WRIT1152 Course Blog

1. panacea-noun
a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases: the panacea for all corporate ills | the time-honoured panacea, cod liver oil.
(From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised) in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses)provided through the University of MN

1. palatable-adjective
(of food or drink) pleasant to taste: a very palatable local red wine. • (of an action or proposal) acceptable or satisfactory: a device that made increased taxation more palatable.
(From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised) in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses)provided through the University of MN

But this panacea for armies and navies still had a long way to go before it was either sufficiently cheap or palatable to be accepted by the general public(Pickled, Potted, and Canned, page 249).

sentences
He thought the psychiatrist's panacea would take care of his mental sufferings, depression, and diseases, but he was wrong.
Her daugter's mother's day breakfast was very palatable and began her day with such delight.

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1. abdicate-verb
[no obj.] (of a monarch) renounce one's throne: in 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated as German emperor | [with obj.] Ferdinand abdicated the throne in favour of the emperor's brother.
(From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised) in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses) using University of Minnesota database.

In 1814, only two months after Napoleon had abdicated and been exiled to Elba, leaving an exhausted and bewildered France and yet another Louis on the throne, Nicolas Appert made a visit to London(Pickled, Potted, and Canned, page 236-37)

Sentence- The British ruler abdicated his throne to marry his love, Whitney Creed, who had no royal blood and was just a poor peasant.

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carrion - noun
[mass noun] the decaying flesh of dead animals.
- ORIGIN Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French and Old Northern French caroine, caroigne, Old French charoigne, based on Latin caro ‘flesh’.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Flies, of course, lay eggs on carrion, and their larvae then hatch out as wriggling maggots (A History of Food, page 663).

The vultures keen sense of smell lead them to the carrion which they immediately feasted upon.

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hermetic
1. hermetic-adjective
(of a seal or closure) complete and airtight. • insulated or protected from outside influences: a hermetic society.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

"Those flasks which were not hermetically sealed were soon swarming with maggots, but the others remained free of them" (A History of Food, page 663).

Sentence: My mother's delicious beef stew was hermetically sealed so that I may enjoy again this winter.

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Aetiology

OED: 1. The assignment of a cause, the rendering of a reason; also, the reason annexed, the wherefore of a command or utterance.
2. The science or philosophy of causation; that part of philosophy which treats of the demonstration of causes; the part of any special science which speculates on the causes of its phenomena.
3. That branch of medical science which investigates the causes and origin of diseases; the scientific exposition of the origin of any disease.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes’ “Response”: “Significant fat loss on carbohydrate-restricted diets, unrestricted in calories, is the kind of paradoxical observation that might actually inform our understanding of the true aetiology of the disorder itself.”

Sentence: The scientist conducted interviews to learn more about the aetiology of the epidemic.

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Aleatory

OED: Adjective. Dependent on the throw of a die; hence, dependent on uncertain contingencies. (OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Barzun: “Since much punctuation in printed matter today comes from the copy editor rather than the author, these shades of thought should perhaps be classed as ‘aleatory art’” (239).

Sentence: They were instructed to use an aleatory process to obtain the set of random numbers.

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A priori
OED: Adverb and adjective phrase.
1. A phrase used to characterize reasoning or arguing from causes to effects, from abstract notions to their conditions or consequences, from propositions or assumed axioms (and not from experience); deductive; deductively.
2. Hence loosely: Previous to any special examination, presumptively, in accordance with one's previous knowledge or prepossessions.
3. By some metaphysicians used for: Prior to experience; innate in the mind.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes: “The second was that ‘there is no a priori reason why this balance should be maintained by control of appetite alone, since it depends as much on calorie expenditure as on calorie intake’” (298).

Sentence: A priori knowledge for the physics problem included the fact that all matter has mass.

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Perspicacity
OED: Noun.
1. Clearness of understanding or insight; great mental penetration; discernment.
2. Keenness of sight.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes: “Less easy to imagine, though, is how anyone avoids this fate, particularly if we believe that the balancing of intake and expenditure is maintained not by some finely tuned regulatory system… but, rather, by our conscious behavior and our perspicacity at judging the caloric value of the foods we eat” (298).

Sentence: The mathematician’s great perspicacity allowed him to understand and solve the famous problem.

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Impecunious
OED: Adjective. Having no money, penniless; in want of money. (OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes: “So why were they fat? ‘It is difficult to explain the high frequency of obesity seen in a relatively impecunious society such as exists in the West Indies, when compared to the standard of living enjoyed in the more developed countries…’” (242).

Sentence: The impecunious college students searched for low-cost food.

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Facile
OED: Adjective.
1. That can be accomplished with little effort. Now with somewhat disparaging sense. Formerly used as predicate with inf. phrase as subject, and in phrase facile and easy.
2. A. Of a course of action, a method: Presenting few difficulties. B. Easy to understand or to make use of.
3. Moving without effort, unconstrained; flowing, running, or working freely; fluent, ready.
4. Of persons, dispositions, speech, etc. A. Easy of access or converse, affable, courteous. B. Characterized by ease of behaviour. C. Not harsh or severe, gentle, lenient, mild.
5. Easily led or wrought upon; flexible, pliant; compliant, yielding.
6. A. quasi-adv. Easily; without difficulty. B. in Scots Law. ‘Possessing that softness of disposition that he is liable to be easily wrought upon by others C. Of things: Easily moved, yielding, ‘easily surmountable; easily conquerable.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes: “…an explanation for leanness that the British metabolism researchers Nancy Rothwell and Michael Stock described in 1981 as ‘facile and unlikely,’ a kind way of putting it” (248).

Sentence: The mayor claimed that all the city’s crime was caused by criminals, a conclusion that critics derided as being facile.

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Concomitant
OED: Adjective. Going together, accompanying, concurrent, attendant.
Noun. 1. An attendant state, quality, circumstance, or thing; an accompaniment.
2. A person that accompanies; a companion.
(OED, 2nd Ed, accessed through U of MN Libraries)

Taubes: “Once Hirsch’s obese subjects took to restricting their calories, however, they experienced what he called ‘all the physiological and psychological concomitants of starvation’” (256).

Sentence: Confusion was concomitant with filing the complicated tax return.

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Citation: Men, Women, sex and Darwin by Natalie Angier in the 1999 New York Times.
In-text page one: But evolutionary psychology as it has been disseminated across mainstream consciousness is a cranky and despotic Cyclops, its single eye glaring through the overwhelmingly masculinity lens.
Despotic- any person who exercises tyrannical authority; a tyrant, an oppressor (Oxford Online Dictionary).
Fidel Castro is a despotic ruler of his people.

Posted by Kisha D. at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Citation: Men, Women, sex and Darwin by Natalie Angier in the 1999 New York Times.
In-text page one: But evolutionary psychology as it has been disseminated across mainstream consciousness is a cranky and despotic Cyclops, its single eye glaring through the overwhelmingly masculinity lens.
Despotic- any person who exercises tyrannical authority; a tyrant, an oppressor (Oxford Online Dictionary).
Fidel Castro is a despotic ruler of his people.

Posted by Kisha D. at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A. adj.

1. a. Leaping, jumping; esp. of animals, saltatorial.

b. Of water: Jetting forth; leaping upwards.

c. Of the pulse: Beating strongly. poet.

Found in The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb and Willaims on page 6. "A newspaper reporter writes her story in the traditional "pyramid" form, with the salient information first....

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Etymology: noun. plural et·y·mol·o·gies.
1 : the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language 2 : a branch of linguistics concerned with etymologies
— et·y·mo·log·i·cal -mə-ˈlä-ji-kəl\ adjective
— et·y·mo·log·i·cal·ly -k(ə-)lē\ adverb

I found this concept in Barzun Chapter 1, pg. 51. "If in doubt about the differences among words that are not in everyday use, recourse to etymology will help."

The learning and use of academic English words by Corson, David
It is available through the library or by searching the EBSCO Host directly.

http://web.ebscohost.com.floyd.lib.umn.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=108&sid=e49eee3c-470d-4195-b498-1438ef35912b%40sessionmgr109

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