Word of the Day!

recalcitrant [ri-kal-si-truhnt]

adjective:
1 resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant; refractory.
2 hard to deal with, manage, or operate.

But Smith managed to rally and to learn, through trial and error, how to milk what he needed out of an often recalcitrant medical system. (Gina Kolata, Taking Charge, The New York Times, September 1997)

With the passage of decades, facts are difficult to unearth, and emotions and motivations are even more recalcitrant. (Julia M Klein, What to do when family history is radioactive? Work around stonewalling relatives, Los Angeles Times, August2021)

The new Cabinet had to deal with religious conflict, refugee flight, food scarcities, recalcitrant princely states, and oversee the framing of a new Constitution. (Ramachandra Guha, Shed partisanship, reach out to the best minds, Hindustan Times, April 2020)

She greeted him now as though he were a recalcitrant member of the family, rather than a menacing outsider. (F Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited)

Origin:

'refusing to submit, not submissive or compliant,' 1823, from French récalcitrant, literally 'kicking back' (17c-18c), from Late Latin recalcitrantem (nominative recalcitrans), present participle of recalcitrare 'to kick back' (of horses), also 'be inaccessible,' in Late Latin 'to be petulant or disobedient;' from re- 'back' (see re-) + Latin calcitrare 'to kick,' from calx (genitive calcis) 'heel'. Used from 1797 as a French word in English. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Long before any human was dubbed 'recalcitrant' in English (that first occurred in the 18th century), there were stubborn mules (and horses) kicking back their heels. The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it: recalcitrare, which literally means 'to kick back.' (Its root calc-, meaning 'heel,' is also the root of calcaneus, the large bone of the heel in humans.) Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded - as attested by various Latin words meaning 'stubborn' - but it wasn't until later that writers of Late Latin applied recalcitrare and its derivative adjective to humans who were stubborn as mules. (Merriam-Webster)

marcescent [mahr-ses-uhnt]

adjective:
withering but not falling off, as a part of a plant.

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A bonus design tip for gardeners: A row of marcescent trees, although not technically evergreen, makes for an effective, nearly year-round screen. (Margaret Roach, How to Read the Tree Leaves, The New York Times, November 2022)

Another possible benefit to younger, shorter trees is that marcescent leaves appear to help protect against browsing by deer and moose. The leaves are lower in nutrients and more difficult to digest than new buds (which are present throughout the winter). (Susan Pike, Some trees retain leaves all winter long, Seacoastonline, February 2015)

I apologize if the metaphor is a little too on the nose, but the dissolution of a partnership such as marriage, feels marcescent. Sometimes I get mad at myself for hanging on too long to this or that aspect of my dead marriage, but that process just may be protective. (Brandy Renee McCann, Marcescent, Appalbrandy, March 2022)

The parchment-colored leaves riding out the winter - marcescent, he tells her - shining out against the neighboring bare hardwoods. (Richard Powers, The Overstory)

Origin:

'withering, liable to decay, ephemeral,' 1727, from Latin marcescentem (nominative marcescens), present participle of marcescere 'to wither, languish, droop, decay, pine away,' inchoative of marcere 'to wither, droop, be faint,' from Proto-Italic mark-e-, from PIE root merk- 'to decay' (source also of Sanskrit marka- 'destruction, death;' Avestan mareka- 'ruin;' Lithuanian mirkti 'become weak,' merkti 'to soak;' Ukrainian dialect morokva 'quagmire, swamp,' Middle High German meren 'dip bread into water or wine,' perhaps also Middle Irish mraich, Welsh brag 'a sprouting out; malt'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

nugatory [noo-guh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee, nyoo-]

adjective:
1 of no real value; trifling; worthless.
2 of no force or effect; ineffective; futile; vain

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The petitioners through lawyer Kibe Mungai argue that the petition will be rendered nugatory by June 2024 unless the Notice of motion is heard as a matter of urgency and the said petition for hearing and determined sooner. (Dzuya Walter, Petitioners seek CJ Koome’s intervention to have cost of living case certified urgent, Citizen Digital, January 2024)

In any event, at this stage, we are of the view that a conservatory order will, not only preserve the status quo but also save Portside Companies themselves from nugatory expenditure should the appeal succeed. (Sam Kiplagat, Court stops Joho family firm Sh5.9bn grain facility at Mombasa port, Business Daily, July 2024)

Yates is like many figures in 20th-century American literature: an early flowering of an intriguing talent rendered nugatory by crowding, tormenting demons - drink, drugs, self-doubt, self-loathing, burn-out and so on. (William Boyd, Tough is the night, The Spectator, December 2004)

I fancy the writer could hardly propose anything more alarming to those immediately interested in that navigation than such a repeal. If he does not mean this, he has got no farther than a nugatory proposition, which nobody can contradict, and for which no man is the wiser. (Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke)

According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,-conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,-had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man’s own righteousness. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)

Origin:

'trifling, of no value; invalid, futile,' c. 1600, from Latin nugatorius 'worthless, trifling, futile,' from nugator 'jester, trifler, braggart,' from nugatus, past participle of nugari 'to trifle, jest, play the fool,' from nugæ 'jokes, jests, trifles,' a word of unknown origin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

perspicacious [pur-spi-key-shuhs]

adjective:
of acute mental vision or discernment; keen

One perspicacious pal did comment: "Another book about Elizabeth? What’s left to say?" (Clare McHugh, 'Q’ is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth unlike any other, The Washington Post, October 2024)

Chris M L Burleigh is a poet with a distinctive and refreshingly light-hearted voice expressed through his viscerally nuanced and at times acutely perspicacious work. (Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Interview With Chris M L Burleigh, Yorkshire Times, October 2021)

I guess if you were so big-picture perspicacious that you established the trick that affects half the answers you might have been able to do it, but most of us toss an answer or two onto a grid when getting started. (Caitlin Lovinger, Back on the Job, The New York Times, March 2018)

It is an unusually perspicacious analytic deduction from inconspicuous clues that we call ratiocination, or more familiarly, the detective instinct. (Carolyn Wells, The Technique of the Mystery Story)

Anthony, the courteous, the subtle, the perspicacious, was drunk each day - in Sammy's with these men, in the apartment over a book, some book he knew, and, very rarely, with Gloria, who, in his eyes, had begun to develop the unmistakable outlines of a quarrelsome and unreasonable woman. (F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned)

Origin:

"sharp-sighted," also "of acute mental discernment," 1630s, formed as an adjective to perspicacity, from Latin perspicax "sharp-sighted, having the power of seeing through; acute," from perspicere "look through, look closely at," from per "through" (from PIE root per- "forward," hence "through") + specere "look at" (from PIE root spek- "to observe"). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

incommensurable [in-kuh-men-ser-uh-buhl, -sher-]

adjective:
1 having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison
2 utterly disproportionate
3 (of two or more quantities) having no common measure

Examples:

As the late philosopher Lawrence Becker proclaimed, 'autonomous human lives have a dignity that is immeasurable, incommensurable, infinite, beyond price.' (Frank Martela, Be Yourself - Everyone Else Is Taken, Scientific American, March 2020)

In Sewing Machine, 2000, the mechanism's operator - this time male - seems not to be sewing at all, but conducting some kind of shamanistic ritual that sends the other figures populating the painting's hallucinatory space into their own incommensurable realms of reverie. (Barry Schwabsky, Bass Culture, Artforum, January 2025)

In other words, spaces created with unmeasurable elements, which give an illusion of incommensurable continuity. (Cullen Murphy, An American Art Critic's 70-Year Love Affair With Rome, The Atlantic, November 2022)

Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire assembly (of knaves, it is true, but what matters that ?) stupefied, petrified, and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable tirades which welled up every instant from all parts of his bridal song. (Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris)

How on earth can a set of events belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belonging to an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has the faintest idea. (Aldous Huxley, Island)

Origin:

"having no common measure," 1550s, from French incommensurable (14c) or directly from Medieval Latin incommensurabilis, from in- "not, opposite of, without" + Late Latin commensurabilis, from Latin com "with, together" + mensurabilis "measurable," from mensurare "to measure," from Latin mensura "a measuring, a measurement; thing to measure by," from mensus, past participle of metiri "to measure" me- "to measure"). (Online Etymology Dictionary)