Froward \FROH-werd\, adjective: not easily managed; contrary The mule is a froward animal. c. 1300, Old English fromweard “turned from or away,” from from + -weard. The opposite of toward, it was Latin pervertus in early translations of the Psalms, and also meant “about to depart, departing,” and “doomed to die.” Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation […]

Looks like Dictionary.com aborted their alphabetical Word of the Day pattern mid-stream. Weird. Victuals \VIT-uhlz\, noun: food or provisions, esp. for humans Before the hurricane hit, we went to the store for victuals. c 1303, vitaylle (singular), from Anglo-French and Old French vitaille, from Late Latin victualia “provisions,” noun use of plural of victualis “of […]

canine \KEY-nahyn\, adjective: 1. of or like a dog or member of the dog family 2. any animal belonging to a group of meat-eaters including dogs, foxes, and wolves 3. pertaining to a canine tooth 4. one of the four teeth next to the incisors; cuspid Several police departments with canine squads similar in size […]

Here’s the word, but there was just no fun to be had on YouTube for this word, and I’m too ill to go look for something random. So I’m bemoaning the lack of funny and my poor health. Better luck tomorrow. Bemoan \bi-MOHN\, verb: to moan about or weep for; mourn The tower’s approval came […]

“What’s this?” you ask! “A Tube of the Day where the post date ACTUALLY coincides with the email date?!” you utter in astonished disbelief. “And where are all of my intervening words? I’m missing all of November and December and most of January!” It’s true. I noticed that Dictionary.com has started choosing their words of […]

Gloaming \GLOH-ming\, noun: Twilight; dusk. The children squealed and waved and smiled, their teeth flashing white in the gloaming. — Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life It was the gloaming, when a man cannot make out if the nebulous figure he glimpses in the shadows is angel or demon, when the face of evening is […]

Hubris \HYOO-bruhs\, noun: Overbearing pride or presumption. During his long tenure in the financial world, Friedman has watched dozens of his competitors’ businesses killed by hubris born of success rather than by unsound business decisions or adverse market conditions. — Lisa Endlich, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success This is the actor’s hubris, to imagine […]

Bivouac \BIV-wak, BIV-uh-wak\, noun: 1. An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter. 2. To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter. Rob had made his emergency bivouac just below the South Summit. — David Breashears, “Death on the mountain”, The Observer, March 30, 2003 They were stopped by […]

There was apparently some kind of mix-up that caused there not to be a word for yesterday. Execrable \EK-sih-kruh-buhl\, adjective: 1. Deserving to be execrated; detestable; abominable. 2. Extremely bad; of very poor quality; very inferior. His human-rights record was abysmal. His relations with Washington were adversarial. He rivaled Zimbabwe’s execrable Robert Mugabe for the […]

Genuflect \JEN-yuh-flekt\, intransitive verb: 1. To bend the knee or touch one knee to the ground, as in worship. 2. To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel. After graduation I talked my way into a job at Ionic Development Corporation, a legendary place in Cambridge on the Charles River, a huge brick building with […]