51吃瓜 of the Day
fiddlesticks
interjection
(used to express impatience, dismissal, etc.)
More about fiddlesticks
Fiddlesticks originally was the plural of fiddlestick, 鈥渢he bow used to play a violin or fiddle,鈥� which dates to the first half of the 15th century. By the second half of the 18th century, the phrase 蹿颈诲诲濒别蝉迟颈肠办鈥檚 end meant 鈥渘othing鈥� (a fiddlestick ends in a point); 蹿颈诲诲濒别蝉迟颈肠办鈥檚 end, reduced also to fiddlestick and fiddlesticks, was used as an expression of mild annoyance or dismissal.
how is fiddlesticks used?
Otho would have been Bilbo’s heir, but for the adoption of Frodo. He read the will carefully and snorted. It was, unfortunately, very clear and correct (according to the legal customs of hobbits, which demand among other things seven signatures of witnesses in red ink). 鈥淔oiled again!鈥� he said to his wife. 鈥淎nd after waiting sixty years. Spoons? Fiddlesticks!鈥澛�
In her nineties, flying into Washington on the president’s private airplane on Mother’s Day, she took in the crowd of well-wishers at the airport and announced, “Oh, fiddlesticks, if I’d known there was going to be all this fuss, I wouldn’t have come.”
fiddlesticks
dissilient
adjective
bursting apart; bursting open.
More about dissilient
Dissilient, 鈥渂ursting apart or open,鈥� is primarily a botanical term referring to ripe pods or capsules of some plants bursting apart. Dissilient comes from Latin 诲颈蝉蝉颈濒颈脓苍蝉 (inflectional stem dissilient-), the present participle of 诲颈蝉蝉颈濒墨谤别, 鈥渢o leap apart,鈥� a compound of the prefix dis– 鈥渁part, asunder, away鈥� and –蝉颈濒墨谤别, a derivative of the simple verb 蝉补濒墨谤别 鈥渢o leap, jump, spurt.鈥� Dissilient entered English in the second half of the 17th century.
how is dissilient used?
Dissilient as milkweed, deprived of cohesion, I am a blown surface.
The court was dissilient, generationally fractured, mannered (as it were) by an increasingly impatient and acquisitive nobility.
dissilient
picaresque
adjective
of, relating to, or resembling rogues.
More about picaresque
The English adjective picaresque, 鈥減ertaining to or resembling rogues,鈥� is modeled on Spanish picaresco 鈥減ertaining to or resembling a 辫铆肠补谤辞鈥� (i.e., a rogue or vagabond), which first appears in print in Spanish in 1569. Picaresque in the sense 鈥減ertaining to a kind of narrative fiction鈥� first appears in print in English in 1810; Spanish picaresco in the same sense appears in 1836. The etymology of 辫铆肠补谤辞 is contested: it may come from the verb picar 鈥渢o prick, pierce,鈥� from Vulgar Latin 辫颈肠肠腻谤别, and be related to Latin 辫墨肠耻蝉 鈥渨辞辞诲辫别肠办别谤.鈥� 笔铆肠补谤辞 first appears in print in Spanish in the first half of the 16th century in the phrase 辫铆肠补谤辞 de cozina 鈥渒itchen knave鈥�; it was not a literary term. 笔铆肠补谤辞 in the sense 鈥渉ero of a genre of novel鈥� first appears in English in the first half of the 17th century.
how is picaresque used?
Ronnie Cornwell was a picaresque, forceful, charming, world-class con man, and he is the obsession of his famous son to this day.
The author … has composed meticulous biographies of each of the complete Gutenberg Bibles that have come down to us. Many have led picaresque lives. Harvard鈥檚 copy was briefly stolen, in 1969, by a troubled young man who smashed its glass encasement, took the book, climbed out a window, and knocked himself unconscious when he fell to the ground.
picaresque