Word of the day

dottles wrote:

copacetic

Eddie used it at the Hyde Park gig, it means very or completely satisfactory....

Oh yeah, I heard that - but thought it was connected to dirty frank - 'Keeps it clean. a keeps it copeseptic'

Have no idea what either word means!! (until you just told me that one) How about 'Copaseptic'??

For a so-called 'High-School Drop-out' Ed certainly knows his words - over the years he's taught me so much - he is really deep conceptually - makes you think about how words are used and the power of that. This is at the heart of why I love PJ so much.

Can someone make me up a t-shirt up sayin "Eddie Vedder - Expanding Our Minds since 1991" !!?

A Pyrrhic victory (IPA: /ˈpɪrɪk/) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.[1]

In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone." While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor, such as the USFL v. NFL lawsuit.

Sian-of-the-dead wrote:

Vainglorious

Ooh, get you!
Another one to look up (I knew pyrrhic)

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vain·glo·ry
   
/ˈveɪnˌglɔri, -
–noun
1.
excessive elation or pride over one's own achievements, abilities, etc.; boastful vanity.
(sounds a bit like myself!)
2.
empty pomp or show.
Origin:

c.1300, "worthless glory," waynglori , from O.Fr. vaine glorie , from M.L. vana gloria (see vain + glory). Related: Vainglorious .

trem-uh-loh]
–noun, plural -los. Music .

1.
a tremulous or vibrating effect produced on certain instruments and in the human voice, as to express emotion.
2.
a mechanical device in an organ by which such an effect is produced.

Origin:
1715–25; < It: trembling < L tremulus tremulous


tremolo arm
— n
a metal lever attached to the bridge of an electric guitar, used to vary the pitch of a played note

Lizard wrote:

Triskaidekaphobia

what the hell does that mean??!

Something about being phobic of the number 13?