Word of the Day!

clishmaclaver [klish-muh-kley-ver, kleesh-]

noun:
(Scots) gossip; idle or foolish talk

Examples:

There is more of good sense, sound judgment, truth, and good taste, in it, than in all the clishmaclaver which has been issued from the Popish presses and Jesuit quarterly reviews in the United States, during the last half century. (William Hogan, Auricular Confession and Popish Nunneries)

Noo, I’ve been a gude friend to ye always, Peter, and eef there’s iver been anything wrang, I’ve been like Sir Murray himsel’ to all ye sairvants, and paid yer wage, and seen ye raised, and that no ane put upon ye; so now tell me, like a gude laddie, has there been any clishmaclaver with Maister Norton and my laird here? (George Manville Fenn, The Sapphire Cross)

Let me insense ye how matters are on that head, for it's better coming from the factor than any clishmaclaver you'll hear in other quarters. (Sam Hanna Bell, Across the Narrow Sea)

Your letter is at hand, stating that you cannot visit me on Friday per promise, because you husband has business that keeps him in town. What clishmaclaver is this! Has it come to such a pass that you can’t leave him for two days? (Jean Webster, Dear Enemy)

Origin:

1720–30; clish(-clash) gossip (gradational compound based on clash ) + -ma- (< ?) + claver (Dictionary.com)

The usual meaning of the Scottish word clishmaclaver (also clish-ma-claver, clishmaclaiver, clashmaclaver) is 'idle talk, gossip, or empty chatter'. The OED says it was formed 'apparently with allusion to clish-clash and claver, with echoic associations', and finds it also used as a verb ('keep me clishmaclavering'). Hiberno-English has the related short form clash 'gossip' as both noun and verb. Terence Dolan notes clash in Sligo ('He’s an awful old clash'), while a century ago P W Joyce reported clashbag 'tale-bearer' or 'busybody' in Armagh, Northern Ireland. (Sentence first)

sploot [sploot]

verb:
(slang, of an animal) to lie flat on the stomach with the legs stretched out
noun:
the act or an instance of splooting

            
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There’s the classic sploot (one leg remains beneath the body while the other leg is kicked back), the side sploot (one leg is tucked under the body while the other is kicked out to the side) and a full sploot (the animal has kicked both legs behind the body, exhibiting a full body stretch). (Hannah Docter-Loeb, Who Sploots?, Slate, August 2022)

But even in the chillier climes like Laramie, squirrels will sploot on warmer days. The upside to what Koprowski called heat islands is that cement sidewalks, while also retaining heat, will retain cooler temperatures while in the shade. (Joshua Wood, U W Professor, Who Is World’s Foremost Authority On Squirrels, Says Splooting Is OK, Cowboy State Daily, August 2022)

Snellby Kay said her household refers to the position as "road kill pose," and Brianna Portillo called it the "sploot." (Sophie Lloyd, Cat's Bizarre Sleeping Position Confuses Internet: 'Airplane Mode', Newsweek, July 2023)

I think a senior cat who still gets the zoomies would love her own bean bag chair to sploot in! (Eve Vawter, Scottish Fold Cat’s Beanbag Sploot Is the AMSR Therapy Session We Didn’t Know We Needed, Parade Pets, April 2025)

Origin:

Sploot is part of a growing lexicon of 'DoggoLingo', which uses cute, deliberate misspellings and onomatopoeias like mlem, blep, smol, borf, and heckin to fawn over man’s best friend online - and the many, many pictures and videos we post of them. While the exact origins of sploot are unclear, lexicographer Grant Barrett of the A Way with Words radio show has suggested that the term sploot may riff on the word splat to characterize the splat-like (flat, spread-out) appearance of a sploot pose. This wordplay mirrors other changes made to existing words in DoggoLingo, like the substitution of chonky for chunky. Sploot is especially associated with corgis, a squat breed of dogs with very short legs. The use of sploot, as associated with pets, is evidenced by at least 2012. (Dictionary.com)

legerdemain [lej-er-duh-meyn]

noun:
1 sleight of hand
2 a display of skill or adroitness

Examples:

In Open Eye's itsy-bitsy performing space, Sass has constructed a set filled with tricks and gimmicks: old-fashioned bulletin boards animate themselves, objects move on their own, characters appear from and disappear to unexpected places. Some of the legerdemain is how'd-they-do-that pieces of stage magic, while other bits are visual distraction. (Dominic P Papatola , Theater review: These 'Red Shoes' can't be tied with a bow. And that's a good thing , Twin Cities, March 2017)

Poirot reacts to all this legerdemain with a disbelieving scowl, even when he can't fully explain the hair-raising tricks his eyes and ears are playing on him. (Justin Chang, Review: With 'A Haunting in Venice,' Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie series hits its stride , Los Angeles Times, September 2023)

The magician on stage is all-powerful to the mesmerised audience, pulling the rabbit out of his hat, sawing pretty ladies in half, making members in the audience disappear and a host of other tricks in his legerdemain (Ravi Shankar, Why poll Houdini Prashant Kishor isn't a neta, The New Indian Express, February 2022)

Every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception - chattering away all the while - but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad)

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. (Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera)

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early 15c, 'conjuring tricks, sleight of hand,' from Old French léger de main 'quick of hand,' literally 'light of hand.' Léger 'light' in weight (Old French legier, 12c) is from Latin levis 'light' (from PIE root legwh- 'not heavy, having little weight'). Main 'hand' is from Latin manus (from PIE root man- 'hand'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In Middle French, folks who were clever enough to fool others with fast-fingered illusions were described as leger de main, literally 'light of hand'. English speakers condensed that phrase into a noun when they borrowed it in the 15th century and began using it as an alternative to the older sleight of hand. (That term for dexterity or skill in using one's hands makes use of sleight, an old word from Middle English that derives from an Old Norse word meaning 'sly.') In modern times, a feat of legerdemain can even be accomplished without using your hands, as in, for example, 'an impressive bit of financial legerdemain.' (Merriam-Webster)

fumarole [fyoo-muh-rohl]

noun:
a hole in or near a volcano, from which vapor rises

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On Wednesday afternoon, Popocatépetl emitted a huge fumarole that split in the middle, eventually taking the shape of a giant heart as it rose into the sky. (Flights suspended in Puebla as Popocatépetl volcano grumbles, The Washington Post, Mexico News Daily 2024)

Gas vents, also known as fumaroles, are also activating around the volcano's summit and Crater Peak vents, the latter being the location where the 1953 and the 1992 eruptions occurred. (Sam Walters, Activity at Alaska’s Mount Spurr Suggests That The Volcano Is About To Erupt, Discover, May 2025)

Downhill from Viti, the landscape belches audible steam blasts from a fumarole at Hverir, a misty, moody landscape with hiking paths that go past scalding ponds not far from the warm Myvatn Nature Baths, where we recovered from our hikes and talked geology with the Danish couple. (Elaine Glusac, Driving Iceland’s Overlooked North, The New York Times, June 2022)

He did the trick with a fumarole of cigarette smoke escaping from her lips. ( Robert D McFadden, Hiro, Fashion Photographer Who Captured the Surreal, Dies at 90, The New York Times, August 2021)

In ordinary climates, a fumarole, or volcanic vapour-well, may be detected by the thin cloud of steam above it, and usually one can at once feel the warmth by passing one's hand into the vapour column, but in the rigour of the Antarctic climate the fumaroles of Erebus have their vapour turned into ice as soon as it reaches the surface of the snow plain. (Ernest Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic)

Directly overhead, in the face of an almost perpendicular cliff, were three of the cavern mouths, which had the aspect of volcanic fumaroles. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Seven Geases)

Origin:

Italian fumarola, from Italian dialect (Neapolitan), from Late Latin fumariolum vent, from Latin fumarium smoke chamber for aging wine, from fumus (Merriam Webster)

sacerdotal [sas-er-doht-l]

adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of priests
characterized by belief in the divine authority of the priesthood

Examples:

He seemed indeed a sacerdotal figure - a high priest who offered his own life before accepting the animal's. Every one of us was transfigured by the rite. (Christopher North, Taurine state of grace , The Critic, March 2021 )

After the reading - ‘Neither pray I for these alone...' - one of the ladies was so pleased with the sacerdotal language that she blew me a kiss across the aisle. (Jason Goodwin, 'When someone dies, you can lose a place, as well as a person', Country Life, June 2019)

In the meltdown's aftermath, a small unregulated bank is unusually suspect, especially when operating in a 'sacerdotal-monarchical state established under the 1929 Lateran Treaty' and reporting to an abstract nominee with an ethereal address. Nor can it help that the bank is a market-maker in loaves and fishes. (Matthew Stevenson, The Vatican Bank: In God We Trust?, newgeography, May 2013)

The brand inspires a sacerdotal devotion in many of its workers (its archives contain the papers of one of the atelier's premieres, or heads, who served from 1947 to 1990). (Matthew Schneier, Atop Dior, Balancing Art and Commerce, The New York Times, July 2017)

He would immerse himself in the sacerdotal labor of translation. (Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl)

Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles)

Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the coast, which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten in less than four leagues. (Father Lobo, A Voyage to Abyssinia)

One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. (Herman Melville, Typee)

Origin:

'of or belonging to priests or the priesthood,' c 1400, from Old French sacerdotal and directly from Latin sacerdotalis 'of or pertaining to a priest,' from sacerdos (genitive sacerdotis) 'priest,' literally 'offerer of sacrifices or sacred gifts,' from sacer 'holy' (see sacred) + stem of dare 'to give' (from PIE root do- 'to give'). (Online Etymological Dictionary)

Sacerdotal is one of a host of English words derived from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning 'sacred.' Other words derived from sacer include desecrate, sacrifice, sacrilege, consecrate, sacrament, and even execrable (developed from the Latin word exsecrari, meaning 'to put under a curse'). One surprising sacer descendant is sacrum, referring to the series of five vertebrae in the lower back connected to the pelvis. In Latin this bone was called the os sacrum, or 'holy bone,' a translation of the Greek hieron osteon. (Merriam-Webster)

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)

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)

peregrinate [per-i-gruh-neyt]

verb:
to travel or journey, especially to walk on foot.

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Everywhere on the rim of the island, which I peregrinate with my companionable driver, G Douglas Wijerathna, I see scooters and tuk-tuks ferrying surfers to beaches and breaks, schools and camps. (Chandrahas Choudhury, Sri Lanka's South Coast Is the Next Great Lifestyle Destination, Condé Nast Traveller, March 2024)

For those who like to peregrinate without actually going anywhere, virtual reality is just the ticket, the next best thing to astral projection (something I'm dying to try). (James Wolcott, Sunglasses After Dark, Air Mail, November 2022)

He followed that with 'Wonder Boys,' a witty campus farce in which Chabon's pen continued to peregrinate all over Pittsburgh in prose which still reveled in the many wonders to be discovered here. (Kristofer Collins, Book Reviews: Michael Chabon's 'Moonglow', Pittsburgh Magazine, October 2016)

I go there on the 10th to remain till May; but I am sorry to say I see little hope of my being able to peregrinate to far Provence - all benignant though your invitation be. (Henry James, The Letters of Henry James)

The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate southwest along the seacoast. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Seven Vagabonds)

Origin:

'to travel from place to place,' 1590s, from Latin peregrinatus, past participle of peregrinari 'to travel abroad, be alien,' figuratively 'to wander, roam, travel about,' from peregrinus 'from foreign parts, foreigner,' from peregre (adv.) 'abroad,' properly 'from abroad, found outside Roman territory,' from per 'away' + agri, locative of ager 'field, territory, land, country' (from PIE root agro- 'field'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

We begin our narrative of the linguistic travels of peregrinate with the Latin word peregrinatus, the past participle of peregrinari, which means 'to travel in foreign lands'. The verb is derived from the Latin word for 'foreigner', peregrinus, which was earlier used as an adjective meaning 'foreign.'That term also gave us the words pilgrim and peregrine, the latter of which once meant 'alien' but is now used as an adjective meaning 'tending to wander' and as a noun naming a kind of falcon. (The peregrine falcon is so named because it was traditionally captured during its first flight - or pilgrimage - from the nest.) (Merriam-Webster)

myrmidon [mur-mi-don, -dn]

noun:
faithful follower who carries out orders without question; a subordinate who executes orders unquestioningly or unscrupulously

Examples:

These days Tate's name pops up occasionally in bookstores, never in cafés: he's simply not part of the contemporary discussion. Literary history and her myrmidons, the anthologists, have hacked down his poetic ranks - often to a single poem, 'Ode to the Confederate Dead' - and left the rest to lie where they fell, out of print. (David Yezzi, The violence of Allen Tate, The New Criterion, September 2001)

OK, first of all, George III didn't have myrmidons (Charles P Pierce, This Week In The Laboratories Of Democracy, Esquire, March 2014)

He was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract him with some account of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. (E W Hornung, The Camera Fiend)

His myrmidon on this occasion was a little, red-nosed butler, who waddled about the house after his master, while the latter bounced from room to room like a cracker. (Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall)

'"We are gathered," he ses, "to consider what can be done for the defence of our sainted Brother Lawley, who's in the hands of the myrmidons of the law." (Edgar Wallace, The Man Who Shot the "Favourite" (The Gold Mine))

Origin:

one of a warlike people of ancient Thessaly, legendarily ruled by Achilles and accompanying him to Troy, c. 1400, from Latin Myrmidones (plural), from Greek Myrmidones, Thessalian tribe led by Achilles to the Trojan War, fabled to have been ants changed into men, and often derived from Greek myrmex 'ant' (from PIE morwi- ), but Watkins does not connect them and Klein's sources suggest a connection to Greek mormos 'dread, terror.' Transferred sense of 'faithful unquestioning follower,' often with a suggestion of unscrupulousness, is from c. 1600. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The Myrmidons, legendary inhabitants of Thessaly in Greece, were known for their fierce devotion to Achilles, the king who led them in the Trojan War. Myrmex means 'ant' in Greek, an image that evokes small and insignificant workers mindlessly fulfilling their duties. Whether the original Myrmidons were given their name for that reason is open to question. The 'ant' association is strong, however. Some say the name is from a legendary ancestor who once had the form of an ant; others say the Myrmidons were actually transformed from ants. In any case, since the 1400s, we've employed myrmidon in its not-always-complimentary, ant-evoking, figurative sense. (Merriam-Webster)