decry

decry - verb - to speak disparagingly of; denounce as faulty or worthless; express censure of; to condemn or depreciate by proclamation, as foreign or obsolete coins.

perorate

perorate - verb - to conclude or sum up a long discourse; to speak or expound at length; to declaim

amour propre

amour propre - n - Self-love; self-respect; feelings of excessive prode.

Tangent: Robert Bourke wrote a book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, in which he identified radical individualism and radical egalitarianism as root causes of our societal ills. The title is a take-off on a line from a poem by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!
Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

stanch

stanch - verb - to stop the flowing of; to check in its course

cryptic

cryptic - adj - Mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous.

I have nothing to say about today's word, so I'll put in a plug for Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Anthology," which is notable for, among other things, being one of the few poetry books that was a national bestseller, and which continues to sell today. It's a series autobiographical epitaphs for the people of Spoon River, a fictitious Illinois town. Here are two of my favorites:

Emily Sparks

Where is my boy, my boy—
In what far part of the world?
The boy I loved best of all in the school?—
I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart,
Who made them all my children.
Did I know my boy aright,
Thinking of him as spirit aflame,
Active, ever aspiring?
Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed
In many a watchful hour at night,
Do you remember the letter I wrote you
Of the beautiful love of Christ?
And whether you ever took it or not,
My boy, wherever you are,
Work for your soul’s sake,
That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,
May yield to the fire of you,
Till the fire is nothing but light!...
Nothing but light!

Knowlt Hoheimer

I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the country jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words, ”Pro Patria.”
What do they mean, anyway?

(Notes: The Battle of Missionary Ridge outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, was fought between Union forces commanded by Major General Ulysses S Grant and Confederate forces commanded by General Braxton Bragg. "Pro patria" means "for country;" it comes from a line by the Roman poet Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 BC - 8 BC]: "Dulce et decorum pro patria mori est [It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country].")

opprobrium

opprobrium - noun - disgrace; infamy; reproach mingled with contempt; a cause or object of reproach or disgrace.

I love that definition - reproach mingled with contempt. What a cool way to flavor this word. Anyway, this one comes from recent history channel shows about the Knights Templar, especially at and after 1307.

cenacle

cenacle - n - The room where the Last Supper took place; A clique or circle, especially of writers; A small dining room, usually on an upper floor.

The picture is Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper (1498); it shows the reaction of the apostles to Christ's prediction that one of them would betray Him.

solace

solace - noun - comforat in time of grief; alleviation of grief or anxiety.

mellifluous

mellifluous - adj - Sweetly or smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding.

I am nearing the end of I Am Charlotte Simmons, and it's turning out to be one of the most difficult books I've ever read. If you plan to read the book, you should stop here, because I'm about to give away a major point in the story.

Charlotte has just "gone all the way" with a notorious serial seducer because she really, truly believed that he loved her. Charlotte, having succumbed to his mellifluous words, is no longer a virgin. Having given her all, she finds that he no longer has the slightest interest in her. In fact, he's giving all the guys who'll listen every detail of his latest conquest; by Monday, it seems like everybody on campus knows, and Charlotte wishes she could die. I felt like dying along with her.

privation

privation - noun - an act or instance of depriving; the state of being deprived of something, especially of something required or desired; destitution; need.

What we might say of someone's obvious absence from this list (although, I'm similarly guilty this week - way too busy!)

blitzkrieg

blitzkrieg - n - A swift, sudden military offensive, usually by combined air and mobile land forces.

Literally, "lightning war." Another German word that has entered the English-speakers vocabulary.

It wasn't known in 1939, but Germany threw virtually everything it had into its Polish invasion, which began September 1, 1939. Had Germany been attacked from the west at that time, the war in Europe may not have gone any further.

delude

delude - verb - to mislead the mind or judgment of; deceive

Weltanschauung

Weltanschauung - n - A comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity's relation to it.

Another useful German word in common English usage.

And now, here's a question. I'm reading Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, and I must say I'm appalled and disgusted by its picture of college life in the 21st Century. Co-ed dorms? Boys and girls together performing activities that should be private or at least confined to the same sex? Hooking-up, which means impromptu sex with someone you've just met? Courses designed to be "athlete friendly"? You've both been in college much more recently than I have, so I ask you: How much of this is true? (As for the novel, it's excellent - like every other Tom Wolfe book I've read, fiction or non-fiction. Caution: It's rated a very hard R, which couldn't be avoided given the subject.)

blandish

blandish - verb - to coax or influence by gentle flattery; cajole; to use flattery or cajolery.

No real commentary, but notice how much fun the word cajolery is to say...

dada

dada - n - the style and techniques of a group of artists, writers, etc., of the early 20th century who exploited accidental and incongruous effects in their work and who programmatically challenged established canons of art, thought, morality, etc.

The picture shows Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a prime example of dadaist "art."

To compensate, here's Edward Arlington Robinson's (1869-1935) best (in my opinion) poem:

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird."
He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily:
"Well, Mr. Flood,Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together.
Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood--For auld lang syne.
No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang--

"For auld lang syne."
The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below--
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

cajole

cajole - verb - to persuade by flattery or promises; wheedle; coax

sanguine

sanguine - adj - Cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident; reddish; ruddy.

It may also be used as a synonym for sanguinary, but I have never seen or heard it used that way.

Tangent: I am just finishing E. L. Doctorow's novel The March, about Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and I'm about to start Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. I mention this because I suspect many people think I believe the novel is dead. There is some truth to that, especially when you consider the dim view I take of Stephen KIng and John Grisham, but I have read some good modern novels. A few that come to mind are The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, both by Tom Wolfe, Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurty, and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Rated X), by Oscar Hijuelos. I have also heard good things about J. K. Rowling's (the most photogenic of the lot, pictured here) Harry Potter novels (the last of which was selling 38,000 copies an hour at its peak!). So the novel isn't dead, but it's certainly in critical condition.

patchwork

patchwork - n. - something composed of miscellaneous or incongruous parts, hodgepodge; pieces of cloth of various colors and shapes sewn together to form a covering

adulate

adulate - verb - to show excessive admiration or devotion to; flatter or admire serviley

bodkin

bodkin - n. - a sharp slender instrument for making holes in cloth; a blunt needle with a large eye for drawing tape or ribbon through a loop or hem