Welcome to another edition of your weekly array of vocab words.
This blog is only on CityBeat's website, but I would strongly recommend you pick up the paper this week for our Double Down cover package of back-to-back festivals Bunbury and Buckle Up. I'll be at Bunbury all three days. If you want to say hi, I'll be the 1,000th girl in a flower crown.
dulcet warble: a melody that is pleasing to the ear, n.
This one’s a two-for-one — two new, funky-sounding words that combine into one phrase. If you have any knowledge of Spanish desserts, you probably inferred that dulcet meant sweet, as dulce describes something as sweet en Español. No phonetic/origin hints I'm aware of for warble, though.
In the paper: Brian Baker describes Buckle Up performer Ashley Monroe as, “It wasn’t difficult to hear Dolly Parton in Monroe’s dulcet warble.” In her dulcet warble? What’s a dulcet warble? Do I have one? Unfortunately upon reading the definition I realized I do not have a dulcet warble, probably one of the reasons I’m not performing in the Buckle Up festival.
purveyor: a supplier of goods and provisions, n.
This stood out because it sounds antiquated. Who counts as a purveyor in 2014? Rachel Podnar, purveyor of vocabulary…
In the paper: Baker’s Top Ten Buckle Up Acts gets two nods for vocab with “Arlo McKinley and the band of Country purveyors he’s dubbed the Lonesome Sound.” If only Bunbury’s Alternative Pop/Rock/Country inspired the same illustrious vocabulary as Buckle Up’s Country does, then then the vocab distribution in the two articles would be even (but who's counting?).
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies: Latin, who shall keep watch over the guardian? Phrase.
Here’s a phrase I’ve never heard before and I’m sure I’ll never say in conversation.
In the paper: OK, maybe when you read this in Ben L. Kaufman’s column “Who Guards the Guardians?” questioning the Obama administration's seemingly limited understanding of how a free press works. The phrase just popped up out of nowhere, but it was followed by “Who guards the guardians? Obama? Holder?” and you probably thought, ‘Gee, I bet that Latin means who guards the guardians.’ I personally didn’t put that together but now I know better.
visceral: either characterized by instinct rather than intellect or characterized by coarse or base emotions, adj.
Visceral is the kind of word you’re familiar with but not familiar enough to use it in conversation so now that you’re clear on the definition, get out there and start describing all the visceral things in your life.
In the paper: Brian Baker used it in his Sound Advice describing “Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires,” (aka one of the most confusing band names for a copy editor) when he said “visceral Garage Rock sugar helps the medicine of re-examining sins and scars of Southern suppression go down.” What a sentence. I think visceral Garage Rock might make remembering suppression worse but that’s just me.
summarily: in a prompt or direct manner, or without notice adv.
Summarily isn’t a “big word” but it doesn’t mean what you think it would mean. Given its similarity to “summary” I thought “summarily” meant an adverb form of “a short description of all of its parts,” but I can’t think of how that could function as an adverb and I’m sure no one else could either so they threw a new definition at it.
In the paper: Summarily is the weekly word from Kathy Y. Wilson, this time in her strongly-worded argument against Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper program, which “summarily dismisses that while black and Latino boys are suffering, black and Latino women are suffering more than anyone else.” Looks like Obama caught some flack from both of our columnists this week.
