August 31, 2006 - Explicate

Explicate \EK-spluh-kayt\, transitive verb:
To explain; to clear of difficulties or obscurity.

I can cite a case -- my own -- of a young person's being altered politically by a novel, but I cannot explicate the process, let alone explain it in terms of the author's intention or literary strategies.
-- Mary McCarthy, "The Lasting Power of the Political Novel", New York Times, January 1, 1984

The French baccalaureate exam asked students to explicate a passage from Kant.
-- Cullen Murphy, "Common Stock", The Atlantic, February 2001

Explicate comes from Latin explicare, "to unfold; to unfold the meaning or sense of; to explain, expound, or interpret," from ex-, "out" + plicare, "to fold."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for explicate

Fourth day in a row where 95% of the YouTube hits are in a foreign language. This time its in French. I have two videos tonight. One is actually in French, but it is a much better look at parkour than the last one. The middle section with David Belle in the park on the rock-climbing wall is pretty cool. Enjoy.



Linkage!

One of the few videos filmed in the US actually uses a French song. It's fun and quirky though and it made me chuckle. FYI, for those of you, like me, from Not-California, Vons is a grocery store chain. Enjoy!



Linkify!

Also, I have some HUGE news that I don't know if I can share yet. This is going to be so cool! More details as I can make them available.

August 30, 2006 - Requisite

requisite \REK-wuh-zit\, adjective:

1. Required by the nature of things or by circumstances; indispensable.
2. That which is required or necessary; something indispensable.


Those with the requisite talents made drawings and watercolors of the birds, the flowers, the untouched landscapes that unfolded before them.
-- Barbara Crossette, The Great Hill Stations of Asia

In this way, 2,156 buildings were laboriously hoisted, a quarter of an inch at a turn, until they reached the requisite height and new foundations could be built beneath them.
-- Cornelia Dean, Against the Tide

Rather than seeing mindfulness as a kind of talent, like artistic flair or musicality, he believes that everyone willing to make the requisite effort can attain it.
-- Winifred Gallagher, Working on God

Patience and an enquiring mind are absolute requisites for tracing family histories.
-- Mike Anderiesz, "Working the web: Genealogy", The Guardian, January 17, 2002

Requisite derives from Latin requisitus, past participle of requirere, "to require."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for requisite

Today's search is apparently about artistic pretension. The first one is real pretension, please follow the link and read the neo-post-modern bullshit ("emergent state," "four track aesthetic") that accompanies his *ahem* art piece. The poor tree.



This guy, on the other hand, packs even more BS into his description, in 1/5th the space, except I think he's fully aware of his bullshit. In that context, this is a fun little riff on "modern art." By the way, don't ask for the Stroganoff recipe, it doesn't taste as good as it sounds.



Link here.

August 29, 2006 - Sui Generis

sui generis \soo-eye-JEN-ur-us; soo-ee-\, adjective:
Being the only example of its kind; constituting a class of its own; unique.

This man, in fact, was sui generis, a true original.
-- Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur

They're a special case, a category of their own, sui generis.
-- Eric Kraft, Leaving Small's Hotel

In the degree of their alienation from their society and of their impact on it, the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were a phenomenon almost sui generis.
-- Aileen M. Kelly, Toward Another Shore

William Randolph Hearst did not speak often of his father. He preferred to think of himself as sui generis and self-created, which in many ways he was.
-- David Nasaw, The Chief

Sui generis is from Latin, literally meaning "of its own kind": sui, "of its own" + generis, genitive form of genus, "kind."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for sui generis


Another one with a band name. Sigh. Gawsh, too bad I don't speak or read Brazilian.* I might have found the only English or non-language video in the whole search.

Remember, the number one rule of Kitty Fight Club (KFC?) is "No one talks about Kitty Fight Club!"



Link

* I know Brazillians speak Spanish and not Brazillian (cuz it's a dead language).**

** I know it's Portugeuse.

August 28, 2006 - Aegis

aegis \EE-jis\, noun:
1. Protection; support.
2. Sponsorship; patronage.
3. Guidance, direction, or control.
4. A shield or protective armor; -- applied in mythology to the shield of Zeus.

It is this ideal of the human under the aegis of something higher which seems to me to provide the strongest counterpressure against the fragmentation and barbarization of our world.
-- Ted J. Smith III (Editor), In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963

A third round of talks is scheduled to begin on May 23rd in New York under the aegis of the United Nations.
-- "Denktash declared head after rival withdraws", Irish Times, April 21, 2000

In real life, Lang's father was commercially astute and fantastically hardworking, and under his aegis the construction business flourished.
-- Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Aegis derives from the Greek aigis, the shield of Zeus, from aix, aig-, "a goat," many primitive shields being goatskin-covered.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for aegis


Finally, a semi-normal word. Apparently, Street Fighter III has a character with a signature move called the Aegis Reflector or something because there are a metric shitload of videos of this move being performed. There's also a character or mecha in Gundam Wing called Aegis or something because that's a constant recurring theme today too. I'm going to include a couple of videos because there wasn't anything that just jumped out at me as the clear winner (not like Hoopered from Robustious the other day). Enjoy!

First, Kids jumping up walls to, believe it or not, French hip hop. The PK in the name is short for Parkour (or freerunning) and this is a training video or something.


Link

Second, this is what happens when you take your action figures out of the box. Mint-in-Box isn't about collection, it's about protection!


Link

Third, bored Filipina has too much fun with a web cam and a magic mic. Not that kind of fun, perv! It's probably better if you speak tagalog, but it's not that great one way or another. This is mostly included because the song she's sings was all over the search results and this was the most interesting version of it. Plus, she's not a bad singer.


Link

And, finally, cute Korean Christian kids. Just cuz, well, daycare babies = cute and they are, they believe, under the aegis of God, or Jesus, or whatever, and the song is a little catchy.



Link

August 27, 2006 - Habitue

The screaming you hear is me trying in vain to continue this experiment. I am now (not having searched for today's word) at a 75% failure rate for finding films using the real word of the day. That's because today's word is:

Habitue \huh-BICH-oo-ay; huh-bich-oo-AY\, noun:
One who habitually frequents a place.

Here you will meet Disco Bean . . . , a 70s dance-club habitue who spends his days in an empty warehouse polishing his Latin hustle moves and pretending it's still 1978 and he's the next John Travolta.
-- Stephen Holden, "The Search for One-Eye Jimmy", New York Times, June 21, 1996

Or as one jaded habitue of El Casbah observes when an unfamiliar face appears in the club: "She's new to cafe society."
-- Stephen Holden, "Cafe Society", New York Times, July 18, 1997

In the public house kept by Jesper Darkes, "zealous partizans in the cause of Liberty," as one habitue called them, met day and night, laying plans, discussing whether this man or that could be trusted or whether he was spying for the government, speculating on what could be done when the British military arrived, as it surely would.
-- Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War

Habitue is from the past participle of French habituer,

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for habitue

Sigh. It's pointless, but let's try the search...Huh. Well, there are actually many hits, but they are all for habit or habitual or in Spanish. Well, I guess I spoke too soon. The idea of this site was to use the word of the day simply as a method of finding interesting videos. It's not, as my dear wife assumed, to find a defining video, so I guess all these qualify. This should be interesting.

Here's a nice funny British comedy (Britcom?) troupe video. Now with 100% more rubber ass.



Find it here.
Check out the other "Young Guns" videos along the right-hand side bar. See more at their homepage.

August 26, 2006 - Provender

It's just not fair.

provender \PROV-uhn-duhr\, noun:
1. Dry food for domestic animals, such as hay, straw, corn, oats, or a mixture of ground grain; feed.
2. Food or provisions.

It turns out that he and thousands of other German immigrants have been acting as pre-invasion intelligence-gatherers, ensuring that "the German Army knew almost to a bale of hay what provender lay between London and the coast."
-- Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War

Frances Trollope, Captain Marryat, Colonel Basil Hall and Charles Dickens in 1842 all commented on the way Americans wolfed down their provender as fast as possible, cramming the cornbread in their sloppy maws and, worse, doing so in grim silence, punctuated only by the noise of slurps, grunts; scraping knives and hacking coughs.
-- Simon Schama, "Them and US", The Guardian, March 29, 2003

Provender comes from Old French, from Late Latin praebenda (prae and pro being confused), "a daily allowance of provisions," from praebere, contraction of praehibere, "to hold forth, to offer, to afford," from prae-, "before" + habere, "to have, to hold."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for provender

This really isn't fair. Two no-tubers in a row. Google's also useless. That Video Site? "No Results Yielded" Nothing on bolt.com or Zippy.com, which I suppose is just as well since this is supposed to be TUBE of the day, not Zippy of the Day or Bolt of the day. Sigh. OK, Robin, to the Thesaurus! OK, nevermind. Thesauri suck. Back to the FWFSW/FWSSW rule I suppose, which today gives us "dry food" and "food." Yikes. I don't think I am going to like this. Well, they can't all be gems. I am going to make an executive decision and replace the FWFSW with "fodder" as I feel that is a decent substitute and because the two FW's are essentially the same.

Let's go then.

"Fodder:" Oh. Dear. God. I think I should have chosen a different synonym. Fodder just has too many uses, but I made the decision, so I will stick with it. Sigh. Put on your tinfoil hats for this one. This dude's serious. Check out the right hand column on the actual YouTube site to see more of this whackjobs fruitcake ideas.



The Truth Starts Here! *cough, cough*

Okay, that's done. As broad as this may be, now for "Food:"

Oh. Dear. God. Again.
As one commenter said, "Beware the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse....they will come in a form unexpected...." You will be singing this all day long. I don't know where it is from (aside from being British), or why they have stained my computer so, but now they have you too. I'm sorry - if I don't pass it along a creepy technicolor girl will climb through my monitor seven days from now.



It's here. (Bonus: I'm not sure if this is better or worse.)

Please be a normal word tomorrow. This might be a very bad experiment.

August 25, 2006 - Robustious

Tough one today. Not having searched yet, I might have to resort to a back-up plan already.

robustious \roh-BUHS-chuhs\, adjective:
1. Boisterous; vigorous.
2. Coarse; rough; crude.

. . .the robustious romantic figure comparable to John Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility--he comes in with dash, then proves a temptation to the heroine but is an eventual disappointment.
-- Stanley Kauffmann, "Emma", New Republic, August 19, 1996

When the meaning of the disturbance became clear to him he placed a hand beside his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Frank!" in such a robustious voice that the feeble clamor of the natives was drowned and silenced.
-- O. Henry, Cabbages and Kings

Here he has seemingly swilled some of Falstaff's sack and has had robustious, fiery fun.
-- Stanley Kauffmann, "Star-Crossed Lovers", New Republic, January 4, 1999

Robustious derives from Latin robustus, "oaken, hence strong, powerful, firm," from robur, "oak."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for robustious


Uh Oh: "No Videos found for 'Robustious'"

So now we try Google

Uh Oh: "Your search - Robustious did not return any results."

I did find, during a Google Web Search, that Dictionary.com is repeating words of the day. Seems a bit dishonest, I feel. Oh well. Onward.

YouTube and Google are both "no go." I can't access That Video Site from work, so I may look later.

Now we come to some decisions. Dictionary.com is also Thesaurus.com. So I could try Tubing the top synonym for Robustious. Let's try that.

Uh Oh! No results found for robustious.
Did you mean rumbustious? WHAT?!

Damn. OK. Maybe I should have gone this route first. The very definition of a word is some word or words that mean approximately the same thing. I could tube the First Word of the First Sense of the word (which I now dub the FWFSW rule) and see what we hit. The logic behind this is the same as the "upside-down triangle rule" of journalism which is that information should be provided in a most important to least important continuum as you read the article so that you could stop at any point after the first three paragraphs and have the majority of the information, at least, in broad strokes. I assume Dictionary work operates on the similar priniciple, placing defining words in most accurate to least accurate order in the definition to give the closest definition with increasing refinement as you travel down the list.

In this case, the target word is "Boisterous." This word should hit a gold mine of content, but before I continue, I feel there is a philosophical problem inherent in the FWFSW rule. The problem is that a word will have multiple meanings (senses) and thus, Tubing a word will hit results for any sense in which the word is used. Robustious has two meanings, which are fairly counter to each other. Should I amend the rule to FWFSW/FWSSW (First Word of the First Sense of the Word/First Word of the Second Sense of the Word) resulting in two searches and two videos (or as many as there are senses? Would that be fair and make up in quantity what YouTube won't provide in quality? For now, that seems fairest, so our searches will be for "Boisterous" and "Coarse." (I must admit to a little trepidation with the FWSSW since that could lead to an NSFW place... Oh well. Onward.)

Okay: "Boisterous"

This is a kid's show spoof with some boister to it. Boisterous is actually a difficult word on The Tube. Nearly everything relates to drunkenness and that just seemed to easy for TOTD.


Find it here.

I had much more luck with "Coarse." Aside from many misspellings of "course," I was able to find this truly NSFW gem. If you watch it at work (no nudity), make sure to use your head phones. It has a very kids in the hall feel to it. Definite winner!


Find it here.

I hope tomorrow's word is much friendlier!

August 24, 2006 - Denizen

denizen \DEN-uh-zuhn\, noun:
1. A dweller; an inhabitant.
2. One that frequents a particular place.
3. [Chiefly British] An alien granted certain rights of citizenship.
4. An animal, plant, etc. that has become naturalized.

Goethe, who visited Berlin only once, found the "wit and irony" of its denizens quite remarkable.
-- Peter Gay, My German Question

But he will know one thing about what it means to be an American, because he has known the raw continent, and not as tourist but as denizen.
-- "Noted With Pleasure", New York Times, February 2, 1992

So Charlie McCreevy is a regular denizen of the "Dáil bar."
-- Kathy Sheridan, "Feeling a little Bullish", Irish Times, April 22, 2000

Denizen comes from Anglo-French denzein, "(one) living within (a city or state)," from Old French denz, "within," from Late Latin deintus, "from within," from Latin de-, "from" + intus, "within."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for denizen

I chose this one because it is mildly funny, but mostly because of the name "Denizens of Slack." I participate in the SlackCast, official podcast of the Domain of Slack. The naming coincidence was too much for me to resist. This is a funny video, though I wish it were longer and could be more developed with these characters. There is a great deal of untapped potential here. Plus the song is quite catchy. Enjoy!



Find it here.