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Mar 4, 2013
This week's theme
There's a word for it

This week's words
gelasin
sprezzatura
polylemma
schadenfreude
palimpsest

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

You may know it as the lowly bread clip. It closes the end of the plastic bag that holds a loaf of bread or a few pounds of potatoes. Once it has done its job, you dump it in the trash can without a second thought. But there are people who have given it a third or fourth or nth thought. They call it occlupanid. And they have come up with a whole classification for these ties.

There's a word for it. That's what you'll say when you look at this week's words. Each of these words describes a thing, idea, or feeling that may take a whole sentence to describe otherwise.

gelasin

PRONUNCIATION:
(JEL-uh-sin)

MEANING:
noun: A dimple in the cheek that appears when someone smiles.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek gelaein (to laugh), which also gave us the words agelast (one who never laughs) and hypergelast (one who laughs too much). Earliest documented use: 1608.

USAGE:
"Gelasin is this pretty little dimple of which Martial says:
  His is the face less gracious
  Who has not the gelasin joyous."
Laurent Joubert; Treatise on Laughter; University of Alabama Press; 1980.
Translation: Gregory David De Rocher.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Errors like straws upon the surface flow: / Who would search for pearls must dive below. -John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700)

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