Word of the Day
raillery
noun
good-humored ridicule; banter.
More about raillery
Raillery “good-humored ridicule” is an adaptation of French raillerie, equivalent to the Middle French verb railler “to mock, deride” and the suffix -erie, which is used to indicate qualities, properties, or actions collectively. Railler derives by way of Occitan ralhar “to babble, chatter” from Late Latin ragere “to bray, bellow, roar.” The verb ragere is an example of Word of the Day hapax legomenon, which means “a word that only appears once in a particular work or area of literature”; in this case, ragere is included just one time in a Latin text that dates to the 10th century and is absent from all other texts in the Latin language. Ragere is likely of imitative origin, and although classical Latin had a similar-sounding synonym, rugīre “to roar” (compare French, Portuguese, and Spanish rugir), there is no connection between rugīre and ragere. Raillery was first recorded in English circa 1650.
how is raillery used?
Irish women writers, actors, painters, and journalists of the mid-twentieth-century socialised in a heady atmosphere of arty conversation and political raillery, and actively campaigned on issues which affected their rights as citizens. They hosted annual banquets to network with influential people in theatre and the media, invited writers (male and female) to their “at homes” to discuss art and literature, and publicly promoted the work of their members through a literary award system…
septentrion
noun
the north.
More about septentrion
Septentrion “the north” derives from Latin septentriōnēs, which refers to the seven stars of the asterism Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major (the “Greater Bear”). These seven stars, because of their location in the northern sky near the North Star, have long had an association with the north in various cultures; we only need to look at the state flag of Alaska to see this association alive and well today! Latin septentriōnēs is equivalent to septem “seven” and triō (stem triōn-) “plowing ox.” Another Latin word for “the north” is the noun boreās, the source of aurora borealis (literally, the “northern dawn”), which is a borrowing of Ancient Greek Boréās, the personification of the north wind. In modern Romance languages, instead of deriving from Latin septentriōnēs or boreās, the words for “north” (such as French nord and Spanish norte) are adapted from Old English north. Septentrion was first recorded in English in the late 14th century.
how is septentrion used?
Past midnight I awoke. Overhead there was such a bright light I almost had to shade my eyes. Then I realized what I was looking at, the Milky Way. What joy I felt as I recognized my lost constellation, Ursa Major. I now knew in fact what prompted Paul Fort to write, “The sky is one great emerald from south to septentrion.” With joy I knew again the seven stars of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, now commonly known as the “Big Dipper”. From Latin: septem (seven) and triones (a team of three plow oxen). I now knew septentrion, to the north, as did Paul Fort.
On the very ground Alone she sat, as she had there been left A guard upon the wain, which I beheld Bound to the twyform beast. The seven nymphs Did make themselves a cloister round about her, And in their hands upheld those lights secure From blast septentrion and the gusty south.
abient
adjective
tending to move away from a stimulus or situation.
More about abient
Abient “tending to move away from a stimulus or situation” comes from the Latin term abiēns (stem abient-) “going away,” the present participle of the verb abīre “to go away, exit, depart.” Abīre is formed from the preposition ab “from, away” and the verb īre “to go,” which has two stems: -ient and -it. The verb īre also gives rise to ambīre “to go around,” inīre “to go into, begin,” and trānsīre “to go across, cross,” and to see evidence of all these Latin verbs in English today, compare ambient and ambition, initial and initiate, and transient and transit. The -it stem also pops up in circuit (from Latin circumīre “to go round, circle”), exit (from exīre “to go out”), and even obituary (from obīre “to go toward,” often used euphemistically in the sense “to meet one’s death”). Abient was first recorded in English in the early 1930s.
how is abient used?
In the case of negative affect, the motivating experience can be best described, not as punishing, but as experience that tends to be psychologically noxious and difficult to tolerate. Such experience instigates abient behavior—behavior that tends to produce avoidance and to reduce attention to and/or communion with the object of the affect when there is an object.
To avoid writing, I engage in abient behavior: walking the dog, cleaning the floor, ironing T-shirts, or reading junk mail.