Explicate \EK-spluh-kayt\, transitive verb:To explain; to clear of difficulties or obscurity. I can cite a case — my own — of a young person’s being altered politically by a novel, but I cannot explicate the process, let alone explain it in terms of the author’s intention or literary strategies.— Mary McCarthy, “The Lasting Power of […]

requisite \REK-wuh-zit\, adjective: 1. Required by the nature of things or by circumstances; indispensable.2. That which is required or necessary; something indispensable. Those with the requisite talents made drawings and watercolors of the birds, the flowers, the untouched landscapes that unfolded before them.— Barbara Crossette, The Great Hill Stations of Asia In this way, 2,156 […]

sui generis \soo-eye-JEN-ur-us; soo-ee-\, adjective:Being the only example of its kind; constituting a class of its own; unique. This man, in fact, was sui generis, a true original.— Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur They’re a special case, a category of their own, sui generis.— Eric Kraft, Leaving Small’s Hotel In the degree […]

aegis \EE-jis\, noun:1. Protection; support.2. Sponsorship; patronage.3. Guidance, direction, or control.4. A shield or protective armor; — applied in mythology to the shield of Zeus. It is this ideal of the human under the aegis of something higher which seems to me to provide the strongest counterpressure against the fragmentation and barbarization of our world.— […]

The screaming you hear is me trying in vain to continue this experiment. I am now (not having searched for today’s word) at a 75% failure rate for finding films using the real word of the day. That’s because today’s word is: Habitue \huh-BICH-oo-ay; huh-bich-oo-AY\, noun:One who habitually frequents a place. Here you will meet […]

It’s just not fair. provender \PROV-uhn-duhr\, noun:1. Dry food for domestic animals, such as hay, straw, corn, oats, or a mixture of ground grain; feed.2. Food or provisions. It turns out that he and thousands of other German immigrants have been acting as pre-invasion intelligence-gatherers, ensuring that “the German Army knew almost to a bale […]

Tough one today. Not having searched yet, I might have to resort to a back-up plan already. robustious \roh-BUHS-chuhs\, adjective:1. Boisterous; vigorous.2. Coarse; rough; crude. . . .the robustious romantic figure comparable to John Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility–he comes in with dash, then proves a temptation to the heroine but is an eventual disappointment.— […]

denizen \DEN-uh-zuhn\, noun:1. A dweller; an inhabitant.2. One that frequents a particular place.3. [Chiefly British] An alien granted certain rights of citizenship.4. An animal, plant, etc. that has become naturalized. Goethe, who visited Berlin only once, found the “wit and irony” of its denizens quite remarkable.— Peter Gay, My German Question But he will know […]