English Vocabulary 2

Front 1

vim

Back 1

Power; force; energy; spirit; activity; vigor.

Hint 1

The 76-year-old retired Malaysian schoolteacher displayed so much vim during a recent hike through a national park in Sarawak, astonished rangers began calling her a "recycled
teenager."
--Choong Tet Sieu, "The Power to Go On and On,"
[1]Asiaweek, July 28, 2000

The publishing business seems to be showing new vim.
Figures recently released by the Association of American Publishers, which monitors about 100 large firms, reveal much better performance in the first quarter of 1983 than in the first quarter of 1982.
--Judith Applebaum, "Permission to Play," 2]New York
Times, May 29, 1983

I am taken aback by Janet's voice. I am surprised by its
sound, soft, [3]tentative in its tone, a voice without the vim and vigor of her muscular writing style.
--Lauren Slater, "One nation, under the weather," [4]Salon, July 5, 2000

Vim is from Latin vis, strength.

Synonyms: vivacity, spirit, dash, energy, snap.

Front 2

Hogmanay

Back 2

The name, in Scotland, for New Year's Eve, on which children go about singing and asking for gifts; also, a gift, cake, or treat given on New Year's Eve.

Hint 2

This is Hogmanay, the gifting of another year, the coming of midnight, the darkest hour, before the turn towards dawn.
--John F. Deane, "The music of what happens," [1]Irish
Times, December 28, 2000

The biggest celebration in Britain was in Edinburgh, where Hogmanay drew about 200,000 people to a free street party in the city centre.
--"Archbishop of Canterbury calls for greater generosity,"
[2]Irish Times, Saturday, January 2, 1999

The origin of the word Hogmanay is unknown.

Front 3

perquisite

Back 3

1. A profit or benefit in addition to a salary or wages.
2. Broadly: The benefits of a position or office.
3. A gratuity or tip for services performed.
4. Anything to which someone has or claims the sole right.

Hint 3

In a tight market for skilled labor... corporations are
increasingly buying homes for hot new hires -- a perquisite once reserved for top executives.
--Jennie James, "For Many Europeans, There's No Place Like Home," [1]Time, May 8, 2000

It is a shock to find the master, whom we cannot help thinking of as the greatest gentleman in the history of art, regarding petty larceny as a perquisite of office and
diverting the wages of sweepers and cleaners.
--Sir Lawrence Gowing, "Obsessed by Ambition, Saved by
Art," [2]New York Times, August 10, 1986

She is dressed in an inexpensive but stylish outfit, impeccably coordinated gloves, hat, shoes, and matching
purse--the sole perquisite of her husband's hand-to-mouth pattern-cutting job in the ladies garment industry.
--Ann Druyan, "A New Sense of the Sacred," Humanist,
November 2000

After having long been a narrowly aristocratic perquisite,the opportunity for adventurous cuisine was "democratized"
in early modern, increasingly capitalistic Europe, by the spreading quest for upward social mobility, imperial service abroad, and thickening networks of social commerce.
--Robert Mccormick Adams, "Introduction: Case Histories,"
[3]Social Research, Spring 1999

Perquisite derives from Medieval Latin perquisitum, from the past participle of Latin perquirere, "to search for eagerly," from per-, "through, thoroughly" + quaerere, "to seek." In
Middle English it meant "property acquired by means other than
inheritance." By 1565 it had acquired the sense "fringe benefit"; by 1721 it had also come to signify "a tip or
gratuity."

Synonyms: benefit, fringe benefit, gravy, perk, reward.

Front 4

quiddity

Back 4

1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.

Hint 4

He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their
wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow
--Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," [1]New York Times, October 30, 1998

So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of Japanese and of American literature.
--Ihab Hassan, "In the mirror of the sun: reflections on Japanese and American literature, Basho to Cage," [2]World Literature Today, March 1, 1995 Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the copiousness and quiddity of a personality --the self peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in unpredictable, evanescent talk.
--John Mullan, "Dreaming up the Doctor," [3]The Guardian,
November 11, 2000

It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical
quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or
arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn.
--Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"

She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits.
--John Brewer, [4]The Pleasures of the Imagination

I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had
promised to write and wondered how I would go about it --
his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students.
--Saul Bellow, [5]Ravelstein

Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what."

Front 5

cynosure

Back 5

1. Anything to which attention is strongly turned; a center of
attraction.
2. That which serves to guide or direct.
3. [Capitalized]. The northern constellation Ursa Minor, which contains the North Star; also, the North Star itself.

Hint 5

The monarch, at the apex of court power and centre of its
ritual, and the greatest patron of the arts, was the
cynosure of this culture, standing (or, more usually,
sitting) at the centre of a system of artistic practice
intended to represent his or her sacred omnipotence and
monopoly of power.
--John Brewer, [1]The Pleasures of the Imagination

Lucy is very pretty and becomes the cynosure not only of the aforementioned characters, but also of several faceless and epicene young men who also loiter about.
--John Simon, "Stealing Beauty," [2]National Review, July 15, 1996

Then, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye in the
library, he extemporized a brief speech on his "lucky day."
--Peter Schneider, [3]Eduard's Homecoming

Cynosure derives from Latin cynosura, from Greek kunosoura, "dog's tail, the constellation Ursa Minor," from kuon, kun-,
"dog" + oura, "tail."