Ineffable

ineffable [ĭn-EF-ə-bəl]
adj. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible

[From Latin ineffābilis, from in- ("not") + effābilis ("utterable") from ex- ("out") + fārī ("to speak")]

The primary function of ineffable is as an intensifier. "It wasn't just that the girl was beautiful. Her beauty was beyond description. It was ineffable." Things which defy description or expression are ineffable: "ineffable ecstasy"; "inexpressible anguish"; "unspeakable happiness"; "unutterable contempt"; and "a feast of untellable splendor."

A second way ineffable is used is to describe a sort of gray area. Christopher Hitchens, here in Slate, for example, writes that Barack Obama has reached an undefinable place, a destination which defies description because the boundaries of that place are opaque:

President Barack Obama's visit to Europe afforded us an opportunity to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of his style in operation. And, even though he has almost attained the Holy Grail of public relations—in other words, he is practically at that ineffable and serene point where he gets good press for getting good press—there may come a time when even his trans-Atlantic admirers will have to take a second look.

A third way in which ineffable is used is with sacred concepts that are "not to be uttered" or "taboo." In Judaism, traditionally, it is taboo to speak or write the name of God. God is ineffable to the Jews. The idea is that by putting a description on something sacred, you are inevitably limiting that thing and bringing it down to your level. In his book, A History of Heaven, Jeffrey Burton Russell described the sacred as incomprehensible, and therefore indefinable:

Heaven itself is ineffable, beyond words. The term ineffabilis was established in theology in the fifth century by Augustine (354-430), who said that it is easier to say what God is not than to say what he is. God is not only incomprehensible to humans but is himself beyond all categories; heaven is therefore also beyond categories. Yet we have no way of discussing heaven except in the only speech we know, human language.

Bulwark

bulwark [BOOL-wərk]
n. any protection against external danger, injury, or annoyance; any person or thing giving strong support or encouragement in time of need, danger, or doubt

[From Old Norse bole ("the trunk of a tree") + werk ("work, as an engineering structure")]

In its literal sense, a bulwark is "a wall or embankment raised as a defensive fortification; a rampart." But in literature and common parlance, it tends to be used in its figurative sense (as I define it above), in the same way "safeguard" and "defense" are used figuratively.

Franklin Roosevelt, for example, famously said:

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.

John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers from 1920-60, called unionized labor a safeguard against communist influence:

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners of production, secure in their homes, and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against intrusion of alien doctrines of government.

In his 1964 acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in San Francisco, Barry Goldwater called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization our greatest source of protection:

Now failure cements the wall of shame in Berlin; failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs; failures marked the slow death of freedom in Laos; failures infest the jungles of Vietnam; and failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations, the NATO community.

Hypocoristic

hypocoristic [hī-pə-kə-RIS-tĭk]
adj. endearing, as a pet name, diminutive, or euphemism

[From Greek hypokoristikós ("to call by endearing names) from hypo- ("under") + kor- ("child") + -istikos]

A hypocoristic name is a pet name or a diminutive name. Hypocorism is the noun form. The word hypocoristic is used in linguistics, often to explain the origin or evolution of one name into another.

Random House gives some examples:

Hypocoristic forms are, as the definition says, generally either pet names, or nicknames, such as Harry for Henry or Betsy or Beth or Liz or about a zillion others for Elizabeth, or they are forms with some sort of diminutive element, such as the suffix -y/-ie, yielding such words as preppy (prep (school) + -y), kiddie, birdie, cutie, and the like.

Ancestry-dot-com explains that the -cock suffix in names like Hitchcock and Hancock came hypocoristically:

(The name "Cocke") applied to a young lad who strutted proudly like a cock, it soon became a generic term for a youth and was attached with hypocoristic force to the short forms of many medieval personal names (e.g. Alcock, Hancock, Hiscock, Mycock). The nickname may also have referred to a natural leader, or an early riser, or a lusty or aggressive individual.

Emperor Constans II (630-668) came to the Byzantine throne in 641, 305 years after Constantine the Great, the man who Christianized the Roman Empire. In his classic tome The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon notes that although Constans II is known to history by that name, Constans was a pet name for Constantine:

The baptismal name of this emperor was Heraclius; he was renamed Constantine at his coronation, perhaps because his step uncle Heraclius had brought discredit on the name. He is Constantine on his coins and is so called by Nicephorus, but Tbeophanes calls him Constans and he is always known as Constans II. We must infer that Constantine was his official name, but that he was popularly called Constans in a hypocoristic sense.

Look at the map of the Byzantine Empire above and note the size of the Arab Caliphate in 650. Muhammed had been dead only 18 years, yet his religion, Islam, and his language, Arabic, were then growing like wildfire, south of Byzantium. Eventually, the Islamic Caliphate (under Oriental Turks) would entirely swallow the Christian-Greek empire north of Arabia.

Tares

tares [TAIRS]
n. an unwelcome or objectional element

[From Arabic ṭarḥah ("rejection, subtraction") from ṭaraḥa ("to throw away")]

In a literal sense, tares are weeds, especially vetches. However, the Christian Bible uses tares figuratively to mean an undesirable element, such as a servant of the devil.

In Matthew 13, Jesus takes the stage on the deck of a ship at harbor and entertains "the whole multitude" on shore. He warms up the crowd with his classic yarn about weeds and wheat-farming (Matthew 13:25-30):

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

The implication is that the bad seeds, the tares, will eventually burn in Hell, even if they don't get punished immediately. The day of reckoning comes for all. In the meantime, just because there are bad seeds among you, God does not recommend mankind punishing everyone to root out the wicked. For those in his audience too dense to understand, Jesus explained his parable:

The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Allocution

allocution [AL-ə-KYOO-shən]
n. a formal speech

[From Latin allocūtiō, combining al- ("tendency") + loquī ("to speak")]

Allocution tends to be used in technical jargon in two distinct forms -- one within the Roman Catholic Church; the other in a courtroom. When the president of the United States, for example, delivers his annual State of the Union address, that's clearly a formal speech. However, it's not generally referred to as allocution, though it certainly could be.

Here is a rare example -- I found it in a book published in 1891 -- where allocution is used in a non-technical sense as a formal speech:

Speeches now followed in rapid succession, but the allocution delivered by M. Sasvari was the most striking illustration of internationalism. He commenced in Magyar, and after a few complimentary words to his Hungarian colleagues, assured the Austrian and German guests, himself speaking in good German, that the Hungarians recognised how much their civilisation was due to the Germanic races. Then speaking in French, he explained that Hungary admired the great French nation, which, marching in the vanguard of progress, had given to the world the highest and most generous ideas. Now changing from French to Italian, he spoke of the glories of ancient Rome to be revived at no distant date. Finally, concluding in fluent English, he greeted the brave children of Great Britain, who had borne the banner of civilisation to the uttermost regions of the globe.

In the Catholic context, an allocution is "a solemn form of address or speech from the throne employed by the Pope ... delivered only in a secret consistory at which the cardinals alone are present."

An allocution of the Pope often takes the place of a manifesto when a struggle between the Holy See and the secular powers has reached an acute stage. It then usually summarizes the points at issue and details the efforts made by the Holy See to preserve peace. It likewise indicates what the Pope has already conceded and the limit which principle obliges him to put to further concessions. ... When the Pope has reached a conclusion on some important matter, he makes his mind known to the cardinals by means of a direct address, or allocution.

In the language of our courts, a defendant normally has the right of allocution:

... the right of a defendant to make a statement to the court on his own behalf and present information in mitigation of sentence. It started out as the ancient common-law practice of inquiring of every defendant if he had anything to say before sentence was imposed. Back in the day, when death was the only punishment and defendants had no counsel, the right of allocution was used to beg for mercy. In modern times, the right had evolved to permit a defendant to plead for a more lenient sentence and to fit with our modern sense of justice and the desire to rehabilitate.

Although allocution is somewhat uncommon and tends to be used only in its technical senses, its Latin root loquī ("to speak") is found in more than a dozen good English words, many of which are well known.

The three most common: colloquial ("characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing"); eloquent ("having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, and appropriate speech"); and ventriloquism ("the art or practice of speaking, with little or no lip movement, in such a manner that the voice does not appear to come from the speaker but from another source, as from a wooden dummy").

Four words ending in -quy (pronounced kwee): colloquy ("a conversational exchange"); obloquy ("censure, blame, or abusive language aimed at a person or thing, esp. by numerous persons or by the general public"); soliloquy ("a dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener"); and somniloquy ("the act or habit of talking in one's sleep").

Seven good nouns: circumlocution ("a roundabout or indirect way of speaking; the use of more words than necessary to express an idea."); colloquium ("a conference at which scholars or other experts present papers on, analyze, and discuss a specific topic"); elocution ("a person's manner of speaking or reading aloud in public"); grandiloquence ("speech that is lofty in tone, often to the point of being pompous or bombastic"); interlocution ("conversation; dialogue"); locution ("a particular form of expression; a word, phrase, expression, or idiom"); and prolucutor ("a presiding officer of an assembly; chairperson").

And a couple of adjectives: loquacious ("talking or tending to talk much or freely"); and magniloquent ("speaking or expressed in a lofty or grandiose style").

Obstreperous

obstreperous [ŏb-STREP-ər-əs]
adj. 1. resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly. 2. noisy, clamorous, or boisterous

[From Latin obstreperus ("clamorous") from ob- ("over") + strepere ("to rattle)]

Perhaps the biggest problem with obstreperous is it can mean different things, but it's not always clear which one is intended. The definitions tend to bleed into each other. Although its etymological origins are not in an unruly mob, that is where you should place this word. An unruly mob resists control. It's noisy and clamorous and boisterous. My recommendation is to restrict your usage of obstreperous to mean "unruly, verging on out of control." If a group of people is having a good time, but is noisy and enthusiastic, I wouldn't classify them as obstreperous, though perhaps they could be called boisterous. When a wild child is throwing a fit, crying, tossing his toys about, unable to control his emotions, that's obstreperous.

Here's an example from The Times of London where it's not clear how obstreperous is being used. Does the writer mean that taxi drivers are unruly? or merely noisy?

After trying to hide holes in their socks while shuffling through airport security, hunting a seat in the departure lounge, tipping red wine on to documents on a crowded flight and dealing with obstreperous taxi drivers on arrival, the experienced traveller will find it hard to empathise with the beauty queen’s innocent enthusiasm (for travel).

In this instance, George Will uses obstreperous as a synonym for clamorous ("expressing vehement dissatisfaction"). That's technically acceptable. However, clamorous would have been better, because I doubt the people he describes were really unruly, verging on being out of control:

Storing nuclear waste, which decays very slowly and emits great heat while doing so, has been studied since 1955, when nuclear submarine propulsion technology was adapted to generate electricity. After considering storage on the seabed or a remote island or in the polar ice sheets, or rocketing the waste into orbit around the sun, the government settled on deep geologic storage as the preferred solution. Some Kansas salt mines were considered, but the mines were too difficult to seal and, besides, Kansas became, as Nevada is now, obstreperous.

When obstreperous is used as a synonym for unruly, there's no confusion. That's how it is used most often, as well. Here is an example of that from a court case called, CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH v. MILES STEPHEN SMITH:

Mr. Smith is charged under Virginia Beach’s disturbing the peace ordinance, Code Sec. 23-10. which forbids “any person to disturb the peace of others by violent, tumultuous, offensive or obstreperous conduct or by threatening, challenging to fight, assaulting, fighting or striking another.”

Meme

meme [MEEM]
n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

[From Greek mimēma ("something imitated"), from mimeisthai ("to imitate")]

In his book, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins -- famous for his strong defense of evolutionary science and his public quarrels with Biblical Creationists -- coined the word meme as a cultural equivalent to a gene. While meme has taken on a life of its own as its usage has grown, this is what Dawkins originally wrote:

The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity that prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process. But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicator and other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.

The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene.' I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory,' or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream.'

Dawkins then lists various cultural phenomena which qualify as units of cultural transmission:

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. As my colleague N.K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: 'memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking--the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'

My guess as to why Dawkins conceived of the meme is because he was trying to understand why so many people, despite scientific evidence, were so religious and superstitious. This gets at that:

Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent 'mutation.' In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such high survival value? Remember that 'survival value' here does not mean value for a gene in the gene pool, but value for a meme in the meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

Replication is the key ingredient in memes. It is like life after death for the originator of an idea. Francis Scott Key is long dead, but he lives on in the Star Spangled Banner. Glenn Grant weighs in on the replication angle:

An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.

Heith Michael Rezabek gets at the idea that learned behaviors are also memes:

My favorite example of a crucial meme would be "fire" or more importantly, "how to make a fire." This is a behavioral meme, mind you, one which didn't necessarily need a word attached to it to spring up and spread, merely a demonstration for another to follow. Once the meme was out there, it would have spread like wildfire, for obvious reasons... But when you start to think of memes like that -- behavioral memes -- then you can begin to see how language itself, the idea of language, was a meme. Writing was a meme. And within those areas, more specific memes emerged.

News Hounds, a (presumably liberal) website dedicated to challenging the Fox News Channel, characterizes ideas accepted on Fox and spread to its audience by its announcers as viral memes:

The “Fox Nation” is very, very concerned about the University of Notre Dame’s invitation for President Obama to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree at their school. Megyn Kelly provided even more coverage of the matter on Monday (April 6th). In keeping with the Fox meme that this event represents a violation of Catholic values while reinforcing the meme that Obama is pro-choice ergo he’s evil, Megyn Kelly provided a platform for more of the same.

Coterie

coterie [KOH-tə-rē]
n. a group of people who associate closely; an exclusive group; clique

[From Old French coterie ("an association of tenant farmers")]

The etymology of coterie is interesting. The tenant farmers from whom we get coterie were organizations of peasants working land owned by a feudal lord known as a cote. (I don't think this version of cote is related to the modern French word which means "quote.") The feudal cote spawned the French word cotage, which is where we get cottage. The cotage of a cote was not just his house, but included the entire property attached to a cote.

In writing, coterie is often needlessly modified by words to let us know the clique in question is "a small coterie" or "an exclusive coterie." A coterie by definition cannot be a big group. I have, however, seen instances where writers have modified coterie with large, extensive and so on. By doing so, they are saying the group is likely not a coterie at all.

Tim Rutten in the L.A. Times, reviewing 'Nomad's Hotel' by Cees Nooteboom, refers to a group of writers as a "small coterie." That's redundant, as a coterie is by definition small:

As a young man in Buenos Aires, (the Argentine-born author Alberto) Manguel was fortunate enough to be invited into the small coterie of local literati who read daily to the blind Jorge Luis Borges.

Jacob Hamblin, in his book Science in the Early Twentieth Century, says psychoanalist Carl Jung had "an extensive coterie." A coterie can not be extensive -- it is exclusive:

Jung developed an international reputation, as well as an extensive coterie of followers that helped to expand the understanding of collective symbols throughout the world.

David Shaywitz and Thomas Stossel in the Wall Street Journal claim a group of critics have disproportionate influence over corporate-sponsored drug research. The problem, though, is that it's likely that the people Stossel and Shaywitz refer to are not close associates of each other, and thus not really a coterie, even if they are small in number:

Leading research organizations such as the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's disease proactively build bridges with industry leaders, solicit advice from industry scientists, and fund projects in industry labs. But this enlightened view of industry is not widespread. This is largely because of the disproportionate influence of a coterie of prominent critics we have previously dubbed "pharmascolds," who routinely vilify the medical products industry and portray academics working with it as traitors and sellouts.

-clude

-clude [CLUDE]
verb root -- to close; to shut

[From Latin claudere]

There's only one $10 word which includes the root -clude: that's occlude. I looked up the -clude root, because I couldn't quite figure out what tied the -clude words together. Dictionaries say claudere translates as either "to close" or "to shut." Thus, by its roots, include means "to shut in" or "to close in." Of course, English words don't always mean what their roots suggest, and they often will take on new meanings over time.

Here are the -clude words: conclude ("to bring to a close; to determine by reasoning; deduce; infer"); exclude ("to shut out, as in to prevent from being included, considered, or accepted"); include ("to contain, as a whole encloses parts or elements; to consider as part of a group; to confine within"); occlude ("to close, shut, or stop up, as a passage, opening, etc."); preclude ("to make impossible, as by action taken in advance; prevent; to put a barrier before; hence, to shut out; to hinder; to stop; to impede"); and seclude ("to place in or withdraw into solitude; remove from social contact and activity, etc.; to isolate; shut off; keep apart").

Occlude tends to be used in medical terminology, as well as in other scientific jargon. Here is an easy to understand explanation of why "Bypass surgery, stents do not prolong life":

Performing bypass surgery or angiography on a patient with heart disease is like pumping air into a car tire that has a slow leak. Sure, the tire will be sufficiently inflated for a while, but eventually the tire will have deflated so much that the car is not drivable. If the hole is not patched, the tire will deflate each time it is pumped up. So is the case with a patient with heart disease. The bypass or the angioplasty and stent will fix the probably temporarily, because these procedures provide clear passage ways for the blood; however, the arteries will repeatedly occlude unless the cause of the problem is addressed.

Elide

elide [ĭ-LIDE]
v. to omit; ignore; pass over

[From Latin elidere ("strike out") from e- ("out") + -lidere ("to strike")]

Elide is normally used in three different ways. One is simply as a synonym for ignore or omit.

In Jonathan Rauch's review of Robert Reich's memoir of his years in the Clinton Administration, Locked in the Cabinet (1997), Rauch chides Reich for mixing fact and fiction, for using quote marks around words he attributes to others that may or may not have been spoken. Rauch accuses Reich of ignoring the difference between what happened and what did not:

Reich is saying that he's not writing journalism or history. He's writing ... well, what? He elides the very distinction between history and myth, memoir and novel, reality and perception. The problem is that those are real people he misquotes, real history he rewrites.

A second way elide is commonly used is to mean strike out or cross out.

In G20 Summit: an easy guide to judge its success or failure, The Daily Telegraph of London suggests that the heads of state at the meeting will serve the function of editors, not authors:

The concluding announcements from big summits are usually drafted weeks, if not months, in advance by the teams of "sherpas", who advise the ministers and heads of state. The most the G20 can hope to achieve in today's four and a half hours of meetings is to elide a few phrases here or add a couple of numbers there.

The third way elide is used is with pronunciation. When a person says "I'm comin'" instead of "I'm coming" he has elided the g-sound. This process, called elision, can be with a vowel, a consonant or an entire syllable. Some instances of elision are more common than the complete pronunciation of a word. Most people don't pronounce vegetable as VEJ-uh-tuh-bull; they say VEJ-tuh-bull. The omission of the second syllable is an instance of elision. Note, however, that contractions, like can't, are not considered elisions. They started out as elisions, became accepted, and now are considered set forms.

Adumbrate

adumbrate [AD-əm-brāt]
v. 1. to give a sketchy outline of; 2. to prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow

[From Latin adumbrāre, ad- ("toward") + umbra ("shadow")]

Adumbrate seems like the kind of word which should be common in police work: "The witness didn't see everything, but she was able to adumbrate for us most of what happened."

Note, by the way, that adumbrate should be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, AD. The reason for that, I think, is to differentiate its parts. If you mistakenly pronounce it, uh-DUM-brate, you lose the sense of umbra in AD-um-brate.

There are a handful of nice English words which find their root in the Latin word for shadow, adumbrate being one of them. Others include: umbra ("shade; shadow); penumbra ("a partial shadow; or an area in which something exists to a lesser or uncertain degree"); umbrage ("offense; annoyance; displeasure"); umbrella (" shade, screen, or guard, carried in the hand for sheltering the person from the rays of the sun, or from rain or snow"); and umbel ("a kind of flower cluster in which the flower stalks radiate from a common point, resembling an umbrella").

In his book Freedom Just Around the Corner, Walter McDougal gives a rough outline of what each of the two principal authors of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, was hoping to accomplish with his essays:

There is no point in trying to adumbrate this greatest of all political treatises except to say Hamilton played the pragmatist and Madison the theorist, Hamilton the salesman for vigorous government, Madison for limited, balanced government, Hamilton the exponent of unified sovereignty to defend liberty against foreign enemies, Madison of divided sovereignty to defend liberty against domestic enemies.

In The Revenge of Karl Marx, Christopher Hitchens credits Francis Wheen, a Marx biographer, with sketching a rough outline of one of Marx's theories:

In the story of the class struggle, it’s invariably a case of one step forward and two steps back. I know of two passages that explain why this is so. ... The second is the central chapter of Wheen’s book, which adumbrates Marx’s own version of the same competition—or rather losing struggle.

Trenchancy

trenchancy [TREN-chən-see]
n. the state or quality of being sharp, incisive, or penetrating, as in words or an argument

[From French trenchier ("to cut")]

More common than the noun trenchancy in ordinary discourse is its adjective form, trenchant ("incisive or keen, as language or a person; cutting"). And more common still is when you cut a whole in the ground, you've dug a trench. It has the same etymology.

In "The Revenge of Karl Marx," Christopher Hitchens, who as a young man called himself a Trotskyite, but has since renounced his former faith, here praises the sharpness of some of Marx's rhetoric:

One pleasure in the rereading of Marx is to savor the trenchancy and aptness of his literary allusions.

Because I don't see or hear trenchancy enough, I'm not sure if the noun is ever employed to mean sarcasm; however, trenchant the adjective at times is -- in the sense that a trenchant remark can be a cutting remark -- used to mean sarcastic.

In this 2004 article for the National Review, William F. Buckley describes some writing by John Kenneth Galbraith as "ironic trenchancy." Perhaps that qualifies as sarcasm?

John Kenneth Galbraith ... has a new book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, for publication in April. The publishers are dizzy with delight over the brief (62-page) manuscript, in which the author, in his singular way, using an ironic trenchancy that shatters glass with its explosive acuity, makes his briefs.

One interesting historical tidbit on Galbraith, arguably the world's worst famous economist, is that he did his PhD at UC Davis in the early 1930s, where he also served on the faculty. To be perfectly honest, there was no UC Davis, when he was here. Instead, Davis was a branch campus, the School of Agriculture, of UC Berkeley at that time. So Galbraith's PhD. in Agricultural Economics is ultimately from Berkeley, even if he studied in Davis and was a head and a half taller than Milton Friedman (see picture above).

Integument

integument [ĭn-TEG-yuh-mənt]
n. 1. a natural covering, as a skin, shell, or rind; 2. any covering, coating, enclosure, etc.

[From Latin in- + tegere ("to cover")]

Though it's not used too commonly in its figurative sense, integument is essentially a high-priced synonym for cover or covering. As technical jargon, science writers use integument and integumentary literally to mean skin, shell, plant rinds, etc. Tegmen ("a cover, covering, or integument") and tegument ("a covering or vestment") mean essentially the same thing and share the same Latin etymology.

The closely spelled integer, integrity and integral don't have the same etymology as integument. Integer derives from in- (meaning "not") + tangere (meaning "touched"). Integer, of course, means whole.

In an essay in The Atlantic, "The Revenge of Karl Marx," Christopher Hitchens uses integument as a figurative synonym for cover:

What (Marx) postulated, and what made him different from any previous theorist of materialism whether historical or dialectical, was a sharp distinction between the forces and the relations of production. Within the integument of one system of exploitation, in other words, was contained a systemic conflict that, if not resolved, would lead to stagnation and decline but, if properly confronted, might lead to a higher synthesis of abundance and equality.

In "An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures," published in Nature, Xiao-Ting Zheng and his colleagues describe the peculiar outer skin structure of a dinosaur called Tianyulong (see picture above):

More surprisingly, Tianyulong bears long, singular and unbranched filamentous integumentary (outer skin) structures. This represents the first confirmed report, to our knowledge, of filamentous integumentary structures in an ornithischian dinosaur.

Cavil

cavil [KAV-əl]
n. a trivial or frivolous objection
v. to raise trivial and irritating objections to

[From Latin cavillārī ("to jeer, scoff, quibble")]

The only thing I know to say about cavil is that it means the same thing as quibble, yet only the college-educated and beyond use the word cavil, while everyone will quibble now and then. What I think is most important in caviling is that the objection needs to be frivolous. Occassionally, writers will suggest someone's complaint is a cavil, when in reality they mean a serious or justifiable objection.

In Winston Churchill's biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough (see picture above), he writes about one of Marlborough's deputies, Sicco van Goslinga, who knew nothing about war or strategy, but was full of opinions on these matters, and raised objections when his superior, Marlborough, failed to follow Goslinga's advice:

Marlborough continued to coax and persuade the Pensionary Heinsus to grant him the necessary freedom to fight, without which he could only maneuver up to a fiasco. Geldermalsen had by this time returned to the army, apparently with Marlborough's consent. His colleague Goslinga continued to cavil and malign.

William F. Buckley here contends that federal spending supports special interests more than the common good. However, I think his usage of cavil is wrong. The objections he points to ought not be seen as trivial:

No one seems to cavil at the assumption that new laws are exactly that, obeisances to private interests. Targeted patronage can't be disguised when we are talking about a farm bill. Farmers are intended to benefit from farm bills. Steel tariffs are intended to help steel makers. What's new and disturbing is that political figures don't seem to cavil at linking legislation to "special interests."

concupiscible

concupiscible [kŏn-KYOO-pĭ-sə-bəl]
adj. worthy of being desired; provoking lustful desires

[From Latin concupīscere ("to desire strongly"), from com- ("in association with") + cupere ("to desire")]

It's surprising to me that as pornographic and semi-pornographic images have become commonplace in modern society and clothing has become more revealing, a great word meaning "provoking lustful desires" remains as uncommon as concupiscible is. I don't know of any exact synonyms for it. Words like sexy, hot and desirable can be used for concupiscible, but none has that singular emphasis of provoking lust, the way concupiscible has. Yiddish has a nice word to describe a sexy woman, zaftig, but again that lacks the sense of provocation. Lustful and libidinous describe the traits of the person who lusts, not the features of the person who is the target of that desire.

In his famous sermon, The Image of God in Man, published 200 years ago, Robert South contrasted the Stoic view of what was sinful in man with the examples of Jesus, "who took upon him all our natural infirmities, but none of our sinful, has been seen to weep to be sorrowful to pity and to be angry:"

Now, though the schools reduce all the passions to these two heads: the concupiscible and the irascible appetite; yet I shall not tie myself to an exact prosecution of them under this division, but at this time, leaving both their terms and their method to themselves, consider only the principal and most noted passions from whence we may take an estimate of the rest.

In Act V, Scene 1 of Measure for Measure -- the last scene in the play -- William Shakespeare has Isabella give "the gift of (her) chaste body" to save the life of her brother, Claudio. Isabella describes the lust of Angelo, who holds Claudio's fate in his hands, as provoking lustful desires:

In brief, to set the needless process by,
How I persuaded, how I pray'd, and kneel'd,
How he refell'd me, and how I replied,—
For this was of much length,—the vile conclusion
I now begin with grief and shame to utter:
He would not, but by gift of my chaste body
To his concupiscible intemperate lust,
Release my brother; and, after much debatement,
My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour,
And I did yield to him: but the next morn betimes,
His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant
For my poor brother's head.

Chaff

chaff [CHAF]
v. to tease in a good-natured manner; to engage in banter
n. banter

[Origin unknown, but probably from chafe ("to irritate; to annoy")]

From the saying, "separate the wheat from the chaff," which means "to separate what is useful or valuable from what is worthless," chaff is fairly well known. In that sense, chaff is "the husks of grains and grasses separated from the seed by threshing and winnowing." However, chaff has another meaning, "banter," which is unrelated.

Banter is "an exchange of light, playful, teasing remarks; good-natured raillery." Besides chaff, we have quite a few nice synonyms in English for playful kidding, teasing and joking among friends. Here are some: badinage ("light, playful banter"); jest ("a bantering remark"); josh ("to chaff; banter in a teasing way"); persiflage ("light, bantering talk or writing"); rag on ("to subject to a teasing, esp. in an intense or prolonged way"); raillery ("good-humored ridicule"); razz ("to deride; make fun of; tease"); and ridicule ("to deride; make fun of").

In Love, Poverty and War, Christopher Hitchens quotes Evelyn Waugh from Waugh's work as a foreign correspondent for the Express newspaper, where Mr. Waugh described the playful banter at a bar in Sarajevo:

All over the lounge and dining-room they sat and stood and leaned; some whispered to each other in what they took to be secrecy; others exchanged chaff and gin.

In his novel Put Out More Flags, Evelyn Waugh again employs chaff:

There was still a great deal of the schoolboy about Alastair; he enjoyed winter sports and sailing and squash racquets and the chaff round the bar at Bratt's.

Rumpus

rumpus [RUM-pəs]
n. a noisy or violent disturbance; commotion

[Origin unknown]

It surprised me to find that the origin of rumpus is considered unknown. I would have thought it was related to romp ("boisterous play or frolic"), which has an accepted etymology: from Old French ramper ("to rear, rise up), of Germanic origin.

When I was a child, pre-Sesame Street, the most popular kids' show on public television was Romper Room. Although I don't hear it too often anymore, a room in a house set aside for rough play is called a rumpus room. Dictionaries tend to define a rumpus room -- the term first originated in 1940 -- as "a recreation room."

A gossip columnist in the Times of London, Adam Sherwin, on Thursday referred to a noisy commotion in the British House of Commons:

A rumpus in the computer room is the talk of the MPs’ den, Portcullis House. Evan Harris, the Lib Dem Member, was heard to complain loudly that an item of personal property had been destroyed. The object in question was a long-festering sushi lunch that had been disposed of.

In his book, The Wars of Watergate, Stanley Kutler quotes Bill Safire calling for members of Congress to make some noise after Senate Democrats required that Archibald Cox be appointed a Special Prosecutor, as a condition of approving Elliot Richardson as Attorney General:

Former Nixon speechwriter William Safire urged Congress to "raise the rumpus it is entitled to raise as a result of the Richardson confirmation double-cross."

Encomium

encomium [ěn-KO-mē-əm]
n. a formal expression of high praise; eulogy

[From Greek enkōmion, en- ("in") + kōmos ("celebration")]

Originally an encomium was a Greek choral song honoring the hero of the Olympic Games and sung at the victory celebration at the end of the Games. The Greek writers Simonides of Ceos and Pindar wrote some of the earliest of these original encomia. The term later took on the broader meaning of any composition of a laudatory nature. While an encomium may be heaped on someone living or dead, if someone gives you a eulogy (it literally means "good word"), you are no longer alive. If the eulogy at a memorial service is given informally, it is not an encomium.

In this article from American Heritage magazine, Geoffrey C. Ward reviews Richard Goodwin's memoir of Goodwin's time in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. When he parted the Johnson White House -- over Vietnam -- Ward quotes Johnson's high praise for Goodwin from the memoir:

In reluctantly accepting Goodwin’s resignation, Johnson was lavish in his praise: “I know that the unique opportunity to serve your country during these years has been a blessing to you, for it has given you the means of applying your brilliant talents to the problems that beset your fellow men. It has also been a blessing for the country—for within the high councils of government you have articulated with great force and persuasion man’s hunger for justice and his hopes for a better life.” “It was the most extravagant and eloquent tribute I ever received,” Goodwin notes, “before or since.” He has every right to be proud of this encomium, signed by the demanding President for whom he labored so effectively, but the reader can’t help wondering if LBJ actually wrote it.

In his controversial book about Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens takes after the famous nun for her cordial relations with some vicious dictators and their families. Here, Hitchens quotes Mother Teresa praising Michèle Duvalier, the wife of Haiti's despot, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier:

'Madame President is someone who feels, who knows, who wishes to demonstrate her love not only with words but also with concrete and tangible actions.' ... in her time, (Mother Teresa) had 'never seen the poor people being so familiar with their head of state as they were with her. It was a beautiful lesson for me.'

Hitchens suggests that the founder of the Missionaries of Charity was cozy with brutal killers like the Duvaliers, and never critical of their terrible deeds, because she personally gained from them; and they were kind to her in return, because she afforded them much-needed good publicity:

In return for these and other favours, Mother Teresa was awarded the Haitian Legion d'honneur. And her simple testimony, in warm encomium of the ruling couple, was shown on state-run television every night for at least a week.

Swarthy

swarthy [SWORE-thē]
adj. having a dark complexion or color

[From German schwarz ("black"), earlier Gothic swarts]

Yiddish took the same root word from German and came up with shvartzeh, meaning black. The English swarthy, however, is descriptive of skin color, but isn't limited to black people of African heritage. Anyone who is darker-skinned than your typical white Brit, such as an Italian normally is, qualifies as swarthy. According to the dictionaries I've checked, swarthy evolved in English from swart, meaning the same thing.

The governor of Kal-ee-for-nee-uh's last name, Schwarzenegger, has, of course, schwarzen in it, meaning black. There seems to be disagreement as to what the -egger means. Arnold says it means "plowman," making his name translate as Blackplowman. Others have said -egger is "field." This maven on German names says the Terminator's name derives from "das schwarze Eck," meaning "Black-corner." No one apparently disagrees, though, that the first part of Schwarzenegger is black.

According to my dictionary, the word swarthy is first used in English in 1570. Shortly thereafter, Shakespeare tried it out in Act II, Scene 6 of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In this soliloquy, Proteus -- one of the gentlemen -- who left behind in Verona a possible lover, Julia, doesn't know what to do, after having fallen in love in Milan with Silvia, who is possibly the lover of his friend, Valentine -- the other gentleman:

I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;
But there I leave to love where I should love.
Julia I lose and Valentine I lose:
If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;
If I lose them, thus find I by their loss
For Valentine myself, for Julia Silvia.
I to myself am dearer than a friend,
For love is still most precious in itself;
And Silvia—witness Heaven, that made her fair!—
Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

In Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick, a chaplain named Father Mapple, preaching to seafarers in the Whaleman’s Chapel, recounts the Biblical story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Melville, here, uses swarthy to describe Father Mapple's dark-skinned forehead:

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them. .

Imbue

imbue [ĭm-BYOO]
v. to permeate or saturate; to impregnate or inspire, as with feelings, opinions, etc.; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.

[From Latin imbuere ("to moisten, stain")]

Imbue is etymologically related to imbibe ("to drink; to take in, as ideas"). In their figurative senses, the difference between imbue and imbibe is largely that imbibe is more of a reflexive verb. What I imbibe affects me. What you imbibe affects you. What I imbue permeates someone or something else. Someone else's ideas can be imbued in me. Another difference between them is that imbibe is (often) more transient in its effects. Sarah left the Obama rally inspired, having imbibed her candidate's promise of change she could believe in. Because anything which permanently impresses itself upon you affects who you are, what you believe and how you act, there is often a religious connotation associated with imbue that is lacking in imbibe.

In 1930, Will Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, succumbed to censorial pressures put upon Hollywood by the Catholic Church. The MPPDA agreed to institute a new Production Code Administration, to be headed by Joseph I. Breen, a former newspaperman and influential Roman Catholic layman. In his book, Pre-Code Hollywood, Thomas Doherty explains the Victorian morality that Joe Breen wanted to saturate movies with:

Breen saw his errand in the Hollywood wilderness in grander terms than the concealment of skin and the deletion of curses. He wanted to remake American cinema into a positive force for good, to imbue it with a transcendent sense of virtue and order.

In his 1850 tract on how to teach Sunday School, author James Inglis explained how the Bible's lessons can permeate those being taught:

It is as needful to imbue our lessons with life, as to make them substantial. Yet different lessons must be taught in different modes. We must endeavour to imbue every lesson with its own spirit. Descriptions must be made picturesque, devotional lessons be filled with feeling, and where an object is to prove some great truth, clearness precision and good arrangement are what must be principally sought after.

In a November, 1994 New York Times column, William Safire wrote that the intellectual energy in Washington had shifted from the White House to Congress, following large Republican victories in the election held a week before. Yet Safire divorced himself in this column from one of the ideas being promoted by the new Speaker of the House to be, Newt Gingrich:

Libertarian conservatives like me recoil at the intrusiveness in Newt's call for a "voluntary" school prayer amendment. He's being inconsistent on his bedrock principle of individual responsibility: If parents want to imbue their children with spiritual values -- as more should -- the parents should take the kids by the hand to Sunday School and not fob off that family duty on educators employed by local government.