Word of the Day!

Alla prima - noun.

If you want to sound sophisticated at an artsy gathering, you may want to brush up on (no pun intended) alla prima works such as Rembrandt's Portrait of Jan Six, which was painted with this technique. Italian for "first attempt", alla prima is a wet on wet painting technique where additional paint is applied over the previous layers of wet paint.

One needs to be quick as previous layers can dry before the painting is finished.

Bonus trivia: did you know Bob Ross used alla prima? His shows were filmed without editing, so what you saw in half in hour was actually what happened in half an hour! I admire his speed and confidence!

Vatjie - noun.

Pronounced /ˈfaɪki/, it is also spelt as vaatje or faatche and is Afrikaans for a small cask, canteen, keg or other vessel for holding liquids.

Twangle - verb

Twangle, and it's kin twangles, twangler, twangled and twangling as you might have guessed, are related to twang, but I wasn't thinking that when a Words With Friends bot surprised me with it!

A twang can describe someone's accent or the action of plucking an instrument string, such as a guitar. Twangle can also describe playing an instrument. For example, "The piano teacher played the piece once, then again, demonstrating how twangling can add zest to the music".

Tanisi

Tanisi is the Cree word for 'hello', or depending on the conversation's context, 'how are you?'. Listen to the video below for the pronunciation.

Peloton - noun.

Every now and then a word becomes a brand name, as in the case of everyone's favourite pandemic bike, Peloton. I only discovered that Peloton was a real word during the recent Tour de France crash.

Peloton comes to us from the French word for platoon. Nowadays it refers to a main pack of riders in a bicycle race. It might intrigue you to know that pelotons are not just strategic--riding in a pack creates a reduction in drag and allows cyclists to save energy. Huh!

Public Domain, Link

Jezails - noun.

Here's a perfectly cromulent word to zoom ahead on Scrabble or Words With Friends. A jezail or jezzail is a Pashtun word and name for a handmade, long-barrelled gun once popular with Pashtun tribes.

By Lieutenant James Rattray - The British Library, Public Domain, Link

If you have heard this old nursery rhyme, you probably didn't think too much about Mother Hubbard:


Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the Cupboard,
To give the poor Dog a bone;
When she came there,
The Cupboard was bare,
And so the poor Dog had none.


But, did you know that a Mother Hubbard is also a piece of clothing inspired by the nursery rhyme? Mother Hubbards are long, wide and loose-fitting dresses with long sleeves and a high neck. They are extremely modest and developed during Victorian times.

Alas, the Mother Hubbard has a negative connotation as well--colonizers and missionaries introduced the style to "civilize" BIPOC people, so aghast were they at nudity. The Mother Hubbard lives on in various designs, however, mostly notably the Hawaiian muumuu.

I have had this cartoon on my phone forever--it's a gem!





Image shows a four panel cartoon of singing cartoon books
Panel One: Dictionary sings If you want to use a word, I know all the ones you've heard!
Panel Two: Thesaurus sings I've got synonyms galore, so come with me and we'll find more!
Panel Three: Encyclopedia sings If you'd like to know more deets, look within my lengthy sheets!
Panel Four: Urban Dictionary enters looks dishevelled and singing a redacted song while the dictionary says Nope! No No No

Ikat noun.

Ikat, pronounced ee-kaht, refers to either the technique used to create this woven cloth or the cloth itself. This interesting textile originated in South Asian and the word ikat is Indonesian in origin.

By Sujit kumar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Inselberg - noun.

An inselberg, also called a monadnock, is a singular rock formation that appears on a more or less level plain. The most famous inselberg would be Uluru in Australia, but there are others around the world.

Inselberg originates from German--Inselberg, which means "island mountain". Geologist Wilhelm Bornhardt coined the word in 1900 when describing the many land features found in Eastern Africa.

Monadnock, or "smooth mountain" is thought to originate from the Abenaki, whose traditional territory is in the Eastern Canada and USA. In fact, there is a Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire.

By Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link