9 July 2017

ardor

[ahr-der]

noun

1. great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion:
She spoke persuasively and with ardor.
2. intense devotion, eagerness, or enthusiasm; zeal:
his well-known ardor for Chinese art.
3. burning heat.

Also, especially British, ardour.

Origin of ardor

Middle English

1350-1400; Middle English; Latin, equivalent to ārd(ēre) to burn + -or -or1; replacing Middle English ardure; Old French ardur; Latin, as above; 17th century ardour < Anglo-French; Latin, as above

Synonyms

1. fervency, spirit, earnestness, intensity.

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for ardor Expand

Contemporary Examples

But Jack Scott came in and entered into the “game,” as he called it, with ardour.
Read ‘The King in Yellow,’ the ‘True Detective’ Reference That’s the Key to the Show
Robert W. Chambers
February 19, 2014

Historical Examples

In the ardour of the chase the dogs soon ran out of sight, pursuing their quarry towards the shore at Sligachan.
The Celtic Magazine, Vol. I, No. VI, April 1886
Various

The small boys on the bench had had leisure to abate their ardour by this time.
The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic’s
Talbot Baines Reed

She had loved Sir Alexander with all the ardour of a first youthful attachment
The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I
Susanna Moodie

But inwardly all the ardour of his mood collapsed at the touch of her.
Robert Elsmere
Mrs. Humphry Ward

Gurney applied his steam-jet to other purposes than propelling locomotives and exciting the ardour of furnaces in ironworks.
Cornish Characters
S. Baring-Gould

Anagram

or rad

Today’s quote

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On this day

9 July 1941 – British military cryptologists break the Enigma code which the German Army was using for encrypting messages used for directing ground to air operations. However, a group of Polish cryptologists claim to have assisted in the cracking of Enigma and have been campaigning for recognition of their part in the break-through.

9 July 1946 – birth of Ronald Belford ‘Bon’ Scott, Scottish-born Australian rock musician. Most famous as the lead-singer of legendary hard rock band, AC/DC. Scott died on 19 February 1980, after choking on his own vomit following a heavy drinking session.

9 July 1982 – In the early hours of the morning, 30 year old Irishman, Michael Fagan breaks into Buckhingham Palace and makes his way to Queen Elizabeth II’s bedroom. Reports at the time, claimed that he spent 10 minutes in there talking with the Queen before being arrested, however, Fagan later claimed that the Queen immediately fled the bedroom and summoned security. The incident was the biggest royal security breach of the 20th century.

9 July 2004 – A US Senate Intelligence Committee finds that the CIA misrepresented the threat posed by Iraq, which was used by President George W. Bush in order to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion by the ‘Coalition of the Willing’.

7 July 2017

obelus

[ob-uh-luh s]

noun, plural obeli [ob-uh-lahy]

1. a mark (− or ÷) used in ancient manuscripts to point out spurious, corrupt, doubtful, or superfluous words or passages.

Origin of obelus

Middle English, Late Latin, Greek

1350-1400; Middle English; Late Latin; Greek obelós spit, pointed pillar

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for obelus Expand

Historical Examples

The plan of expressing suspicion by obeli was a good one—it raised the question of genuineness without foreclosing it.
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3
W. E. Gladstone

Anagram

be soul
blouse
so blue

Today’s quote

The first duty of a man is to think for himself.

― José Martí

On this day

7 July 1941 – birth of Bill Oddie, English comedian, star of ‘The Goodies’.

7 July 1953 – After graduating from medical school in June 1953, Dr Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara sets out on a train trip from Argentina to Bolivia and the Andes. His family don’t see him for six years, when he emerged in Havana, fighting for Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution. Following the successful overthrow of the government, Che was given key government positions within the Castro regime, including as Minister of Industries to implement agrarian reform.

7 July 1985 – 17 year old Boris Becker becomes the youngest player to win Wimbledon.

7 July 2005 – Four suicide bombers detonate themselves on London’s transport system, killing 56 people and injuring 700.

7 July 2007 – The New 7 Wonders Foundation officially declares a new ‘Seven Wonders of the World’ list:

1. The Great Wall of China
2. Petra, Jordan (a city carved into rock)
3. Christ Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
4. Machu Picchu, Peru
5. Chichén Itzá Pyramid, Mexico
6. Roman Colisseum, Italy
7. Taj Mahal, Indian

1. Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt
2. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
4. Statue of Zeus, Olympia, Greece
5. Mausoleum of Maussollos at Hallicarnassus
6. Colossus of Rhodes
7. Lighthouse of Alexandria

5 July 2017

chevalier

[shev-uh-leer or especially for 1, 2, shuh-val-yey, -vahl-]

noun

1. a member of certain orders of honor or merit:
a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
2. French History. the lowest title of rank in the old nobility.
3. a chivalrous man; cavalier.
4. Archaic. a knight.

Origin of chevalier

late Middle English Middle French

1250-1300; < Middle French; replacing late Middle English chivaler < Anglo-French. See cavalier

Examples from the Web for chevalier

Contemporary Examples

Jacques Chirac made Boulud a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in March 2006.
The Frenchman Who Rules New York
Katie Workman
September 21, 2009

chevalier was born in Washington, D.C., but has lived in London for the past 25 years.
Tracy Chevalier’s Novel on Ohio’s Underground Railroad
Jane Ciabattari
January 16, 2013

Historical Examples

You did not think your old aunt had so much spirit, did you, chevalier mine?
In Quest of Gold
Alfred St. Johnston

The last male heir joined the standard of the chevalier in 1745.
The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places and Picturesque Scenery of Great Britain Vol. 1
William Finden

Anagram

evil reach
liver ache
clear hive
reveal chi

Today’s quote

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall.

– Mitch Hedberg

On this day

5 July 1937 – The canned meat, Spam (spiced ham) released to market by Hormel Food Corporation.

5 July 1946 – the first bikini goes on sale after its debut at a fashion show in Paris. It was designed by Parisian engineer, Louis Réard. He named it after Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean where the USA had been conducting testing of atomic bombs. Réard hoped that the bikini would have an ‘explosive commercial and cultural reaction’ just like an atomic bomb.

5 July 1989 – Former US Marine and white-house aide, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North given a three-year suspended sentence, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours of community service after being convicted of ‘accepting an illegal gratuity’, ‘aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry’ and ordering the destruction of documents during his role in the Iran-Contra affair (a political scandal during the Reagan administration in which the US government was selling weapons via intermediaries to Iran, a nation that was blacklisted from receiving weapons. The profits were channeled through Nicaraguan terrorist groups, the Contras, which were violently opposing Nicaragua’s ruling left-wing Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction).

5 July 1996 – Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

3 July 2017

bonarietà

(bonarjeˈta)

feminine noun
(vedi agg)

– good nature, affability

– kindliness

Example

Gozzi gave him brio and bonarietà , with cordiality and humor.
Folkways
William Graham Sumner

Anagram

bane trio
bean riot
toe brain
baron tie
ate robin

Today’s quote

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

– Franz Kafka

On this day

3 July 1883 – Birth of Franz Kafka, Austrian novelist, who wrote in German. Two of his books (‘The Trial’ and ‘The Castle’) were published posthumously against his wishes. He wrote of a dehumanised world in which he explored paranoia, isolation, fear and bewilderment, from which the term ‘Kafka-esque’ has been coined. Died 3 June 1924.

3 July 1969 – death of Brian Jones. English guitarist for the Rolling Stones. He was 27. Born 28 February 1942.

3 July 1971 – death of Jim Morrison, lead singer and song writer of the Doors. He was 27. Born 8 December 1943.

3 July 1971 – birth of Julian Assange in Townsville, Queensland, former hacker and computer programmer, publisher, journalist and activist. Co-founder of WikiLeaks, a website on which he published classified military and diplomatic documents. The USA has been investigating Assange since 2010 when he published documents leaked by Chelsea Manning. Facing extradition to Sweden in 2012 on charges of sexual assault, Assange sought and obtained asylum by Ecuador. He has been accommodated in the Ecuadorean embassy in London ever since.

3 July 1988 – An Iranian passenger plane carrying 290 civilians, including 66 children, is shot down by the United States Navy. Iran Air flight 665 was over Iranian territorial waters and had not deviated from its usual flight path. The US Navy had fired surface-to-air missiles from the USS Viciennes at the Airbus A300. The US Navy claimed they had mistaken it for an attacking F-14 Tomcat even though the plane had been issuing identification ‘squawks’s on Mode III for civilian aircraft, not on Mode II which was for military aircraft. The US government ‘expressed regret’, but did not apologise. In 1996 the US government paid the Iranian government USD $131.8 million to settle a court case brought in the International Court of Justice. There was also a payout of $61 million following a claim in the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. The crew of the Viciennes were awarded medals for their tour of duty in the Persian Gulf, including the Air Warfare Coordinator receiving the Navy Commendation Medal and the Legion of Merit.

3 July 1999 – death of Mark Sandman, US musician, singer, songwriter. Founder of the alternative rock band, Morphine, which blended heavy bass sounds with blues and jazz. Sandman was described as the most under-rated and skilled bass player of his generation. Sandman collapsed and died on stage during a Morphine concert in Latium, Italy. His death was the result of a heart attack and blamed on heavy smoking, stress and extreme heat, in which the temperature on the night was in excess of 38o Celsius. Born 24 September 1952.

2 July 2017

drey

/dreɪ/

noun

1. a squirrel’s nest

Word Origin
of unknown origin

Collins English Dictionary

Examples from the Web for drey

Historical Examples

Then the poems: Morduth, ein altes heroisches Gedichte in drey Bchern.
Ossian in Germany
Rudolf Tombo

I remember a pair that made a hole in a beech near the tree my drey was in.
Birds and Man
W. H. Hudson

There he had built what he called a nest, but what humans, with greater nicety of diction, call a drey.
“Wee Tim’rous Beasties”
Douglas English

The drey was eminently satisfactory, for, in the summer months, it was completely hidden.
“Wee Tim’rous Beasties”
Douglas English

A boy has taken three little young squirrels in their nest or drey.
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 116, January 17, 1852
Various

Anagram

dyer

Today’s quote

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

– Ernest Hemingway

On this day

2 July 1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship, Amistad. The 49 adults and four children had been captured in Sierra Leone and sold into slavery in Cuba. After commandeering the ship, the men demanded the ship’s navigator (Don Montez) to return them home. Montez deceived them and sailed up the USA east coast to Long Island. The USA took custody of the ship and a court-case ensued over the legal status of the slaves. In 1841, in the case of the United States v The Amistad, the US Supreme Court ruled that the slaves had been illegally transported and held as slaves. The Court ordered them to be freed. 35 of them returned to Africa in 1842.

2 July 1900 – the first Zeppelin flight takes place in Germany.

2 July 1937 – Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific while attempting an equatorial round-the-world flight. They had run low on fuel while trying to locate Howland Island. While many suspected they had crashed into the ocean, there is strong evidence to indicate that they may have died as castaways after crash-landing on or near to Gardner Island, 400 nautical miles from Howland Island. This is supported by evidence that there were more than 100 radio calls made by Earhart in the four days after the crash, a female skeleton found on the island and a small piece of fuselage that matches that of Earhart’s plane. The remainder of the plane is suspected of being dragged away from the island by the tides and sinking.

2 July 1961 – death of Ernest Hemingway, American author. He wrote books including ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ and ‘Old Man and the Sea‘. Born 21 July 1899.

2 July 1976 – The Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) falls to the Communist North Vietnam, resulting in the formation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

30 June 2017

belabour

[bih-ley-ber]

verb (used with object)

1. to explain, worry about, or work at (something) repeatedly or more than is necessary:
He kept belaboring the point long after we had agreed.
2. to assail persistently, as with scorn or ridicule:
a book that belabors the provincialism of his contemporaries.
3. to beat vigorously; ply with heavy blows.
4. Obsolete. to labor at.

Also, especially British, belabour.

Origin of belabor
1590-1600 First recorded in 1590-1600; be- + labor

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for belabor

Historical Examples

It is exhausting to belabour a thick-skinned and obstinate animal with a stick.
Blue Lights
R.M. Ballantyne

Have you any particular spite at my door, that you belabour it in that style?
Macaria
Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

He made himself greatly dreaded by his orchestra, whom he used to belabour over the head with his fiddle.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI.
Various

He said he would track him out and belabour him as he deserved.’
Penshurst Castle
Emma Marshall

At one time some worthy fellow entreats us to take up the public cudgel and belabour a blatant Economist.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
Various

belabour thy brains, as to whom it would be well to question.
Scribner’s Magazine, Volume 26, July 1899
Various

He chased the sheep into a corner of the enclosure, and proceeded to belabour them with a heavy stick.
The Pilots of Pomona
Robert Leighton

He seized a stick that was lying on the ground, and began to belabour the hag with all his might.
The Mantle and Other Stories
Nicholas Gogol

So saying she snatched up the ladle from the dripping-pan, and threatened to belabour him with it.
Boscobel: or, the royal oak
William Harrison Ainsworth

He may hit me on the head and they may belabour me from behind.
White Nights and Other Stories
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Anagram

a blue orb

Today’s quote

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.

– Pietro Aretino

On this day

30 June 1934 – Night of the Long Knives (Operation Hummbingbird), in which Hitler purges his political enemies.

30 June 1937 – The world’s first emergency telephone number, 999, is introduced in London.

30 June 1950 – US President Truman sends troops to South Korea to assist in repelling the North Korean Army. He calls on the Soviet Union to negotiate a withdrawal from North Korea, however, the Soviets blame South Korea for an unprovoked attack.

30 June 1959 – US fighter jet, an F-100 Super Sabre, crashes into the Japanese Miyamori Elementary School at Ishikawa (now Uruma) on the US occupied island of Okinawa, Japan, killing 11 students, 6 other people from the neighbouring area and injuring 210 (including 156 students). The pilot, Captain John G. Schmitt Jr, had ejected to safety. The incident was one of many tragic events the Okinawans have suffered since the US occupation.

28 June 2017

Huguenot

[hyoo-guh-not or, often, yoo-]

noun

1. a member of the Reformed or Calvinistic communion of France in the 16th and 17th centuries; a French Protestant.

Origin of Huguenot

German

1555-1565; French, perhaps blend of Hugues (name of a political leader in Geneva) and eidgenot, back formation from eidgenots, Swiss variant of German Eidgenoss confederate, literally, oath comrade

Related forms

Huguenotic, adjective
Huguenotism, noun

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for Huguenot

Contemporary Examples

The du Pont family descended from Huguenot nobility in Burgundy, emigrating to the United States in 1800.
Foxcatcher’s Real-Life Psycho Killer
Marlow Stern
November 17, 2014

Historical Examples

This induces him to cross the Channel in order to take a share in the Huguenot wars.
A Roving Commission
G. A. Henty

He was of Huguenot ancestry, and learned the goldsmith’s trade of his father.
Tea Leaves
Various

This seems strange considering that all the merchants of the new company were Huguenot Protestants.
Montreal 1535-1914 under the French Rgime
William Henry Atherton

“I would rather see him hanged, but saved, than alive and a Huguenot,” was the gloomy reply.
The Works of Honor de Balzac
Honor de Balzac

He escaped in 1576, and put himself at the head of the Huguenot party.
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8
Various

Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee.
Days of the Discoverers
L. Lamprey

Anagram

into huge
tongue uh
he outgun

Today’s quote

Sometimes I wish that I could go into a time machine right now and just look at my self and say, ‘Calm down. Things are gonna be fine. Things are gonna be all great. Just relax.’

– Tristan Wilds

On this day

28 June 1914 – Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, while in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was one of 16 Bosnian Serbs found guilty of the incident. The assassination led to World War I as European countries took sides in the subsequent retaliation. The world’s major powers aligned into two opposing alliances: the Allies (UK, Russia, France, USA, Italy and Japan) and the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary (later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria). More than 70 million military personnel were mobilised. By 1918, when the war ended, there were more than 9 million combatants and more than 7 million civilians dead. However, prior to this, following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the new communist government withdrew Russia from the war. The Allies took exception to this and invaded Russia as part of the White Armies (counter-revolutionary, anti-communist forces made up of British, French, Japanese and US Armies, as well as Russian conscripts) that waged war against the communist Red Army in what became known as the Russian Civil War. Both sides massacred civilians (the Red Terror and the White Terror). The war caused massive famine. By the time the war ended in 1922, around 8 million were dead (5 million from famine) and the Red Army was victorious.

28 June 1919 – World War I officially ends as Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles. The armistice had been agreed to on 11 November 1918, but it took until June 1919 to formalise the peace treaty. The treaty forced Germany and her allies to take responsibility for the war, to disarm, to make significant territorial concessions and to make financial reparations to a number of countries. The Treaty of Versailles was one of the motivators behind Hitler’s rise to power and subsequently World War II that resulted in the deaths of between 50 million and 80 million people.

28 June 1997 – World heavyweight champion boxer, Mike Tyson, bit Evander Holyfield’s ear during the third round of a world title rematch. Tyson was initially disqualified and then allowed to continue the fight, however, Tyson then bit off a part of Holyfield’s other ear which was later found on the floor of the ring. Tyson was disqualified and later fined $3 million. His boxing licence was rescinded, but reinstated in 1998.