laconic

laconic: /luh-kon'-ic/ adj.
1 usually capitalized, archaic : of or relating to Laconia or the Laconians : Spartan
2 a : speaking or writing with Spartan brevity : curt, terse, undemonstrative
• "laconic, these Indians -- Weston La Barre"
• "an antiseptic romance between Jones and a laconic young widow -- Martin Levin"
2 b : spoken, written, or expressed briefly or sententiously : pithy
• "the tone of the commentary laconic and masculine -- Times Literary Supplement"
• "a laconic derby-hatted interlude that stops the show -- Henry Hewes"
Etymology: Latin Laconicus, from Greek Lakomacrnikos, from Lakomacrn Laconian + -ikos -ic]

LACONIC indicates shortness to the point of seeming brusque, unconcerned, or mysterious
• "again he paused longer, and raised his eyebrows still more. "It is sold, sir," was again his laconic reply -- Bram Stoker"
"the laconic announcement was made ... that the sentences of death had been carried out -- Manchester Guardian Weekly"
--"laconic." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (16 Feb. 2007).

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Willard R. Espy, Amiable Logophile, Comments:
Laconic. Sparta was also known as Laconia, and Spartans as Laconians. Because the Laconians were sparing in speech and emotion, laconic means "terse; pithy; sententious."
A foreign conqueror sent a message: "If I come to Laconia, not one brick will stand on another." The laconic reply was "IF."
--O Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun: An Etymology of Words That Once Were Names. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1978.

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Bloggin' John Comments:
Laconic 's O.K.

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Fletcherize

Fletcherize v. : to reduce (food) to tiny particles especially by prolonged chewing

Usage: Often Capitalized

Etymology: Horace Fletcher + English -ize--Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (13 Feb. 2007).

Bloggin' John Asks:

Q: How many times did Horace Fletcher prescribe that we chew . . . I mean Fletcherize each piece of food for good digestion?
A: According to Wikipedia: 32 times.

Q: Who was Horace Fletcher, and what else did he recommend for healthful eating?
A: Once again, we turn to Wikipedia:

Horace Fletcher (1849-1919) was an American health-food faddist of the Victorian era who earned the nickname "The Great Masticator," by arguing that food should be chewed thirty two times — or, about 100 times per minute — before being swallowed: "Nature will castigate those who don't masticate." He invented elaborate justifications for his claim.

Fletcher and his followers recited and followed his instructions religiously, even claiming that liquids, too, had to be chewed in order to be properly mixed with saliva. Fletcher promised that "Fletcherizing," as it became known, would turn "a pitiable glutton into an intelligent epicurean."

Fletcher also advised against eating before being "Good and Hungry", or while angry or sad. He promoted his theories for decades on lecture circuits, and became a millionaire. Upton Sinclair, Henry James and John D.Rockefeller were among those who gave the fad a try. Henry James and Mark Twain were visitors to his palazio in Venice.

Along with "Fletcherizing", Fletcher and his supporters advocated a low-protein diet as a means to health and well-being.

But by 1919, when Fletcher, 68, died of a heart attack, his diet plan was already being replaced by the next approach to dieting championed by Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk: counting calories.--Wikipedia (13 Feb 2007)

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Don't forget, now: 32 times. Enjoy your next meal!--B'n'J'n

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channelfido

channelfido: n. an official, necessarily ineffective, who at all times scrupulously follows proper channels . . . a word that first appeared in Personal Administration in 1950 (194).
--Dickson, Paul. Dickson's Word Treasury. New York: Wiley and Sons, 1982.

Embedded within the term channelfido is the concept of a loyal but effete and narrow-minded executive working within a corporate setting. The word channel (which derives from the French word for pipe, thus narrowing our understanding of channel just a bit more) brings to mind the term "back channels," channels that are unseen by the public and that consist of a closed system of tightly fitted routes of authority set in a preordained corporate alignment. Inside the system of channels walks a dog, a creature loyal to its masters--corporate executives--but too small and ill-equipped to do anything except be there. Transformed into dog, our imagined human worker is symbolically reduced in size. capability, and power. This diminished cross-breed works or, rather simply walks--vacuously back and forth--inside a closed system of channels, seemingly content with his narrow loop in life.

But instead of writing "channeldog," our word-wit inserted a canine-delimited name--Fido--which brings along with it entailments of low worth that support his purpose of ridiculing the job title he is inventing. Fido comes from the Latin fidus which means faithful. The word also has a high profile in Virgil's Aeneid. Aneas' faithful companion's name is Achates, but he is addressed and known by the sobriquet "Faithful Achares,"which in Latin, becomes fidus Acharesm.The Virgilian connection lends our faithful channel-haunted employee some dignity, but he is also still only a follower.

One final comment on Fido. We vaguely think of Fido as a common name for dogs, but rarely have many of us seen a common dog named Fido. That makes Fido a kind of phantom name--a name pervaded with vacuity of sorts that gets subtly transferred into the appellation channelfido, which we see, is a mock title effectively constructed of metaphorical concepts that delineate consistently enjoined motifs of derision.

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subfusc

sub·fusc: adj. | sub-fusk |
1 : SUBFUSCOUS
2 : having little of brightness or appeal : DRAB, DINGY

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• "the moment when the word Austerity was to take to itself a new subfusc and squalid twist of meaning" -- Osbert Sitwell
• "that gray, impoverished, subfusc community" -- Marguerite Steen

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Etymology of subfusc: Latin subfuscus brownish, dusky, from sub- near, almost + fuscus dark brown, blackish

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• If you are interested in first understanding the chromatic nuances of fuscous so that you can then delve deeper into the darker sub-shades of meaning surrounding subfuscous, see if the following uber-rigorous definition of fuscous sheds any light on your needs. (Don't say I didn't warn you. B'n J'n):

"fus·cous: of any of several colors averaging a brownish gray which is lighter than taupe, lighter and less strong than average chocolate, and less strong and slightly redder than mouse gray" [Got that? Does your mind's eye create a gestalt of this "averaging" of shades? I got lost after "lighter and less strong than average chocolate."]
--Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (10 Feb. 2007).

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protean

protean: adj. Usage: sometimes capitalized

• Etymology: Proteus, legendary sea god in the service of Neptune who had the power of assuming different shapes (from Latin, from Greek Promacrteus) + English -an

1 : characteristic of or resembling Proteus : capable of change : exceedingly variable

2 : readily assuming different shapes or forms

3 : capable of acting many different roles

4 : displaying great diversity : possessed of infinite variety


Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (10 Feb. 2007).

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A Summary of the Confrontation Between
Proteus and Agamemnon in Homer's The Odyssey

Menelaus had almost as much trouble getting home from Troy as Odysseus did. Menelaus was king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, and husband of that Helen whose elopement with Paris of Troy led to the Trojan War. His wanderings on the way back to Sparta lasted eight years. Once, detained for twenty days by want of wind on the island of Pharos, and running short of provisions, he was advised by a nymph that the sea-god Proteus, if forced, could tell him how to reach home. Menelaus found the god asleep, seized him, and held on despite Proteus's successive transformations into a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a boar, water, and a tree. (I would like to know how he managed to hold on to the water.) Proteus eventually provided the necessary instructions. Anything exceedingly variable or readily assuming many shapes--an amobea, for instance, or, in a different sense, an actor--is protean (41).
--Espy, Willard R. O Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun: An Etymology of Words That Once were Names. New York: Clarkson N. Potter 1978.

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peripatetic

peripatetic n. /per ri pu TET' ik/ 1 travelling from place to place.
2 working or based in a succession of places.
— DERIVATIVES peripatetically adverb.
— ORIGIN Greek peripatetikos ‘walking up and down’.
--Compact Oxford English Dictionary

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"A Peripatetic President," runs one headline in the January 25, 1989 New York Times: "Election Over, He Runs." What the accompanying article, a searching piece of journalism, describes is President George Bush's now famous decision to take an afternoon jog, reporters and photographers in tow, mere days after assuming office. This whimsical event was taken to characterize the man: according to reporter Maureen Dowd, Bush "has seemed in perpetual motion since the election.
"In perpetual motion" is a good equivalent of what we mean by "peripatetic," which ultimately derives from the Greek by peripatos, a courtyard for walking about, and more directly from peripatetikos "given to walking about" (not "given to jogging about"). This unwieldy and somewhat pretentious adjective would never have entered the Language but for one very famous peripatetic philosopher: Aristole. As the story goes, Aristotle was fond of pacing about in the peripatos at his Lyceum [lecture hall], a habit he passed on to later deep thinkers. His system of thought came to be named after this practice, and thus was born the Peripatetic School of philosophy.
All the early uses of "peripatetic" in English refter to Aristotle's teachings, but its potential as a humorous metaphor became obvious by the late sixteenth century. John Moore applied the term with gusto in 1617: "The devil is a Peripatetic . . . always walking and going about, seeking whom he may ensnare" (103).
--Macrone, Michael. It's Greek to Me: Brush up Your Classics. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

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quidnunc

quidnunc: \ QWID'-nunk \ n. [Latin quid nunc what now?] (1709): a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip; busybody--Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2003).

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