Word of the Day
badinage
noun
light, playful banter or raillery.
More about badinage
Badinage “playful banter” is a French compound noun of badiner “to joke, trifle” and the noun suffix -age, naturalized in English. Badiner is a derivative of the noun badin “joker, banterer,” from the Provençal verb badar “to gape,” which in turn comes from unrecorded Vulgar Latin batāre “to yawn, gape.” Badinage entered English in the second half of the 17th century.
how is badinage used?
“The Importance of Being Earnest” … has delighted audiences for more than a century with its badinage, irreverence and frothy romance. The real stars of the play have always been the words, which tumble out in a scathing, literate, giddy gush.
So, with laughter and shouts and endless badinage and merriment, the guests take their places.
More about plashy
Plashy “marshy, wet” is a derivative of Middle English plash(e), plaice, place “pool of standing water, marshy area,” from Old English plæsc “pool of water, puddle.” The adjective suffix -y comes from Middle English -i, -ie, -y, from Old English -ig (compare the German suffix -ig), which is related to the Greek adjective suffix -ikos and Latin -icus. Plashy entered English in the mid-16th century.
how is plashy used?
The hare is running races in her mirth; / And with her feet she from the plashy earth / Raises a mist, which, glittering in the sun, / Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
Suddenly I found myself face-to-face with a proud fastidious woman in confusion, hesitating, seeming to scruple at the prospect of having to step out of the Gallery and into the plashy road.
limerence
noun
the state of being obsessively infatuated with someone, usually accompanied by delusions of or a desire for an intense romantic relationship with that person.
More about limerence
Limerence “obsessive infatuation with someone, usually accompanied by delusions of or a desire for an intense romantic relationship with that person” was coined in 1977 by Dorothy Tennov, an American psychologist, in her book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Dr. Tennov says of her coinage: “I first used the term amorance then changed it back to limerence… It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever.”
how is limerence used?
What did Henry VIII’s poems express more feelingly than Shakespeare’s, and what did Don Juan, for all his reputation, probably never feel at all? The answer is limerence.
Like everything else he’d said, she passed this under the microscope of obsessional limerence.