Word of the Day
nebbish
noun
a pitifully ineffectual, luckless, and timid person.
More about nebbish
Nebbish “a pitifully ineffectual person” is a variant of the Yiddish term nebekh “poor, unfortunate.” Unlike the majority of words in Yiddish, which are of Germanic extraction, nebekh is most likely from a Slavic source such as Czech nebohý “poor.” The original meaning of this Slavic source was “unendowed,” and it derived from a negative prefix (compare English not and non-) and the Proto-Indo-European root bhag- “to share, apportion.” This same root is also found in Ancient Greek phagein “to eat,” as in esophagus. Nebbish was first recorded in English in the early 1890s.
how is nebbish used?
The ability to make a nebbish of ourselves is given to all of us. Some exist with this condition on a permanent basis; others can just turn it on at will. … Of course, being on the fortunate, effectual side of the nebbish equation is always preferable to being on the “wrong” side of nebbishness. But I daresay that all of us have, at one time or another, felt the discomfort and humiliation of acting like a nebbish, wishing that the earth would open up and swallow us, whole.
On Nov. 19, Skylight opens “Little Shop of Horrors,” the Alan Menken-Howard Ashman musical that blends comedy and horror through a score that draws on pre-Beatles rock, doo-wop and Motownish sounds. Sievert plays Seymour, the lovestruck florist-shop nebbish who unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of a carnivorous and increasingly hungry hunk of vegetation.
unguinous
adjective
resembling, containing, or consisting of fat or oil; greasy; oily.
More about unguinous
Unguinous “containing fat or oil” derives from Latin unguen “fat, grease,” plus the suffix -ōsus “full of.” Unguen, in turn, comes from the verb unguere “to smear” (stem unct-), which is also the source of English terms such as unction “an act of anointing,” unctuous “having an oily feel,” and unguent “a salve applied to wounds.” The stem unct- regularly became oint in French, leading to words such as anoint and ointment. Unguinous was first recorded in English at the turn of the 17th century.
how is unguinous used?
She was sitting in the tent, languidly waiting for the women to come and prepare her for the wedding ceremony. Anointed from head to toe with an unguinous, aromatic oil, her pomaded hair suffused with a sharp scent, she sat vacantly on a pile of sacks, her embroidered gown and jewelry in a corner, chafing her oiled arms as if to dry them.
The suit and vest were of an old style, obviously not clean, an unguinous stain down the vest front, and the jacket ashen-white along the lapels and cuff edges where it was worn, but she could see that it had once been a good proper suit, and something about its tidy narrow cut and the way the man fit inside it, comfortably and with a cute sort of pride, reminded her of Poppy and the suit he kept for special occasions and in which he had been buried.
ankh
noun
a tau (T-shaped) cross with a loop at the top, used as a symbol of generation or enduring life.
More about ankh
Ankh “a tau (T-shaped) cross with a loop at the top” is a borrowing from Egyptian ʿnh̬ “live; life, soul.” In this word, ʿ represents a voiced throaty sound that does not exist in English, and h̬ represents the sound spelled as ch in German Buch, Hebrew Chanukah, and Scottish loch. While Arabic is the official language of Egypt today, the Egyptian language was spoken in the country for thousands of years until its latest form, Coptic, became largely extinct in the 1700s. Although the Egyptian source of ankh is transliterated today as ʿnh̬, while its spelling remained consistent in Egyptian hieroglyphics, its pronunciation during the several stages of the Egyptian language varied greatly. Ankh was first recorded in English in the late 1880s.
how is ankh used?
In a period when paganism and Christianity coexisted, there was cross-pollination between the two. The ancient Egyptian symbol for life, the ankh—a cross shape with an oval loop—influenced the development of the cross known as the crux ansata, used extensively in Coptic symbolism.