a plump of fatuous Nimrods

today i will start a new life. a new life where i improve my vocabulary daily by writing about words that computers email to me. everything will change!

naw, that belief would be fatuous, which is dictionary.com's word of the day. it's not the best word of the day, but i'd previously thought it meant something along the lines of "maudlin" just because of it reminds me of "infatuated". but actually, the shared root of the two words is fatuus meaning stupid. so fatuous refers to anything that is inane or stupid, especially when it's illusory or misguided. hint: use the derivative fatuity in a sentence in order to impress people!

mysteriously, merriam-webster's word of the day is Nimrod, who is a king of Shinar when he's capitalized, and either a hunter or a stupid jerk when it's lowercase. the definition actually uses the word jerk, which gets it points. it's not the best word, but i do wish people would call each other nimrods more often. underused putdown!

oed fails to disappoint today! i think they've wised up to the fact that nobody wants to learn the history of the word "frown" and they've started telling us about interesting archaic phraseology. today their word is the noun plump, which is a group of people or animals or trees or things. it was used for a while just in the phrase "a plump of spears" which referred to a bunch of spear-carriers. but you can also use it to refer to waterfowl or shrubs or pressmen.

i'm a huge advocate of bringing plump into the mainstream as a collective noun, and using collective nouns more often. it's sorta nuts, too, that the english language has all these terms of venery that we learned from pretentious gentleman hunters in the fifteenth century. and furthermore, that there's a word game built into the language where anyone who fathoms themself a wordsmith is allowed to introduce new collective nouns for things in order to change the way we think about a group of a thing. let's not waste this opportunity!

The day harry potter six came out

today was not a good day for words. i mean not to get you all melancholy about vocab right outta the gate but just don't count on me for your lexical improvement today. maybe read a book?

fractious is merriam-webster's word of the day. it means "tending to be troublesome or unruly". this isn't horrible. the best part is the little etymology note where it explains that fraction used to mean discord or disharmony, which makes third grade math classes sound a lot more exciting. however, i'm pretty sure this is a word i was supposed to learn for the SAT, so i feel awkward about trying to use it in a sentence. it feels more like something i should use in an analogy. C-.

bestow is dictionary.com's word. for real? still means "to present as a gift or honor, confer". still derived from the word stow. still pretty boring. D-.

Bastille Day

okay we're jumping right into the thick of things. no pep talk. no background. words of the day, nothing more and nothing less. unadulterated vocab, bitches. that's the way robespierre woulda wanted it.

grudging is merriam-webster's horrible contribution. no interesting new definition, just the same old "unwilling, reluctant" def that we're used to. pretty useless. merry-web tries to spice it up with an incredibly boring etymology involving some confusion in the sixteenth century between "grudge" and "begrudge" but they're not fooling anybody. grudging just plain isn't word of the day material, emdub. i'm gonna grudgingly give this word a D just because "grudging" is kinda fun to say, but it really doesn't have much to offer.

louche, on the other hand, is dictionary.com's pretty impeccable word of the day. actually, this really excels in all of the categories that make a word of the day into the word of a lifetime. first off, i've never even heard this word used before. it's rare! you'll sound pretty intelligent when you toss this word in alongside all the other laudable locutions you spew at the water cooler.
second off it means "of questionable taste", which is a meaning that i need words for pretty much daily. thirdlymost, it's super simple to remember (just think lewd + douche) which makes it easy to use in everyday situations. quarterwise, it's even got a sorta cool etymology. it comes from the old french losche which means "squinty-eyed" and comes from the latin luscus which is also part of the science name for wolverines. okay so for a final rundown, louche is obscure, useful, easy to remember, and vaguely related to wolverines. it gets an A- for all that, and it'd be an A or an A+ if it had more syllables. nice work, dictionary.com