intelligentsia

intelligentsia – n - Intellectuals considered as a group or class, esp. as a cultural, social, or political elite.

Today's word came up in Richard Pipes's Concise History of the Russian Revolution. Pipes says - and I agree - that intelligentsia are needed to produce revolutions (as opposed to reforms) because they regard the mass of humanity as mere abstractions, imperfect life forms in need of the molding only the intellectual elite can provide. Historical examples would be France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and the United States today.

William F. Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT. Agreed.

in totu

in toto - In all; completely; entirely; wholly.

I came across this term last night in Jacque Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, which I strongly recommend. (I take exception to some of his conclusions, but he's worth disagreeing with.)

By the way, I'm still recuperating from your beating me on the draw re reductio ad absurdum. ;^D

embonpoint

embonpoint - noun - (ahn-bohn-PWAN) plumpness of person; stoutness

I found this quote on wikipedia, "The Western ideal considers a slim and slender body mass as optimal while many historic cultures consider an embonpoint or plump body-mass as appealing". The article went on to talk about how US women failed to recognize what men find attractive, believing a slimmer than average appearance was more attractive. In reality, most men found women of average build to be more attractive.

isthmus

isthmus – n - A narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land.

I know most people consider the whole subject tiresome, just something to be gotten past in school, but my interest in history is life-long. I may have been the only five-year-old in the Western hemisphere who could have named all the US presidents and told you something about them (admittedly, nothing very penetrating - I was five!). Anyone interested in history is going to develop some knowledge of geography, and I thought I'd devote a few entries to the subject.

That's the isthmus of Corinth shown above, separating the Pelloponese (home of the Spartans) from what may still be called Attica (home of the Athenians).

cavil

cavil – v - To raise irritating and trivial objections; find fault with unnecessarily; to oppose by inconsequential, frivolous, or sham objections; a trivial and annoying objection; the raising of such objections.

petabyte

petabyte - noun - One quadrillion (10 to the 15th power) bytes

I found this word in this wonderful email signature:

"Peta" is Greek for fifth; a petabyte is 10 to the fifth power, as
well as fifth in line after kilo, mega, giga, and tera.

However notice the mistake: 10^5 is 100000 which is less than mega, quite a bit less than giga and a huge amount less than tera. The correct reference should have been 1000^5. Interestingly, since we deal in powers of 2 (binary) for digital computers, the actual number of a petabyte is 1024^5 (2^50) or 1,125,899,906,842,624. Given the discrepancy between 1000^5 and 2^50, it has been suggested that petabyte be equal to 1000^5 while pebibyte be equal to 2^50, but this isn't widely used. In reality, most people probably don't know what comes after terabyte anyway.

Here is some extra history about the prefix 'Peta' which is interesting:
Adopted in 1975, it comes from the Greek πέντε, meaning five, because it is equal to 1000^5. It is based on the model of tera- (from Greek τέρας = 'monster', but looking like tetra- from the Greek for "four" with a letter missing, and so peta-, coming from penta-, omits the third letter, n.

cavort

cavort – v - To prance or caper about; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner; make merry.

I've been getting precious little of this done lately.

via media

via media – n - A middle way; a mean between two extremes.

C. S. Lewis believed Anglicanism to be the via media between Catholicism and more standard forms of Protestantism. Today, Anglicanism (and its American offshoot Episcopalianism) seems to be the via media between Unitarianism and paganism.

About ten years ago I read an article by Christopher Buckley in which he fielded the question, "Is sex still sexy?" Back when today's featured exquisite, Yvette Mimieux, was making the rounds it was. Here she is with Rod Taylor in George Pal's Time Machine (1960), where she played Weena. (Some time we'll have to discuss the ways in which movie-makers keep getting H. G. Wells wrong. Pal missed the point too, but he gave us an entertaining movie.)

edgewise

edgewise - adv - with the edge forward; in the direction of the edge; sideways

Exactly how I'm trying to get my words in these days. I've been fairly busy.

unconscionable

unconscionable – adj - Not guided by conscience; unscrupulous; not in accordance with what is just or reasonable; excessive; extortionate.

I'd write more but I'm too blinded with rage after squirting away 22 irreplacable minutes on our daily time-waster, scrum.

plebiscite

plebiscite - n - A direct vote in which the entire electorate is invited to accept or refuse a proposal: a vote in which a population exercises the right of national self-determination.

Natalie beat me to the punch on "plebian," so here's a derived word.

rake

rake - noun - an agricultural implement with teeth or tines for gathering cut grass, hay or the like or for smoothing the surface of the ground; a dissolute or profligate person, esp. a man who is licentious

I received an email with an attachment from a friend which was a movie clip of a particular Jeopardy game in which the contestant used the word rake in the context of the second definition presented here.

culpable

culpable - adj - Deserving blame or censure; blameworthy.

From my Latin mass days:

Mea culpa!
Mea culpa!
Mea maxima culpa!

(Through my fault! Through my fault! Through my most grievous fault!) The reference is to Christ's atonement for the sins of mankind through his death on the cross.

Today's example shows yet again how even a little knowledge of Latin (and Greek) helps build our English vocabulary. Wolf, you already knew that, but will you deny that most English speakers would benefit greatly by taking a page from our book?

corpus delicti

corpus delicti – n - The basic element or fact of a crime, as, in murder, the death of the murdered person; the object, as the body of a murdered person, upon which a crime has been committed and that serves as evidence proving that the crime was committed.

Playing catch-up. Busy, busy, busy.

forage

forage - noun - the act of searching for provisions of any kind

I use this word frequently when I don't bring my lunch from home and have to go looking for it.