gorget /GOR-jət/. noun. Armor for the throat. The part of a wimple that covers the neck. An ornament for the neck such as a necklace or decorative collar. A distinctive color on the throat of an animal, usually a bird. From Old French gorge (throat).
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Persons, places, things...you know the drill.
Wellerism
Wellerism /WEL-ər-izm/. noun. An expression combining an obvious statement—usually a well-known cliche, quotation or proverb—followed by a facetious addition. A canonical example: “I see, said the blind man,” which exists in myriad forms. Named after Sam Weller, a comic character in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, prone to making this kind of statement, for example, “There; now we look compact and comfortable, as the father said ven he cut his little boy’s head off, to cure him o’ squintin’.” Unlike the “sarcastic interrogatives”explored here last week, Wellerisms have been clearly documented in other languages, such as in the Dutch, “Alles met mate, zei de kleermaker en hij sloeg zijn vrouw met de el,” which translates into English as, “everything should be done measuredly, said the tailor and he hit his wife with a ruler.”
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sarcastic interrogative
sarcastic interrogative. noun. Defined by folklorist Charles Clay Doyle as “stock questions with glaringly obvious yes or no answers. The function of each such question is to respond derisively to a prior query, itself calling for a yes or no answer so as to suggest that the answer to the original query is too obvious to be worth proffering seriously.” Perhaps the most famous example: “Is the Pope Catholic?” And perhaps the most canonical: “Can a duck swim?”
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pandiculation
pandiculation /pan-dik-yoo-LAY-shən/. noun. Stretching and yawning, as when first waking up. Rarely, just yawning. From Latin pandiculari, from pendere (to stretch).
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sprachgefühl
sprachgefühl /SHPRAW-khgə-fyuul/. noun. A feeling for language, particularly an intuitive understanding of when language usage is appropriate, effective and “right.” A sense and feel for language. From German sprache (language) + gefühl (feeling).
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limen
limen /LI-mən/. noun. A threshold, typically of consciousness and sensation. The point below which a sensation isn’t perceived. See also, the more common adjective, liminal. Latin līmen (threshold).
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ploce
ploce /PLAW-see/. noun. A figure of speech in which a word is emphatically repeated to bring attention to a particular attribute or quality. Latin, from Greek plokē (complication) from plekein (to plait). See also symploce, the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning and end of successive clauses, such as G.K. Chesterton’s “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
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