Word of the Day!

ouroboros [oor-uh-bur-uhs, oor-oh-bawr-uhs yoor-]

noun:
1 a representation of a snake or dragon eating its own tail, originating in Ancient Egyptian and Greek iconography and used as a symbolic representation of wholeness, eternity, or death and rebirth.

2 anything that resembles or calls to mind a snake or dragon eating its own tail

Examples:

Trauma is a time traveller, an ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before. Only fragments remain. (Junot Díaz, The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma, neoseeker, April 2018)

The ancient, mystical image of a snake swallowing its tail is called an ouroboros. It symbolizes the endless cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. What should we call an Alexa smart speaker swallowing itself? Progress? (John Kelly, An annoyed radio listener reports that Alexa is awoken by mistake, The Washington Post, May 2022)

But as Hollywood continues its transformation into a reboot ouroboros of unoriginal ideas, I have a tiny bit of fear that these projects will be disasters. (Miles Surrey, The Summer of 2018 in Pop Culture Has Been Scary, neoseeker, July 2018)

The Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, is a visual metaphor deployed to shift commonly held perspectives on, especially, the relationship between art and money. (Miles Surrey, Revised Book Proposal, Creative Infrastructure, November 2017)

The Ouroboros is a symbol steeped in history. Tied to the ancient art of alchemy, the Ouroboros travelled from ancient Egypt to Greece, and is often associated with the emotionally charged meaning of life's cyclical nature. (What is An Antique Split Ring, Lillicoco, March 2022)

        
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borrowed from Late Greek ourobóros 'devouring (its) tail' (modifying drákōn 'dragon, snake') from Greek ourá 'tail' + -o- + -boros, nominal derivative from the base of bibroskein 'to eat, eat up, devour'(Merriam-Webster)

oleaginous [oh-lee-aj-uh-nuhs]

adjective:
1 resembling or having the properties of oil, oily; containing or producing oil
2 marked by an offensively ingratiating manner or quality

Examples:

She runs a mentoring scholarship programme for women, administered by a tiresome, oleaginous would-be conductor, played by Mark Strong, and there are rumours that this is a source of young women with whom Tár has affairs. (Peter Bradshaw, Tár review - Cate Blanchett is colossal as a conductor in crisis, The Guardian, September 2022)

In recent years, parts of the delta have taken on the atmosphere of a war zone: hidden among mangroves and low bush, villagers and local militias have established countless makeshift distilleries to refine crude stolen from pipelines, while dumping tons of oleaginous waste back into the ground. (Raffi Khatchadourian, The Long View, The New Yorker, December 2016)

While there is a strong case for Michael Forsyth, who prowled the country like an oleaginous sith, or Malcolm Rifkind, who ruled with a sort of sinister patrician aura, and both were despised as representatives of Thatcherism, they were at the very least, noticeable. (Mike Small, Who is the Worst Secretary of State for Scotland Ever?, BellaCaledonia, January 2023)

"Dirty-looking beggars," said I over my shoulder: "dark as dark; blue chins, oleaginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as they make them, but nothing picturesque in their rags." (E W Hornung, Raffles, Further Adventures Of The Amateur Cracksman)

As the oleaginous matter exudes, it falls in drops through the apertures into a wide-mouthed calabash placed underneath. After a sufficient quantity has thus been collected, the oil undergoes a purifying process, and is then poured into the small spherical shells of the nuts of the moo-tree, which are hollowed out to receive it. (Herman Melville, Typee)

Origin:

'oily, unctuous, having the qualities of oil,' early 15c, oleaginose (modern from by 1630s), from Old French oléagineux (14c.) and directly from Medieval Latin oleaginus, literally 'of the olive,' from olea 'olive,' alteration of oliva (see olive) by influence of oleum 'oil.' (Online Eytymology Dictionary)

The oily oleaginous slipped into English via Middle French oleagineux, coming from Latin oleagineus, meaning 'of an olive tree'. Oleagineus itself is from Latin olea, meaning 'olive tree', and ultimately from Greek elaia, meaning 'olive'. Oleaginous was at first used in a literal sense, as it still can be. An oleaginous substance is simply oily, and an oleaginous plant produces oil. The word took on its extended 'ingratiating' sense in the 19th century. (Merriam-Webster)

ossuary [osh-oo-er-ee, os-]

noun:
1 a place for the bones of the dead
2 a container or receptacle, such as an urn or a vault, for holding the bones of the dead

Examples:

(Note, the pictures in the first two articles are just what you might expect...)

Her glass eyes, surrounded by a halo of gold, peer out from behind the ossuary box at whoever might be looking in at her from behind a locked wrought iron gate. (Elisabeth Edwards, The Eerily Beautiful Skeleton of Saint Munditia Is Covered in Jewels, Vintage Times, SEptember 2022)

In the latest excavations conducted by archaeologists from the Regional Museum in Jasło, 18 skeletal burials have been documented, in addition to an ossuary and a brick-built drainage tunnel that dates from the mid-19th century. Researchers suggest that the ossuary and tunnel likely date from the same period, with any human remains uncovered during the digging of the tunnel being placed in the ossuary. (Ossuary & Human Remains Discovered Beneath Car Park, Heritage Daily, April 2021)

"We wanted to create an ossuary like a gate between the temple and the city, and to give it the ambivalence of being both a boundary and a nexus between the sacred and the secular," notes the Japanese architecture studio. (black tones unify this japanese temple's ossuary and tree burial facility by love architecture, designboom, April 2021)

He had dwelt alone for two generations in a curious house on the rim of the northern desert of Tasuun: a house whose floor and walls were built from the large bones of dromedaries, and whose roof was a wattling composed of the smaller bones of wild dogs and men and hyenas. These ossuary relics, chosen for their whiteness and symmetry, were bound securely together with well-tanned thongs, and were joined and fitted with marvelous closeness, leaving no space for the blown sand to penetrate. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Witchcraft of Ulua)

He looked over his shoulder, to where the great massif of the Inner Palace rose up. In the darkness, against the gathering glow of the many fires, it looked more like an ossuary than a fortress. (Chris Wraight, Warhawk)

I love to go to his ossuary of dead transactions, as I would visit the catacombs of Rome or Paris. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, The Poet at the Breakfast Table)

(And for those who want to be unnerved more :) see this article on Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, a church decorated - quite literally - with the bones of 40,000 people, and the 1970 short film made by surrealist Jan Svankmajer.

Origin:

'urn or vase for the bones of the dead;' also 'place where bones of the dead are deposited,' 1650s, from Late Latin ossuarium 'charnel house, receptacle for bones of the dead,' from neuter of Latin ossuarius 'of bones,' from Latin os (plural ossua) 'bone' (from PIE root ost- 'bone') on model of mortuarium. (Online Etymology Dictionary)