supplant

supplant - verb - to take the place of another, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics; to take the place of and server as a substitute for

gregarious

gregarious - adj - tending to form a group with others of the same kind; seeking and enjoying the company of others

... or, as the saying goes, "birds of a feather flock together". Recently, however, this list has often felt like a list of one.

impugn

impugn - verb - to attack by words or arguments; to call in question; to make insinuations against; to oppose or challenge as false; to gainsay

I'm on a good pace for a word entry every-other-day. :-(

I'll try to do better, I've been real busy learning new stuff at work.

bedaub

bedaub - verb - to smudge over; to besmear or soil with anything thick and dirty; to overdecorate; to ornament showily or gaudily

Not something done to corn with butter. That would be daub. (get it! ;-)

condescend

condescend – v - To behave as if one is conscious of descending from a superior position, rank, or dignity; to stoop or deign to do something.

Wolf, one of your strengths as a teacher is that you were never condescending.

Today's Exquisite entry is my teenage dream girl Natalie Wood.

petit

petit - adj - small; petty; minor

I was on this kind of jury last week. We tried a case in which we found the defendant guilty on felony charges and sentenced him to a total of 11 years in prison. I promise the process felt anything but petit. Overall, it was a good experience though. I enjoyed being a part of the "system".

jingo

jingo – n - A person who professes his or her patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy; bellicose chauvinist.

Sorry, I've been so busy lately I've had to neglect WoD. By the way, have you noticed there's never a Jeff around when you meed one?

anschluss

Anschluss – n - Union, esp. the political union of Austria with Germany in 1938.

From the German for 'annexation.' The Third Reich annexed Austria in 1938 followed by Czechoslavakia's mostly German-speaking Sudetenland in 1939. These were unintended consequences of the redrawing of the European map by the victors at Versailles, and were part of the buildup to the second world war that the 1919 treaty had, in my opinion, made inevitable.

And now, in honor of J B Wolf, I offer The Pasture, a favorite poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963).

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha'n't be gone long.

You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother.

It's so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha'n't be gone long.

You come too.

arriviste

arriviste - noun - a person who has recently attained success, wealth or high status but not general acceptance or respect; an upstart

tenet

tenet - noun - any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc., esp. one held as true by members of a profession, group or movement

tortillon

tortillon - noun - a stump made of paper twisted to a point, used in drawing

Inspired by the serendipity of finding the exquisite drawing posted yesterday, I went looking for more pencil art, specifically portraits of people. There are several sites which describe how to perform beautiful renditions, most of them refer to this tool as an indispensable blending tool. The exquisite post today is another pencil drawing, this time with colored pencils.

crescendo

crescendo - noun - A directive to a performer to smoothly increase the volume of a particular phrase or passage.

One of the cartoons my kids used to watch on the Discovery channel featured a musical rocket propelled by the cartoons encouraging the children to pat their legs in a dumming motion. To make the rocket go faster, they needed to be louder, so the cartoons would yell "CRESCENDO", as would my children.

Incidentally, this will conclude (at least temporarily) my foray into the music dictionary for entries. There are so many other words I feel like I've missed in reading recently, I'd like to go back to pick them up and add them.

I am including an exquisite pencil drawing of Natalie Portman. I wish I had the kind of talent this artist does. The ability to make the drawing so very life-like. Especially examine the integrity of each strand of hair.

abstract expressionism

abstract expressionism – n - A movement in experimental, nonrepresentational painting originating in the U.S. in the 1940s, with sources in earlier movements, and embracing many individual styles marked in common by freedom of technique, a preference for dramatically large canvases, and a desire to give spontaneous expression to the unconscious.

I've already commented on Jackson Pollock, so I'll use an untitled masterpiece by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) to illustrate today's word. Now isn't that better than all those tedious Exquisites? Enjoy! (Wolf, what was that you were saying about shades of gray?)

cadenza

cadenza - noun - an ornamental passage performed near the close of a composition usually improvised and usually performed by a soloist

Some examples:
Tchaikovsky: Violin concerto in D major, Op. 35, I
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, I

opus

opus - noun - the classification of a composition in relation to the composer's other composition, usually given in chronological order.

So, for example, the first composition would be given an opus of 1 (Op. 1). However, most of the time, the publishers are the ones assigning opus numbers, so the numbers don't always represent the true chronology of a composition.

Impressionism II

Wolf, this one's for you. It's the Renoir Blonde Bather I've been threatening to post seemingly forever. She's plumper than we like them today, but no less exquisite for that. Aside from that, the painting is another fine example of impressionism. (Natalie, you have nobody to blame but yourself.)

cubism

cubism - n - A style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20th century, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure, the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents, and the organization of the planes of a represented object independently of representational requirements.

(I know I'm not being very systematic in my art presentation.)

Probably the most famous example is Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, displayed at the 1913 New York Armory exhibition. In my opinion, fine art has never recovered from the cubists; they paved the way for the outrageously overrated Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, and too many others to list.

ballad

ballad - noun - a simple song of natural construction, usually in the narrative or descriptive form, usually having several verses of similar construction and may or may not have a refrain

baroque

baroque – adj - Of or pertaining to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early 17th century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, by forms in elevation and plan suggesting movement, and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect.

In my opinion, "movement" and "dramatic effect" are the key terms. These elements are prominent in Caravaggio's Conversion of Saint Paul (1600).

scale

scale - noun - a collection of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work.

Someone once said the most difficult thing to define is the simplest. How true of the musical scale. Not only is this a collection of notes, but it also has several properties and additional (adverbs!) to describe it (diatonic, chromatic, whole-tone, etc). Ignoring most of these additional properties doesn't really do justice to the term, but consider the following items: scales go up and/or down a musical score and the separation of the notes from each other is constant. If you'd really like to be bamboozled by the description of a scale, try out wikipedia.