Monthly Archives: February 2023

Word Of The Day For Wednesday June 27, 2018

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Wednesday June 27, 2018

emolument

PRONUNCIATION: (i-MOL-yuh-muhnt)

MEANING: noun: Payment, salary, or fees from an office or employment.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin emolumentum (profit, advantage), from ex- (out) + molere (to grind). Earliest documented use: 1480.

NOTES: Earlier an emolument was a miller’s fee for grinding corn. Today, emolument is what you get for the daily grind. What have emoluments got to do with the politics today? See this article from Time about the president’s violation of the foreign emoluments clause of the US Constitution.

USAGE: “Tom paused, said with slight embarrassment, ‘There wouldn’t be any — er, emolument, I’m afraid. We have to tighten our belts in these hard times.’” Ruth Rendell; The Vault; Scribner; 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: It may be observed that the English language is not a system of logic, that its vocabulary has not developed in correlation with generations of straight thinkers, that we cannot impose upon it something preconceived as an ideal of scientific method and expect to come out with anything more systematic and more clarifying than what we start with: what we start with is an inchoate heterogeneous conglomerate that retains the indestructible bones of innumerable tries at orderly communication, and our definitions as a body are bound to reflect this situation. -Philip Babcock Gove, lexicographer (27 Jun 1902-1972)

Word Of The Day For Friday February 22, 2019

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Friday February 22, 2019

throttlebottom

PRONUNCIATION: (THROT-l-bot-uhm)

MEANING: noun: A purposeless incompetent in public office.

ETYMOLOGY: After Alexander Throttlebottom, a Vice Presidential character in Of Thee I Sing, a 1931 musical comedy. Earliest documented use: 1932.

NOTES: In honor of Presidents Day, this week we’ve been looking at words with presidential connections. It’s about time we paid our dues to the Vice President too. A VP, by its very nature, is meant to play a second fiddle though it’s not uncommon to find an eminence grise in that office. Here’s how the term throttlebottom came to represent VPs and other similar (mostly) harmless figures.

The first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize, Of Thee I Sing, is a brilliant political satire that gave us today’s word. In this masterly operetta (music: George Gershwin; lyrics: Ira Gershwin; libretto: George Kaufman and Morris Ryskind), presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen runs a political campaign based on the theme of love. His National Party sponsors a beauty contest, with Wintergreen to marry the winner. Instead, Wintergreen falls in love with Mary Turner, a secretary at the pageant, and marries her on the day of his inauguration. Diana Devereaux, the contest winner, sues President Wintergreen for breach of contract; France threatens to go to war, since Devereaux is of French descent; and Congress impeaches him. Wintergreen points out the United States Constitution provision that when the President is unable to perform his duty, the Vice President fulfills the obligations. VP Throttlebottom agrees to marry Diana and forever etches his name in the language.

USAGE: “[Lyndon B. Johnson] wanted to be Vice President, both to position himself as JFK’s successor someday and because he believed that he could convert any job — even Throttlebottom’s — into a power base.” James MacGregor Burns; The Crosswinds of Freedom; Knopf; 1989.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. -George Washington, 1st US president, general (22 Feb 1732-1799)