When Juliet famously says “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo…” it sounds like she’s asking “Where are you?” But wherefore actually means “why,” the reason behind something. So, she’s not wondering where he is; she’s agonizing over the fact that their love is impossible because of the ancient feud between their two families.
A margin call is a demand for additional capital or securities to bring a margin account up to the minimum maintenance level. Brokers may force traders to sell assets, regardless of the market price, to meet the margin call if the traders do not deposit additional funds.
Ploce (PLOH-chay), from the Ancient Greek for “weaving” or “braiding,” is a rhetorical device – the repetition or inversion of a word or phrase for emphasis. Examples:
* “I am stuck on Band-Aid, and Band-Aid’s stuck on me.”
* “I am what I am.”
* “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
The title of today’s movie reminded me of a “new” slang word I came upon: spoonish. It supposedly describes a person or thing that acts silly or makes a silly mistake. But I googled it… and I can’t find any confirmation that it’s actually a word that people use. Can anyone out there help me?
Something that is superjacent is positioned immediately above or on top of something else. Example (from “The Castles of Moravia,” a 2011 article by Evan Rail in the Travel section of the NYT): “Village streets threaded around the hillside, eternally watched over by the superjacent castle.”
To grabble is to grasp or grope – probably from the same Old English/Germanic origin as grapple (wrestle). Example from “The Tall Men” by William Faulkner: “A fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA and WPA and a dozen other three-letter reasons for a man not to work.”
A cipher (SY-fur) – from the Arabic for “zero” – is a secret code, usually one created using a mathematical algorithm. It can also be used to refer to someone or something of no importance.
Example: “An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets.” (Steven Pinker)
To conflate is to fuse or confuse. To bring different things together and fuse them into a single entity – and, by extension, mistakenly treat them as equivalent. Example: “It is easy for those who conflate religion with government to interpret any criticism of government or policy as an ‘attack’ on their ‘faith’.” (Christina Engela in Loderunner)
A cadre (KAH-dree) – from the Latin for “four” – is a small group of people that have some kind of unifying relationship. Example from an article in The Guardian: “Just another member of the insular elitist cadre of closed-minded short people. All fun and games until he needs something from the top shelf.”
To indite is to write, especially a literary or artistic work. As used in “Marginalia,” an essay by Edgar Allan Poe: “It is certain that the mere act of inditing tends, in a great degree, to the logicalisation of thought. Whenever, on account of its vagueness, I am dissatisfied with a conception of the brain, I resort forthwith to the pen, for the purpose of obtaining, through its aid, the necessary form, consequence, and precision.”