Word of the Day
sennachie
noun
a professional storyteller of family genealogy, history, and legend.
More about sennachie
Sennachie “a professional storyteller of family history” is borrowed from Scottish Gaelic seanachaidh, which comes from Old Irish senchae or senchaid “historian.” The sen- element in these Old Irish terms means “old, ancient” and is cognate with Latin senex “old; an elder.” From senex (stem sen-), English inherits senate, senescent, and senile, all of which pertain to elders, either in age or in society. The comparative form of senex is senior “older,” which is the source of senior, sir, and surly as well as French seigneur, Italian signore, and Spanish señor. Sennachie was first recorded in English in the 1530s.
how is sennachie used?
Although the Irish folk-tales are largely the same as other folk-tales throughout the world, the method of narrating them in Ireland became very elaborate over time …. The skill involved was recognized beyond the Gaeltacht, such that the Irish word for a professional storyteller—senchai, or its Scottish Gaelic cognate seanchaidh—was borrowed into English as shannaghes (plural) as early as 1534; it is now usually spelled seannachie or sennachie.
It was the sennachie who first told me I was special. He had come to teach my eldest brother, David. The sennachie is the holder of the family story, the keeper of the genealogy, the remembrancer of all that makes a clan or a family…
defenestrate
verb (used with object)
to throw (a person or thing) out of a window.
More about defenestrate
Defenestrate “to throw out of a window” is a back-formation from defenestration; as with noun–verb pairs such as automation and automate, bartender and bartend, and burglar and burgle, the verb defenestrate is formed from the noun defenestration. Defenestrate ultimately derives from Latin fenestra “window,” which is of uncertain origin. One theory is that fenestra is derived from or connected to the Ancient Greek verb phaínein “to bring to light, cause to appear,” which is the source of many fant- and phant- words in English, from fantastic and fantasy to phantasmagoric and phantom. However, it is likely that fenestra derives from Etruscan, a language of unknown origin that was once spoken in the Italian peninsula. Defenestrate was first recorded in English at the turn of the 20th century.
how is defenestrate used?
We poured more oil out of the window while other students defenestrated other portraits, of dead rectors or who or who knows what dry, boring, be-robed and be-medalled characters together with any papers we extracted from the cupboards and everything else we could lay our hands on to make a big and visible bonfire. We flung the windows wide open and after defenestrating everything inflammable and easy to throw down we organised tables and chairs into a barricade behind the balustrades.
One thing the city of Prague is famous for: throwing men out windows. The word for this is defenestration. Tourists can climb the narrow stairs to the room where Catholic noblemen were defenestrated because of a religious dispute in 1618. You can look down from the window to see exactly the length of their fall. Catholics say these men were saved by angels … [and] lowered gently to earth. Protestants say the men survived because they landed in a dung heap piled below the window.
chaparral
noun
a dense growth of shrubs or small trees.
More about chaparral
Chaparral “a dense growth of shrubs or small trees” is an Americanism borrowed from Spanish, in which it is equivalent to chaparro “evergreen oak” and -al, a suffix indicating where something is found in abundance, such as an orchard. Chaparro is likely adapted from Basque txapar “little thicket.” Basque is a language spoken in northern Spain and southwestern France, a region also known as Basque Country, and it is a language isolate—a language with no known surviving relatives. Basque has been conclusively linked with Aquitainian, a language spoken 2,000 years ago in Aquitaine, a region of southwestern France, but outside this small corner of Western Europe, the origins of Basque are shrouded in mystery. Chaparral was first recorded in English circa 1840.
how is chaparral used?
Chaparral is both a vegetation type and the name given to the community of coadapted plants and animals found in the foothills and mountains throughout California …. Seen from the car window or scenic lookout, chaparral looks like a soft bluish green blanket gently covering the hills. Up close, however, this “blanket” no longer appears soft. Instead, what is revealed is a nearly impenetrable thicket of shrubs with intertwined branches and twigs with hard leaves and stiff and unyielding stems.
I lean against a tree—and am treelike. I find myself calmly standing sentry there, part-clad in my mail of moonlight, and doing so in a state of such optical and auditory supervigilance that I perceive, with no trace of a startle reflex, the movements not only of the forest creatures as they hop and scamper and flit but even, through the blackened chaparral, the distant silhouette of a person who stands at a window on San Francisco [Street]. When my phone vibrates, it’s as if I’ve pocketed a tremor of the earth.