Doctor Dictionary - Word Of The Day

fractious \FRAK-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Tending to cause trouble; unruly.
2. Irritable; snappish; cranky.

In Marshall's case, the experience of dealing with a clamorous band of younger siblings, earning their affection and respect while holding them to their tasks, proved remarkably useful in later years when dealing with fractious colleagues jealous of their prerogatives.
-- Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

Marcus frequently took a rod to Ambrose's back--with the predictable result of making the boy even more fractious and slow to obey.
-- Roy Morris Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company

Fractious heirs drink too much and squabble over dock space for their sailboats.
-- Marilyn Stasio, review of Stormy Weather, by Carl Hiaasen, New York Times, September 3, 1995

Fractious is from fraction, which formerly had the sense "discord, dissension, disharmony"; it is derived from Latin frangere, "to break."

ratiocination \rash-ee-ah-suh-NAY-shun; rash-ee-oh-\, noun:
The process of reasoning.

For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot.
-- "People", Time, October 26, 1987

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes proved so popular that it became a given that mystery tales should include a sleuth who investigates a murder or other crime, and by virtue of intelligence, ratiocination and perseverance solves a case that initially seemed unsolvable.
-- Maxim Jakubowski, "A beginner's guide to crime fiction", The Guardian, October 29, 1999

There is no question that Joyce and Nabokov. . . brilliantly explored and expanded the limits of language and the structure of novels, yet both were led irresistibly and obsessively to cap their careers with those cold and lifeless masterpieces, "Finnegans Wake" and "Ada," more to be deciphered than read by a handful of scholars whose pleasure is strictly ratiocination.
-- "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love 'Barry Lyndon'", New York Times, January 11, 1976

Ratiocination is from Latin rationcinatio, from ratiocinari, "to compute, to calculate, to reason," from ratio, "reckoning, calculation, reason," from reri, "to reckon, to think."

convivial \kuhn-VIV-ee-uhl\, adjective:
Relating to, occupied with, or fond of feasting, drinking, and good company; merry; festive.

The convivial atmosphere would continue on the way home, with a bag of toffees and more stories including, quite often, the story of How Grandpa Was Found.
-- "The foundling who got a life and a history", Times, January 6, 2000

He hated to drink to excess, disliked convivial entertaining and had no gift for bonhomie.
-- Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord

Young Sam, steeped in the family's endless storytelling, confessions, musings about their aspirations, and bickering about politics, seemed destined to become happy and convivial.
-- Andrew Hoffman, Inventing Mark Twain

Convivial comes from Latin convivium, "a feast, entertainment, a banquet," from conviva, "a table-companion, a guest," from convivere, "to live with, hence to feast with," from com-, con-, with + vivere, "to live."

sotto voce \SAH-toh-VOH-chee\, adverb or adjective:
1. Spoken low or in an undertone, as not to be overheard.
2. (Music) In very soft tones. Used chiefly as a direction.

Behind the scenes, however, were sotto voce grumblings that Kohl was perhaps hanging on too long and that the party might be better off if he were to step aside and hand the candidacy to popular majority leader Wolfgang Schauble.
-- Jordan Bonfante, "The Challenger", Time, March 16, 1998

Say it sotto voce, they say, knowing full well that to shout about it would invite ridicule.
-- Julian Muscat, "Classic case for a change of course", Times (London), April 24, 2001

Inside the room, as she closed the door, the man winked at her: "I'm from the OSS," he said sotto voce. "I'm checking your room for 'bugs.'"
-- Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies

Occasionally, to keep us amused, he mouthed bits at us: but sotto voce, in case there was a real Dutchman within earshot.
-- John Bayley, The Red Hat

Sotto voce is from the Italian: sotto, "under" and voce, "voice."

nuptial \NUHP-shuhl; -chuhl\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to marriage; done or used at a wedding; as, "nuptial rites and ceremonies."
2. Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the mating season.
3. Marriage; wedding; nuptial ceremony; -- usually used in the plural.

The couple entered the town of Chalons, stopping on the way to listen to a concert (which must have been torture for Monsieur, who had no ear for music) and then heard a nuptial blessing from the Bishop.
-- Christine Pevitt, Philippe, Duc D'Orleans

Angela remembered vividly the mild indecorousness of the occasion -- not the usual nuptial jollity, but an oddly irreverent atmosphere, light and ungrateful.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis, The Sin Eater

The two ducks may never approach each other again, their species' habit being to put on flashy nuptial plumage and choose new partners every spring.
-- Mary Parker Buckles, Margins

As the bride and groom arrived, the city-issued clock registered five minutes to noon, just moments before the chapel would close, almost ensuring that, no matter how esteemed the couple, the nuptials would not be reported in the next day's papers.
-- Larry Tye, The Father of Spin

Nuptial comes from Latin nuptialis, from nuptiae "marriage, wedding," from the past participle of nubere, properly, "to cover, to veil," hence, "to marry," as the head of the bride was covered with a veil.

parse \PAHRS\, transitive verb:
1. To resolve (as a sentence) into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactical relationship of each part.
2. To describe grammatically by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence.
3. To examine closely or analyze critically, especially by breaking up into components.
4. To make sense of; to comprehend.
5. (Computer Science) To analyze or separate (input, for example) into more easily processed components.
6. To admit of being parsed.

We must learn to parse sentences and to analyse the grammar of our text, for, as Roman Jakobson has taught us, there is no access to the grammar of poetry, to the nerve and sinew of the poem, if one is blind to the poetry of grammar.
-- George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995

There are too many spots where the rhythm goes momentarily awry; where words are used with murk, sloppiness or phonetic imprecision; where sentences are so twisted around that they become hard to parse; even times where it's hard to be sure just who or what is being referred to.
-- Douglas Hofstadter, "What's Gained in Translation", New York Times, December 8, 1996

The American Constitution, for example, says that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." . . . once we parse notions like "abridging" and "the freedom of speech," perhaps we will decide cases on the basis of an inquiry into two, three, or more relevant considerations.
-- Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict

Parse comes from the Latin pars (orationis), "part (of speech)."

jeremiad \jair-uh-MY-uhd\, noun:
A tale of sorrow, disappointment, or complaint; a doleful story; also, a dolorous or angry tirade.

This age in which leisure and letters were gilded with commerce did not see the decline and fall of art, despite the jeremiads of such artists as William Blake ('Where any view of money exists,' he prophesied, 'art cannot be carried on').
-- Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century

Johnson's jeremiad against what he sees as American imperialism and militarism exhaustively catalogs decades of U.S. military misdeeds
-- Stan Crock, review of The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, Business Week, February 2, 2004

Economics ministers in general were taken aback when a recent World Bank report -- after a year of jeremiads -- suggested the crisis was being exaggerated
-- Lance Castle, "The economic crisis revisited", Jakarta Post, April 1, 1999

Jeremiad comes from French jérémiade, after Jérémie, Jeremiah, the prophet.

ambuscade \AM-buh-skayd; am-buh-SKAYD\, noun:
1. An ambush.
2. To attack by surprise from a concealed place; to ambush.

But so great were his fears for the army, lest in those wild woods it should fall into some Indian snare, that the moment his fever left him, he got placed on his horse, and pursued, and overtook them the very evening before they fell into that ambuscade which he had all along dreaded.
-- Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington

The storm is distant, just the lights behind
The eyes are left of lightning's ambuscade.
-- Peter Porter, "The Last Wave Before the Breakwater"

No more ambuscades, no more shooting from behind trees.
-- William Murchison, "What the voters chose", Human Life Review, January 1, 1995

Ambuscade comes from Middle French embuscade, from Old Italian imboscata, from past participle of imboscare, "to ambush," from in, (from Latin) + bosco, "forest," of Germanic origin.

abed \uh-BED\, adverb:


In bed.


When I lay abed as a boy in our ranch house, listening to those trucks growl their way up highway 281, the sound of those motors came to seem as organic as the sounds of the various birds and animals who were apt to make noises in the night.