Write Now Communications
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • Portfolio
  • Photos
  • Blog
  • Love of Language
  • Coaching Corner
  • Pet Friends
  • Word of the Week
  • Travel Log
    • Italy
    • Ireland
    • Paris
    • Italy
  • Contact
416.779.0083

Welcome  to  my  Word  of the  Week

Eleemosynary (This is my all-time favourite word in the English language.)  

el·ee·mos·y·nar·y  [el-uh-mos-uh-ner-ee, -moz-, el-ee-uh-]  adjective meaning:
  • of or pertaining to alms, charity, or charitable donations; charitable.
  • derived from or provided by charity.
  • dependent on or supported by charity: an eleemosynary educational institution.
(1610–20 Medieval Latin eleēmosynārius,  equivalent to Late Latin eleēmosyn ( a ) (see alms) + Latin -ārius-ary)

"A fair young girl, dressed in white . . .  threw forth as much as her two small hands could hold of some kind of food for the flock of eleemosynary doves . . .  How like a dove she is herself . . . The other doves know her for a sister . . ."
                                                                                                                       -- Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Marble Faun

Murmuration
  1. the act of murmering:  the utterance of low continuous sounds or complaining noises  --the murmuration of the crowds,  the ceaseless, inarticulate  murmuration of prayer
  2. of starlings :  flock: in the stackyard there was a great murmuration of starlings 

​Lexeme

lex·eme  [lek-seem] noun
  • a lexical unit in a language
  • a vocabulary item
(1935–40; lex(ical) or lex(icon) + -eme)

​Peripatetic

​itinerant, wandering, meandering, or walking about. 

Take me to any great city in the world and my mind will awake with peripatetic curiosity. 
                                                                                                                                          - S

​Seraphic

​​characteristic of or resembling a seraph or seraphim
"a seraphic smile"

synonyms:blissful, beatific, sublime, rapturous, ecstatic, joyful, rapt


Take me to a lake, an ocean, a river or a mountain, and my soul will soar with seraphic delight!
                                                                                                                                                    
 -- S

Tendentious

expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one.
"a tendentious reading of history"

Pretty much unfailingly, an American and a Canadian history buff discussing the War of 1812 will each give you their tendentious version of history. (Spoiler alert: the Canadian's version will be closer to the truth!)
                                                                                                                                                            -- S


Zug·zwang

/ˈzəɡˌzwaNG,ˈtso͞oɡˌtsvaNG/

noun
CHESS
  1. a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one's turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage.
    "black is in zugzwang"

Novinophobia

expressing severe anxiety about running out of wine during Covid-19

DTdetestation

expressing a severe dislike of a a pathological liar, sociopath and megalomaniac with the power of a demigod, the brains of a gnat and the initials "DT."
© 2020 Sharon Jackson / Write Now Communications - All Rights Reserved
Contact: writenow@bell.net