Word of the Day
blellum
noun
Scot. Obsolete. an idle, indiscreet talker.
More about blellum
Not only does blellum not have an etymology, it has very few citations. One of which is in the poem Tam o’Shanter (1790) by Robert Burns (1759–96); so it’s a keeper.
how is blellum used?
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum …
How was ye to foresee that Mr. Manners was a blellum?
toyetic
adjective
(of a character or object from a movie, TV show, etc.) potentially marketable as a toy: a toyetic superhero.
More about toyetic
Toyetic, an obvious composition of toy and the adjective suffix -etic, was supposedly coined by the American toy developer and marketer Bernard Loomis (1923–2006) in a conversation with Steven Spielberg about making figures based on Spielberg’s movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
how is toyetic used?
There’s a singular pleasure that comes with holding a Star Wars toy. The film’s vehicles, weapons, heroes, and villains, after all, are uniquely “toyetic” …
It adds another powerhouse toyetic property to their portfolio, with a proven track record of success.
sibilate
verb
to utter or pronounce with a hissing sound.
More about sibilate
Sibilate comes from Latin sībilātus, past participle of the verb sībilāre “to hiss, hiss in disapproval.” From sībilant-, the present participle stem of sībilāre, English has the noun and adjective sibilant, used in phonetics in reference to hissing sounds like s or z. Sibilate entered English in the 17th century.
how is sibilate used?
It may be that there is some mysterious significance in the pitch at which an idea is vocalized; but, as for this writer, we doubt if it makes any difference whether he sibilates his opinions to himself in half-suppressed demi-semiquavers, or roars them to the world through a fog-trumpet–their obliquity may safely be assumed as a constant quantity.
“I’ve been in for twenty years,” he sibilates in my ear.