Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Good words to have


(Latin) Perire: to perish, to be destroyed

To abash is to shake up someone's self-confidence or self-possession. English speakers have been using abashed to describe feelings of embarrassment since the 14th century, but they have only used unabashed (brazenly or otherwise) since the late 1500s. Both words can be traced back to the Anglo-French word abair, meaning "to astonish."

(Latin) Vanitas: vanity, emptiness, aimlessness

Concatenate (kahn-KAT-uh-nayt) To link together in a series or chain. Concatenate comes directly from Latin concatenare, which in turn is formed from con-, meaning "with" or "together," and catena, meaning "chain." (The word chain itself also evolved from catena.) Concatenate has a somewhat longer history as an adjective, meaning "linked together," than as a verb. The adjective first appeared in English in the 15th century and the verb wasn't in use until more than a century later. Catenate, a verb in its own right meaning "to link in a series," had also arrived on the scene by the early 17th century.

Torpedo can be traced back to the Latin verb torpēre, meaning "to be sluggish or numb." In Latin torpedo literally meant "stiffness" or "numbness." Torpedo was also the name given in Latin to the fish known as the electric ray, and it was as a name for the fish that torpedo first entered English. During the Napoleonic Wars, the American inventor Robert Fulton experimented with an explosive charge for use against warships which he called a "torpedo" (and which we would now refer to as a mine) after the electric ray's ability to incapacitate creatures with an electrical discharge. Fulton was also the inventor of the Nautilus, an early hand-powered submarine which was one of the precursors of the vessels that would deliver the more familiar cigar-shaped torpedoes with such devastating effects during the 20th century's two World Wars.

(Latin) Brevior: Brief, shorter, smaller, too short


Skosh: A small amount, bit, smidgen. The word skosh comes from the Japanese word sukoshi, which is pronounced "skoh shee" and means "a tiny bit" or "a small amount." The Japanese word was shortened by U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan after World War II. Later, in the Korean War, a small soldier was often nicknamed Skosh.