Word of the Day
gormless
adjective
lacking in vitality or intelligence; stupid, dull, or clumsy.
More about gormless
The British adjective gormless, “lacking in vitality or intelligence; stupid, dull, or clumsy,” with the variant spellings gaumless and gawm(b)less, is probably a respelling of gaumless by r-less speakers. Gaumless comes from the Northern English and Scots noun gaum “heed, attention,” from Old Norse gaumr, with the same meaning. Gormless entered English in the mid-18th century.
how is gormless used?
Lockdown is lifting—hooray. But oh, no. Back come the phombies, and more gormless than ever. You remember the phone zombies. Maybe you call them wexters, people who walk and text simultaneously, oblivious to traffic or the old ladies they knock into bus shelters because they must reply to “U out l8er?” right here, right now.
More about droke
The rare noun droke has two meanings: “a valley with steeply sloping sides” and “a thicket of small trees or bushes.” Droke is restricted pretty much to Canada—the Atlantic Provinces (New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) and the Northwest Territories. Droke has no established etymology; but the dialects of the West Country, a loosely defined area of southwest England comprising Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset (at least), record the nouns drock “a wooden part of a plow” and droke “a furrow or ditch; an underground watercourse.” Droke entered English in the second half of the 18th century.
how is droke used?
We sometimes went berry picking in nearby areas, but we were cautioned not to wander too far because in certain drokes, small valleys, lived fairies who might spirit us away.
There’s more, but they’re not all worth a mention. Except for me and Mom over in Frogmarsh. And Jas Kelly, he’s up the droke a piece.
infinitesimal
adjective
immeasurably small; less than an assignable quantity.
More about infinitesimal
Infinitesimal comes from New Latin infīnītēsimālis, infīnītēsimus, a compound of Latin infīnītus “unspecified, indefinite, unrestricted, unlimited, infinite” and the adjective suffix –ēsimus, which was extracted from vīcēsimus “twentieth” (where the suffix is original) and applied to form ordinal numbers from 20 to 1,000; thus infinitesimal literally means “infinitieth.” Infinitesimal entered English in the mid-17th century.
how is infinitesimal used?
The story is both pleasantly seamy and inconsequential, as pat and flimsy as a mad-science soap opera. Its psychological dimensions are infinitesimal; its social context is nonexistent.
The problem with the intentional walk isn’t just that it robs baseball’s best players of a chance to hit. The issue is that it’s a waste of time in an already plodding game. … But major leaguers keeping going through the motions on the almost infinitesimal chance that the pitcher might get the yips and throw it away.