Word of the Day
judder
verb (used without object)
to vibrate violently.
More about judder
Judder as a verb means “to vibrate or shake violently,” and as a noun, “violent shaking.” It is first recorded in 1926 and refers to the shaking of automobiles (or their parts); it was later applied to aircraft. Judder has no precise etymology: it may be a combination of jolt or jerk and shudder, or it may be a variant pronunciation of shudder.
how is judder used?
Huw stalks through both sets of automatic doors, which judder and groan.
Other times, the vehicle’s robotic brain appeared confused, lingering at an all-way stop and juddering when a group of pedestrians crossed in front.
pecuniary
adjective
of or relating to money.
More about pecuniary
Pecuniary, “relating to money,” comes from the Latin adjective pecūniārius, a derivative of pecūnia “property, possessions, wealth, money,” itself a derivative of pecū “flock, herd, farm animals,” livestock being a very important source of wealth in early farming societies. Pecū and its related nouns are derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European noun peku– “sheep,” from the root pek-, pok- “to pluck, fleece, card (wool, flax).” Peku- is the source of Umbrian pequo “cattle” (Umbrian was an Italic language spoken in Umbria, north of Rome), Greek pókos and pékos “sheep’s wool, fleece,” and Lithuanian pekus “cattle.” By regular phonetic change peku- becomes fehu– in Proto-Germanic, becoming Gothic faihu “possessions, property,” German Vieh “cattle, beast, brute,” Old English feoh, fioh, feh “cattle, property (in cattle),” Middle English fe, feo, feh “livestock, herd of livestock, movable property, wealth, money.” Modern English fee “charge, payment, sum paid, “ but also “landed estate, inherited estate,” comes partly from the Middle English and Old English nouns, but fee in the sense “inherited estate, feudal estate” also comes from Old French fieu, fief “estate in land” and Anglo-French fe, fee, fie, from Germanic fehu. Pecuniary entered English in the early 16th century.
how is pecuniary used?
Whatever Mr. Penson’s civic convictions, he also has a pecuniary interest in the outcome.
As of last year, nearly half of America’s middle-aged adults found themselves members, willing or not, of what’s been called “the sandwich generation,” so named because these people have a child below them and an aging parent above them. … Given the pecuniary strain involved, it’s surprising that, about 150 years ago, parents might have gone out of their way to set up a situation like this.
More about nudnik
Everyone, unfortunately, has had experience with a nudnik, “a persistently dull, boring pest.” Nudnik is plainly a Yiddishism, a derivative of the Yiddish verb nudyen “to bore, pester.” Nudyen may come from Polish nudzić “to weary, bore,” or Russian nudit’ “to wear out (with complaints, pestering).” The Yiddish suffix –nik, adopted into English as a noun suffix that refers to persons, usually derogatorily, involved in a political cause or group (such as beatnik, peacenik), is also of Slavic origin. The personal suffix –nik appears in English as early as 1905, but the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, literally “traveling companion,” popularized –nik ad nauseam. Nudnik entered English in the first half of the 20th century.
how is nudnik used?
Mr. Daniels is one of those quintessential New York characters: a confessed nudnik. Dozens of times a year, he telephones city officials about local irritants, from the lack of sidewalk curb cuts to accommodate wheelchairs to a mound of asphalt left on a sidewalk after a repaving job.
We lie to protect our privacy (“No, I don’t live around here”); to avoid hurt feelings (“Friday is my study night”) … to escape a nudnik (“My mother’s on the other line”) …