Today's word from the OED has the following earliest quotation: 1887 H. TIBBITS Massage 14 In Massaging joints.

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fantod: a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 08, 2010 is:

eminently • \EM-uh-nunt-lee\  • adverb
: to a high degree : very

Example sentence:
The village is eminently walkable and packed with attractions for foodies, shoppers, history buffs, and children. (Ellen Albanese, The Boston Globe, June 30, 2010)

Did you know?
When British physician Tobias Venner wrote in 1620 of houses somewhat eminently situated, he used eminently in a way that now seems unusual. Venner meant that the houses were literally located in a high place, but that lofty use of eminently has since slipped into obsolescence. Eminently traces to the Latin term eminēre, which means to stand out. In its first documented English uses in the 15th century, the term meant conspicuously, but that sense, like the elevated one we mentioned earlier, is now obsolete. The figurative sense for which the word is best known today began appearing in English texts in the mid-1600s.

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Today's word from the OED has the following earliest quotation: 1946 Public Opinion Q. 10 375/2 High-income areas are over-sampled in order to strengthen the values at the upper end of the financial distributions. (These data are corrected by assigning a weight to each interview in inverse relation to the sampling ratio used.)

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mojo: personal magnetism; charm.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 07, 2010 is:

twee • \TWEE\  • adjective
: affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint

Example sentence:
I stood in the greeting card section of the store reading through the selections, looking for one that would express my affection and appreciation without being intolerably twee.

Did you know?
Most adults wouldn't be caught dead saying, Oh, look at the tweet 'ittle birdie! (at least not to anyone over the age of three), but they probably wouldn't be averse to saying, He went fishing with his dad, She works as a nanny, or Hey, buddy, how's it going? Anyone who uses dad, nanny, or buddy owes a debt to baby talk, a term used for both the childish speech adults adopt when addressing youngsters and for the speech of small children who are just learning to talk. Twee also originated in baby talk, as an alteration of sweet. In the early 1900s, it was a term of affection, but nowadays British speakers and writers, and, increasingly, Americans as well, use twee for things that have passed beyond agreeable and into the realm of cloying.

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Today's word from the OED has the following earliest quotation: 1801 Asiatic Ann. Reg. 1800: Proc. Parl. 34/1 A comparison of the revenues and charges of the year 1798-9 as estimated, and according to the actual out-run.

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yeuk: an itching sensation.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 06, 2010 is:

eighty-six • \ay-tee-SIKS\  • verb, slang
: to refuse to serve (a customer); also : to get rid of : throw out

Example sentence:
NBC's Hannah Storm eighty-sixed her real last name, Storen, when her first employer, a heavy-metal-oriented radio station in Corpus Christi, asked her to host a show titled Storm by the Sea. (Sports Illustrated, September 25, 2000)

Did you know?
If you work in a restaurant or bar, you might eighty-six (or eliminate) a menu item when you run out of it, or you might eighty-six (or cut off) a customer who should no longer be served. Eighty-six is still used in this specific context, but it has also entered the general language. These days, you don’t have to be a worker in a restaurant or bar to eighty-six something -- you just have to be someone with something to get rid of or discard. There are many popular but unsubstantiated theories about the origin of eighty-six. The explanation judged most probable by Merriam-Webster etymologists is that the word was created as a rhyming slang word for nix, which means to veto or to reject.

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Today's word from the OED has the following earliest quotation: 1747 S. RICHARDSON Clarissa I. xl. 268 None but the prosperous upstart, mushroom'd into rank (another of his peculiars) was arrogantly proud of it.

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cheechako: a tenderfoot; greenhorn; newcomer.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 05, 2010 is:

colloquy • \KAH-luh-kwee\  • noun
1 : conversation, dialogue *2 : a high-level serious discussion : conference

Example sentence:
The company's employees worried and speculated as the executive team remained closeted in an intense colloquy for the entire morning.

Did you know?
Colloquy may make you think of colloquial, and there is indeed a connection between the two words. As a matter of fact, colloquy is the parent word from which colloquial was coined in the mid-18th century. Colloquy itself, though now the less common of the two words, has been a part of the English language since the 15th century. It is a descendant of Latin loqui, meaning to speak. Other descendants of loqui in English include eloquent, loquacious, ventriloquism, and soliloquy, as well as elocution and interlocutor.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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Today's word from the OED has the following earliest quotation: ?1567 M. PARKER Whole Psalter xcii. 260 To thy good name: O God so hye: due laudes to modulate.

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minim: the least quantity of anything.

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 04, 2010 is:

zwieback • \SWEE-back\  • noun
: a usually sweetened bread enriched with eggs that is baked and then sliced and toasted until dry and crisp

Example sentence:
It's the cheesiest of cheesecakes, with a zwieback crumb crust. (Tina Danze, The Dallas Morning News, February 2, 2000)

Did you know?
In ages past, keeping food fresh for any length of time required a lot of ingenuity, especially when one needed to carry comestibles on a long journey. One of the solutions people came up with for keeping bread edible for traveling was to bake it twice, thereby drying it and slowing the spoiling process. The etymology of zwieback reflects this baker's trick; it was borrowed from a German word that literally means twice baked. Nowadays, zwieback is not just used as a foodstuff -- the texture of the dried bread makes zwieback a suitable teething device for infants.

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