kitty-corner, catty-corner [kit-ee-kawr-ner, kat-ee-kawr-ner ]

adverb or adjective:
in a diagonal position from, especially outward from the corner of a square.

Examples:

A McDonald's is kitty-corner from a Walmart, and Tim Hortons is across the street from AAA. Convenient as it all may sound, this district is not quite real. (Katherine ( Read more... )

Tuesday, Sep. 24, 2024

En Masse (noun)
en masse [ahn mas, en; French ahn mas]

adverb
1. in a mass; all together; as a group: The people rushed to the gate en masse.

Idioms and PhrasesIn one group or body; all together. For example, The activists marched en masse to the capitol . This French term, with exactly the same meaning, was adopted into ( Read more... )

peradventure [pur-uhd-ven-cher, per-]

noun:
1 chance, doubt, or uncertainty.
2 surmise
adverb:
(archaic) it may be; maybe; possibly; perhaps

Examples:

Peradventure they make sales on the January 31, they must ensure that they deposit the money in banks before the close of the working hours because old notes would cease to be legal tender ( Read more... )

deucedly [doo-sid-lee,dyoo-]

adverb:
(chiefly British, informal) devilishly, damnably: extremely

Examples:

It's deucedly hard to contemplate a Rolls-Royce without putting it on a pedestal, because they never feel like mere motorcars, somehow transcending glass and metal to symbolise fine taste, high achievement, or whatever it is you want ( Read more... )

forsooth [fawr-sooth]

adverb:
(archaic) in truth, indeed (now used in derision or to express disbelief

Examples:

Forsooth, the winter of our discontent has been made glorious summer by the Salzburg Festival. (A J Goldmann, After a Winter of Discontent, a Glorious Summer in Salzburg, The New York Times, July 2021)

And the lowly scribes say, ( Read more... )

catch-as-catch-can [kach-uhz-kach-kan]

adjective:
using any available means or method, hit or miss
adverb:
without specific plan or order

Examples:

But you can now see a significant shift toward empowering audience members to make their own choices: Ravinia, for example, will have two kinds of lawn seating, one in predetermined pods, the ( Read more... )

Boustrophedon - adjective or adverb.

Today's word was suggested by shivver13 and it's a fun one.

If you practice the art of calligraphy or studied anthropology, you may already know about boustrophedon. Pronounced /ˌbo͞ostrəˈfēdn/, the word is derived from Ancient Greek meaning "ox-turning" and can be used as an adjective or an adverb thusly ( Read more... )

lief [leef]

adjective:
1 (archaic) dear; beloved; treasured.
2 (archaic) willing, glad

adverb:
soon, gladly (commonly in the phrase 'as lief')

Examples:

Depend upon it, sir, many a rich man dining tonight upon roast swan would as lief exchange his vittles for a plate of this cooked cheese! (Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies)

He wants no ( Read more... )

Mutatis mutandis - phrase.

I'm going back to school again this year and my fibre classes are bursting with new words and phrases to share. I actually had to look up the meaning of some of them, including mutatis mutandis.

This Latin based phrase from the middle ages generally means:

• with things changed that should be changed
• having changed what ( Read more... )

Ab ovo - Adverb.

It seems fitting to pick this Latin phrase as the first word of the year! Ab ovo literally means "from the egg". It is mostly used in literary contexts to mean "beginning". It can contrast with in media res, where a story starts in the middle.

Happy New Year!