F2T
(chat) free to talk

FAQ
(web) frequently asked questions

FITB
(chat) fill in the blank

FWIW
(chat) for what it's worth

FYI
(web, chat) for your information

Fanny Adams

• S.f.a.
• Sweet FA
• Sweet Fanny Adams
• Fanny
• Adams
• FA
• Sweet

1. nothing; 2. very little; next to nothing Etymology: Initialism of "Sweet Fuck-All".
Synonyms:
S.f.a., Sweet FA, Sweet Fanny Adams

Few and far between

• Few
• far
• between

When something is "few and far between", it means that it is rare or not easily available.
Example: There used to be many porpoises in the Pacific Ocean, but excessive hunting and drift net fishing have made them few and far between. They may even become extinct.

Fish or cut bait

• fish
• cut bait
• cut
• bait

To start the main assignment or continue with the preparations; do one thing or another, but stop delaying; make a choice; act now or give someone else a turn.
Example:
Are you using that microscope or not? Fish or cut bait.
Etymology:
This idiom, popular since the 1800s, is a metaphor that refers to a person who holds a fishing rod but doesn't fish. Someone else could use that rod and catch some fish. The procrastinator might be asked to either drop the line into the water and fish, or cut the bait from the line and let another angler have a chance.

Freecycle

• Freecycling

What do you do with all the stuff you collect that you no longer want but which is too good to throw away? At one time you might have given it to some charity; these days you could sell the more presentable items on eBay, but a new alternative is to freecycle it. The process is named freecycling. The only rule, strictly enforced, is that no money must change hands and there must be no bartering.
Examples:
1) In the face-to-face world, it's often hard to find that deserving person who needs your specific load of useless castoffs. Enter the Internet, which not only makes such networking easy but also has long been suffused with an ethic that promotes gift giving. Since May, the Freecycle concept has exploded, spreading from city to city with the speed of a grass (roots) fire. (From "Salon", 25 Nov. 2003)
2) A couple of freecycling abuses have been identified. Illegal drug paraphernalia has turned up on some sites across the country, and donated items occasionally are snatched up for resale elsewhere by visitors exploiting the free-for-all spirit of the arrangement. (From the "Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service", 26 Jan. 2004)




Freedom fries

• Freedom fry
• French fry
• French fries
• Freedom
• fries
• fry
• French

Nowdays, the ADS members have come up with "freedom", replacing "French" in "French fries".
Example:
I went to McDonald's and ordered freedom fries but they said they didn't know what I was talking about and I pretended to freak out at them and call them unpatriotic...
Synonym:
French fries - a thin strip of potato fried in deep fat. Often used in the plural.
Etymology:
The new expression appeared as the part of a pathetic attempt to reduce France's status, because the country didn't support the USA war in Iraq.


Freedom kiss

• French kiss
• French
• freedom
• kiss

Nowdays, the ADS members have come up with "freedom", replacing "French" in "French kiss".
Example:
The cafeteria menus at the three House office buildings will change the item "French fries" to "Freedom fries" and "French toast" to "Freedom toast". The decision was spearheaded by two Republicans. What's next - the "Freedom kiss?"
Synonym:
French kiss - a kiss in which the tongue enters the partner's mouth.
Etymology:
The new expression appeared as the part of a pathetic attempt to reduce France's status, because the country didn't support the USA war in Iraq.

Freedom toast

• Freedom toast
• French toast
• Freedom
• toast
• French

Nowdays, the ADS members have come up with "freedom", replacing "French" in "French toast".
Example:
The cafeteria menus at the three House office buildings will change the item "French fries" to "Freedom fries" and "French toast" to "Freedom toast". The decision was spearheaded by two Republicans. What's next - the "Freedom kiss?"
Synonym:
French toast - sliced bread soaked in a batter of milk and egg and lightly fried.
Etymology:
The new expression appeared as the part of a pathetic attempt to reduce France's status, because the country didn't support the USA war in Iraq.

Fwd
(web) forward

face the music

• face
• music
• pay the piper
• carry the can
• take one's medicine
• pay
• piper
• carry
• can
• take
• medicine

To endure the consequences of one's actions; to accept the unpleasant consequences of one's previous actions; to take what you have coming to you.
Example:
He is going to have to face the music sooner or later.
History:
This American saying was common in the mid-1800s. There are two theories about its origin. It could have come from the world of theater. Sometimes an audience didn't like a show. It took courage for a performer to stand on the stage and face the hostile audience and also the orchestra pit ("the music"). This idiom could also have come from the military world. If a soldier did something dishonorable, he was often dismissed from the army as the band played, "facing the music."
Synonyms:
pay the piper, carry the can, take one's medicine


faction
[FAK-shuhn]
1. A usually contentious or self-seeking group within a larger group, party, government, etc.
2. Party strife and intrigue; internal dissension.
Examples:
1) For most of his colleagues, Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, who had succeeded Khrushchev as First (later General) Secretary, was a far more reassuring figure -- affable, lightweight and patient in reconciling opposing factions, though skillful in outmaneuvering his political rivals. (Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, "The Sword and the Shield")
2) Leaders of the party's reform faction, decisively defeated for top posts, have not heeded the call for post-election unity. ("El Salvador: Orthodox Faction Holds on to Power in the FMLN," NotiCen, December 6, 2001)
3) As Madison wrote in Federalist no. 10, the purpose of the Constitution was to constrain special interest politics, or what he called "the violence of faction." (James T. Bennett and Thomas J. Di Lorenzo, "CancerScam")
4) While Britannia Triumphans opened with a scene in which rebellious citizens of past reigns are dispelled by Heroic Virtue, faction, disorder and rebellion were much harder to deal with in British society. (John Brewer, "The Pleasures of the Imagination")
Etymology:
"Faction" comes from Latin "factio, faction-", from the past participle of "facere" ("to do, to make").


factoid
[FAK-toyd]
1. An invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print.
2. A briefly stated and usually trivial fact
Example:
The show consists of entertainment news interspersed with video factoids about Hollywood stars.
History:
We can thank Norman Mailer for the word "factoid"; he coined the term in his 1973 book "Marilyn", about Marilyn Monroe. In the book, Mailer explains that factoids are "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." In creating his coinage, Mailer relied on "-oid," a suffix that traces back to the ancient Greek word "eidos," meaning "appearance" or "form." Mailer followed in a long tradition when he chose "-oid"; English speakers have been making words from "-oid" since at least the 17th century.


faineant
[fay-nay-AWN, fay-nay-AHNG] (the final "NG" is not pronounced, but the vowel is nasalized)
1. Doing nothing or given to doing nothing; ineffectual.
Synonyms: idle; lazy; indolent.
2. A do-nothing; an idle fellow.
Synonym: sluggard.
1) Yet if nonhunters ever knew how many properly dressed, entirely palatable big-game carcasses wind up in dumpsters because someone was simply too faineant to butcher and cook and eat an animal he could find the time and energy to shoot and kill, hunting would be in even greater jeopardy than it is today. (Thomas McIntyre, "The meaning of meat," Sports Afield, August 1, 1997)
2) According to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Charles II was no faineant half-wit but a conscientious and reflective king. (David Gilmour, "The falsity of 'true Spain,'" The Spectator, July 22, 2000)
3) A faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something. (Anthony Trollope, "Phineas Finn")
4) David preferred a life of faineant self-indulgence to the pressures of a career, and his inheritance made such a life possible.
Etymology, more synonyms:
"Faineant" is from French, from Middle French "fait-nient", which literally means "does nothing," and ultimately traces back to the verb "faindre," or "feindre," meaning "to feign." (The English word "feign" is also descended from this verb, as are "faint" and "feint.") "Faineant" first appeared in print in the early 17th century as a noun meaning "an irresponsible idler," and by 1854 it was also being used an adjective. As its foreignness suggests, "faineant" tends to be used when the context calls for a fancier or more elegant word than "inactive" or "sluggish."


fair-weather friend

• fair-weather
• friend
• a friend in need
• friend in need
• a friend in need is a friend indeed
• need
• indeed

A friends who cannot be depended on in difficult times; a person who is a friend only when one is successful; a person who is a faithful friend only when everything is going well but who deserts you in time of difficulty.
Examples:
1) He is a fair-weather friend only and you can`t rely on him if you have a problem.
2) You can't count on Liz to help you when you're in trouble. She's just a fair-weather friend.
History, antonym:
It's good when the weather is fair and lovely, with blue skies and mild breezes. It's bad when the weather turns foul. Apply the same idea to a friendship and you can see where this idiom came from. A fair-weather (good-time only) friend is the opposite of "a friend in need" (time of trouble).



fait accompli

• fait
• accompli

[fay-tah-kom-PLEE; fet-ah-kom-PLEE] (pl. faits accomplis [same or -PLEEZ])
An accomplished and presumably irreversible deed or fact.
Examples:
1) In 1991, with German reunification a fait accompli and the European Community striding toward full political and economic integration, the future had seemed extraordinarily bright. (Richard K. Lester, "The Productive Edge")
2) Olga, strict and tradition-minded, marries a man her father has found for her in Greece: she accepts the choice as a fait accompli, and falls in love with him on sight. (Michiko Kakutani, "After 'Eleni,' Life of a Woman's Children in America", New York Times, October 17, 1989)
3) To argue that Napoleon could have acted differently at Borodino is a meaningless wrestle with a fait accompli. (James Wood, "The Broken Estate")
Etymology:
"Fait accompli" comes from the French, literally meaning "accomplished fact": "fait", from Latin "factum" ("a thing done"), from "factus", past participle of "facere" ("to make or do") + "accompli", past participle of "accomplir", from Latin "ad-" + "complere" ("to fill up, to complete"), from "com-" + "plere" ("to fill").


faith
1. Belief (in a particular thing or person); "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable" (H. L. Mencken)
2. Religion.
3. Trust, confidence.
4. Fidelity to one's promises; allegiance to duty, or to a person honored and beloved. Synonym: loyalty.
5. Word or honor pledged; promise given.
Example:
He violated his faith. Synonym: fidelity.
6. That which is believed on any subject, whether in science, politics, or religion; especially (theol.), a system of religious belief of any kind, as, the jewish or mohammedan faith; the system of truth taught by christ; as, the christian faith; also, the creed or belief of a christian society or church.
Example:
Which to believe of her, must be a faith that reason without miracle could never plant in me.
7. credibility or truth.
Example:
The faith of the foregoing narrative was absolute.
Etymology, quotations about faith:
"Faith" - c.1250, "duty of fulfilling one's trust," from O.Fr. "feid", from L. "fides" - "trust, belief," from root of "fidere" - "to trust," from PIE base *bhidh-/*bhoidh- (cf. Gk. "pistis"). Theological sense is from 1382; religions called faiths since c.1300.
According to Mencken: "A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill." However, Francis Bacon wrote: "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." (From "Of Atheism" ) An interviewer in the "Atlantic Monthly" (from "Atlantic Unbound", May 20, 2004 - "The Universe Made Simple") posed the following question to physicist Brian Green: "As you study all this [String Theory] in depth, do you find yourself moving toward religion or away from religion?"
The answer was: "It's hard to say. It really depends on what one's definition of religion is. Some people define religion in a rather abstract way, as the order and the harmony and the wonder of the universe. And from that point of view, yes, string theory is revealing great order, great harmony, and great beauty. So if you define religion in that way, then we are going toward it... But if you use a more conventional notion of religion, which involves some divine being that set all things up, I think the best we can say is that string theory has nothing to say about it one way or another... We can't ever rule a divine being out using science, because the divine being, of course, could have set it up so that we could discover what we have but see no direct imprint of the work of that divine being... My own feeling, therefore, is that if we are revealing God's handiwork through our research, I'm happy to be part of that journey. If, on the other hand, all we're doing is revealing laws of physics that have governed the universe from the beginning until today, then I'm happy to be part of that journey, too. So whichever framework it fits into, I think the work itself is noble and interesting and very, very worthwhile."



fall for

• fall

1. To become infatuated with somebody; to develop intense feelings for someone.
Example: I think I fell for that cute guy I met last night.
2. To be fooled; to believe a false story.
Example: You didn't fall for that advertisement about making money on the Internet, did you?


fallible

• fallacy

[FAL-uh-bul]
1. liable to be erroneous
2. capable of making a mistake
Example:
As a little girl, Lucy idolized her father and believed he was always right, but as she got older, she realized that he was a fallible person who made mistakes like everyone else.
Etymology, related words:
"Fallible" derives from Medieval Latin "fallibilis", from Latin "fallere" - "to deceive." It is related to "fail", "false" (from "falsum", the past participle of "fallere"), "fallacy" ("a false notion"), "fault" (from Old French "falte", from "fallere"), and "faucet" (from Old Proven?al "falsar" - "to falsify, to create a fault in, to bore through," from "fallere").
"Errare humanum est." That Latin expression translates into English as "To err is human". Of course, cynics might say that it is also human to deceive. The word "fallible" simultaneously recognizes both of these human character flaws. In modern usage, it refers to one's ability to err. "Fallible" has been used to describe the potential for error since at least the 15th century.


fanfic

• fan fiction
• fanfiction
• fan fic
• fic

Also: fan fic, fan fiction, fanfiction
Fiction written by fans as an extension of an admired work or series of works, especially a television show, often posted on the Internet or published in fanzines; fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters.
Examples:
1) Real Person Fiction (RPF) is a type of fan fiction featuring celebrities or other real people.
2) & the books have become a vehicle for a worldwide outburst of collective storytelling. & author J.K. Rowling has opened the door for fans to imagine for themselves how it will develop, and theyve seized the opportunity & Entire websites are devoted to passionate Potter plot discussions and "fanfic." ("Dallas Morning News", 15th July 2005)
3) & fans of the boy wizard may be getting desperate for some fresh adventures from the gang at Hogwarts & Help is at hand in the form of fan fiction. In this curious literary genre that is flourishing on the net, fans of a particular book, TV series or film write their own stories & ("The Guardian", 5th December 2002)
Etymology:
"Fan" + "fiction" = "fanfiction" = "fanfic". As a matter of historical interest, it should be noted that in the pre-1965 era, the term "fan fiction" was used in science fiction fandom to designate science fiction written by members of fandom and published in fanzines, as distinguished from fiction professionally published; this usage is now obsolete.




fanzine

• fanac

An amateur or semi-professional magazine published by members of science fiction fandom or others.
Example:
The term "fan fiction" was used in science fiction fandom to designate science fiction written by members of fandom and published in fanzines.
Etymology:
The phenomenon has existed from the 1930s to the present day. Those magazines were the earliest form of a science fiction fanzine, and at one time constituted the primary form of science-fictional fannish activity ("fanac").
The term 'fanzine' is now also used, by extension, to refer to fan-created magazines in other areas; the earliest rock-and-roll fanzines were edited by science fiction fans. A significant fraction of modern computer/Web/Internet slang, abbreviations, etc. is derived from the jargon of the fanzine fans.
The fanzine movement is now well represented on the Web, see webzines.


farrago
[fuh-RAH-go; fuh-RAY-go]
(Plural farragoes) A confused mixture; an assortment; a medley.
Examples:
1) Ivan Illich writes "a farrago of sub-Marxist cliches, false analogies, non sequiturs, false or bent facts and weird prophesies." ("The Paul Johnson Enemies List," New York Times, September 18, 1977)
2) Roy Hattersley will upset much of Scotland by calling Walter Scott's lvanhoe "a farrago of historical nonsense combined with maudlin romance." ("Literary classics panned by critics," Independent, January 18, 1999)
3) From the moment the story of the Countess of Wessex and the Sheikh of Wapping broke, there has been a farrago of rumour, speculation and fantasy of which virtually every newspaper should be ashamed. (Roy Greenslade, "A sting in the tale," The Guardian, April 9, 2001)
Etymology:
"Farrago" comes from the Latin "farrago" ("a mixed fodder for cattle," hence "a medley, a hodgepodge"), from "far" (a kind of grain).


fashion statement

• fashion
• statement

Stylish or unusual clothing; clothes that cannot be ignored or overlooked.
Example: That new suit of yours is quite a fashion statement!
Etymology: 'Fashion' refers to the latest styles in clothes, and 'statement' means that the clothes are so bold that they speak for themselves.

fast food

• junk food
• fast
• food
• junk

Quickly prepared food, usually served by large chains such as McDonalds.
Example:
I'm sick of McDonalds - can't we have something besides fast food for a change?
Etymology: 'Fast' means quick, and 'food' is anything you can eat. 'Fast food' is food you order and get in a minute or two, without having to sit and wait for it.
Synonym: junk food


fat cat

• fat
• cat
• big shot
• big wig
• big
• shot
• wig
• VIP
• tycoon

1. A very wealthy person (who donates large sums of money to political campaigns).
Example:
Maybe we can get some fat cats to contribute money for the new gym.
Etymology: Cats that are well-fed and cared for are seldom skinny; hence, a person living the good life is a fat cat.
2. A person who has great wealth and power; a distinguished or important person.
Examples:
1) Many of the city's fat cats eat at that steak restaurant on First Avenue.
2) Those fat cats in Washington are going to keep pressuring Congress to pass the tax bill.
Etymology:
This term comes from the 1920s, when it was used to describe wealthy contributors to American political parties. "Fat" described both the size of their waistlines (because they could afford big meals) and the size of their wallets (stuffed with money). Where did "cat" come from? It rhymes with "fat", and rhyming sounds often help a saying become popular.
Synonyms:
big shot, big wig, VIP, tycoon.
3. Affluent, wealthy, rich; fancy, luxurious.
Examples:
1) I've never seen him driving any of those fat-cat cars.
2) I just have a bank account. No fat-cat investments.


fat finger syndrome

• fat-fingered
• fat finger
• syndrome
• fat
• finger
• fat fingering
• fingering
• fingered
• have fat fingers
• with fat fingers

Noun: fat finger syndrome
Accidentally pressing the wrong button when entering details on a computer keyboard.
Noun: fat finger
Any typo that produces dramatically bad results.
Noun: fat fingering
1. The process by which one makes an excuse for a typo (the keys are too close and his/her fingers are too fat).
2. Data entry.
Adjective: fat-fingered
1. Accidentally pressed; mistaken.
2. Two left feet; awkward.
Verb:
To introduce a typo while editing in such a way that the resulting manglification of a configuration file does something useless, damaging, or wildly unexpected.
Examples:
1) It is known as fat finger syndrome  the occasional tendency of stressed traders working in fast-moving electronic financial markets to press the wrong button on their keyboard and, in the process, lose their employer a mint& (The Guardian, 9th December 2005) 2) I am the fat-fingered fool who, overconfident of her online skills, recently tried to order one litre of goats milk but ended up with five& (The Telegraph, 20th December 2005) 3) Many reasons have been given for Londons victory in the race to host the 2012 Olympics& It seems a technophobic Greek sports administrator with fat fingers may have been Londons secret, albeit accidental, weapon. (The Guardian, 23rd December 2005)
4) NSI fat-fingered their DNS zone file and took half the net down again.
More examples, history, related expressions:
With the computer now an integral part of everyday life, but a good percentage of the computer-using population having no formal typing skills, the concept of frequently typing the wrong thing and having to correct it is something were all familiar with. It now seems weve got a description for this daily keyboard phenomenon: fat finger syndrome. If were not just creating text but using the keyboard to enter and submit details, fat finger syndrome can have significant repercussions. Some of us who enjoy the convenience of online supermarket shopping might already be familiar with fat finger syndrome. Sixteen cans of beans arrive at our door, and as we come to terms with the situation, we realise that we must have accidentally selected four multipacks of four cans, instead of four individual cans. Never mind, thatll keep us going for a while!
But the consequences of fat finger syndrome in financial contexts can be rather more serious. In December 2005, fat finger syndrome was responsible for one of the most spectacular financial errors in history, when a share dealer on the Tokyo stock exchange pressed the wrong button on his computer and landed his firm with a bill for £128,000,000. The Japanese trader meant to sell one share in a recruitment company for 600,000 yen  about £3000. But a typing error meant he sold 600,000 shares at a price of one yen, or around half a penny! The significance of fat finger syndrome is not just restricted to financial transactions. In December 2005, it was alleged that Londons victory in hosting the 2012 Olympics was partly attributable to a member of the International Olympic Committee pressing the wrong button during a crucial third-round vote.
One enterprising website offers a clever way to take advantage of fat fingers. If you're bidding on the auction site eBay <http://www.ebay.com>, you can use fatfingers.com <http://www.fatfingers.com> to search for bargains that few other people will find and bid for because of spelling mistakes in the descriptions of the articles that are on sale. The expression fat finger syndrome seems to have originated from the jargon of computer programming, where the term fat finger (also spelled "fat-finger") is used as a transitive verb to describe the action of introducing a typing error which has very bad or unexpected results. Though the verb "fat finger" has spread to contexts other than computer programming, the related participle adjective "fat-fingered" is more common as a way of describing significant typing errors, or someone who makes them. Use of the expression "fat fingers" is also quite common, usually occurring as "have fat fingers" or "with fat fingers", and an instance of "fat finger syndrome" is sometimes referred to as "a fat finger".
And here is the history of how "fat fingering" has come to be defined as "data entry". During a conference call one techie asks another techie why X was A when it clearly should have been B. The techie being questioned responded - "sorry, I fat fingered it". A very non-techie who is fond of sounding cool, hip, and "in the know" is listening trying to pick up some vocabulary in hopes of sounding more knowledgeable than reality. He makes the conclusion that the error came from manual data entry (fat fingering) since the conversation just preceding it was how to automate the data ingestion process. Time passes... This non-techie happens to also very social politically rubbing elbows every chance they get. Using the term incorrectly, others in high places begin to use it as well. Another conference call where the aforementioned non-techie is not present. A techie complains about the automated input feed being broken. A manager indicates that the deadline can not slip and that the techie is to fat-finger it if need be. The techie says "you want me to do what?". The manager thinking his authority is being called into question indicates that if the techie is not willing to do a little menial labor and enter that data in manually - they can look for work elsewhere. All of the techies do not want to have the wraith directed their way and steer clear of correcting the manager. Time passes... Another conference call - mixture of participants. The techies so want to please their superiors that they begin intentionally incorrectly using the term so that the managers feel cool, hip, and "in the know". Nowadays, "fat fingering" sometimes means any data cleaning/massaging/transformation/standardization.


fat tax

• fat food tax
• fatty food tax
• junk food tax
• obesity tax
• Twinkie tax
• Twinkie
• obesity
• junk
• fatty
• fat
• tax
• food

A tax imposed on foods that are deemed to be unhealthy, particularly those that contribute to obesity and other health problems.
Examples:
1) Ontario has backed off a so-called fat tax on doughnuts, burgers and other meals under $4, saying paying more for fast food would not encourage people to make healthier choices. (Keith Leslie, "McGuinty rules out so-called fat tax after protest from restaurant industry", The Canadian Press, April 20, 2004)
2) A recent study in the British Medical Journal, found that a "fat tax" could help prevent up to 1,000 premature deaths from heart disease a year in the UK. The plan will be welcomed by the British Medical Association, which last year debated a call for a tax on saturated fats to tackle obesity. GPs argued that the tax would help to cover the high cost of treating obesity and might change people's behaviour. (David Charter and Sam Lister, "Junk food under attack by fat tax", The Times (London), February 19, 2004)
3) Smoking is indeed a costly health problem. But so, for example, are obesity and overindulgence in artery-clogging foods. Should there then be a "fat" tax to help pay for the diseases brought on by bad eating habits? ("Socking it to smokers", Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1985)
History, synonyms:
The fat tax - a subset of the "sin tax" (1901) - has been proposed and implemented in many jurisdictions over the past 20 years or so. It has also appeared under different names over the years, the most popular of which are "fat food tax" (1995), "fatty food tax" (1994), "junk food tax" (1981), "obesity tax" (1993), and "Twinkie tax" (1989).


fatidic
[fuh-TID-ik]
Of, relating to, or characterized by prophecy.
Synonym: prophetic.
Examples:
1) Throughout his very considerable body of work, there is an obsession with time, with dates, with temporal coincidences, with the fatidic power of numbers over our birth and death. (James Kirkup, "Obituary: Ernst Junger," Independent, February 18, 1998)
2) With a fatidic clarity that comes only occasionally and only to the young, she understood that... this too was a sign, an omen. (Kathleen Cambor, "In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden")
Etymology:
"Fatidic" comes from Latin "fatidicus", from "fati-" (from "fatum" - "fate") + "-dicus" (from "dicere" - "to say").


fatuous
[FACH-oo-uhs] 1. Inanely foolish and unintelligent; stupid. 2. Illusory; delusive.
Examples:
1) Publishers persist in the fatuous belief that a little hocus-pocus in the front flap blurb will so dazzle readers that they'll be too dazed to notice the quality of what's on the pages inside. ("A night in the city", Irish Times, October 7, 1997)
2) No enquiry, however fatuous or ill informed, failed to receive his full attention, nor was any irrelevant personal information treated as less than engrossing. (Michael Palin, "Hemingway's Chair")
3) A British first amendment would support religious freedom by having nothing to do with Prince Charles's fatuous hope to be the 'defender of all the faiths', but by disestablishing the Church of England. (Nick Cohen, "Damn them all", The Observer, October 7, 2001)
Etymology:
"Fatuous" comes from Latin "fatuus" ("foolish, idiotic, silly").


favonian

• Favonius
• Zephyrus

Pertaining to the west wind; soft; mild; gentle.
Examples:
1) With dusk came cool, favonian breezes. (Ed Darack, "Wind, Water, Sun")
2) As God said to Adam on one of those favonian edenic days, "Pick a bone, any bone". (Norah Labiner, "Our Sometime Sister")
Etymology:
"Favonian" is derived from Latin "Favonius" - "the west wind". Favonius was the Roman god of the gentle western wind, the herald of spring. Favonius ("favorable") is equal to the Greek Zephyrus.


fealty

• loyalty

[FEE-uhl-tee]
1. Fidelity to one's lord; the feudal obligation by which the tenant or vassal was bound to be faithful to his lord.
2. The oath by which this obligation was assumed.
3. (Intense) fidelity; allegiance; faithfulness.
Examples:
1) He was re-elected Governor in 1855, and his administration of the State affairs, both in that and the preceding term of office, was marked by a regard for the public interest rather than party fealty. ("Andrew Johnson Dead," New York Times, August 1, 1875)
2) Barbour believed Christian conservatives represented a critical constituency, and he looked for opportunities to display his fealty to them. (Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein, "Storming the Gates")
3) The aristocratic O'Sullivans were enriched in return for their promise of fealty to the mighty Democratic party and its rising new leader. (Edward L. Widmer, "Young America")
4) Whether exploited by traditional religions or political religions, psychological totalism - the unquestioning fealty to one God, one truth, and one right, embodied in one faith, one cause, one party - has everywhere provided the tinder of persecution. (Jack Beatty, "The Tyranny of Belief," The Atlantic, September 13, 2000)
5) Out of fealty to his boss, who had hired him after no other employer would, Jesse stayed on with the struggling company.
Etymology, more examples, synonyms:
"Fealty" comes from Old French "feelte," or "fealte", "from Latin "fidelitas" ("fidelity"), from "fidelis" ("faithful"), from "fides" ("faith"), from "fidere" ("to trust").
In 1626, Francis Bacon wrote, "Fealty is to take an oath upon a book, that he will be a faithful Tenant to the King." That's a pretty accurate summary of the early meaning of "fealty." Early forms of the term were used in Middle English around 1300, when they specifically designated the loyalty of a vassal to a lord. Eventually, the meaning of the word broadened. Fealty can be paid to a country, a principle, or a leader of any kind - though the synonyms "fidelity" and "loyalty" are more commonly used.


feast or famine

• feast
• famine

Great success or total failure; either too much or too little of something.
Example:
Last week we made over $100 on our car wash; this week only one car came. It's either feast or famine.
History:
This catchy phrase suggests the opposites of having too much or too little of something. "Feast" and "famine" are antonyms and also begin with the same sound (alliteration). This expression started out as "feast or fast" in the 1700s, but later "fast" was changed to "famine", which means about the same thing but doesn't sound as good with "feast". Why the switch of words? Nobody today really knows.


feather in your cap

• a feather in your cap
• a feather in one's cap
• feather in one's cap
• feather
• cap

This expression indicates a person has done something to make him or her proud. Example:
Camille loved to play the violin. She practiced every day. One day during orchestra rehearsal, the string section was playing a piece that Camille had practiced carefully. "Camille, let me hear that measure again," said the orchestra conductor. Camille played the measure perfectly. "Beautiful!" the conductor said. "You deserve to be first chair in next week's concert. That will be a feather in your cap."

feather one's nest

• feather one's own nest
• feather
• nest

To enrich oneself by taking advantage of one's position; to be more interested in taking care of oneself, providing for one's own comfort, and making money rather than doing good for others.
Examples:
1) The congressmen feathered his nest through his connection with big business.
2) The senator was accused of using his office to feather his own nest.
History:
For millions of years birds have been lining their nests with soft feathers to make comfortable homes. Since the 1500s the expression "feather one's nest" has been used to refer to greedy people who use the power of high positions to make life comfortable for themselves before they think of the well-being of others. The saying can also be used in a more positive way to mean decorating your home to make it more pleasant and comfortable.


febrile

• feverish

[FEB-ryle]
Marked or caused by fever.
Synonym: feverish.
Example:
He discovered febrile symptoms, and ... all farther resistance became in vain; and she was glad to acquiesce, and even to go to bed, and drink water-gruel. (Sir Walter Scott, "The Heart of Midlothian")
History, related words and expressions:
Not too surprisingly, "febrile" originated in the field of medicine. We note its first use in the work of the 17th-century medical reformer Noah Biggs. Biggs used it in admonishing physicians to care for their "febrile patients" properly. Both "feverish" and "febrile" are from the Latin word for "fever," which is "febris." Nowadays, "febrile" is used in medicine in a variety of ways, including references to such things as "the febrile phase" of an illness. And, like "feverish," it also has an extended sense, as in "a febrile emotional state."


fecund

• fruitfu
• fertile
• prolific
• fecundity

[FEH-kund, FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd]
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive (to a marked degree).
Examples:
1) For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two every three years - eight boys and six girls in all. (Saul David, "Prince of Pleasure)
2) In her first novel she portrays a lush, fecund landscape palpable in its sultriness and excess. (Barbara Crossette, "Seeking Nirvana," New York Times, April 29, 2001)
3) Miss Ozick can convert any skeptic to the cult of her shrewd and fecund imagination. (Edmund White, "Images of a Mind Thinking," New York Times, September 11, 1983)
4) Wainscott's book is ... focused squarely and surely on probably the most astonishingly fecund period in American theater history, 1914-1929. (James Coakley, "Comparative Drama")
5) The phonograph and the electric light were but two of the fruits of Thomas Edison's fecund mind.
Synonyms: fruitfu, fertile, prolific
"Fecund" and its synonyms "fruitful" and "fertile" all mean producing or capable of producing offspring or fruit - literally or figuratively. "Fecund" applies to things that yield offspring, fruit, or results in abundance or with rapidity ("a fecund herd"; "a fecund imagination"). "Fruitful" emphasizes abundance, too, and often adds the implication that the results attained are desirable or useful ("fruitful plains"; "a fruitful discussion"). "Fertile" implies the power to reproduce ("a fertile woman") or the power to assist in reproduction, growth, or development ("fertile soil"; "a fertile climate for artists").
Etymology:
"Fecund" - from the Latin "fecundus" (minus the final "-us"), meaning "fruitful, prolific". The noun form is fecundity.


feel one's oats

• feel
• oat
• oats

To be in high spirits, energetic; to act in a proud way.
Example:
Ms. Blumenthal was dancing, laughing, and feeling her oats.
History:
This American expression from the early 19th century originated when a writer noticed that his horse always acted more lively and vigorous when it was well-fed with oats. The writer applied the idea to people, often older ones, and wrote that a peppy, active person was "feeling his oats."


feet of clay

• feet
• clay

A hidden fault or weakness in an esteemed person; a week point.
Examples:
1) The new Prime Minister has feet of clay and and may not last very long in his new position.
2) In American history we learned that many Presidents had feet of clay.
Etymology:
In the Bible (Daniel 2:31-32), the king of a great empire once dreamed of a statue with a head of gold, a body of silver and brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. The statue broke and its pieces blew away in the win. The king's prophet interpreted the dream to mean that the empire would eventually break up. Even today, people who are highly regarded may have secret flaws of character ("feet of clay") that could ruin their reputation.


feign
[FAYN]
1. To give a false appearance of; induce as a false impression.
2. To assert as if true.
Synonym: pretend.
Example:
Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her? Had he feigned a regard for her which he did not feel? (Jane Austen, "Sense and Sensibility")
History, related words:
"Feign" is all about faking it, but that hasn't always been so. In one of its earliest senses, "feign" meant "to fashion, form, or shape." That meaning is true to the term's Latin ancestor: the verb "fingere," which also means "to shape." The current senses of "feign" still retain the essence of the Latin source, since to feign something, such as surprise or an illness, requires one to fashion an impression or shape an image. Several other English words that trace to the same ancestor refer to things that are shaped with either the hands, as in "figure" and "effigy," or the imagination, as in "fiction" and "figment."


festinate

• festina lente
• festinately
• hastily

[FESS-tuh-nut]
1. Hasty.
2. To hasten.
Example:
"Even [the company's] successes ... are vestiges of 1990s thinking. They may halt a festinate death, but you don't build a company around them." (Fritz Nelson, "Network Computing", August 21, 2000)
History, more examples, related words:
"Festinate" is one among many in the category of words whose first recorded use is in the works of Shakespeare ("Advise the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation." - "King Lear", III.vii.10). Perhaps the Bard knew about "festinatus", the Latin predecessor of "festinate", or was familiar with the Latin proverb "festina lente" - "make haste slowly". Shakespeare also gets credit for the adverb "festinately" ("quickly, hurriedly; without due reflection; precipitately; rashly; passionately; impatiently"; synonym - "hastily"; first seen in "Love's Labour's Lost", III. i. 6: "Bring him festinately hither"), but another writer beat him to the verb "festinate" (pronounced [FESS-tuh-nayt]), meaning "to hasten".


fete
[FAYT]
1. A festival.
2. A lavish often outdoor entertainment.
3. A large elaborate party.
4. To host a party in honor of...
Example:
Nigel's 50th birthday was celebrated with an impressive fete, featuring an abundance of delicious food, an open bar, and endless music and dancing.
History, related words:
"Fete" is a word worth celebrating. It's been around since Middle English, when it was used in a manuscript to refer to "fetes, spectacles and other worldly vanytees." Since the 19th century, it has been doing double duty, serving both as a noun and as a verb meaning "to honor or commemorate with a fete." You can honor "fete" by remembering that it entered English from Middle French, and that it derives ultimately from the Old French "feste," meaning "festival" - a root that, not surprisingly, also gave English the word "feast." (Because of its French ties, one will sometimes see "fete" spelled with a circumflex above the first "e," as that's how it appears in that language.)


fetid

• stinking
• noisome
• rank
• rancid
• smelly

[FET-id; FEE-tid]
Having an offensive smell.
Synonyms: noisome, rank, rancid, smelly, stinking.
Examples:
1) The air was fetid, heavy as the breath of a large animal. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Bad Dreams)
2) He grew up between the river and the vineyard-covered slopes, between the fetid smell of the tannery and the fine aroma of crushed grapes. (Patrice Debr?, "Louis Pasteur", translated by Elborg Forster)
Etymology:
"Fetid" derives from Latin "fetidus", from "fetere" ("to stink").


fetor
[FEE-tuhr; FEE-tor]
A strong, offensive smell; stench.
Examples:
1) Inside it's pitch black & the air is hot & wet with the sweet fetor of rotting grass. (Peter Blegvad, "The Free Lunch", Chicago Review, June 22, 1999)
2) When I close my eyes and summon the fond smells of childhood . . . the aroma that fills, as it were, the nostrils of my memory is the sulfurous, protein-dissolving fetor of Nair. (Jeffrey Eugenides, "Middlesex")
Etymology:
"Fetor" comes from Latin "foetor", from "foetere" - "to stink".


fetter
[FET-uhr]
noun:
1. A chain or shackle for the feet; a bond; a shackle.
2. Anything that confines or restrains; a restraint.
transitive verb:
3. To put fetters upon; to shackle or confine.
4. To restrain from progress or action; to impose restraints on; to confine.
Examples:
1) The right ankle of one, indeed, is connected with the left ankle of another by a small iron fetter. (William Wilberforce, "On the Horrors of the Slave Trade")
2) But just let even a thumb's pressure be put upon me to tame the wild something in me, and I feel it like a fetter. (Kahlil Gibran, quoted in "Kahlil Gibran, Man and Poet", by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins)
3) Only his hands have any action left in them. He uses them, struggling against the torpor that fetters him, to raise his rifle barrel and shoot the man in the floppy hat. (Robert Coover, "Ghost Town")
Etymology:
"Fetter" is from Middle English "feter", from Old English. It is related to foot.


fettle

• in fine fettle
• fine fettle

[FET-l]
A state or condition of fitness or order; state of mind; spirits (often used in the phrase "in fine fettle").
Examples:
1) Aside from the problems with her voice... Miss Garland was in fine fettle last night. (Vincent Canby, "Judy Garland Sets the Palace Alight," New York Times, August 1, 1967)
2) Back in 1987, the Conservatives won a thumping majority in a June general election, primarily because the economy was seen by grateful voters to be in fine fettle. (Larry Elliott, "Danger of a recurring nightmare," The Guardian, June 18, 2001)
3) Many of the nuns were in fine fettle, even into their 80s and 90s. (John McCrone, "Sisters of mercy," The Guardian, August 18, 2001)
4) He seems in fine fettle when we meet, and happy to discuss the film that gave him his break. (Charlotte O'Sullivan, "Naked ambition," The Guardian, February 7, 1999)
Etymology:
"Fettle" is from Middle English "fetlen" ("to set in order," originally "to gird up"), from Old English "fetel" ("a girdle").


fey

• fay

[FAY]
1. (Chiefly Scottish) Fated to die; doomed.
2. (Chiefly Scottish) Marked by a foreboding of death or calamity.
3. Able to see into the future; visionary; clairvoyant.
4. Marked by an otherworldly air or attitude; possessing or displaying a strange and otherworldly aspect or quality; magical or fairylike; elfin.
5. Appearing slightly crazy, as if under a spell; crazy, touched.
6. Excessively refined; precious.
7. Quaintly unconventional; campy.
Examples:
1) ... The former a gang of dangerous delinquents, fearless, macho, vulgar . . ., the latter a group of mischievous schoolboys, whimsical, fey, sophisticated and daringly experimental. (Sean Kelly, "What Did You Expect, the Spanish Inquisition?" - New York Times, July 25, 1999)
2) Beneath a fey manner, his mother was highly competitive. (Evan Thomas, "The Very Best Men")
3) Leo, suddenly fey, sports a rhinestone ascot and black velvet waistcoat, homburg and walking stick. (Edward Karam, "Fast and louche," Times (London), March 29, 2001)
4) Smocked silver jersey skirts came with frills and had a fey allure, as did the silver tennis dress and ruffled black chiffon dress trimmed with satin. ("WWD", October 8, 2004)
History, related words:
"Fey" comes from Middle English "feye, feie", from Old English "f?ge" - "fated to die."
"Fey" is a word that defies its own meaning, since it has yet to even come close to the brink of death after being in the language for well over 800 years. In Old and Middle English it meant "feeble" or "sickly." Those meanings turned out to be fey themselves, but the word lived on in senses related to death, and because a wild or elated state of mind was once believed to portend death, other senses arose from these. The word "fay," meaning "fairy" or "elf" may also have had an influence on some senses of "fey." Not until the late 20th century did the word's most recent meanings, "precious" and " campy," find their way onto the pages of the dictionary.


fiat
[FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at]
1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order.
2. Formal or official authorization or sanction.
Examples:
1) He found a provision in the college constitution that said there were to be no executive committees, and arguing that those stodgy impediments to serious change had grown up only by convention and tradition; he abolished them and ruled these faculty meetings by fiat, using each as an occasion to announce what he was going to do next that was sure to stir up even more resentment. (Philip Roth, "The Human Stain")
2) Americans tend to squirm about the messiness of their two best-known trade agreements with Japan: the "voluntary limitations" that have restricted exports of Japanese cars to the United States since 1981, and the semiconductor agreement of 1986, which declared by fiat that foreign manufacturers should get 20 percent of semiconductor sales in Japan. (James Fallows, "Containing Japan," The Atlantic, May 1989)
Etymology:
"Fiat" derives from Latin "fiat" ("let it be done"), from "fieri" ("to be done").


fiddle while Rome burns

• fiddle
• Rome
• burn

To do nothing or busy oneself with unimportant matters instead of taking action in an urgent situation.
Example:
The governor fiddled while Rome burned, doing nothing about crime, poverty, and pollution.
Etymology:
There's a famous legend that in A.D. 64 the emperor Nero stood on a high tower and played his lyre ("fiddle") while he watched Rome burn. The story may not be true, but it yielded this idiom that describes the behavior of anyone who, in a crisis, doesn't take action right away.

fiduciary

• fiduciarily
• fiducially

[fih-DOO-shee-air-ee]
1. Someone who stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in certain obligations to others.
Synonym: trustee.
2. Of, relating to, or involving a confidence or trust: as a) held or founded in trust or confidence; b) holding in trust; c) depending on public confidence for value or currency.
Examples:
1) American capitalism relies heavily on the fiduciary duty concept to protect those who entrust their money to large and often distant corporations. (Senator Susan Collins, "Congressional Record", July 11, 2002)
2) Corporate boards, whose members are elected by shareholders, bear the ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibility for the company's performance. (John Maggs, "Out of the Loop," National Journal, March 9, 2002)
3) Congress is faced with a great challenge in protecting workers who need help, while employing our fiduciary responsibility to guard the taxpayer dollar. (Representative Jennifer Dunn, "The Seattle Times", October 1, 2001)
4) As fiduciaries, investment advisers are expected to be on the client's side of the negotiating table in any deal. (Robert Barker, "Will the SEC Bless This Masquerade?", Business Week, March 9, 2002)
5) Real estate brokers ... act in a fiduciary capacity and must place the interests of their clients above their own and be fair to all parties. ("Barron's Real Estate Handbook")
Etymology, more meanings, relative words:
"Fiduciary" relationships often concern money, but the word "fiduciary" does not, in and of itself, suggest financial matters. Rather, "fiduciary" applies to any situation in which one person justifiably places confidence and trust in someone else and seeks that person's help or advice in some matter. The attorney-client relationship is a fiduciary one, for example, because the client trusts the attorney to act in the best interest of the client at all times. "Fiduciary" can also be used as a noun for the person who acts in a fiduciary capacity, and "fiduciarily" or "fiducially" can be called upon if you are in need of an adverb. The words are all faithful to their origin - Latin "fiduciarius", from "fiducia" ("trust"), and is related to faith and fidelity.

fiduciary capitalism

• fiduciary
• capitalism

[fi-'dü-shE-"er-E, -sh&-rE, -'dyü-]
['ka-p&-t&l-"iz-&m, 'kap-t&l-, British also k&-'pi-t&l-]
A capitalist model in which corporations are influenced and guided by shareholders, particularly large institutional shareholders - such as pension funds and mutual funds - that act on behalf of many smaller investors.
Examples:
1) /First Use/ At the end of the twentieth century the rise of institutional ownership - particularly through private and public pension funds and mutual funds - has led to a period we have characterized as fiduciary capitalism, a re-concentration of ownership in the hands of a relatively small number of decision makers. Even though, in fact, legal ownership is still widely dispersed, the fiduciary duty of these institutions potentially gives them a responsibility to exercise the power of ownership. (J. P. Hawley & A. T. Williams, "Corporate governance in the United States: the rise of fiduciary capitalism - a review of the literature", Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, January 31, 1996)
2) Therefore, Monks believes, if shareholders become an "effective, informed, competent counter force to whom management must be accountable," which is what he advocates, much of what citizens might otherwise seek through the political process will be available to them as shareholders. The idea, which Monks calls fiduciary capitalism, is to "restore ancient values of ownership that preceded the corporate form, and that seem to have eluded corporations in the long modern era." (Joel Bakan, "The Corporation", Viking Canada, March, 2004)
3) The key megatrends are: ... - The emergence of 'fiduciary capitalism': the growing inclination - and capability - among major institutional investors for shareholder activism in the governance of their portfolio companies on these issues. Climate change, for example, has now become the fastest-growing category of shareholder resolutions in the US. (Matthew Kiernan, "SRI: the next chapter", Pensions Management, April 1, 2004)

fifth wheel

• a fifth wheel
• fifth
• wheel

1. The fifth wheel in a carriage which prevents tipping.
2. A spare wheel; an extra car wheel and tire.
Synonym: spare 3. A steering bearing that enables the front axle of a horse-drawn wagon to rotate.
4. Something or someone that is unnecessary and burdensome; a useless object, an unnecessary device; an unneeded, extra person.
Examples:
1) If he comes with us, he'll just be a fifth wheel.
2) The team already had two guards, so I felt like a fifth wheel.
History:
This is a proverb that was first used in France in the 16th century. A unicycle has one wheel; a bicycle has two wheels; a tricycle has three wheels; and wagon and cars have four wheels. No vehicle needs five wheels. The fifth wheel is a surplus thing, good for nothing. In the same way, if two couples are going out on a double date, an extra person who tags along could be called a "fifth wheel". However, in the 19th century, with the advent of large tractor trailer trucks, the connector plate between the tractor and the trailer has become known as a fifth wheel. So, sometimes it is a necessary thing - but only for cars.


fifty quid bloke

• 50-quid bloke
• 50-quid man
• 50-quid guy
• fifty quid man
• 50-quid
• fifty
• quid
• bloke
• man
• guy

Middle-aged man (or even woman) who has money and is happy to splash out on a fistful of CDs.
Synonyms: 50-quid man, 50-quid guy
Etymology,history, examples:
Rock'n'roll itself turns 50 this year and its first wave of fans are pensioners. The older fan is fast becoming the music industry's best customer. And he - it is usually a he - has acquired a name: the 50-Quid Bloke. The term was defined in July 2003 in a speech to the BPI's AGM by David Hepworth of "Development Hell", an independent magazine company. On a hot day at County Hall in London, Hepworth stood up and gave Britain's record-company bosses a lecture about their own customers, concentrating on "the 50-quid guy", a term he had picked up from friends in retail. "This is the guy we've all seen in Borders or HMV on a Friday afternoon, possibly after a drink or two, tie slightly undone, buying two CDs, a DVD and maybe a book - fifty quid's worth - and frantically computing how he's going to convince his partner that this is a really, really worthwhile investment." The 50-quid bloke is a big user of the web, but unlike his children, he wants to own things. He shops at Amazon as well as the high street. He loathes Pop Idol, telling the kids it devalues everything rock music stands for (the kids reply that it's only a TV show, dad). But he is defined more by his likes than his dislikes and, crucially, he wants to keep up. He likes the White Stripes, Coldplay and Blur and has persevered with Radiohead through the difficult last three albums. His latest buys are the debut albums from the Stands, who remind him of the Byrds, and Franz Ferdinand, who remind him of the Glasgow art-school bands of 1982. If he had a digital radio, he would love BBC6 Music, with its slogan "the great, the new and no fill" and its habit of playing Franz Ferdinand alongside the Clash. He adores DVD. His favourite recent film is "Lost in Translation", in which Bill Murray shows his own 50-quid tendencies by crooning a karaoke version of the Roxy Music song More Than This. "He's got the High Fidelity chip embedded in his brain," says Jerry Perkins, publisher of "Word" - but his interests have broadened along the way. He is university-educated, reads a broadsheet, of whatever size, and raved about Anthony Beevor's "Stalingrad". And yes, he may be a she. Women bought 41% of albums in 2002, up from 38% the year before. The generation gap, once about content, has shifted to modes of consumption. For the under-30s, music is something to be shared and swapped and downloaded, legally or otherwise. It doesn't need to be owned because it's everywhere. If they do buy it, it may be in a form as slight as a mobile ringtone. It looks as if the fifty-quid bloke is keeping the music business afloat. He has a special appeal to harassed record-company executives; unlike most stereotypes, he is defined not by his age or taste or membership of a cult, but by the amount he spends.


fight like Kilkenny cats

• play Kilkenny cats
• fight
• like Kilkenny cats
• like
• Kilkenny cats
• play
• Kilkenny
• cats
• cat

1. a battle that goes on until both sides have been destroyed, an all-out, no-holds- barred fight to the finish;
2. people who are vehemently opposed in attitudes or opinions to the extent that they will never agree and will spark fire off each other whenever they meet.
Etymology:
This refers to an old story about two cats that fought to the death and ate each other up so that only their tails were left. Probably, the fight took place in the ancient town of Kilkenny, on the River Nore in south-east Ireland. But there are three stories in modern books about how the expression grew up in connection with the town; all of them repeat submissions to the British publication "Notes & Queries" in the Victorian period.
1) It was the result of the stationing of a group of German soldiers in Kilkenny, either during the revolution of 1798 or possibly that of 1803. To relieve the boredom in barracks, soldiers would tie two cats together by their tails, hang them over a washing line and leave them to fight. One day an officer was alerted by the caterwauling and the look-out man failed to give warning of his approach in time. In great haste, a soldier cut off the cats' tails to let them escape, but wasn't able to hide the evidence left behind. The officer was told blandly that two cats had been fighting each other so savagely it had proved impossible to separate them and that they had fought so desperately that they had devoured each other, with the exception of their tails.
2) It refers to a legendary battle on a plain near Kilkenny, supposedly sometime in the eighteenth century, between a thousand cats of that city and a thousand cats that had gathered from all other parts of the island. This left the field of battle strewn with dead moggies, they having fought so viciously that they had all killed each other. This may be a parable based on dissents of the period between the people of the Kilkenny area and other parts of Ireland.
3) It may indeed be a kind of parable, but one based in factional disputes in Kilkenny between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. The town then was divided into two townships called Irishtown and Englishtown, a situation that wasn't uncommon in a country occupied for so long by the English. For religious, cultural and political reasons there were deep divisions between the two groups. These were made worse, the writer said, because the rights and duties of the two townships hadn't been made clear by statute. This led to three centuries of dispute between the rival municipal bodies that ended in beggaring both of them.


fight tooth and nail

• fight
• tooth and nail
• tooth
• nail

To fight hard, fiercely, furiously, and ferociously; to fight with everything one has.
Examples:
1) He is fighting tooth and nail to get a transfer to another department.
2) The counselor had to separate two campers who were fighting tooth and nail.
History:
This vivid expression goes far back to a Latin proverb that became a French saying centuries later and finally came into English in 1562. When wild animals fight, they bite and claw each other. Sometimes people fight fiercely, as if they were animals fighting a deadly battle "tooth and nail".


filial

• filly

[FILL-ee-ul]
1. Of, relating to, or befitting a son or daughter.
2. Having or assuming the relation of a child or offspring.
Example:
Martha's acute sense of filial responsibility made her check on her mother whenever a few days went by without contact.
History, expressions, "filly":
"Filial" is descended from the Latin "filius," meaning "son," and "filia," meaning "daughter," and in English (where it has been used since at least the 14th century) it has always applied to both sexes. At one time, the word carried the dutiful sense "owed to a parent by a child," typically found in the then-common phrases "filial respect" and "filial piety". It can now be used more generally for any emotion or behavior of a child to a parent. One might suspect that "filia" is also the source of the word "filly," meaning "a young female horse" or "a young girl," but it isn't. Rather, "filly" is from Old Norse "fylja."


fill the bill

• fit the bill
• fill
• bill
• fit

To be just the perfect thing that is needed; to be very competent, effective; to be suitable for what is required.
Examples:
1) I think that the new equipment should fill the bill for us.
2) The decorator said that a tall potted palm in this corner would fill the bill.
3) Does this restaurant fit the bill for the celebration? Synonym: fit the bill
History:
One of the many meanings of "bill" is a list of acts being presented in a theater. In the 1800s an audience expected to enjoy a full bill of singers, dancers, jugglers, and comedians. To be sure that the audience was satisfied with the evening's lineup, the theater manager sometimes added acts to "fill the bill". Today the meaning has broadened to anything or anyone that meets a need or is just right for a purpose.


finger

• single smb. out
• single out
• single

To place the blame on someone else; to point at a specific person; to trace back to the origin.
Examples:
1) They fingered you for the bank robbery, so you better get out of town! 2) I fingered Jimmy as the person responsible for the slowdown in sales.
Etymology: People frequently use their fingers to point at something or to make a selection.
Synonym: single smb. out

finger in every pie

• have one's finger in every pie
• finger
• every pie
• pie

To have a part in something; to be involved in many matters, business, or activities.
Example:
Mrs. Simon has her finger in every pie when it comes to music, dance, and theater.
Etymology:
The image that possibly created this expression might be of a person who can't decide what pie he or she wants - blueberry, pecan, peach - so they stick a finger in every pie to get a taste of each. Think of each pie as a difference business or project, and when you put your finger into a "pie", you have a part interest or responsibility in that activity. People often participate in many activities to make extra profit for themselves.


finical

• exacting
• fastidious
• finicky
• nice
• particular

[FIN-ih-kuhl]
Extremely or unduly particular in standards or taste.
Synonyms: exacting, fastidious, finicky, nice, particular.
Examples:
1) The paintings incorporate the random and arbitrary... within a practice that nonetheless requires finical accuracy; there is a degree of almost mindless repetition and filling in involved, but the resulting forms are unpredictable and uncategorizable. (Barry Schwabsky, "Ingrid Calame: James Cohan Gallery," Artforum, February 1, 2004)
2) That the director, who is known for his finical selection of stars, has zeroed in on Aamir says a great deal about his faith in the actor. ("Images: Movie Matters," News India, November 15, 1996)
3) Finical yet never fussy, thorough but not obsessive, Westermann the woodworker is a joy to behold. (Mario Naves, "H. C. Westermann," New Criterion, May 1, 2002)
Etymology:
"Finical" is probably derived from "fine".


fire in the hole

• Fire
• hole

An alert that an explosive device is about to be detonated; warning shouted prior to detonating explosives, including breaching charges, quarrying, cratering and bridge demolitions. It means that someone has lit a fuse on an explosive and everyone should "get out of the shaft or hole".
Example:
"KUED" presents "Fire in the Hole", an examination of the mining labor conflicts that shaped the West during the early 1900s.
History, synonyms:
"Fire in the hole" is an old engineering/mining term that carried into the military. Basically, it comes from the time of doing hardrock mining. You drill a hole into the stone, then pack it with powder or explosive and put in a fuse. To warn everyone that the fuse has been or is about to be lit, "Fire in the Hole" is shouted. The cry is usually given three times and repeated by everyone in hearing. It acts as a signal to take cover, especially from the rocks and debris resulting from the explosion. Combat engineers have adopted the cry. It is also used on throwing a grenade etc. But the warning for incoming fires is "incoming", and the warning for a grenade coming into your foxhole is "grenade".


firework

• fireworks

1. a device for producing a striking display by the combustion of explosive or flammable compositions
2. (plural) a display of fireworks
3. (plural) a) a display of temper or intense conflict; b) a spectacular display
Example:
"More [divorcing] couples are considering mediation ... rather than hiring two lawyers who fight it out for their clients. The potential benefits are lower costs and fewer fireworks." (Mary Rowland, "The New York Times", January 15, 1995)
History, more examples:
The word "fireworks" burst upon the scene in the 1500s as a reference to military explosives (a sense that is now obsolete). These explosives were originally used as weapons, of course, but soon they were also being used in pyrotechnic displays celebrating victory or peace. By 1575 people were oohing and aahing over "fireworks shewed upon the water; the which were both strange and wel executed." Figurative uses have been popping up ever since the 1600s. In addition to the angry explosion sense illustrated in our example sentence, "fireworks" can also refer to a spectacular display of musical, visual, or verbal brilliance, as in "an outstanding album, bursting with spectacular musical fireworks."


firmament
[FUR-muh-muhnt]
1. The region of the air; the sky; the heavens.
2. The field or sphere of an interest or activity.
Examples:
1) But to judge by the twinkling summer stars that filled the firmament, the dawn was still far off. (A. B. Yehoshua, "A Journey to the End of the Millennium")
2) Studying the firmament - the night vault that sparkles with thousands of flickering lights - is older than recorded history. (William E. Burrows, "This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age")
3) The glossy magazines have branded her a rising star, shooting up into the firmament of mega fashion stardom. (Hadley Freeman, "If I see one more black suit, I'll want to roll over and die," The Guardian, December 14, 2001)
Etymology:
"Firmament" comes from Late Latin "firmamentum" ("firmness, the sky"), from Latin "firmare" ("to make firm").


fish out of water

• fish
• out of water
• water

A person who is out of his or her usual place; someone who doesn't fit in or is helpless in a situation.
Examples:
1) I want to help the new girl from Russia. She must feel like a fish out of
water.
2) He was like a fish out of water at the expensive restaurant.
Etymology:
For thousands of years people have known that a fish belongs in water. That's its natural habitat. So a person who is in an unfamiliar or uncomfortable setting will feel like a fish out of water.

fisk

• fisking

1. A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry, a news story, or someone's political position.
Etymology: The term derives from the name of Robert Fisk, the Middle Eastern correspondent for "The Independent" newspaper in London. The act of doing point-by-point refutation is called fisking.
2. To run about; to frisk; (obs.) to whisk
Example:
He fisks abroad, and stirreth up erroneous opinions. (Latimer)
3. Fisk, city in Missouri (USA) Location: 36.78222 N, 90.20741 W Population (1990): 422 (196 housing units) Area: 0.9 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water) Zip code(s): 63940
4. Fisk James, 183472, U.S. financier and stock speculator.


fisking

• fisk
• Fiskings
• web log
• blog
• web
• log

Also: fisk
refers to the act of deconstructing, often in minute detail, an article, essay, argument, etc. with the intent of challenging its conclusion or theses by highlighting supposed logical fallacies and incorrect facts; "he said, I say" method of criticism.
Example:
A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form.
History:
Fisk + "-ing". The practice was named in honor of British journalist Robert Fisk after he issued a dispatch from Pakistan describing his savage beating at the hands of Afghanistan refugees and expressing his opinion that, if he were in their position, he would have treated any Westerner the same. The term first appeared on either of the web logs http://www.instapundit.com or http://www.andrewsullivan.com and has to an extent retained its original ideological associations in that "Fiskings" are usually performed by conservative on their left-wing Leftism opponents, especially those with strong "Third worldist" sentiments.


fisog
(South Yorkshire dialect) A face.

fissile

• fissility

[FISS-ul]
1. Capable of being split or divided in the direction of the grain or along natural planes of cleavage.
2. Capable of undergoing fission.
Example:
The only fissile material that occurs in usable amounts in nature is uranium-235.
History, related words:
When scientists first used "fissile" back in the 1600s, the notion of splitting the nucleus of an atom would have seemed far-fetched indeed. In those days, people thought that atoms were the smallest particles of matter that existed and therefore could not be split. "Fissile" (which can be traced back to Latin "findere," meaning "to split") was used in reference to things like rocks. When we hear about "fissile materials" today, the reference is usually to nuclear fission: the splitting of an atomic nucleus that releases a huge amount of energy. But there is still a place in English for the original sense of "fissile" (and for the noun "fissility," meaning "the quality of being fissile"). A geologist, for example, might refer to slate as "fissile."


fit as a fiddle

• as fit as a fiddle
• fit
• fiddle

In good shape, in good condition, fit, healthy, sturdy.
Example:
Her grandfather is 92 years old but he is as fit as a fiddle.
Etymology:
This expression dates from at least the early 1600s. "Fit" has always meant "in good health". But why was it joined with "fiddle" in this simile? Probably because "fit" and "fiddle" are a good example of alliteration, and a fiddle that's fit (well tuned and in good shape) can play terrific music.


five finger discount

• five
• finger
• discount

Shoplifting; taking an item from a store without paying for it.
Example:
How much did my CD player cost? I got it at a five finger discount, man!
Etymology: "Five finger" refers to the hand, and a "discount" is a reduction in price (in this case, a 100 percent reduction).

five o'clock shadow

• five o'clock
• shadow
• five
• o'clock

Facial stubble; a man's beard at the end of the day.
Example:
Peter has a very heavy beard. Even though he shaves every morning, he gets a five o'clock shadow by lunchtime!
Etymology:
The typical American workday ends at 'five o'clock' in the afternoon. A 'shadow' is a patch of darkness, or a hint of the presence of something. After spending a full day at work for eight or more hours, many men have a noticeable growth of facial hair, which is dark like a 'shadow' and hints at the beard that would grow if left unshaven.


fix one's wagon

• fix your wagon
• fix
• wagon

To hurt smb., to get back at, to get revenge; to get even with or to punish someone; to thwart or frustrate another or cause his or her failure in something.
Examples:
1) If you make him angry, he'll fix your wagon. He'll get revenge.
2) Maya borrowed my homework sheet and then left it at home. I'll fix her wagon.
Etymology:
Some people think this idiom may have come from the days of the great westward migration in America in the 1800s, when the covered wagon was the main means was transportation. One meaning of the word "fix" is to take revenge upon or get even with. It might also mean tying up and holding secure, as in tying up a wagon so it cannot roll away. Today, "fix someone's wagon" means to plot against that person to do something bad to him or her.


fix up

• fix

1. To refurbish, repair.
2. To clear up, settle, set right; to make arrangements for; to arrange.
3. To match with; find (smth. or smb.) for.
4. To punish.
Examples:
1) Could you fix up my car please?
2) Can you fix up a meeting with the President?
3) My friends fixed me up with her.



flagellate
1. flagelliform;
2. of or pertaining to the flagellata;
3. to whip; to scourge; to flog.
Example: The religious fanatics flagellated themselves.
Synonom: scourge
4. having or resembling a flagellum or flagella
Synonyms: flagellated, whiplike.
5. usually nonphotosynthetic free-living protozoan with whiplike appendages; some pathogens of humans and other animals.
Synonyms: flagellate protozoan, flagellated protozoan, mastigophoran, mastigophore.
Etymology:
"Flagellate" derives from the Latin noun "flagrum", meaning "whip".


flageolet
[flaj-uh-LET]
1. A french bean variety with light-colored seeds, usually dried.
Synonom: haricot Example:
Shrill flageolets piped a sprightly tune as merrymakers danced an exuberant quadrille. 2. A small fipple flute with with four finger holes and two thumb holes, resembling the treble recorder.
Synonyms: treble recorder, shepherd's pipe
Etymology:
Did you think flageolets were beans? You're right, but so are we when we say they're flutes. How can that be? Simple. There are two "flageolet" homographs (homographs are words that are spelled alike though they differ in origin or part of speech). The musical "flageolet" reached English first; we picked it up from the diminutive of the Old French word for "flute," but it traces to the Latin "flare," meaning "to blow." The edible "flageolet" came to English via a diminutive of the French word for "kidney bean," but it derives ultimately from the Latin "phaseolus," meaning "cowpea."


flagitate
To importune; to demand fiercely or with passion.
Etymology:
From Latin flagitatus, p.p. of flagitare = to demand.


flagitious

• villainous

marked by scandalous crime or vice
Synonym: villainous.
Example:
The actor will play a flagitious scoundrel in his next film - a departure from the "good guy" roles he usually takes on.
Etymology:
"Flagitious" derives from the Latin noun "flagitium," meaning "shameful thing," and is akin to the Latin noun "flagrum," meaning "whip." "Flagrum" is also the source of "flagellate" ("to whip" or "to scourge") and the more obscure verb "flagitate", meaning "importune." But it is not the source of "flagrant", which means "conspicuously bad," despite the superficial resemblance. "Flagrant" and its cousins derive instead from the Latin "flagrare," meaning "to burn." "Flagitious" first appeared in the late 14th century, and it was originally applied to people who were horribly criminal or wicked. These days, it can also describe intangibles, such as actions ("flagitious promiscuity"), ideas ("a flagitious notion"), and principles ("flagitious motives").


flagrant

• Glaring
• gross
• rank
• monstrous
• passionate

1. flaming; inflamed; glowing; burning; ardent.
Examples:
1) The beadle's lash still flagrant on their back.
2) A young man yet flagrant from the lash of the executioner or the beadle.
3) His real nature expresses itself in his flagrant desires and affections.
2. actually in preparation, execution, or performance; carried on hotly; raging.
Example: A war the most powerful of the native tribes was flagrant.
3. flaming into notice; notorious; enormous; heinous; glaringly wicked; conspicuously bad.
Example: This flagrant crime must be solved.
Etymology:
Latin flagrant-, flagrans, present participle of flagrare = to burn. Date: 1513
Synonyms and their difference:
Flagrant applies usually to offenses or errors so bad that they can neither escape notice nor be condoned: "flagrant abuse of the office of president".
Glaring, gross, rank mean conspicuously bad or objectionable.
Glaring implies painful or damaging obtrusiveness of something that is conspicuously wrong, faulty, or improper: "glaring errors".
Gross implies the exceeding of reasonable or excusable limits: "gross carelessness".
Rank applies to what is openly and extremely objectionable and utterly condemned: "rank heresy".


flaneur
[flah-NUR]
One who strolls about aimlessly; a lounger; a loafer.
Examples:
1) Burrows and Wallace show how New York embraced the idea of the flaneur - of the disinterested, artistically inclined wanderer in the city, of what they call "city watching." (Jed Perl, "The Adolescent City," New Republic, January 22, 2001)
2) The restricted hotel lobby has replaced the square or piazza as a public meeting place, and our boulevards, such as they are, are not avenues for the parade and observation of personality, or for perusal by the flaneur, but conveyor belts to the stores, where we can buy everything but human understanding. (Anatole Broyard, "In Praise of Contact," New York Times, June 27, 1982)
3) Baudelaire saw the writer as a detached flaneur, a mocking dandy in the big-city crowd, alienated, isolated, anonymous, aristocratic, melancholic. (Ian Buruma, "The Romance of Exile," New Republic, February 12, 2001)
Etymology:
"Flaneur" comes from French, from "fl?ner" - "to saunter; to stroll; to lounge about."


flapdoodle

• nonsense

nonsense
Example:
"That whole business with the gypsy fortune-teller was just a lot of fabricated flapdoodle," snorted General Rumsey, "and you shouldn't believe a word of it."
Etymology:
Combining the letters "f" and "l" (and often "d" or "m") is a great formula for creating funny words - take "folderol," "fiddlesticks," "fandangle," "flubdub," "flummox," and "flimflam." To ascribe pedigreed origins to any of those silly syllables would be fiddle-faddle. "Flapdoodle" certainly can't claim high-flown ancestors. Like many of its nonsensical fellows listed above, it most likely originated as an alteration of some other absurd word ("fadoodle" is a candidate), but its exact origins are unknown. What we do know is that it first appeared in English in 1878. Six years later, Mark Twain employed the word in "Huckleberry Finn", with narrator Huck describing a king's speech at a funeral as "all full of tears and flapdoodle."


flash crowd

• flash
• crowd
• Slashdot effect
• Slashdot
• effect

A sharp and often overwhelming increase in the number of users attempting to access a Web site simultaneously, usually in response to some event or announcement. Example:
Among other problems, the approach deals with events like 'flash crowds' on public Internet sites. This is where incidents, such as the US lingerie firm Victoria Secret's Webcast fashion show, or a surge of stock market activity, generates unforeseen activity levels. (Alison Classe, "A Question of Balance", Computer Weekly, June 24, 1999)
History:
"Flash Crowd" was the title of a 1973 short story by the science fiction author Larry Niven, one of a series about the consequences of instantaneous, practically free teleportation booths that could take one anywhere on Earth in milliseconds. One consequence, not predicted by the builders of the system, was that with the almost instantaneous reporting of newsworthy events, tens of thousands of people worldwide would flock to the scene of anything interesting - along with criminals, hoping to exploit the instant disorder and confusion so created. On the World Wide Web, a similar phenomenon can occur, when some web site catches the attention of a large number of people, and gets an unexpected and overloading surge of traffic: a notorious example is the "slashdot effect" (see). Another similar phenomenon is the "flash mob" (see).
Synonym: Slashdot effect


flash in the pan

• a flash in the pan
• flash
• pan

1. A temporary success which yields no long-term results; something which begins promisingly but has no lasting significance; dramatic display that quickly fades into nothing.
2. A person who fails to live up to earlier potential; someone who enjoys transient success but then fails; a person who does superior work at first.
Examples:
1) I'm looking for a steady worker, not a flash in the pan.
2) People thought she was going to be a great concert violinist, but Dana was just a flash in the pan.
Etymology:
In the 1600s there was a popular gun called a flintlock musket. When the trigger was pulled, sparks were supposed to make the gunpowder in a small pan on the gun go off and explode the main charge. But sometimes there was only a flash in the pan and no big explosion. Today a "flash in the pan" is any person who showed great early promise ("sparks") but who never lived up to his or her full potential ("explosion").


flash mob

• flash
• mob

a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual, and then disperse quickly. They are usually organized through the Internet.
Example:
The software has been posted online, so anyone could in theory assemble their own flash mob at any time.
History, etymology:
The flash mob phenomenon began in early 2003, when people became aware, through the Internet, of events organized by a person or group called the "Mob Project", planned for New York City. The first flash mob, which was scheduled to take place at a discount store, didn't really materialize because a group of police and a paddy-wagon, having been tipped off about the event, arrived at the store first and scared off the participants. Organizers avoided such problems during the second flash mob by sending participants to preliminary staging areas in four pre-arranged Manhattan bars, where they were given further instructions about the final event and location just before the event began. About 200 people converged upon the 9th floor rug department of Macy's department store, gathering around one particular very expensive rug. Anyone approached by a sales assistant was advised to say that the gatherers lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York, that they were shopping for a "Love Rug", and that they made all their purchase decisions as a group. A third mob was directed to the mezzanine of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan. There the mob erupted into spontaneous applause for a period of 15 seconds, and then the mob dispersed as quickly as it had appeared. Such rapid convergence, followed by an equally swift disappearance has become a staple of the "flash mob" phenomenon. "Flash mob" events quickly spread to Asia, and by August 2003 to Europe, Latin America and Australia.
"Flash mob" may be the derivative of "flash crowd" (see) and "smart mob" (see) .


flat-hat

• flat
• hat
• hedgehop

[FLAT-hat]
To fly low in an airplane in a reckless manner.
Synonym: hedgehop.
Example:
Unable to resist the temptation to show off, the young pilot decreased altitude and flat-hatted over the county fairground.
History:
Legend has it that the term "flat-hat" originated with an incident back in the days of barnstormers in which a pedestrian's hat was crushed by a low-flying airplane. According to one version of the tale, the reckless pilot was subsequently required to purchase a new hat for the hapless pedestrian. It seems unlikely that such an event actually took place, but we can well imagine how fear of having one's hat smashed flat by a passing airplane might have given rise to such a vivid verb. "Flat-hat" first appeared in English in 1940; another word for flying low to the ground, "hedgehop," debuted 14 years earlier.


fledgling

• newcomer
• fledgeling
• starter
• rookie
• newbie
• neophyte
• freshman
• newbie
• entrant
• novice
• beginner
• tyro
• apprentice
• greenhorn
• tenderfoot

1. Of a young bird just having acquired its flight feathers.
Example: "a fledgling robin".
Synonyms: fledgling, fledgeling. 2. Young and inexperienced.
Examples: "a fledgling enterprise"; "a fledgling skier"; "a fledgling lawyer".
Synonym: unfledged 3. A young bird that has just fledged or become capable of flying.
Synonym: fledgeling. 4. An inexperienced (young) person; any new participant in some activity.
Example:
As a pilot, he's still a fledgling Synonyms:
newcomer, fledgeling, starter, neophyte, freshman, newbie, entrant; novice, beginner, tyro, apprentice; (informal) greenhorn, tenderfoot, rookie, newbie.
Etymology:
The word derives from the Old English "flycge", "having feathers" (thus fit to fly).



flexitarian
a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat or fish.
Example:
A new breed of "flexitarians" eats primarily fruits, grains and vegetables, but won't say no to steak or salmon.



flibbertigibbet
[FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it]
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.
Examples:
1. We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France. (Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking", New York Times, November 28, 1993)
2. He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity", but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables. (Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular", New York Times, March 15, 1992)
Etymology:
"Flibbertigibbet" is from Middle English flipergebet, which is probably an imitation of the sound of meaningless chatter. "Flibbertigibbet" originally meant a gossip or chatterbox, but it soon took on the idea of a light-minded or frivolous person. Flibbertigibbet was also the name of a demon; it appears in a list of 40 fiends in a book by Samuel Harsnet and also in Shakespeare: "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth". (King Lear, iii. 4.)



flippant

• flippancy

[FLIP-unt]
Lacking proper respect or seriousness, showing inappropriate levity; pert.
Examples:
1) In the mid-1950s we both wrote for the same weekly, where her contributions were a good deal more serious and less flippant than mine. (Anthony Howard and Jason Cowley, "Decline and Fall," New Statesman, March 13, 2000)
2) The conversations had grown more adult over the years - she was less flippant, at least. (Sylvia Brownrigg, "The Metaphysical Touch")
3) The young attorney reddened when she realized the reply she'd just given the frowning judge bordered on flippant.
History, related words:
"Flippant" was probably created from the verb "flip," which in turn likely originated as an imitation of the sound of something flipping. Among early senses of the adjective were "nimble" and "limber." One could be flippant not only on one's feet, but also in speech; that is, someone "flippant" might have a capacity for easy, flowing speech. But people who speak freely and easily can sometimes seem too talkative, even impertinent, and from the beginning "flippant" referred to such overly glib speech as well. By the end of the 18th century, the flip-flop was complete - the positive sense of "flippant" had slipped from use, and the "disrespectful" sense had taken over.
The noun form is flippancy.


flirtberrying

• flirtberry
• toothing

Sending flirty e-mails with a "BlackBerry".
Synonym: toothing
Example:
The world champion in iflirtberrying is said to be Rebecca Hill, 26, a marketing executive, from Wandsworth, southwest London, who fires off e-mails between flights and meetings around the world.
Etymology, related words:
"Flirtberrying" is a combination of the words "flirt" ("to behave towards someone in a way that shows sexual or romantic interest") and "BlackBerry", not the autumn fruit, but a handheld electronic device which, as well as functioning as a mobile phone, includes text messaging, e-mail and wireless Internet facilities. Research in 2003 indicated that text messages had begun to overtake handwritten cards as the medium by which romantic communications were exchanged on Valentine's Day. And with each new device, the possibilities widen. It is in this context that in 2005 the noun "flirtberrying" was born. The verb is "flirtberry".



florescence
[flaw-RESS-unss]
a state or period of flourishing
Example:
Dr. Harrison's new book chronicles the florescence of art, literature and scientific discovery that took place during the Renaissance.
Etymology:
The flowering of botany as a science in the 18th century produced a garden of English words that came about as adaptations of Latin words. Botanists picked "florescence" as a showy word to refer to the blooming of a flower - a good choice given that the term grew out of the New Latin "florescentia," meaning "blossoming." ("New Latin" refers to the form of Latin still used by scientists to name and classify organisms.) "Florescentia" is related to the verb "florere" ("to blossom or flourish") and rooted in the Latin noun "flos," meaning "flower." Less literal types appreciated the word, too, and applied it to anything that seemed to be thriving or flourishing.


florid
[FLOR-id] 1. Flushed with red; of a lively reddish color. 2. Excessively ornate; flowery; as, "a florid style; florid eloquence".
Examples:
1) The Reverend Mr Kidney is a short round bowlegged man with black muttonchop whiskers and a florid face, like a pomegranate, into which he has poured a great quantity of brandy and lesser amounts of whisky and claret. (Tom Gilling, "The Sooterkin")
2) Even though avant-garde attacks on the Victorian bourgeoisie were florid in rhetoric, deficient in evidence, and malicious in intent, it does not follow that they had no objective grounds. (Peter Gay, "Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience")
3) Many were florid and overweight, too bulkily dressed and perspiring freely. (Robert Stone, "Damascus Gate")
4) The journalist Frank Crane would later glorify the . . . factory in florid prose as "a sermon in steel and glass," a "Temple of Work" in which machinery rather than an organ provided the music and the choir "was the glad laughter of happy workers." (RolandMarchand, "Creating the Corporate Soul")


flotsam and jetsam

• flotsam
• jetsam

1. A collection of mostly worthless and useless objects; odds and ends; any objects found floating or washed ashore; rubbish and refuse.
Example:
I'm clearing out my room of all the flotsam and jetsam.
2. Vagabondage, vagrancy; sundowners; bums.
3. Remains of a destroyed ship; shipwreck.
Etymology:
The words "flotsam" and "jetsam" date from the early 1500s. "Flotsam" means all the wreckage and cargo floating in the ocean after a shipwreck. "Jetsam" is cargo and equipment floating in the water that was thrown overboard to lighten a ship in danger of sinking. By the 19th century these words meant any kind of junk or debris on land or sea, thrown out or not. The near-rhyming sound of the words helped make this idiom popular.



flummery
1. A name given to various sweet dishes made with milk, eggs, flour, etc.
2. Empty compliment; unsubstantial talk or writing; mumbo jumbo; nonsense.
Examples:
1) He had become disturbed by the number of listeners phoning in with such flummery as tales of self-styled clairvoyants' uncannily correct forecasts. (Suzanne Seixas, "One Man's Finances," Money, September 1, 1986)
2) One reason there is so much flummery in the global warming debate is that the weather in the Northeast United States, where the opinion-makers live, has a disproportionate effect on whether greenhouse concerns are taken seriously. (Gregg Easterbrook, "Warming Up," New Republic, November 8, 1999)
3) It is Dr. August's claim that he receives inspiration from spirits, that through his music the departed can speak to those they left behind. Although this is sometimes unabashed flummery, there are moments when Fitz seems to make a real connection with those who have crossed over. (Paul Quarrington, "Psychic Hotline," New York Times, September 3, 2000)
Etymology:
"Flummery" comes from Welsh "llymru" - a soft, sour oatmeal food.


flummox

• confuse
• baffle
• perplex
• puzzle
• bewilder
• dumbfound
• confound

1. To be a mystery or bewildering to; to confuse; to perplex; to leave somebody confused or perplexed and unable to react.
2. To defeat or overcome somebody in argument.
Examples:
1) References to "poison pills", "shark repellants" and "golden parachutes" irritate some investors even as they impress others; and they flummox almost everybody. ("The City share pushers". Davidson, Alexander. UK: Scope Books Ltd, 1989)
2) That fair flummoxed 'im!
History:
1837, cant word, origin uncertain, probably from some forgotten British dialect. Candidates cluster in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, southern Cheshire and also in Sheffield. "The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily" (Oxford English Dictionary). Charles Dickens is the first writer known to have used it, in his "Pickwick Papers": "And my 'pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don't prove a alleybi, he'll be what the Italians call reg'larly flummoxed, and that's all about it." Don't be misled by that reference to Italians, that's just a fancy of old Mr Weller. There's also the English dialect "flummock", at one time known from Yorkshire down to Gloucestershire, to go about in a slovenly or untidy manner, or to make things untidy, or to confuse, which may be a slightly older version of the same word. It might also be linked to "lommock" or "lummox", a clumsy or stupid person, known from the same area. That's where the trail runs cold. The suggestion is that all these words are in some degree imitative of the noise of throwing things down noisily or untidily, so it may be associated with another dialect word "flump", a heavy or noisy fall.
Synonyms:
confuse, baffle; perplex, puzzle, bewilder, dumbfound, confound.
Usage:
"Flummox" is considered informal; its use should be restricted to speech and casual writing.

fly around

• fly
• around
• to fly around

1. To move in or pass thorugh the air with wings, as a bird. 2. To move through the air or before the wind; esp., to pass or be driven rapidly through the air by any impulse. 3. To float, wave, or rise in the air, as sparks or a flag. Example: Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. (Job v. 7) 4. To move or pass swiftly; to hasten away; to move about in haste; to circulate rapidly.
Examples:
1) A ship flies on the deep.
2) A top flies around.
3) Rumours had been flying around the workrooms all morning. 4) Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race. (J. Milton) 5. To run from danger; to attempt to escape; to flee.
Examples:
1) A coward flies. 2) Fly, ere evil intercept thy flight. (J. Milton) 3) Whither shall I fly to escape their hands? (W. Shakespeare) 6. To move suddenly, or with violence; to do an act suddenly or swiftly; -- usually with a qualifying word; as, a door flies open; a bomb flies apart.
Etymology:
fly (v.1) - "to soar through air," O.E. "fleogan", from W.Gmc. "fleuganan" (cf. O.H.G. "fliogan", O.N. "fl?gja", M.Du. "vlieghen", Ger. "fliegen"), from PIE "pleu" - "flowing, floating" (cf. Lith. "plaukiu" - "to swim"). fly (v.2) - "run away," O.E. "fleon".
"Fleogan" and "fleon" were often confused in O.E. Mod.Eng. distinguishes in preterite: "flew/fled".


fly by night

• fly-by-night
• fly
• night

1. A shady or untrustworthy business enterprise.
2. A swindler or unreliable person.
3. A person who escapes at night to avoid paying debts; a debtor who flees to avoid paying.
4. To escape under the cover of darkness;
5. Bad, dishonest, not to be trusted.
Example:
He put his money in a fly-by-night company and lost it all.
6. Selling for quick profit then disappearing.
Example:
The store where I bought that defective CD player was a fly-by-night operation.
7. Transient, impermanent; of an impermanent nature.
Example:
The symphony is no fly-by-night venture.
History:
"Fly-by-night" was an ancient term that described a woman who was thought to be like a witch. Witches were supposed to fly at night on brooms, and the term came to mean anyone who flies hurriedly from an activity. In the late 1800s this expression was made up to describe a person or business that sneaked away in the middle of the night to avoid paying bills or making good on promises to customers.



fly by the seat of one's pants

• fly by the seat of your pants
• fly by
• seat of one's pants
• fly
• seat of your pants
• seat
• pants

1. To fly an airplane by feel and instinct rather than with the help of the instruments.
2. To do a job instinctively rather than by using concrete information; to do something by instinct and feel without any earlier experience or instruction.
Examples:
1) I had to entertain Dad's friends from Italy. I didn't know their language, so I just flew by the seat of my pants.
2) I had to fly by the seat of my pants when the supervisor left me alone for a week.
3) Many pilots in World War I had to fly by the seat of their pants.
Etymology:
This phrase was popular among members of the U.S. Amy Air Corps in the 1900s. Often, there were few or no instruments on the planes and sometimes the instruments didn't work. So a pilot had to sit tight (on the seat of his pants) and fly an airplane by instinct. Today if you're doing any kind of project and there are no instructions, you may have to "fly by the seat of your pants." You proceed by intuition, natural talent, or common
sense.


fly in the ointment

• fly
• ointment

A small annoyance that spoils an otherwise pleasant situation; fly in the soup, imperfection that appears, drawback that is not at first apparent; an inconvenience that detracts from the usefulness of something.
Examples:
1) The food, the music, and the decorations were perfect, but her camera broke. That was the fly in the ointment.
2) The problem with the music was a fly in the ointment at the party.
Etymology:
This saying comes from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 10:1). Thousands of years ago, people realized that a tiny nuisance can sometimes ruin something pleasant. Ointment is a creamy substance that soothes, softens, or heals the skin. Finding a fly in the ointment would certainly ruin it.


fly off the handle

• fly off
• handle
• fly
• flew off the handle
• flew off
• flew
• flip one's lid
• flip
• lid
• blow up
• blow
• throw a fit
• throw
• fit
• hit the roof
• hit
• roof
• hit the ceiling
• ceiling
• have kittens
• kittens
• kitten
• have a fit
• combust
• blow one's stack
• stack
• flip one's wig
• wig
• lose one's temper
• loose
• temper
• blow a fuse
• fuse
• go ballistic
• ballistic

To lose control; to explode in anger; to fly into a rage; to lose one's temper; to become furiously angry.
Examples:
1) He really flew off the handle when he saw the bill for the meal.
2) When Dr. Anthony discovered that someone had sneaked a look at the report cards, he really flew off the handle.
3) The professor flew off the handle when the student didn't know the answer to a very elementary question.
4) Spam makes me fly off the handle.
Synonyms:
flip one's lid, blow up, throw a fit, hit the roof, hit the ceiling, have kittens, have a fit, combust, blow one's stack, flip one's wig, lose one's temper, blow a fuse, go ballistic
Etymology:
Many Americans in the early 1800s used handmade tools with axheads to chop down trees and build houses. The tools were often crudely made and the axhead would fly off the handle during furious chopping. The flying axhead is much like an angry person out of control.



fly the coop

• fly
• coop

To escape; to leave suddenly and secretly.
Example:
I tucked my little brother into bed, but the next time I looked, he had flown the coop.
Etymology:
A coop is an enclosure or cage for poultry or small animals. If a chicken "flew the coop," it escaped its pen. In the late 1800s and early 1900s "coop" was also a slang word for jail, so this expression often referred to what an escaped prisoner did. Today it is used in connection with any person or animal that secretly escapes or runs away.


fly-tipping

• fly
• tipping
• fly-posting
• posting
• fly-sheet
• sheet
• flying-sheet

The illegal practice of dumping unwanted articles in ditches, by the roadside, on disused land, etc., i.e. waste dumped or tipped on a site with no license accept waste; unauthorised dumping of waste.
Example:
Anyone fly-tipping waste is committing a serious offence.
History, related words:
It's a term used in the UK since the 1960s. In Britain, they frequently "tip" waste rather than dump it, often on a "rubbish tip". The first element, "fly", also appears in the older "fly-posting", putting up posters without permission. Both derive from the verb "to fly" in that the culprits tip and fly, or post and fly, where the idea is of an action done quickly and surreptitiously. Another British sense of "fly", knowing, clever or worldly-wise, as in "he's a fly one!", is probably lurking in there as well. Incidentally, "fly-posting" is not too far in sense from "flyer", an advertising handbill, which is from "fly-sheet", originally "flying-sheet", a bill printed for wide and indiscriminate distribution by hand.


foam at the mouth

• foam
• mouth
• at the mouth
• froth at the mouth
• froth

To be in a state of uncontrolled anger; to be uncontrollably furious, like a mad dog; to emit froth at the mouth as a rabid dog does; to froth at the mouth in excitement or hunger.
Example:
The girl's father was so angry that he was foaming at the mouth.
Etymology:
A dog with rabies or distemper foams at the mouth. A bubbly saliva forms around the lips, and the dog behaves in a crazy manner. As long ago as the 1400s people began describing furious people as "foaming at the mouth", as if they were mad dogs.
Synonym: froth at the mouth


foible

• faible

[foi"ble]; also: faible
1. (obs.) Weak; feeble. 2. A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty.
Example:
It was a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles. 3. The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; the sword blade's weak point.
Etymology:
The first OED citation of "foible" in the sense "the sword blade's weak point" is from 1648, "weak point of a sword blade" (contrasted to "forte"), from Fr. "foible" (adj.) - "weak," from O.Fr. "foible" - "feeble," dissimilated from L. "flebilis". Extended sense of "weak point of character" is first recorded 1673.
Antonym: forte.


folderol
Trivia or nonsense; a showy but useless item.
Example:
He'd answered with some folderol about seeking the ideal woman, but he'd known the truth even as he was spinning her this tosh, and it was a bitter thing. ("Imajica". Barker, C. Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1992)
History:
From before Shakespeare's "There was a lover and his lass, / With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonny no" down to and beyond Pogo's "Deck us all with Boston Charlie, / Walla Walla Wash, and Kalamazoo", nonsense words have a regular feature of song lyrics. (Though, Walla Walla is a real place in Washington state). You might think that it's a stretch to suggest another meaningless la-la lyric filler is the origin of this usefully dismissive word. However, that indeed seems to be its origin, although the usual form until relatively recently was "falderal" rather than "folderol". There are many traditional rhymes and songs with variants of "fal-de-ral" in them somewhere. For example, Robert Bell noted these words of an old Yorkshire mummer's play in his "Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry Of England" of 1857: "I hope you'll prove kind with your money and beer, / We shall come no more near you until the next year. /Fal de ral, lal de lal, etc." And Sir Walter Scott included a few lines of an old Scottish ballad in "The Bride of Lammermoor" (1819): "There was a haggis in Dunbar, / Fal de ral, etc. / Mony better and few waur, / Fal de ral, etc." Charles Dickens had gentle fun with this habit in his "Sketches By Boz" of 1836-7: "Smuggins, after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song, with a fal-de-ral - tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse itself." It was around 1820 that this traditional chorus is first recorded as a term for a gewgaw or flimsy thing that was showy but of no value, though it had to wait until the 1870s before it started to be widely used.


folksonomy

• folksonomist
• folksonomic
• folksonomically
• tagging
• folk tagging
• social tagging
• open tagging
• tag
• social software
• software
• taxonomy
• blogger
• Wikipedian

folksonomy (noun): an online classification scheme in which users add their own keywords to particular websites as a way of categorising the information that they find there
folksonomist - noun
folksonomic - adjective
folksonomically - adverb
Examples:
1) Folksonomy& adopts an ingenious strategy for imposing some organisation on the endlessly rising flood of data online: persuade the internets millions of users to do it themselves..." ("The Guardian", 12th September 2005) 2) Folksonomists apply descriptive keywords, or tags to the objects they come across. ("IEEE Spectrum", 31st January 2006) 3) After mulling over the idea for the past few weeks, I recently got around to adding folksonomic tags to my individual weblog entries. (Personal weblog <http://macdaraconroy.com/macro/2005/ 03/mommy_whats_a_folksonomy.html>, March 24th 2005)
4) You can also listen to music that is described folksonomically by certain tags. (Weblog <http://www.astro.umd.edu/~kayhan/ weblog/archives/2005_12_01_archive.html>, December 2005)
History, related words and expressions, more examples:
In the context of increasing interest in collaborative information sharing on the Internet, the term "folksonomy" has recently become a buzzword in online culture. Folksonomies are ad hoc classification schemes invented by web users themselves to categorise the data they find online. A folksonomy is the result of a process which is often called "tagging" (sometimes referred to as "folk/social/open tagging"), and involves users applying descriptive keywords ("tags") to the information (e.g. articles, photos) they come across. These tags are then made available to other users through social software  software that enables users to share information and collaborate online  so that they can be exploited when searching the net. Folksonomies differ from other classification schemes in that they operate bottom-up, i.e. users can tag things however they want, and if enough users do this, patterns begin to emerge. This is very different from conventional taxonomies which are usually imposed from above, or top-down, such as the Dewey Decimal <http://www.oclc.org/dewey> system used by librarians for classifying books. Advocates of the top-down approach argue that an agreed set of tags makes for more efficient indexing and searching, and that the idiosyncratic nature of folksonomies makes them unreliable, since users might apply a range of keywords to refer to the same concept, e.g. articles about Holland could be tagged with the keyword Dutch, or Holland, or Netherlands. Folksonomies seem to work, however, because although users can choose idiosyncratic tags, most people tend to use fairly obvious ones most of the time. Harnessing the collective intelligence of web users, folksonomies are viewed by some people as the only viable way of categorising the billions of items of information on the net. Joining the ranks of bloggers (writers of weblogs) and Wikipedians (persons who contributes to Wikipedia), those who create folksonomies are referred to as folksonomists. The term "folksonomy" has followed the same derivational pattern as the word "taxonomy", spawning an adjective "folksonomic" (e.g. "folksonomic tags") and an adverb "folksonomically" (e.g. "folksonomically organised"). "Folksonomy" is a blend of the words "folk(s)" and "taxonomy", which means a system for organising similar things into groups. It was first coined in 2004 by US information consultant Thomas Vander Wal, who had observed the phenomenon at websites such as flickr.com <http://www.flickr.com/>. Flickr" is an online photo sharing application where users can communally view and label photos with descriptive keywords, thereby creating an ad hoc, bottom-up classification system for a gigantic photo library.

follow one's nose

• follow your nose
• follow
• nose

To go straight (ahead in the same direction); to be guided by one's instinct.
Example:
When he asked me the way to the cafeteria, I told him to follow his nose.
Etymology:
This saying was being used as early as the 15th century, maybe even earlier. Your nose is in the middle of your face, pointing straight ahead of you. So, if you "follow your nose," you proceed directly ahead. This saying usually has nothing to do with the nose's ability to smell things. However, someone directing you to the school cafeteria, a perfume factory, or a skunk farm might also tell you to "follow your nose," even if you have to take three lefts and a right.

foment

• rouse
• incite

[FOH-ment]
to promote the growth or development of smth.
Synonyms: rouse, incite
Example:
"Clamour and misrepresentation ... only serve to foment the passions, without enlightening the understanding." (George Washington, March 1789)
Etymology:
If you had sore muscles in the 1600s, your doctor might have advised you to foment the injury, perhaps with heated lotions or warm wax. Sound like an odd prescription? Not if you know that "foment" traces to the Latin verb "fovere", which means "to heat". The earliest documented English uses of "foment" appear in medical texts offering advice on how to soothe various aches and pains by the application of moist heat. But the idea of applying heat can also be a metaphor for stimulating or rousing to action. Within 50 years of its English debut, "foment" was also being used in political contexts to mean "to stir up", "to call to action", or, in a sense at least figuratively opposite to its original one, "to irritate".


fonetography
Photo(s) taken using a mobile.
Example:
Fonetography exhibit to raise money for UK Mencap.
History:
"Fonetography" ("phone" + "photography", where the first "ph" became "f") has been created by the phone company "Nokia" to describe taking photographs using a mobile phone. It's the title of an exhibition at the gallery of the Association of Photographers in London that opened in November 2004. It shows mobile-phone images by David Bailey, Rankin, Sir Peter Blake, Nan Goldin, Tracey Emin and Richard Young, among others. The "Guardian" report on this was complemented by ten tongue-in-cheek tips from its picture editor for getting the best out of your camera phone. Number 5: "Don't breakdance and try to take pictures at the same time - this causes camera shake".




food for thought

• chew over an idea
• food
• thought
• chew over
• idea
• chew

Something to consider; anything that provides mental stimulus for thinking; an issue to think about; ideas worth considering, interesting suggestions.
Synonym: intellectual nourishment
Examples:
1) Your comments on Quebec have given me food for thought.
2) The sign said, "If all else fails, read the instruction". That was food for thought.
History, a related expression:
People have used this metaphorical saying since the early 1800s. In it, we think of the mind as a mouth that "chews" not food, but ideas. So ideas are the "food for thought". We sometimes use a related idiom, "to chew over an idea," which means to think about it seriously.


foodie

• empanada
• panatela
• panettone
• pantry

[FOO-dee]
A person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.
Example:
A serious foodie, Beryl reads cookbooks like novels and scours specialty shops in search of exotic ingredients.
History, related words:
"Foodie" is a relatively recent addition to English (dating from the early 1980s), but it derives from a much older word, "food," which has been with us for as long as there has been anything that could be called English. "Food" can be traced back through Middle English to the Old English form "foda," which is itself related to Old High German "fuotar," meaning "food" or "fodder," and Latin "panis," meaning "bread." "Panis" is the source for "empanada," a Spanish turnover with a sweet filling, "panatela," a type of cigar, "panettone," an Italian bread containing raisins and candied fruit, and "pantry," a room used for the storage of provisions.


foofaraw
[FOO-fuh-raw]
1. Excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration.
2. A fuss over a matter of little importance.
Examples:
1) A somber, muted descending motif opens and closes the work, which is brief but effective. It provided much needed relief from the fanfares and foofaraw in which brass-going composers so often indulge. (Philip Kennicott, "Brass Spectacular is a Spectacle of Special Sound," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 17, 1997)
2) After working in the news business for a number of years, I've become a bit cynical about mass-media coverage of events like the Y2K foofaraw. (Roy Clancy, "Ready for Y2K...," Calgary Sun, December 15, 1999)
3) Making the Times best-seller list, or a movie, or all that other foofaraw is not necessarily proof of [a novel's] lasting significance. (Roger K. Miller, "'Peyton Place' was remarkably good bad novel," Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 29, 1996)
Etymology:
"Foofaraw" is perhaps from Spanish "fanfarr?n" - "a braggart."


foot in the door

• foot
• door
• one's foot in the door
• toe in the door
• one's toe in the door
• toe

An opening or particularly promising opportunity.
Examples:
1) His foot in the door, he was sure he would conquer the world.
2) They accepted my application - it's my foot in the door!
Etymology:
A foot (or at least a toe) in the door is a method used by sales people to prevent a person from shutting a door in their face; by means of it, they (and not only they) try and sometimes get involved in something desirable.


footloose and fancy-free

• footloose
• fancy-free
• catch one's fancy
• fancy
• free
• free as a bird
• as free as a bird
• free
• bird
• catch
• as... as

With no commitments or responsibilities; not attached to anyone; not involved with anyone romantically; free; carefree, not committed, devil-may-care.
Synonym: (as) free as a bird
Examples:
1) When the kids moved out, we were footloose and fancy free!
2) He doesn't have a girlfriend right now. He's just footloose and fancy-free.
History, related words, more examples:
In the 16th century, "fancy" meant love and "fancy-free" meant that you weren't in love with anyone. In the late 17th century, "footloose" meant you were free to go anywhere. (Your foot was "loose", not tied to something.) Today the expression means you're not bound to any one place, job, or person.
"To fancy" still means "to be romantically interested in someone" in the UK, even today: "D'you fancy that David Beckham lad?" There is also the term "to catch one's fancy", meaning that you've noticed and like someone: "That new secretary has really caught my
fancy".


for Pete's sake

• for the love of Pete
• for the love of Mike
• for the love of God
• Pete's sake
• love of Mike
• love of God
• love of Pete
• Pete
• love
• sake
• Mike
• God

1. For the good of "Pete" and everybody.
2. An exclamation of anger, or frustration.
Example:
For Pete's sake, don't make noise while the child is sleeping!
Etymology, synonyms:
Another version of the exclamation "for Pete's sake" is "for the love of Pete", which seems to be slightly older (it's recorded in print from 1918). In turn that reminds us of "for the love of Mike", which is older still, from the 1880s. This last expression seems to have been a euphemistic cry to replace "for the love of God", which is known from the early eighteenth century as an irritated exclamation. It looks very much as though at some point around 1918, for no clearly discernable reason, Pete joined Mike as the person to invoke when you were impatient, annoyed, frustrated or disappointed in someone or something, both men being stand-ins for the God that it would be blasphemous to mention. Some people think that these phrases derive from appeals respectively to St Peter and to the Archangel Michael. M. Quinion (http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/worldwidewords.html) says it's plausible, but probably not. From his point of view, those who argued that the invention of "for Pete's sake" was influenced by "for pity's sake" are almost certainly nearer the mark.



for nothing

• all for nothing
• all
• nothing

1. Free of charge.
2. To no avail.
Example:
All that trouble for nothing.
Synonym: in vain
3. For no reason.
Example:
They fired him for nothing.


for the birds

• birds
• bird

Worthless; useless; stupid; uninteresting; something you don't like.
Examples:
1) Doing the cleaning all day is really for the birds.
2) That movie was for the birds. I'm sorry I wasted my money on it.
History:
This American slang was popular among soldiers during the first half of the 1900s. Think of bits of food left on the ground after a picnic. They're not worth anything, except, of course, to birds looking for crumbs. In the same way, we say that anything or anyone bad or silly is "for the birds".


fore
A warning meaning 'look out!' or 'get out of the way!'
Example: Peter's shot went far to the left, so we had to yell "Fore!" at the players on the next hole.
Etymology: This is a term used in golf to warn players on the course that a golf ball is headed their way.

forfend

• heaven forfend
• heaven

[for-FEND] 1. a. (Archaic) To prohibit; to forbid. b. To ward off; to prevent; to avert. 2. To defend; to protect; to preserve.
Examples:
1) My roommate claims that the best way to forfend a nasty cold is to chew garlic.
2) The Tory leader sort of wanted to say that the government should deploy the army more rapidly, but - heaven forfend - he didn't want to imply that it was anybody's fault that the soldiers hadn't been deployed! (Simon Hoggart, "A greasy whiff dispels the stench of worthiness", Guardian, March 22, 2001)
3) If one of us is missing, heaven forfend, then the king's forces are diminished. (Leon Wieseltier, "Kaddish")
4) The river of discovery will continue to flow without cessation, deepening our understanding of the world and enhancing our capacity to forfend calamity and live congenial lives. (John Maddox, "What Remains To Be Discovered")
5) In addition, to forfend direct Chinese involvement, which was extremely unlikely, the administration guaranteed the northern regime, thus removing a major deterrent. (Morton A. Kaplan, "Cruel Vietnam Follies", The World & I, September 1, 1995)
History, related phrase, more examples and meanings:
"Heaven forfend if you don't treat the restaurant critic well - she'll cost you points if she leaves unhappy", wrote Peter Cohen in an October 2005 issue of "Macworld", using an old meaning of "forfend" in the process. English speakers have been using "forfend" with the meanings "to forbid" and "to prevent" since the late 14th century (and the meaning "to protect" since the late 16th century). These days, however, the "forbid" sense is considered archaic; we only use it, as Cohen did, in the phrase "heaven forfend," which harks back to the days of yore. "Forfend" comes from "for-" (an old prefix meaning "so as to involve prohibition, exclusion, omission, failure, neglect, or refusal") and Middle English "fenden" (a shorter variant of "defenden," meaning "to defend, to ward off").

forgo
[for-GO]
(Inflected forms: forwent, forgone, forgoing, forgoes)
To abstain from; to do without.
Examples:
1) This one has given up smoking today, I knew; that one his weekly visit to the cafe, another will forgo her favorite foods. (Joanne Harris, "Chocolat")
2) If my deepest wish is to sit on a beach in Maine fishing for bass, I might cheerfully forgo stock options in Microsoft to do it. (Alan Ryan, "It's Not Easy Being Equal," New York Times, June 18, 2000)
3) As much as I wanted to forgo college and head straight to New York to become an actress, my father said that all knowledge would serve me and that the more I knew the more I could bring to my work. (Jane Alexander, "Command Performance")
Etymology:
"Forgo" derives from Old English "forgan" - "to go without, to forgo," from "for-" ("without") + "gan" ("to go").


forlorn
[fur-LORN; for-]
1. Sad and lonely because deserted, abandoned, or lost.
2. Bereft; forsaken.
3. Wretched or pitiful in appearance or condition.
4. Almost hopeless; desperate.
Examples:
1) Henry had felt guilty at abandoning his sister; he had married not once but twice, leaving Rose forlorn. (Anita Brookner, "Visitors")
2) In these forlorn regions of unknowable dreary space, this reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold. (Francis Spufford, "I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination")
3) Bloch remembers that Stephen was a member of the Milk Squad, comprised of children who were considered to need extra nutrition, and early photographs do show him as one of the smaller boys, in the front row, looking forlorn. (Meryle Secrest, "Stephen Sondheim: A Life")
Etymology:
"Forlorn" comes from Old English "forleosan" ("to abandon"), from "for-" ("") + "leosan" ("to lose").


forswear

• abjure

[for-SWAIR]
Also: foreswear
1. To make a liar of (oneself) under or as if under oath.
2. To reject or renounce under oath; to renounce earnestly.
3. To deny under oath.
Example:
Lizette had always enjoyed riding her bike to work, but after her third accident, she forswore bicycle riding in the city and purchased a subway pass.
Etymology, synonym, more examples:
"Forswear" (which is also sometimes spelled "foreswear") is the modern English equivalent of the Old English "forswerian." It can suggest denial ("[Thou] would'st forswear thy own hand and seal" - John Arbuthnot, "John Bull") or perjury ("Is it the interest of any man . . . to lie, forswear himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder?" - Charles Dickens, "American Notes"). But in current use, it most often has to do with giving something up, as in "the warring parties agreed to forswear violence" and "she refused to forswear her principles". The word "abjure" is often used as a synonym of "forswear," though with less emphasis on the suggestion of perjury or betrayal of the beliefs that one holds dear.


forthright
[forth'rit]
straightforward, frank
Example:
He was far more forthright on the omission of Steve Cram. ("Independent", electronic edition of 19891005. London: Newspaper Publishing plc, 1989, Sport material)
Etymology:
OE "forth" from "fore" ("before") + OE "riht" ("right").


fortuitous
[for-TOO-uh-tuhs; -TYOO-] 1. Happening by chance; coming or occurring by accident, or without any known cause. 2. Happening by a fortunate or lucky chance. 3. Fortunate or lucky.
Examples:
1) The profession, the political faith, the entire life of many men, depend on chance circumstances, on what is fortuitous, on the caprice and the unexpected turns of fate. (Juan Valera, "Pepita Jimenez")
2) They paint, in the most magnificent colours, the order, beauty, and wise arrangement of the universe; and then ask, if such a glorious display of intelligence could proceed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or if chance could produce what the greatest genius can never sufficiently admire. (David Hume, "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding")
3) But Edward Bok has always felt that he was materially helped by fortuitous conditions not of his own creation or choice. (Edward Bok, "The Americanization of Edward Bok")
4) I was saved from arrest by the fortuitous arrival of some friends of my parents, who talked the cops into letting me go. (Susan Molinari with Elinor Burkett, "Representative Mom")
5) I view life as a fortuitous collaboration ascribable to the fact that one finds oneself in the right place at the right time. (Brion Gysin, "The Third Mind")
6) The site selection, three blocks west of the Chicago River, proved fortuitous in 1871, when everything east and north of the river burned down in the Great Chicago Fire. (Richard E. Cohen, "Rostenkowski: The Pursuit of Power and the End of the Old Politics")
Etymology:
"Fortuitous" comes from Latin "fortuitus" ("accidental"), from "fors" ("chance, luck").


forty winks

• forty
• wink
• winks

Nap, light sleep; a short sleep during the day.
Examples:
1) As soon as I arrived home I lay down and had forty winks.
2) I just need forty winks and I'll be able to work all night.
History:
Since the 1300s, "wink" has referred to sleep, but probably just a short period of sleep because when you wink you close and open your eyelids quickly. In the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, the number forty didn't always mean the number after thirty-nine. It meant an indefinite number or "few". The phrase "forty winks" was first used in 1872 in an issue of the famous British humor magazine "Punch".


foundling
[FOWND-ling]
A deserted or abandoned infant; a child found without a parent or caretaker.
Examples:
1) Some of her desires were more altruistic: she wanted to "send Phyllis to school for a year, take Auntie May for a winter in the Isle of Pines," and "raise foundlings." (Tim Page, "Dawn Powell: A Biography")
2) Then one day her daughter returns home with a foundling, an abandoned baby boy. (Charles R. Larson, "Washington Post", September 26, 1999)
Etymology:
"Foundling" comes from Old English "foundling, fundling", from "finden" ("to find") + the suffix -ling.


four corners of the earth

• 4 corners of the earth
• four
• corner
• earth

1. Four directions upon the earth, the four points of the compass (North, South, East, West).
2. All over the world, from all over the planet; all parts of a place; far and wide.
Example:
When John F.Kennedy died, people came to his funeral from the four corners of the earth.
Etymology:
This saying first appeared in the New Testament of the Bible. Some ancient peoples thought that the planet Earth was flat and had corners. So when they referred to the "four corners of the earth," they meant some place near the edge of a rectangular map, the farthest ends of the world.



fraidy cat

• scaredy cat
• fraidy
• cat
• scaredy

A person who won't act on a dare, or who is afraid to try something new.
Etymology: The phrase was coined in recognition of a cat's trait of not standing up against a dog many times its size.
Synonym: scaredy cat

franchise terrorism

• franchise
• terrorism
• terrorist

Terrorism carried out by people hired or inspired by, but who have no formal contact with, a separate terrorist organization.
franchise terrorist - n., adj.
Examples:
1) In this new phase of "franchise terrorism", al-Qaeda has been described as an idea rather than an organisation - "a global movement infected by al-Qaeda's radical agenda", as Mr Tenet put it. Even if its structure has been disrupted by military action, arrests and increased security, it still acts as an inspiration to groups, from Chechnya to the Palestinian territories, that have minimal contact with the network. (Raymond Whitaker, "Bin Laden hunt stepped up," Canberra Times (Australia), March 22, 2004)
2) They may also hire outside help - a trend branded as "franchise terrorism", which was used in the Casablanca and Riyadh bombings earlier this year. Kevin Rosser, one of the report's authors, says that, "like stepping on an anthill", the fall of Afghanistan has caused al-Qa'ida agents to flee, creating a militant diaspora. (David Randall et al., "Two Dead And 50 Injured In Al-Qa'ida Style Terror Blast," Independent on Sunday (London, England), November 9, 2003)
3) Osama bin Laden is either dead or on the run, but the thousands of terrorists who trained in his camps remain a continuing threat. Their "sleeper" cells have blended into community life in countries around the world, including the United States, awaiting only directives and financing to strike again. ("Franchise terrorism," Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine), January 11, 2002)


freak

• weirdo

A social outcast or misfit; a strange person.
Examples:
1) Stephan has no friends and spends all his time in the basement. What a freak! 2) The protest rally was filled with hippies and freaks.
Etymology, more meanings, examples:
1563, "sudden turn of mind," probably related to O.E. "frician" - "to dance" (not recorded in M.E., but the word may have survived in dialect), or perhaps from M.E. "frek" - "bold, quickly," from O.E. "frec" - "greedy, gluttonous." Sense of "capricious notion" (1563) and "unusual thing, fancy" (1784) preceded that in freak of nature (1847). In the 1700s, "freaked" meant "covered with spots or colors". By 1900, "freak" meant "irregular" or "not normal", perhaps in reference to spots of color as imperfections in a manufacturing process. The verb "freak" out is first attested 1965 in Amer.Eng., from "freak" (n.) - "drug user" (1945), but the verb meaning "change, distort" goes back to 1911, and the sense in health freak, ecology freak, etc. is attested from 1908. Today, "freak" has a surprising number of meanings, all coming from the sense of "irregular", including: an expert or fan (as in "a poetry freak"), a hippie, a drug addict, crazy behavior (as in "He freaked when I told him I wrecked his car"), a sexually promiscuous person, an unusually beautiful woman. Synonym: weirdo.


freak out

• go bananas
• freak
• go
• bananas
• go ape
• go ballistic
• ape
• ballistic

To become very angry or excited; to be very emotional.
Examples:
1) Ed freaked out when we told him we crashed his car. 2) Dude, don't freak out. We can handle it.
Etymology:
"Freak" has a lot of meanings, but the verb "freak out" is first attested 1965 in Amer.Eng., from "freak" (n.) = "drug user" (1945).
Synonym: go bananas, go ape, go ballistic


freegan

• freeganism

a person, nominally vegan, who eats only what they can get for nothing.
Examples:
1) Freegans come from a larger community of young, do-it-yourself punks. Many are anarchists, opposing all forms of government and embracing ideals such as individual freedom and cooperation. Some, though, dont identify as anarchists-or as punks-or they resent being labeled. But all of them despise the American-style consumerism they call destructive. ("The Sacramento Bee", 27 May 2003)
2) An unwritten rule of freeganism is that you leave enough for people who genuinely need the food. So when I found discarded boxes of carrots, I only took a few handfuls. ("The Observer", 23 Nov. 2003)
History & Etymology:
The idea behind freeganism is that you get as much of your food as you can from stuff that has been thrown out by supermarkets, restaurants and street markets. Though the practice is also known as voluntary simplicity and monetary minimalism its only partly about living cheaply. Its more a political philosophy, a statement of defiance against what freegans regard as the wasteful consumerist culture of the developed world, which is why it has also been called ethical eating and the ultimate boycott.
The name is usually said to be a blend of free and vegan, since early practitioners were either vegetarian or vegan (not least because it is much more dangerous to eat discarded meat or fish than vegetables and grains). But it has also been argued from a political perspective that its short for free gain. The evidence is that some normally vegan freegans will take animal products, since theres another term, meagan, for vegans who will eat meat if they can get it for nothing.
The culture lives on the edge of illegality, since many firms regard taking food from skips or dumpsters as theft. Some extreme freegan practices would be considered unacceptable by most people, such as table diving, in which freegans hover in a restaurant and grab discarded food from diners plates after they leave.


freeganism

• freegan

The idea behind "freeganism" is that you get as much of your food as you can from stuff that has been thrown out by supermarkets, restaurants and street markets. Though the practice is also known as "voluntary simplicity" and "monetary minimalism" it's only partly about living cheaply. It's more a political philosophy, a statement of defiance against what freegans regard as the wasteful consumerist culture of the developed world, which is why it has also been called
"ethical eating" and "the ultimate boycott".
The culture lives on the edge of illegality, since many firms regard taking food from skips or dumpsters as theft. Some extreme freegan practices would be considered unacceptable by most people, such as "table diving", in which freegans hover in a restaurant and grab discarded food from diners' plates after they leave.
Examples:
1) "Freegans come from a larger community of young, do-it-yourself punks. Many are anarchists, opposing all forms of government and embracing ideals such as individual freedom and cooperation. Some, though, don't identify as anarchists - or as punks - or they resent being labeled. But all of them despise the American-style consumerism they call destructive." ("Sacramento Bee", 27 May 2003)
2) "An unwritten rule of freeganism is that you leave enough for people who genuinely need the food. So when I found discarded boxes of carrots, I only took a few handfuls." ("Observer", 23 Nov. 2003)
Etymology:
The name is usually said to be a blend of "free" and "vegan", since early practitioners were either vegetarian or vegan (not least because it is much more dangerous to eat discarded meat or fish than vegetables and grains). But it has also been argued from a political perspective that it's short for "free gain". The evidence is that some normally vegan freegans will take animal products, since there's another term, "meagan", for vegans who will eat meat if they can get it for nothing.

freeloading

• freeloader
• freeload
• freeloader
• free riding
• free rider
• free riding
• free ride
• free
• riding
• rider
• ride

(slang) living at the expense of one's fellows, living off of other people's money; parasitism
Example:
The Government hopes this will end the spectacle of freeloading hippies waiting for their cash before moving to new sites. ("The Daily Mirror". - London: Mirror Group Newspapers, 1992)
Synonym: free riding.
Etymology:
From "freeload" - 1960s; originally US. One more derivative is "freeloader" (someone who takes advantage of the generosity of others).



frenetic
[frih-NET-ik]
Frenzied, frantic.
Example:
It's the day after Thanksgiving - a day described by Amber Veverka (Charlotte [NC] Observer, November 10, 2003) as "the official, frenetic kickoff for the Christmas shopping season."
Etymology, related words:
When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane - at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. "Frenetik," in Middle English, meant "insane." When the word no longer denoted stark raving madness, it conjured up fanatical frenetic zealots. Today we're even willing to downgrade its seriousness to something more akin to "hectic." But if you trace "frenetic" back through Anglo-French and Latin, you'll find that it comes from Greek "phrenitis," a term describing an inflammation of the brain. "Phren" is the Greek word for "mind," a root you will recognize in "schizophrenic." As for "frenzied" and "frantic," they're not only synonyms but relatives as well. "Frantic" comes from "frenetik," and "frenzied" traces back to "phrenitis."


fresco

• fresco secco
• buon fresco
• secco
• buon

[FRESS-koh]
1. The art of painting on freshly spread moist lime plaster with water-based pigments.
Example:
The fresco that adorned the wall of the old Roman cathedral took the artist five years to complete.
2. A painting executed in fresco.
Etymology:
"Fresco" means "fresh" in Italian, and the name of this art form refers to the fresh plaster used in it. It's an ancient art, the oldest known painting medium other than cave painting, and it reached its height during the Italian Renaissance of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There are actually two types of fresco painting: "fresco secco" (lime painting) and "buon ("true") fresco." In "fresco secco," a freshly plastered wall is soaked in lime, then lime-resistant pigments are applied. Michelangelo used "buon fresco" techniques, in which pigments are fused directly with wet plaster, in his murals in the Sistine Chapel.


frienemy

• de-friend
• defriend
• mutual chatisfaction
• mutual
• chatisfaction
• contract Palzheimer's
• contract
• Palzheimer's
• Palzheimer
• friendscape

[FREN-uh-mee]
A friend who acts like an enemy; a fair-weather or untrustworthy friend. Examples:
1) Definition of a "frienemy": A former friend masquerading as a current friend because she doesn't know I am aware she is dating my ex. ("The Vent", The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 17, 2001)
2) The lingo of lingering and lost friendship is an interesting one. To 'de-friend' is to cease contact  perhaps because you fear the person is really a 'frienemy' (veering from a friend to an enemy), or because of a reduction in 'mutual chatisfaction' (conversational enjoyment), but usually because, consciously or unconsciously, you just let it happen. To 'contract Palzheimer's' means to let a great pal drift from the mind, as a result of the passage of time, lack of time, relocation, a new 'friendscape' (field of acquaintances) and/or changed values. (John Hind, "What's the word?", The Observer, December 14, 2003) Etymology: This just-so blend of "friend" and "enemy" was coined by singer/songwriter Gregg Alexander of New Radicals and first appeared in his 1998 song, "You Get What You Give", a catchy tune if there ever was one (see the first use, below). The rap group "Arsonists" also used the word ("Frienemies") as the title of a song on their album "As the World Burns", released August 24, 1999, and the word also made an appearance on the HBO show "Sex and the City".
First Use:
Wake up kids We've got the dreamers disease Age 14 we got you down on your knees So polite, you're busy still saying please Frienemies, who when you're down ain't your friend Every night we smash their Mercedes-Benz. (Gregg Alexander, "You Get What You Give", New Radicals: 'Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too', October 20, 1998)


frigorific

• frigor

Causing cold; chilling.
Examples:
1) At the frigorific laboratory of the Charlottenburg Polytechnic a specialty is made of experimenting with and studying all matter and the changes produced when exposed to extremely low temperatures. ("Iowa City Press Citizen", 30 September 1925)
2) And for the next 45 rounds, McDowell and Duran took turns before the microphone, batting words away with scarcely a pause. They spelled superencipherment and aerolithology, gorgonize and subaqueous, eutrophic, alpaca and frigorific. ("Palm Beach Post", 24 February 2004)
Etymology:
The chill here is from Latin "frigus", cold, a root that's also the source of "refrigerate" and "frigid", as well as the obsolete "frigor", a state of extreme coldness.



frisson

• shudder

[free-SOHNG] (the last vowel is pronounced nasally, and the final "ng" is not pronounced)
A brief moment of emotional excitement; a moment of intense excitement; an emotional thrill.
Synonym: shudder
Examples:
1) When the roller coaster reached the top of the first hill, a frisson of fear shot through Angie as she anticipated the thrilling and terrifying downward plunge.
2) When we think a story hasn't been invented, there's an extra frisson in reading it. ("Too true," Independent, April 12, 1998)
3) As every parent knows, children have a love-hate relationship with stories about monsters. They love the frisson of hearing about such terrifying creatures as the Cyclops - but hate to think about what they might do if they bumped into one. ("Strange but true: One in the eye for all those Homer-phobes," Daily Telegraph, June 21, 1998)
4) When we stopped in traffic at the Plaza de la Cibeles on the Paseo del Prado, where a grandiose 18th-century statue of the goddess of fertility poised on a chariot seemed to be waiting for the light to change, a little frisson of pleasure jolted through me, because this part of Madrid reminded me of Paris. ("Counting Pesetas in Madrid," New York Times, March 17, 1996)
History, more examples:
"I feel a shiver that's not from the cold as the band and the crowd go charging through the final notes ... That frisson, that exultant moment...." That's how writer Robert W. Stock characterized the culmination of a big piece at a concert in 1982. His allusion to the cold is apt given that "frisson" comes from the French word for "shiver." "Frisson" traces to the Old French "fricon," which in turn derives from "frictio," Latin for "friction." What does friction - normally a heat generator - have to do with thrills and chills? Nothing, actually. The association came about because "frictio" (which derives from the Latin "fricare," meaning "to rub") was once mistakenly taken to be a derivative of "frigere," which means "to be cold."


from the word go

• the word go
• word go
• word
• go

From the very beginning, from the start.
Examples:
1) Her mother did not like her boyfriend from the word go.
2) You knew I worked very hard and had no free time. You knew it from the word go.
Etymology:
At the start of many races, someone shouts, "Ready, set, GO!" So, since the mid-1800s in the United States, "from the word go" has meant from the outset of something.

fructify

• usufruct
• fructose

[FRUK-tuh-fye]
1. to bear fruit
Example:
Fred is in a comfortable financial position these days, thanks to some investments that have recently begun to fructify.
2. to make fruitful or productive
Etymology, related words:
"Fructify" derives from the Middle English "fructifien" and ultimately from the Latin noun "fructus," meaning "fruit." When the word was first used in English in the 14th century, it literally referred to the actions of plants that bore fruit; later it was used transitively to refer to the action of making something fruitful, such as soil. The word also expanded to encompass a figurative sense of "fruit," and it is now more frequently used to refer to the giving forth of something in profit from something else (such as dividends from an investment). "Fructus" also gave us the name of the sugar "fructose," as well as "usufruct," which refers to the legal right to enjoy the fruits or profits of something that belongs to someone else.


fructuous
[FRUHK-choo-uhs]
Fruitful; productive.
Examples:
1) It had by now reached much beyond even that status to appear in our minds as a place sentient, actively helping these once forlorn and homeless sailors, presenting us with fructuous soil to grow our food, bountifully adding its own edible offerings, its waters supplying us with an abundance of fish. (William Brinkley, "Last Ship")
2) Theory does not provide us worthy marching orders for a fructuous future, for theory in itself tells us nothing about how and when it is applicable. (Sheila McNamee and Kenneth J. Gergen, "Relational Responsibility")
Etymology:
"Fructuous" comes from Latin "fructuosus", from "fructus" - "enjoyment, product, fruit," from the past participle of "frui" ("to enjoy").


frugal
[FROO-gul]
Characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources.
Example:
Mary's friends knew her as a frugal woman who cut coupons to save pennies, so they were shocked when she suddenly purchased an extravagantly expensive car.
History:
Someone who is frugal is unwilling to (lavishly) enjoy the fruits of their labors, so it may surprise you to learn that "frugal" ultimately derives from the Latin "frux," meaning "fruit" or "value," and is even a distant cousin of the Latin word for "enjoy" ("frui"). The connection between fruit/value and restraint was first made in Latin; the Middle French word that English speakers eventually adopted as "frugal" came from the Latin adjective "frugalis," a "frux" descendant meaning "virtuous" or "frugal." Although English speakers adopted "frugal" in the late 16th century, they were already lavishly supplied with words for the concept, including the 14th-century coinages "sparing" and "thrifty."


fugacious

• fugitive
• refuge
• fugue

[fyoo-GAY-shuhs]
Lasting but a short time; fleeting.
Examples:
1) The fugacious nature of life and time. (Harriet Martineau, "Autobiography")
2) Tastes, smells... being, in comparison, fugacious. (John Stuart Mill, "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy")
3) When he proposed the tax in May, Altman thought it would follow the fugacious nature of some flowers: bloom quickly and die just as fast. (Will Rodgers, "Parks proposal falls on 3-2 vote," Tampa Tribune, June 27, 2001)
Etymology, related words:
"Fugacious" is derived from Latin "fugax, fugac-" ("ready to flee, flying; hence, fleeting, transitory"), from "fugere" ("to flee, to take flight"). Other words derived from the same root include "fugitive" - "one who flees", especially from the law; "refuge" - "a place to which to flee back" ("re-" = "back"), and hence to safety; and "fugue" - literally a musical "flight."


full dress

• in full dress
• dress
• formal

1. Suitable for formal occasions; the style of dress prescribed for ceremonial or formal social occasions; official attire, ceremonial attire; wearing official attire.
Examples:
"a full-dress uniform"; "full-dress shoes". 2. (of an occasion) Requiring formal clothes.
Examples:
"a full-dress dinner"; "a full-dress ceremony". Synonyms: dress, formal. 3. Complete in every respect.
Examples:
"a full-dress debate"; "a full-dress investigation". Synonym: complete
4. All the bells and whistles.
Example:
When Horst sold his business he bought a full-dress motorhome.


full of beans

• be full of beans
• be full of
• beans
• full of
• bean
• full
• feel one's oats
• feel one's oat
• feel oats
• oat
• oats

(Be) lively, happy, energetic, high-spirited, vigorous, tireless.
Example:
After final exams, some of us were exhausted and others were full of beans.
Synonym: feel one's oats
Etymology:
Eating lots of beans has a gastrointestinal effect on some people that may make them a little more lively. The origin may also be from the days when the race-horses were fed beans. This lively expression has been bouncing around since the 1800s.

full of hot air

• be full of hot air
• full of
• hot
• full
• air
• paper tiger
• paper
• tiger

Being foolish and talking nonsense; being a bluff; pompous; vain.
Example:
I don't believe a word he says. He's full of hot air.
Synonym: paper tiger
Etymology:
When you talk, warm air comes out of your mouth. Large balloons that carry people in baskets are kept afloat by hot air. This idiom from the mid-1800s puts those two ideas together. If you want to describe a pompous person who is all puffed up (like a balloon), you could say he or she if "full of hot air" (that's coming out of his or her mouth).

fulsome
[FUL-sum] 1. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities. 2. Insincere or excessively lavish; especially, offensive from excess of praise.
Examples:
1) He recorded the event in his journal: "Long evening visit from Mr. Langtree - a fulsome flatterer." (Edward L. Widmer, "Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City")
2) Concealed disgust under the appearance of fulsome endearment. (Oliver Goldsmith, "The Citizen of the World")
Etymology:
"Fulsome" is from Middle English "fulsom", from "full" + "-som" ("-some").


funE
(SMS) funny

funambulism
[fyoo-NAM-byuh-liz-um]
1. Tightrope walking.
2. A show, especially of mental agility.
Example:
As a game-show contestant Brian amazed us all with his funambulism, answering every question correctly to win the $10,000 first prize.
Etymology, more examples:
Back in ancient Rome, tightrope walking was a popular spectacle at public gatherings. The Latin word for "tightrope walker" is "funambulus," from the Latin "funis," meaning "rope," plus "ambulare," meaning "to walk." It doesn't take any funambulism on our part to see how the word for an impressive act of physical skill and agility came to mean an impressive act of mental skill or agility. That extended sense of the word has been around since at least 1886, when British academic and writer Augustus Jessopp described the act of diagramming sentences as "horrible lessons of ghastly grammar and dreary funambulism."


fungible
[FUHN-juh-buhl]
1. (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.
2. Interchangeable.
3. (Usually used in the plural.) Something that is exchangeable or substitutable.
Examples:
1) People think this tax is for Social Security. But tax monies are really fungible. They get raided all the time. (Eugene Ludwig, "Motivated to Work," interview by Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes, March 20, 2000)
2) The setting is Ireland in the 1950's, but, a cynical reader might reflect, this sort of fiction is so common that the characters will be completely fungible. (Susan Isaacs, "Three Little Girls From School," New York Times, December 30, 1990)
3) Genuine eros makes us desire a particular person; crude desire is satisfiable by fungible bodies. (Edward Craig (general editor), "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy")
Etymology:
"Fungible" comes from Medieval Latin "fungibilis", from Latin "fungi (vice)" - "to perform (in place of)."


furbelow
[FUR-buh-low]
1. A pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment.
Synonym: ruffle.
2. Something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy ornamentation.
Examples:
1) In a season of ruffles, frills and furbelows, simple cuts in neutral shades stand out. ("Designers Head for Neutral Territory," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1997)
2) Gilt. Red velvet. Brocade. Flocked wallpaper. Swags, frills, furbelows and ornamentation beyond comprehension. We're talking rococo loco. (Liz Braun, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," Ottawa Sun, April 3, 2000)
3) It is a story that, for all its hyper-animatedness, all its flips and furbelows of style, is confusing and wearisome. (Christine Stansell, "Details, Details," New Republic, December 10, 2001)
4) Patience is required to get past some of the director's more baroque cinematic touches, decorating the story's dark center with visual furbelows... and aural gimmicks. (Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Movies: The Evil That Men Do," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998)
Etymology:
Probably alteration of Provençal "farbello, farbella" ("fringe"), perhaps alteration of Italian "faldella" ("pleat"), diminutive of "falda" ("flap, loose end") of Germanic origin.



furkid

• fur-kid
• furbaby
• fur baby
• furchild
• fur child
• child
• baby
• fur
• kid

A pet treated as though it were one's child.
Also: fur-kid, fur kid.
Examples:
1) My name is Brenda Mejia and I'm owned by two Australian cattle dogs. I don't have kids, so I call my dogs my 'furkids.' They keep me as busy as a soccer mom. (Brenda Mejia, "Pet stories", The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA), April 30, 2004)
2) Most everything I ever needed to learn about babies I learned from my dogs. Although I never went as far as calling them my "fur kids," dogs long predated babies in my life. Indeed, in other pages of this newspaper, I am a pets columnist, writing about everything from bearded dragons to border collies. But as I begin to compose the occasional mothering column as well, I've discovered that there's plenty of crossover wisdom between species. (Denise Flaim, "Triplet Chronicles; Dogged lessons in baby care", Newsday, May 17, 2004)
3) At least one major consumer advocacy organization advises against pet health insurance. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Federation of America, one of the nation's largest consumer advocacy groups, expressed his group's view, which is likely to outrage animal lovers who think of their dogs and cats as their "furkids." (Christine Winter, "Pet health insurance plans grow by leaps and bounds", Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), March 26, 2000)
History:
The code of politically correct speech has come down against the word "pet", which at first blush seems about as inoffensive a term as there is in the language. It has referred to a domesticated or tamed animal since the 16th century, and has even branched out to mean a favorite person, or one who is treated with special kindness. What's wrong with that? Plenty, say the animal-rights activists. "Pet" implies the human ownership of an animal, and that just won't do. The preferred term now is "companion animal" (1977). The term "furkid", of course, takes us beyond the treatment of the animal as a mere companion and into the realm of surrogate kid-hood. Now we "animal guardians" (1997) can apply our hyper-parenting skills to our dogs, cats, and other four-legged members of the family. That some of us are doing this is further evidenced by the fact that a number of synonyms for furkid exist, including "furbaby" (1993; also: "fur baby") and "furchild" (2000; also: "fur child").


fusion inhibitor

• fusion
• inhibitor

Fusion inhibitors are a new class of drugs that act against HIV.
Example:
Enfuvirtide, the first FDA-approved fusion inhibitor, is a synthetic 36-amino acid peptide derived from the HIV-1 gp-41 protein.
History:
Fusion inhibitors got their name because they prevent the virus from fusing with the inside of a cell and so stop it from replicating. Though this term has been used in the pharmaceutical industry since the mid-1990s, it has only very recently started to be seen in the non-specialist press because the first example, Fuzeon (generic name enfuvirtide), was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration only in 2003. Such drugs are members of a broader class, the entry inhibitors, which stop the virus from entering the cell in the first place. These are classed as antiretroviral drugs, like other HIV agents, since HIV is a retrovirus, one that works by generating a DNA copy of its RNA genome inside the cell, the reverse of normal genetic replication, which goes from DNA to RNA.


fustian
[FUSS-chun]
Noun
1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff, including corduroy, velveteen, etc.; strong cotton and linen fabric.
2. Highflown or affected writing or speech; broadly: anything highflown or affected in style; pompous or pretentious language.
Adjective
3. Made of fustian.
4. Pompous; ridiculously inflated; bombastic.
Examples:
1) The book is just more fustian from another author who is a pretentious bore writing to impress himself.
2) Don't squander the court's patience puffing your cheeks up on stately bombast and lofty fustian. Speak plainly! (Richard Dooling, "Brain Storm")
3) His stated motive is to meet "the flood of cant, fustian and emotional nonsense which pollutes the intellectual atmosphere." (Walter H. Waggoner, "Joseph W. Bishop Jr., Law Professor and Author", New York Times, May 21, 1985)
4) It would take a stout heart to read through all the loyal effusions and fustian birthday odes of the 18th-century laureates - Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber and the rest. (John Gross, "In Search of a Laureate: Making Book on Britain's Next Official Poet", New York Times, July 15, 1984)
Etymology:
"Fustian" has been used in English for a kind of cloth since the 13th century, but it didn't acquire its highflown sense until at least three centuries later. One of the earliest known uses of the "pretentious writing or speech" sense occurs in Christopher Marlowe's play "Doctor Faustus", when Wagner says, "Let thy left eye be diametarily [sic] fixed upon my right heel, with quasi vestigiis nostris insistere," and the clown replies, "God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian".
The word meaning "thick cotton cloth," c.1200, derives from O.Fr. "fustaigne", from M.L. "fustaneum", probably from L. "fustis" ("staff, stick of wood"), probably a loan-translation of Gk. "xylina lina" ("linens of wood", i.e. "cotton"), but the M.L. word is also derived from Fostat, town near Cairo where this cloth was manufactured. Figurative sense of "pompous, inflated language" first recorded c.1590.
But the precise origins of the word "fustian" are a subject of some dispute.

fustigate
[FUSS-tuh-gayt]
1. to beat with or as if with a short heavy club
2. to criticize severely
Example:
The incumbent senator has been fustigated by his opponent for twice voting to raise taxes.
History, more examples:
Though it won't leave a bump on a person's head, severe criticism can be a blow to his self-esteem. It's no wonder that "fustigate," when it first appeared in the 17th century, originally meant "to cudgel or beat with a short heavy stick," a sense that reflects the word's derivation from the Latin noun "fustis," which means "club" or "staff." The "criticize" sense is more common these days, but the violent use of "fustigate" was a hit with earlier writers like George Huddesford, who in 1801 told of an angry Jove who "cudgell'd all the constellations, ... / Swore he'd eject the man i' the moon ... / And fustigate him round his orbit."


fusty
[FUSS-tee]
1. (British) Impaired by age or dampness.
Synonym: moldy
2. Saturated with dust and stale odors.
Synonym: musty
3. Rigidly old-fashioned or reactionary.
Example:
Tweed jackets and horn-rimmed glasses give Professor Mitchell a fusty air, but he's actually much hipper than he looks.
Etymology:
"Fusty" probably derives from the Middle English word "foist," meaning "wine cask," which in turn traces to the Medieval Latin word "fustis," meaning "tree trunk" or "wood." So how did "fusty" end up meaning "old-fashioned"? Originally, it described wine that had gotten stale from sitting in the cask for too long; "fusty" literally meant that the wine had the "taste of the cask." Eventually any stale food, especially damp or moldy food, was called "fusty." Those damp and moldy connotations were later applied to musty places, and later still to anything that had lost its freshness and interest - that is, to anything old-fashioned.


future shock

• future
• shock
• future shocked
• shocked

1. The physical and psychological distress or disorientation suffered by one who is unable to cope with the rapidity of social and technological changes; difficulty in and stress from coping with rapid changes in society, especially with technological changes; a sense of insecurity and disorientation often felt by people whose societies are undergoing rapid change; the inability to cope with rapid progress.
2. Any overload of a person's or an organization's capacity for adaptation or decision making.
3. A user's (or programmer's!) confusion when confronted with a package that has too many features and poor introductory material.
Example:
A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without exhibiting future shock. (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, "Future Shock Levels")
Etymology:
The book "Future Shock" (a controversial book written by the sociologist and futurologist Alvin Toffler) was published in the 1970s prior to the invention of the desktop computer and the expansion of the Internet, etc. It has sold over 6 million copies and has been widely translated.
"Future shock" is also a term for certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, introduced by Toffler in his book of the same name.
Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change will leave them disconnected, suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation" - future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock.
His analysis of that phenomenon is continued in his later publications, especially "The Third Wave" and "Powershift".