I have always known Ravel as the french composer and orchestrator, known for "Bolero" and "Pictures at an Exhibition" among others. I agree, Boléro is a wonderful piece of music. I have to say, though, I think Modest Mussorgsky would quarrel with you over your attribution of his...

I have always known Ravel as the french composer and orchestrator, known for "Bolero" and "Pictures at an Exhibition" among others.

noun: the fraudulent appropriation of funds or property entrusted to your care but actually owned by someone else A topical word, actually seen in a job posting on the FDIC's web site as follows: Under law, FDIC may not employ any person who has: .... 3) demonstrated a pattern or practice of defalca...

our motto is "never put off till tomorrow what you can put off to the next day".

My motto is "Never put off till tomorrow what you can get out of doing altogether."

French inherited the word from Medieval Latin decadentia "decay, deterioration" It sounds like the Latin word for a cavity (as in tooth decay -- or caries as dentists are wont to say). On the other hand, decadence could be a state of being that takes 10 years to get into. An odd thing, la...

A different bail has a different etymology:
(etc.)

Stargzer, is this origin of bail related to the name of the little crossbar that sits on top of the wicket in the game of cricket?

Now that we have heard a bit of history from Stargzer and the erstwhile Dr. Language, perhaps we ought to return to our original subject.

(There must be a word for the uncontrollable urge to keep internet discussion threads on track -- how about antigoradigressomania?)

Gosh. I hope that you don't mean Anders from the other Agora!

You're not philandering on a different Agora, are you? I'm crushed. I thought we were the one and only.

From logophile to logophilanderer. Such a shame.

• parastatal • Now Congress has decided to create a similar parastatal to bail out Wall Street financial institutions. In this context, this word could be mistaken for peristaltic , which has to do with digestion, as in "the peristaltic agency responsible for swallowing up failed institutions....

• erstwhile •
While comes from Old English hwil, which goes back to an ancient root kwei- "to rest, be quiet".

I guess that sense is still available in the phrase "to while away."

I even saw it used this way in the WSJ in early August, in an article on the Russia/Georgia war.

I guess the WSJ's erstwhile grammarians are out looking for other work.

Wally, would try to convince the Pointy-haired Boss that he was leading a project to download images of flappers in action on company time to test network bandwidth limits and PC load capacity.

Hey, that could work!

In the midwest, I'm sure the DictionArroyo might be a popular tourist destination.

Certainly, dancing is by nature quasiperiodic. However; whereas in electronics, jitter is generally unwanted and we try to minimize it, in dance it is actually desirable.

I am not sure that anyone has attempted to quantify the jitter of a "flapper" in action.

It seems the usage of "jitter" as a singular noun is owned by electronics engineers. But the definition is usually understood as much more specific than the very general definition provided by onelook: noun : small rapid variations in a waveform resulting from fluctuations in the voltage s...