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Definition 1: The noun refers to the frame with holes for the head and hands (the stocks) and the post on which it stands. It was designed as a form of punishment that exposed offenders to the community as an example. Used as a verb, "pillory" now means to viciously chastise someone publicly or subject them to extreme public scorn or ridicule.[@more@]Usage 1: If you visit a Renaissance fair or historical reenactment, you might come across a pillory. Some towns and villages also keep a

Definition 1: An exclusive or special right emanating from an office, organization, or social class. [@more@]Usage 1: This term is often pronounced perogative, as a result of a process called 'metathesis', whereby the sounds "r" and "ê" switch places with each other. The process is indigenous to Southern US dialects, where words like different, veteran, prescription are often pronounced "difernt", "vetern", "perscription". So, this pronunciation

Definition 1: To habituate someone to something undesirable, especially after they have endured it for a long time. [@more@]Usage 1: The verb is usually used with the preposition "to," e. g. "inure yourself to work." The noun is "inurement." Suggested usage: Use this verb when you reluctantly or unwillingly become accustomed to something: "Ralph's TV dinners were a far cry from her mother's creative cuisine but after a while she became inured to them" or &

Definition 1: The Greek correlate of the Latinate word, "syllepsis" [si-'lep-sis], a syntactic construction in which a single word governs at least two other words or phrases even though its sense applies to them in different ways, e.g. "He flew off the handle and straight to Rio."[@more@]Usage 1: Zeugma (syllepsis) usually indicates that one of the words or phrases involved is used normally while the other is in an idiom. "To lose one's temper" is idiomatic (nothin

Definition 1: A person's character, spirit, courage, strength of principle—the stuff one is made of, usually in a positive sense. [@more@]Usage 1: Today's word has an adjective, mettlesome "high-spirited, courageous" (not to be confused with "meddlesome" though pronounced the same), as the feats of mettlesome Achilles on the battlefields of Troy. Suggested usage: Today's word was one of William Shakespeare's favorites. In Act II of his 'Henry IV' Prince Hal reports "I a

Definition 1: No, today's word does not refer to the removal of a new spouse from a groom by disgruntled in-laws, but the surgical excision of dead or dying (necrotic) tissue or the removal of foreign matter from a wound. The reason lies in wait for you below (see Etymology).[@more@]Usage 1: Although today's word seems to contain "bride," it retains its French pronunciation, which sounds like "breed." The noun for today's verb is "debridement." Both terms are curren

Definition 1: Contemptuous pride, insolent arrogance. [@more@]Usage 1: Another of those rarities of English: a word pronounced the way it is spelled. The adjective is "hubristic" and the adverb, "hubristically." Today’s word is also sometimes spelled “hybris.” Whether the mailroom clerk who takes his job complaint directly to the president’s wife shows moxie or hubris depends on whether we approve the idea (moxie) or not (hubris). Chutzpah is rather neutral in connotation

Definition 1: To inflict severe physical or mental pain on; torture physically or mentally.[@more@]Usage 1: Here is another instance of a participle that has all but become an adjective unto itself, abandoning the verb it derives from. The participle, "excruciating," as in "excruciating pain," is used far more often than the verb it is based on—unjustly, we think.Suggested usage: Tired of hearing "torment" and "torture?" Here is an impressive alternative,

Definition 1: A figure of speech that uses dramatic understatement to express a positive idea by negating its opposite.[@more@]Usage 1: An expression that uses litotes is "litotic" and one can speak "litotically." Litotes is a form of meiosis "understatement," the opposite of "hyperbole" or rhetorical exaggeration. When Tom Jones sings "It's not unusual" when he means "it is usual" he is engaging in a perfect example of litotes. While s

Definition 1: A government official in Scandinavia who investigates grievances from the public against government officials; any person who mediates directly between aggrieved parties, especially between the public and corporate or government officials. [@more@]Usage 1: Today's word is borrowed from Swedish, along with the concept of someone who cuts through red tape and takes a complaint from a citizen directly to the official against whom that person is complaining. Some feminists have recentl

Definition 1: (1) A roiling, tumultuous state, a turmoil; (2) a confusion or confused mass.[@more@]Usage 1: Today's word still may be used as a verb, e.g. the boat weltered helplessly in the stormy waters. The verb also meant at one time to beat until welts (areas of the skin swollen and standing up from irritation) rise on the body. It is possible that the boxing class, welter weight, took its name from this verbal use. Suggested usage: In 1863 John Greenleaf Whittier used the original meaning

Definition 1: A state of lawlessness resulting from a total lack of governance.[@more@]Usage 1: Not to be confused with "anarchism", the political theory that opposes all forms of government. Like (true) communists, Anarchists hold the highest form of social order to be one in which laws are internalized in individuals, rendering external enforcement unnecessary. (No likely third-party candidates are on the horizon.) Suggested usage: This is a word often used in connection with riots:

Definition 1: To leave one's native land and live elsewhere; to renounce allegiance to one's native land.[@more@]Usage 1: Historically, writers have expatriated: Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley left England for Italy, T. S. Eliot left the US for England, Samuel Beckett left Ireland for France, Gertrude Stein left the US for France, James Joyce left Ireland for practically anywhere else, and Ernest Hemingway did likewise from the US. The list goes on; many studies have been done of the expatriate [

Definition 1: Assigning human properties to an inhuman object. [@more@]Usage 1: When the forest sighs or whispers, the moon gazes down, the sun dances along the horizon or you hear the laughter of the rivulet, anthropomorphism is afoot. Expressions like "the legs of the table," "the head of the bed," and "the foot of a mountain" are simply metaphoric extensions, new meanings of those words, as it were. To achieve anthropomorphism, the speaker must treat the object a

Definition 1: Composure; cool steadiness, level-headedness especially under stress. [@more@]Usage 1: The adjective is "equanimous" [ee-'kwæ-nê-mês]. Phoebe worked calmly and equanimously helping friends to safety after the earthquake. "Composure" implies effort while "equanimity" is a consistent quality seemingly requiring no effort.Suggested usage: Applications abound around the home: "How can you sit there and tell me with utter equanimity that you've

Definition 1: Stubbornly wicked (impenitent) or wickedly stubborn (intractable).[@more@]Usage 1: Shelley wrote in 'Revolt of Islam' (iv.9) "Custom maketh blind and obdurate The loftiest hearts." The adverb is "obdurately" and the noun, "obduracy." They all come from the transitive and intransitive verb obdure "to harden." Suggested usage: The neutral sense can be used where you might otherwise use "dyed-in-the-wool," e.g. "His father was a u

Definition 1: Excess, superfluity; overindulgence, especially of food and drink, and the suffering accompanying such overindulgence.[@more@]Usage 1: This word may be used as a verb meaning "to overindulge" or "supply in excess." You may surfeit yourself on shepherd pie or your mother may do it for you. If she does, she is a "surfeiter."Suggested usage: No doubt, you have been involved in projects that suffered from a surfeit of advice in the face of a dearth of volu

Definition 1: Emotionally strong, intense, verging on anger; physically powerful and/or rapid.[@more@]Usage 1: People sometimes misprounounce the adverbial form of this word, "vehemently" as [vê-'hee-mênt-li] with the accent on the wrong syl-LA-ble. Note that in all of its manifestations—vehement (adjective), vehemence and vehemency (noun), and vehemently (adverb)—the accent always stays on the first SYL-la-ble, "vee." Suggested usage: The first gist of "vehement&quo

Definition 1: A person with discriminating tastes, especially in food or wine (Adj. epicurean). [@more@]Usage 1: Careful of the various pseudosynonyms of this word, "gourmet", "gourmand", and "gastronome". "Epicure" implies fastidiousness and voluptuousness of taste. A "gourmet" is a connoisseur in food and drink while "gourmand" implies a hearty if less discerning appetite for good food and drink, somewhere between a gourmet and glutto

Definition 1: Colloquial. (1) Spunk, boldness, chutzpah, moxie; (2) common sense, horse sense.[@more@]Usage 1: Today's word means the same as "rumgumption" and "rumblegumption," variants that you may use should you ever need more syllables. This fake Latin noun (see Etymology) is accompanied by a fake Latin adjective, "gumptious," that describes folks with gumption.Suggested usage: While "chutzpah" is part of the Yiddish dialect of English and "moxie&