Tuesday, April 7, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

saltimbocca
noun [mass noun] a dish consisting of rolled pieces of veal or poultry cooked with herbs, bacon, and other flavourings.
origin Italian, literally ‘leap into the mouth’.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Monday, April 6, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

stroud
noun [mass noun] Canadian coarse woollen fabric of a kind used in the manufacture of blankets.
origin late 17th cent.: perhaps from the name of Stroud in Gloucestershire.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Sunday, April 5, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

puissance
noun [mass noun]
1. (Puissance) a competitive test of a horse's ability to jump large obstacles in showjumping.
2. archaic or literary great power, influence, or prowess.
origin late Middle English (in sense 2): from Old French, ‘power’, from puissant ‘having power’ (see puissant). Sense 1 dates from the 1950s.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Saturday, April 4, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

mornay
adjective denoting or served in a cheese-flavoured white sauce: mornay sauce | [postpositive] cauliflower mornay.
origin perhaps named after Mornay, the eldest son of the 19th-cent. French chef Joseph Voiron, who apparently invented the sauce.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Friday, April 3, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

pica
noun Printing a unit of type size and line length equal to 12 points (about 16 inch or 4.2 mm).
• [mass noun] a size of letter in typewriting, with 10 characters to the inch (about 3.9 to the centimetre).
origin late 16th cent.: from Anglo-Latin pica (literally ‘magpie’), commonly identified with a 15th-cent. book of rules about Church feasts, but no edition of such a pica printed in ‘pica’ type is known.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Thursday, April 2, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

hamartia
noun a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.
origin late 18th cent.: Greek, ‘fault, failure, guilt’; the term was used in Aristotle's Poetics with reference to ancient Greek tragedy.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

AskOxford: Word of the Day

Word of the Day from AskOxford: www.askoxford.com

samite
noun [mass noun] historical a rich silk fabric interwoven with gold and silver threads, used for dressmaking and decoration in the Middle Ages.
origin Middle English: from Old French samit, via medieval Latin from medieval Greek hexamiton, from Greek hexa- ‘six’ + mitos ‘thread’.

Pronunciation available online: www.askoxford.com

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English
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