The word for today is… gauntlet (noun) – 1. A protective glove, usually extending over some of the forearm, worn as part of medieval armour. 2. Any of various protective gloves, usually with an extended or flared cuff, as used in certain sports such as fencing and motorcycle riding, in cooking
The word for today is… futile (adj) – Ineffectual; useless; incapable of producing any result; not successful. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : Futile broke into 16th-century English as a Latinate borrowing from Middle French. The Latin derivative, f?tilis, was used to describe things that are brittle or fragile and,
The word for today is… fountainhead (noun) – 1. A spring that is the source or head of a stream. 2. A chief and copious source; an originator. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : When it first entered English in the late 16th century, fountainhead was used only in a literal sense—
For all their blatherskite about “kindness” and “inclusion”, the “progressive” left are about as kind and inclusive as a Dickensian beadle. But, more than anything, “progressives” most resemble C. S. Lewis’s apocryphal schoolboy’s God: “the sort of person who is always snooping around to see if anyone is
The word for today is… forebear (noun) – Ancestor; forefather; progenitor. Not to be confused with: forbear – refrain or abstain from; to forgo. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : Forebear (also spelled, less commonly, as forbear) was first used by our ancestors in the days of Middle English. Fore- means “coming before,
The word for today is… enhance (verb) – To improve or augment, especially in effectiveness, value, or attractiveness. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : When enhance was borrowed into English in the 13th century, it literally meant to raise something higher. That sense, though now obsolete, provides a clue about the origins
The battle lines have been drawn in possibly one of the most expensive and protracted legal disputes the New Zealand used car industry has ever seen – and we’re still not even close to the finish line. In part one of this two part investigation we explore the issues and
The word for today is… emollient (noun) – 1. An agent that softens or soothes the skin. 2. An agent that assuages or mollifies. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : Emollient derives from the present participle of the Latin verb emollire, which, unsurprisingly, means “to soften or soothe.” Emollire, in turn, derives
Gerry Under the Weather 1. ill. I feel sort of under the weather today. Whatever I ate for lunch is making me feel a bit under the weather. 2. intoxicated. Daddy’s had a few beers and is under the weather again. Wally’s just a tad under the weather.
Viv Forbes Washpool Qld, Australia Wandering recently through an arcade popular with the green smoothie set, I saw a sign boasting: “Plant Based Meat”. Someone should advise those nutritional dunderheads that all real meat is plant-based. Real beef and lamb are built from live plants like grasses, lucerne and
The word for today is… dogma (noun) – 1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a religion. 2. A principle or statement of ideas, or a group of such principles or statements, especially when considered
The word for today is… crabwise (adj) – 1. Sideways. 2. In a furtive or circumspect manner; indirectly. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : There’s no reason to be indirect when explaining the etymology of crabwise—we’ll get right to the point. As you might guess, the meaning of the
The word for today is… collogue (verb) – 1. To be on friendly or intimate terms with someone. 2. (a) To consult or confer with someone. (b) To chat. 3. (Chiefly Upper Southern US) To conspire; intrigue. Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : Collogue has been with us since the 17th century,
Gerry Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater This strange expression dates all the way back to the 1500s. Believe it or not, people in the 16th century only bathed once a year and as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I famously said, she bathed twice a year whether
The word for today is… benefic (adj) – Beneficent. Producing good or helpful results or effects Source : The Free Dictionary Etymology : Benefic comes from Latin beneficus, which in turn comes from bene (“well”) and facere (“to do”). The word was originally used by astrologers to refer to celestial bodies believed to
Sir Bob Jones nopunchespulled.com Last week, reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, first published 202 years ago, I encountered the following passage about the heroine Catherine’s sister Sally. “Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen without altering her
