Word of the Day challenge Options

[evlpez]

Word of the Day Challenge

I'll post a new word for each day, including its definition(s). All words are courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary unless otherwise noted.

Ferrets are asked to write a short ficlet (between 100-500 words) and include a WotD.

Submissions can be any genre, about any canon character(s) in any time period.

• There is no deadline.
• You may use any previously listed WotD once.
• You may use more than one WotD in a single submission.
• Please give each submission a title.
• You should specify the WotD used at the end of your post.
• All subs are to be posted in this topic.
• Comments for submissions must be posted in the WotD Discussion topic.
• Each submission will count as 2 Ferret Points (10 galleons) towards its writer's earnings in the Hogwarts Bathroom Fund Drive.

[evlpez]

button-hole, v.

[f. prec. n.: in sense 2 app. altered from BUTTON-HOLD. which it has almost superseded.]

1. a. intr. To sew button-holes. b. trans. To sew with button-hole stitch.

1828 [see BUTTON-HOLING below]. 1868 HOLME LEE B. Godfrey xli. 224 Whether button-holing and embroidering or not. 1882 Cassell's Fam. Mag. XCVII. 44 Penwipers..button-holed round with silk.


c. To make button-hole openings in.

1908 Practitioner Oct. 522 The hand is kept in that position..by long strips of adhesive plaster..; these are button~holed over the knuckles to adapt themselves to them.


d. Surg. To make (esp. accidentally) a button-hole incision in.

1907 Practitioner Oct. 530 It may seem impossible to strip off the muco-chondrium without buttonholing it. 1964 S. DUKE-ELDER Parsons' Dis. Eye (ed. 14) xxvii. 423 The dissection is made by sharp-pointed scissors in the sub~conjunctival tissue..care being taken to avoid button~holing the flap.


2. trans. = BUTTON-HOLD.

1862 All Y. Round VII. 381 The man who is button~holed, or held..and must listen to half an hour's harangue about nothing interesting. 1868 H. KINGSLEY Mathilde II. 140 He went about button-holing and boring every one. 1951 ‘A. GARVE’ Murder in Moscow iii. 48 Jeff..had buttonholed a Russian who spoke a few words of English. 1953 Encounter Oct. 58/2 Scientists were free to.publish their findings, talk about them to colleagues (or to anyone else they could buttonhole).


Hence 'button-holing vbl. n.: also button-holeing, and as ppl. a.

1828 MISS MITFORD Village Ser. III. (1863) 7 The..mysteries of stitching and button-holing. 1862 in Sperber & Trittschuh Amer. Pol. Terms (1962) 68/2 Quarreling, fighting, button-holeing. 1873 Daily News 7 Nov. 5/5 They were subjected to a good deal of button~holing. 1883 Standard 6 Nov. 2/2 After buttonholing, the uniform goes into the hands of the ‘finishers’. 1894 Athenæum 10 Feb. 176/1 The reticence of Mr. Maartens..contrasts vividly enough with the buttonholing familiarity of his English model. 1909 H. G. WELLS Tono-Bungay II. iii. 179 That alluring, button-holeing..style of newspaper advertisement. 1963 Times 13 June 15/5 His book is a button~holing chronicle of daring theft and boudoir hanky-panky.

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channel surf, v.
orig. and chiefly U.S.


intr. To change frequently between television channels, esp. using a remote-control device; to watch snatches of different programmes in a rapid scan through channels, esp. in search of something appealing.

1986 Wall St. Jrnl. 10 Nov. 20/1 Older consumers who initially spurned cabled expansion of prime-time selections now browse confidently with their new toys, channel-surfing blithely through the evenings. 1991 Vanity Fair Sept. 301/3 When not checking out Batman's unit, Paglia channel-surfs across the TV dial, breaking off one of our chats to catch the Daytime Emmy Awards. 1996 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 24 Jan. 19/1 During the federal election campaign a prime-time hour of commercial television may only take 44 minutes to watch, if you channel surf during the ads. 2000 Sunday Herald (Glasgow) (Electronic ed.) 1 Oct., We were channel surfing last week, my friend and I. One minute there were jubilant scenes from the Sydney Olympics; the next minute we were watching all these women sobbing on the set of Maury, one of those generic morning chat shows.

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Pickwickian, a. and n.

[f. Pickwick, surname in Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837).]

A. adj.

1. Of or pertaining to Mr. Pickwick, or the Pickwick Club; chiefly humorous in phr. in (a) Pickwickian sense, language , in a technical, constructive, or conveniently idiosyncratic or esoteric sense; freq. in reference to language ‘unparliamentary’ or compromising in its natural sense.

1836 DICKENS Let. 18 Feb. (1965) I. 132 Believe me (in Pickwickian haste) Faithfully Yours Charles Dickens. 1837 [{emem}] Pickw. I, The Chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand..whether he had used the expression..in a common sense. Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying that he had not [{em}] he had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. 1866 FELTON Anc. & Mod. Gr. I. I. vi. 100 Out it comes..with no mincing of phrase, and no Pickwickian or Congressional explanations afterwards. 1899 [see PRUSSIAN a. 2b]. 1902 CHAMBERLAIN Sp. B'ham 17 Nov., In every case it had only a political, perhaps I might say a Pickwickian, meaning. 1953 ‘N. BLAKE’ Dreadful Hollow 147 Blount, whose Pickwickian exterior camouflaged a mind as ruthlessly purposeful as a guided missile. 1975 J. SYMONS Three Pipe Problem xvii. 173 Johnson's Pickwickian features were unusually solemn.


2. Med. Also pickwickian. [Named in allusion to the fat boy Joe in Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.] Having or being a syndrome occurring in some obese adults (rarely in obese children) characterized by somnolence, respiratory abnormalities, and bulimia.

1956 C. S. BURWELL et al. in Amer. Jrnl. Med. XXI. 812/1 Figure 1 represents Thomas Nast's drawing of Mr. Wardle's boy, Joe. This masterful description by Charles Dickens of a patient with marked obesity and somnolence is the first complete description of this syndrome that we have been able to find in the literature. For this reason we have called it the Pickwickian syndrome. 1965 Progress Brain Res. XVIII. 157 The short diurnal periods of light sleep (10-12 sec duration) in Pickwickian patients are characterized by apnea, increased cyanosis and muscular relaxation. 1977 Lancet 7 May 993/1 There are many other conditions, usually clinically obvious such as the pickwickian syndrome, in which there is both a respiratory and sleep abnormality.


B. n.

1. A member of the Pickwick Club.

1836 DICKENS Pickw. (1837) I. 1 A proposal, emanating from the aforesaid Samuel Pickwick..and three other Pickwickians..for forming a new branch of United Pickwickians. Ibid. ii. 7 The intelligence of the Pickwickians being informers was spread among them. 1905 Daily Graphic 1 Feb. 9/4 The minds of many of the lovers of Dickens who were present at the Dickens Character Ball..reverted to another ball-room [{em}] still in existence [{em}] where one of the most famous of the incidents in the ‘Pickwick Papers’ occurred [{em}] that of the Bull Inn at Rochester. And that ball, too, like this one, wherein not only the Pickwickians but many other characters which sprang from the brain of their creator were incarnated, was a charity ball. 1909 [see BATHLESSNESS].


2. Med. A person with the Pickwickian syndrome.

1965 Progress Brain Res. XVIII. 156 Most obese people..present no diurnal sleeping syndrome, and so far as is known no nocturnal apnea, so that the Pickwickian should have some central disturbance of respiration and arousal. 1975 Electroencephalogr. & Clin. Neurophysiol. XXXIX. 579/2 The data obtained were compared with those observed in a group of 59 hypersomnolent patients aged between 19 and 83.., 18 of whom were Pickwickians.


Hence Pickwicki'ana, publications about the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; Pick'wickianism, a statement made in a Pickwickian sense; Pick'wickianly adv., in a Pickwickian sense.

1887 Chicago Advance 14 Apr. 229/1 Dr. Arthur Little discussed almost convincingly, albeit somewhat pickwickianly, ‘the Advantages of Presbyterianism’. 1894 Ibid. 28 June, This author does not mean his assertions to be taken as facts, but only as bits of critical pickwickianisms. 1899 J. GREGO (title) Pictorial Pickwickiana.

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Chewa, n. and a.
Brit.

A. n.

1. A member of an African people inhabiting central Malawi and adjoining areas of Zambia and Mozambique.

1887 Proc. Royal Geogr. Soc. 9 114 The tribes with whose language the writer is acquainted are the following:..The Chewa, of the Tumbuka, both to the west of the lake. 1904 Jrnl. Royal Afr. Soc. 3 186 First, near the north, was that section of the tribe known as the Tambuka, further south were the Chewa, under the Mukando. 1951 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. 81 103 The Ngoni are inextricably intermingled with the Cewa, with whom they inter-married from the time of their arrival as conquering invaders in the latter's territory. 1996 J. S. OLSON Peoples of Afr. 127 British and Portuguese missionaries converted most Chewas to Christianity during the colonial era.


2. = CHICHEWA n.

1917 M. L. MARGOLIS Story Bible Trans. 112 As we cross the continent of Africa, the Bible is read in..a multitude of negroid and negro tongues:..Chewa, Tonga, Yao (on the shores of Lake Nyasa). 1977 K. KATZNER Langs. of World (1986) iii. 348 Nyanja, known as Chewa in Malawi, is the major language. 2003 Afr. News (Nexis) 6 June, Pengaudzoke will also be launching their new album, Upire, which is Chewa for luck.


B. adj. Of or relating to the Chewa or their language. Cf. CHICHEWA a.

1926 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. 56 69 A medicine known as mtsiriko is made by old Chewa hunters and employed by people for the protection of their cattle and goat kraals against carnivora. 1937 Language 13 19 In morphology, the Chewa language conforms quite rigidly to the general Bantu pattern. 1980 Canad. Jrnl. Afr. Stud. 394 The initiation of Bemba girls by Cewa women elders has also increased. 2003 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. 9 192 The famous nyau ritual of the Chewa-speaking peoples is a symbolic re-enactment of the Chewa creation myth.