#102

Bou·lan·ger (b-lä-zh)

French music teacher of several modern American composers, including Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland.

#101

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doughty \DOW-tee\, adjective:
Marked by fearless resolution; valiant; brave.

He was obsessed with the Arctic, his imagination stoked by epic accounts of the doughty pioneers who had led wooden ships into uncharted waters and northern mists.
-- Sara Wheeler, "In Cold Blood?", New York Times, February 25, 2001

One day he stumbled, fell against the spinning saw and half severed his left arm. It was three days before a doctor came, but the doughty old Swede was still alive.
-- Quentin Reynolds, "The Bold Victory of a Man Alone", New York Times, September 13, 1953

Doughty comes from Old English dohtig, "brave, valiant, fit."

#100

limn \LIM\, transitive verb:
1. To depict by drawing or painting.
2. To portray in words; to describe.

#99

impactful
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: having a great impact or effect

#98

Genuphobia - Fear of knees.

#97

banana boat

noun
a ship designed to transport bananas

#96

imbroglio \im-BROHL-yoh\, noun:
1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things.
2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding.
3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.
4. A confused mass; a tangle.

Imbroglio derives from Italian, from Old Italian imbrogliare, "to tangle, to confuse," from in-, "in" + brogliare, "to mix, to stir." It is related to embroil, "to entangle in conflict or argument."

#95

effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.
-- "Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington" , December 4, 1908

The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra.
-- Washington Irving, The Alhambra

Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures.
-- Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia: The paintings Matisse did in Nice include some of his best", Time, November 17, 1986

From Latin ex, "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.

#94

Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and often is used as an expression of admiration or approval.

platitude \PLAT-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. Staleness of ideas or language; triteness.
2. A thought or remark that is banal, trite, or stale.

Yet a curious thing happens in this book: Whatever promise it offers of satire and enlightened vision dissipates into cliche and platitude.
-- Edward Rothstein, "Against Galactic Rhetoric", New York Times, April 3, 1983

The average sports memoir is a prodigy of simpering modesty and high-minded platitude: enough to rot the mind and sap the morals of the sturdiest child.
-- Wilfrid Sheed, "Take Me Back to the Ballgame", New York Times, September 18, 1966

She'll have to cut the platitudes and start saying something unusual and provocative, which she hasn't yet.
-- Jonathan Alter, "Why It's Time to Let Loose", Newsweek, December 6, 1999

Platitude derives from French plat, "flat." It is related to plate, a flat piece of metal or a flat dish in which food is served or from which it is eaten; and plateau, a broad, level, elevated area of land. The adjective form of platitude is platitudinous.

#91

paean \PEE-uhn\, noun:
1. A joyous song of praise, triumph, or thanksgiving.
2. An expression of praise or joy.

Bud Guthrie had written a paean to the grizzly, calling it the "living, snorting incarnation of the wildness and grandeur of America."
-- David Whitman, "The Return of the Grizzly", The Atlantic, September 2000

If you look at what British writers were saying about England before and after the war, you read for the most part a seamless paean to the virtues of the nation's strength and identity.
-- Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot

Paean comes from Latin paean, "a hymn of thanksgiving, often addressed to god Apollo," from Greek paian, from Paia, a title of Apollo.

#90

ersatz \AIR-sahts; UR-sats\, adjective:
Being a substitute or imitation, usually an inferior one.

Meanwhile, a poor copy was erected in the courtyard; many an unsuspecting traveler paid homage to that ersatz masterpiece.
-- Edith Pearlman, "Girl and Marble Boy", The Atlantic, December 29, 1999

All we can create in that way is an ersatz culture, the synthetic product of those factories we call variously universities, colleges or museums.
-- Sir Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art

Then there was the sheaf of hostile letters larded with ersatz sympathy, strained sarcasm or pure spite.
-- "Time for GAA to become a persuader", Irish Times, April 13, 1998


Ersatz derives from German Ersatz, "a substitute."

#89

Aphenphosmphobia - Fear of being touched.

#88

jejune \juh-JOON\, adjective:
1. Lacking in nutritive value.
2. Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; childish.
3. Lacking interest or significance; dull; meager; dry.

Were I to make this public now, it would be dismissed as the raving of a mind at the end of its tether, unable to distinguish fiction from reality, real life from the jejune fantasies of its youth.
-- Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

By the inflection of his voice, the expression of his face, and the motion of his body, he signals that he is aware of all the ways he may be thought silly or jejune, and that he might even think so himself.
-- Jedediah Purdy, For Common Things

A while ago, Michael Kinsley wrote that Jewish Americans envied Israelis for living out history in a way that made the comfort and security of life in New York or Los Angeles seem jejune.
-- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "The Big Kibbutz", New York Times, March 2, 1997

Jejune derives from Latin jejunus, "fasting, hence hungry, hence scanty, meager, weak."

#87

deus ex machina \DAY-uhs-eks-MAH-kuh-nuh; -nah; -MAK-uh-nuh\, noun:
1. In ancient Greek and Roman drama, a god introduced by means of a crane to unravel and resolve the plot.
2. Any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an apparently insoluble difficulty.

In times of affluence and peace, with technology that always seems to arrive like a deus ex machina to solve any problem, it becomes easy to believe that life is perfectible.
-- Stephanie Gutmann, The Kinder, Gentler Military

But we also need the possibility of cataclysm, so that, when situations seem hopeless, and beyond the power of any natural force to amend, we may still anticipate salvation from a messiah, a conquering hero, a deus ex machina, or some other agent with power to fracture the unsupportable and institute the unobtainable.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Questioning the Millennium

Deus ex machina is New Latin for "god from the machine"; it is a translation of the Greek theos ek mekhanes.

Trivia: The dramatic device dates from the 5th century BC and is especially associated with Euripides, one of the greatest classical tragedians.

#86

slugabed \SLUHG-uh-bed\, noun:
One who stays in bed until a late hour; a sluggard.

Nemecek's business is not for slugabeds. He opens for business every weekday at 4 a.m.
-- Drew Fetherston, "He Can Really Make Pigs Fly", Newsday, December 12, 1994

I found Oriana, as usual, up before me, for I always was a sad slugabed.
-- W. Hurton, Doomed Ship

All save Whit elected to sleep in that morning. Whit came back to report that he had spotted the tracks of a doe and a fawn made in the new snow directly beneath my unoccupied stand, and I regretted being a slugabed.
-- "Paying Tribute to Deer in Minnesota Woods", New York Times, December 6, 1998

Slugabed is from slug, "sluggard" + abed, "in bed."

#85

raillery \RAY-luh-ree\, noun:
1. Good-humored banter or teasing.
2. An instance of good-humored teasing; a jest.

I moved from one knot of people to another, surrounded by a kind of envious respect because of Sophie's interest in me, although subjected to a certain mordant raillery from some of this witty company.
-- Peter Brooks, World Elsewhere

Her raillery and mockery are fun -- but ultimately rather tiring, and tiresome.
-- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, "Eastward Ho!" review of Shards of Memory, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, New York Times, September 17, 1995

Raillery is from French raillerie, from Old French railler, "to tease, to mock."



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#84

diffident \DIF-uh-dunt; -dent\, adjective:
1. Lacking self-confidence; distrustful of one's own powers; timid; bashful.
2. Characterized by modest reserve; unassertive.

He lived naturally in a condition that many greater poets never had, or if they had it, were embarrassed or diffident about it: a total commitment to his own powers of invention, a complete loss of himself in his materials.
-- James Dickey, "The Geek of Poetry", New York Times, December 23, 1979

This schism is embodied in Clarence's two sons: cheerful, pushy, book-ignorant Jared, a semicriminal entrepreneur who has caught "the rhythm of America to come" and for whom life is explained in brash epigrams from the trenches, versus slow, diffident Teddy, the town postman, uncomfortable with given notions of manhood, uncompetitive ("yet this seemed the only way to be an American") and disturbed that others misstate "the delicate nature of reality as he needed to grasp it for himself."
-- Julian Barnes, "Grand Illusion", New York Times, January 28, 1996

Minny was too delicate and diffident to ask her cousin outright to take her to Europe.
-- Brooke Allen, "Borrowed Lives", New York Times, May 16, 1999

Diffident is from the present participle of Latin diffidere, "to mistrust, to have no confidence," from dis- + fidere, "to trust." The noun form is diffidence.

#83

pi·rate (pī'rĭt) Pronunciation Key
n.

1.
1. One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation.
2. A ship used for this purpose.
2. One who preys on others; a plunderer.
3. One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization.
4. One that operates an unlicensed, illegal television or radio station.


v. pi·rat·ed, pi·rat·ing, pi·rates

v. tr.

1. To attack and rob (a ship at sea).
2. To take (something) by piracy.
3. To make use of or reproduce (another's work) without authorization.


v. intr.
To act as a pirate; practice piracy.


[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin pīrāta, from Greek peirātēs, from peirān, to attempt, from peira, trial; see per-3 in Indo-European roots.]

pi·rat'ic (pī-rāt'ĭk), pi·rat'i·cal (-ĭ-kəl) adj., pi·rat'i·cal·ly adv.

#82

ergo \UR-go; AIR-\, adverb:
Therefore; consequently; -- often used in a jocular way.

The general observation has always been: Dogs form packs; the leader of the pack is the strongest, wisest, and largest individual; a human being among dogs fits that description; ergo we are the leader of any dog pack.
-- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs

Armani isn't interested in fashion that moves on (ergo he isn't interested in fashion).
-- Sinead Lynch, "The waist land", Times (London), October 9, 2000

People who do not suffer fools gladly, gladly suffer flatterers. (Ergo, flatterers are no fools.)
-- Richard Stengel, You're Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery

Ergo is from Latin ergo, consequently, therefore.




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