Examples
• And so every anecdote in Northern Ireland has to come accompanied by its refutation. One person will tell a story pointing up the ubiety of the sectarian divide, and how both groups can instantly identify one another and then someone else will chime up and say: but what about so-and-so.
• Bishop Pearson, alluding to a difficult question of the place or ubiety of a spirit (that is, how a spirit which is immaterial can have any place — a relation which seems necessarily to imply extension and circumscription qualities which again necessarily imply a material subject), says that the soul, "existing after death, and separated from the body, though of a nature spiritual, is really and truly in some place; if not
by way of circumscription as proper bodies are, yet by way of determination and indistancy; so that it is true to say this is really and truly present here, and not elsewhere".
•Nagle’s Moral Nuisances article, for example, takes as a case study a controversy over a nude beach in Oregon, with visibility of purportedly immoral behavior the issue and spatial separation to control visibility the cure. But if participants in a Kulturkampf insist on ferreting out examples from elsewhere of behavior and legal recognition and concerning themselves with them, then the scale is going to remain aterritorial and global as well as ubietous and local.

The Storyline
With so many turns and reversals in such a short time, Anna felt a bit dizzy, as if she had become bilocated or her ubiety was uncertain.

Origin
1665–75;  < L ubi  where? + -ety,  var. (after -i- ) of -ity

Sources: Dictionary.com

Why This Word:
I don't often use the word epistemology in everyday speech, but knowing it enables me to recognize an epistemological question when I see it. Ubiety, I think, falls into that class. It's one of those concepts thoughtful people need to help sort out the world they live in.
In quiddity, we looked at what-ness. With ubiety, we look at where-ness. At first blush, the ubiety of material objects seems rather straightforward and the ubiety of non-corporeal substances a subject of theology. Metaphorical ubiety of conceptual objects is a more fertile area. Bipartisanship is or isn't in a specific place. Or perhaps trying to locate it in a specific political body is a mistake. But either way its ubiety, or lack thereof, is one of the major points of debate surrounding the topic. And at closer inspection, the ubiety of material objects may not be that easily defined. We talk about dislocations or people or groups, but we're all always somewhere. A deracinated person or group may feel place-less because the where that is relevant to them is elsewhere. The difficulty of ubiety in everyday experience stems from the uncertainties over defining place. Is America the geographical entity defined on a map or something else, as seems to be indicated when people refer to the "real America" as some distinct entity? There's a very real sense in which defining where you are defines what you are, and feeling as though you are somewhere is a necessary prerequisite for feeling you can be something. Wars are fought over where people are and what some place is. The long and difficult Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from conflicting notions of ubiety - where people sense themselves and others to be. Our sense of ubiety and what that means to us is determinative of our sense of quiddity in significant measure.

Word-E: A Word-A-Day