(via precariousowl)
orang·y, orang·ey (-n-j) adj. Word History: Oranges imported to China from the United States reflect a journey come full circle, for the orange had worked its way westward for centuries, originating in China, then being introduced to India, and traveling on to the Middle East, into Europe, and finally to the New World. The history of the word orange keeps step with this journey only part of the way. The word is possibly ultimately from Dravidian, a family of languages spoken in southern India and northern Sri Lanka. The Dravidian word or words were adopted into the Indo-European language Sanskrit with the form nraga. As the fruit passed westward, so did the word, as evidenced by Persian nrang and Arabic nranj. Arabs brought the first oranges to Spain, and the fruit rapidly spread throughout Europe. The important word for the development of our term is Old Italian melarancio, derived from mela, “fruit,” and arancio, “orange tree,” from Arabic nranj. Old Italian melarancio was translated into Old French as pume orenge, the o replacing the a because of the influence of the name of the town of Orange, from which oranges reached the northern part of France. The final stage of the odyssey of the word was its borrowing into English from the Old French form orenge. Our word is first recorded in Middle English in a text probably composed around 1380, a time preceding the arrival of the orange in the New World.
(Source: thefreedictionary.com)
Janopause
n. The practice of abstaining from alcohol for the month of January.Example Citation :
The Janopause describes the post-Christmas abstinence from anything remotely pleasurable.
Look around your workplace and you’ll see people on the Janopause everywhere. They’ll be the ones with a litre bottle of Brecon Carreg on their desks, a packet of pumpkin seeds and an expression of utter misery.
—Carolyn Hitt, “Abstinence and grim resolutions of Janopause just don’t fit in,” Wales Online, January 9, 2012
n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.
(via dictionaryofobscuresorrows:)
Goes really well with git.
— My favorite word today! Inamorata | Define Inamorata at Dictionary.com (via missspite)
(via missspite)
n. a sleepwalker
In Fain v. Commonwealth, 78 Ky. 183, the defendant, a somnambulist, had gone to sleep in a public room in a hotel, and on being roughly awakened by a stranger, drew a pistol and killed him, imagining himself in danger. The court observed: ‘If the prisoner is and has been afflicted in the manner claimed and knew, as he no doubt did, his propensity to do acts of violence when aroused from sleep, he was guilty of a grave breach of social duty in going to sleep in the public room of a hotel with a deadly weapon on his person, and merits for that reckless disregard of the safety of others some degree of punishment, but we know of no law under which he can be punished. Our law only punishes for overt acts done by responsible moral agents. If the prisoner was unconscious when he killed the deceased, he cannot be punished for that act, and as the mere fact that he had the weapon on his person and went to sleep with it there did no injury to any one, he cannot be punished for that.’ Now, is a man who knows himself liable to violent attacks of insanity guilty of ‘a grave breach of social duty’ in not incarcerating himself in an insane asylum?
– Albany Law Journal, July 8, 1882 (via Futility Closet)
Eros
a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic loveLudus
a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at onceStorge
an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarityPragma
love that is driven by the head, not the heartMania
obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous loversAgape
selfless altruistic love; spiritual;
(Source: Wikipedia, via infectioushumanwaste)
