Word of the Day
tchotchke
noun
an inexpensive souvenir, trinket, or ornament.
More about tchotchke
Tchotchke “an inexpensive souvenir, trinket, or ornament” is a borrowing of Yiddish tshatshke, from obsolete Polish czaczko “toy, trinket” (modern Polish cacko), which is cognate with Czech čačka and Russian cacka, of the same general meaning. These Slavic terms are all most likely of imitative origin; with the addition of the diminutive suffix -ka or -ko, the original forms (Czech čača and both Polish and Russian caca) appear to be reduplicated syllables that are typical of baby talk. In case you thought it was a little strange that a word for “toy” or “trinket” would derive from a doubled syllable, bear in mind that English contains the similarly reduplicated term knickknack. Tchotchke was first recorded in English in the late 1960s.
how is tchotchke used?
For a reminder-through-association to work well it needs to be distinctive—something out of place that will catch the eye. To remind yourself to mail a stack of bills in the morning, for example, you might put a tennis ball on top of them …. And to remind employees to fill out the sign-up sheet for the holiday party, place it next to the brand new large snow globe on the receptionist’s desk and let people know to sign-up when they see the distinctive new tchotchke.
Michael Zegen, a star of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” is an unabashed hunter and gatherer. It runs in the family …. He says that tchotchkes make him feel good. “From the time I was a kid I’ve been into knickknacks,” said Mr. Zegen, whose collectibles include an orange Snoopy and a robot.
Bildungsroman
noun
a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
More about Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman “a novel concerned with the maturing of a young protagonist” is a direct borrowing from German. The word comprises two nouns: Bildung “formation, education” and Roman “novel.” Despite its “formation” sense, Bildung is not related to English building; rather, it derives from German Bild “image, picture,” which is cognate to Old English bilithe “image,” a term with no descendants in modern English. Roman derives via a long chain of semantic shifts from Latin Rōmānus “of or relating to Rome.” Rōmānus yielded the adjective Rōmānicus “in the Roman style or pattern,” and this became Old French romanz “story in the vernacular language” and then French roman “novel,” which German borrowed as Roman. English Roman preserves the original meaning of Rōmānus. Bildungsroman was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 1900s.
how is Bildungsroman used?
“The Chiffon Trenches” has been sold as a juicy tell-all…; revenge … in written form. It is that, kind of. But it is also a bildungsroman about an African-American boy from the Jim Crow South who made it to the front row of the Parisian fashion world by way of Interview, WWD, Ebony, Vanity Fair and, above all, Vogue.
Today, Latinx writers are writing their own versions of the bildungsroman, but with a twist. In novels like Angie Cruz’s Dominicana and Ernesto Quiñonez’s Taína, protagonists are educated not once, but twice: first, in mostly Spanish-speaking families and neighborhoods; and later, in the English-speaking society outside the home.
More about wintle
Wintle “to tumble over; capsize” is a Scottish English verb derived from early Dutch/Flemish windtelen “to revolve” (compare modern Dutch wentelen, of the same meaning). The verb windtelen is a frequentative of winden “to wind,” which makes wintle a close relative of the recent Word of the Day selection wynd; both wintle and wynd come from a Germanic source roughly meaning “to twist.” A frequentative is a type of verb that expresses repetition of an action, and while English no longer creates its own frequentatives, we used to add the suffix -le to mark this aspect. Just as winden becomes the frequentative windtelen, English scuff, sniff, and spark become scuffle, sniffle, and sparkle. Wintle was first recorded in English circa 1780.
how is wintle used?
On one occasion Mrs. Griffiths comes to the village shop early …. There is a hoar frost, the twigs are thick with glistening rime, she is well wrapped up, and she walks carefully so as not to wintle on the rimy Bargate stones of the path. She feels fresh and renewed on freezing mornings like this.
He sat up, held out his arms, and said, “Come, till I embrace you.” I took a hap, step and loup into his arms, and wintled ower beyond him in the bed, kissed him, and bade him an affectionate farewell in the meantime. I called him father ever after, and he called me son.