macabre

• danse macabre
• danse

[muh-KAHB]
1. Having death as a subject; comprising or including a personalized representation of death.
2. Dwelling on the gruesome.
3. Tending to produce horror in a beholder.
Example:
The Halloween movie was a grisly and macabre tale filled with gruesome special effects and terrifying monsters.
History:
During the 13th and 14th centuries, when everyday life was marked by horrific events such as the Black Plague and the Hundred Years' War, Europeans introduced the danse macabre to demonstrate the inevitability and impartiality of death. The danse macabre was a dance or parade in which a skeleton representing death led other skeletons or living persons to the grave, and its name recalls the Maccabees, 2nd-century Jewish patriots who were associated with death and purgatory. Middle French speakers called this pageant "danse de Macabre," literally "dance of death," and it was from the French name that English speakers borrowed "macabre" as a term for things hideous or deathly.


macaroni

• fop
• dandy

[mak-uh-ROH-nee]
1. Pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes.
2. A member of a class of traveled young Englishmen of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who affected foreign ways.
3. An affected young man; fop.
Example:
If he...talks about London and Lord March, and White's, and Almack's, with the air of a macaroni, I don't think we need like him much the less. (William Makepeace Thackeray, "The Virginians")
History, synonyms:
The "macaroni" in the song "Yankee Doodle" is not the familiar food. The feather in Yankee Doodle's cap apparently makes him a macaroni in the now rare "fop" or "dandy" sense. The sense appears to have originated with a club established in London by a group of young, well-traveled Englishmen in the 1760s. The founders prided themselves on their appearance, sense of style, and manners, and they chose the name Macaroni Club to indicate their worldliness. Because macaroni was, at the time, a new and rather exotic food in England, the name was meant to demonstrate how stylish the club's members were. The members were themselves called "macaronis," and eventually "macaroni" became synonymous with "dandy" and "fop."


machination

• machinate
• machinator

[mack-uh-NAY-shuhn; mash-]
1. The act of plotting.
2. A crafty scheme; a cunning design or plot intended to accomplish some usually evil end.
Examples:
1) He was telling me how he could have married the royal princess as a reward for his bravery in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he was an infantryman in the Kaiserliche und Konigliche Austro-Hungarian army, but for the machinations of the evil Archduke somebody-or-other. (George Lang, "Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen")
2) Alongside the various representations of sincere tears, then, are a series of representations of insincerity and emotional machination. (Tom Lutz, "Crying")
3) To keep away from them and steer clear of their inveigling schemes and grasping machinations . . . has been my constant life-long effort. (Jeff Stryker, "They Couldn't Resist: Oh, One Last Thing," New York Times, May 21, 2000)
4) He declared that the tale he could tell would not be of generals or kings, for the political machinations of the great, he said, he was and had been in no position to observe. (Steven Pressfield, "Gates of Fire")
Etymology:
"Machination" derives from Latin "machinatio" - "a contrivance, a cunning device, a machination," from "machinari" - "to contrive, to devise, especially to plot evil." It is related to machine, from Latin "machina" - "any artificial contrivance for performing work". "To machinate" is to devise a plot, or engage in plotting. One who machinates is a machinator.


macho

• mucho
• machismo

(slang)
1. Tough guy; superman
2. Strongly masculine or assertive man; domineering and aggressive man.
3. Machismo, male chauvinism.
4. A great amount or quantity of something.
5. The striped mullet of california (mugil cephalus, or mexicanus)
6. Masculine; assertive; domineering.
7. Super masculine; masculine to an extreme.
Example:
Remember that your goal is to raise a respectful man, and not a macho.
Etymology:
1928 (n.) "tough guy," from Sp. "macho" ("male animal"); as an adj., "masculine, virile," from L. "masculus". First attested in Eng. as an adj. 1959.



macilentus
['masIl@nt]
Lean, shrivelled, or excessively thin.
Etymology, examples:
This word was marked as rare in dictionaries a century ago and has become even more so since, though it retains a niche in elevated or pretentious prose. It's from Latin "macilentus" - "lean". In 1851 a writer evoked with it a victim of tuberculosis: "of whom I could recollect nothing but a macilent figure, stretched upon a sofa and scarcely breathing". It can also have a figurative sense that refers to poor-quality or inferior writing. A reviewer of Britney Spears's album "In the Zone" in 2003 described it as "Britney's most personal statement. Because it's as lost and macilent and alluring and eager to please and disturbingly empty-eyed as she is."


macrocosm

• universe
• existence
• creation
• world
• cosmos
• microcosm

1. The entire world; everything that exists anywhere; the great world; that part of the universe which is exterior to man; contrasted with microcosm, or man.
2. A system reflecting on a large scale one of its component systems or parts.
Example:
They study the evolution of the macrocosm.
Synonyms:
universe, existence, creation, world, cosmos
Antonym: microcosm
Etymology:
Medieval Latin "macrocosmus": Greek "makro-" ("macro-") + Greek "kosmos" ("world"); cf. French "macrocosme".



mad as a hatter

• as mad as a hatter
• mad
• hatter

Stark raving mad, insane, deranged, strange, eccentric, batty, plumb loco, completely crazy.
Examples:
1) If you wear that pink wig, people will think you're mad as a hatter.
2) Sean is as mad as a hatter, but he's my most interesting friend.
History:
Lewis Carroll created the character of the Mad Hatter in his classic book "Alice in Wonderland". The expression "mad as a hatter" comes from the early 1800s. One possible origin is a snake called adder. People in England thought that if you were bitten by an adder, its poison would make you insane. Some people pronounced "adder" as "atter", so if you acted crazy, you were as "mad as an atter", which later became "hatter". Another explanation of the expression's origin is that people who worked in felt-hat factories in the 1800s inhaled fumes of mercuric nitrate, and, as a result, developed twitches, jumbled their speech, and grew confused. The condition was sometimes mistaken for madness and may have given birth to the saying "mad as a hatter."


mad as a wet hen

• as mad as a wet hen
• mad
• wet hen
• wet
• hen

Very upset; extremely angry; ready to fight.
Example:
When Tess realized that her brother had eaten all the cookies, she was as mad as a wet
hen.
History:
It doesn't really bother hens much when they get wet. This early 19th century expression probably resulted from a mistake or someone's imagination. It is not a barnyard reality.

maelstrom
[MAYL-struhm]
1. A large, powerful, or destructive whirlpool.
2. Something resembling a maelstrom; a violent, disordered, or turbulent state of affairs.
Examples:
1) The murk became thicker as Zachareesi fishtailed his canoe through a swirling maelstrom of currents pouring past, and over, unseen rocks. (Farley Mowat, "The Farfarers")
2) Suddenly, the Serb cause was thrust into the maelstrom of the Napoleonic Wars. (Misha Glenny, "The Balkans")
3) Always at the center of a maelstrom of activity and contention, he provided good columns for the press. (Arthur Lennig, "Stroheim Like")
4) Captain Ahab, the monomaniacal Harmon draws everyone around him into a maelstrom of trouble. (John Motyka, review of "The Dogs of Winter", by Kem Nunn, New York Times, March 23, 1997)
Etymology:
"Maelstrom" comes from obsolete Dutch "maelstroom", from "malen" ("to grind, hence to whirl round") + "stroom" ("stream").


maffick

• Mafeking Night
• Mafeking
• Night
• Mafikeng
• Mafikeng night

to celebrate with boisterous rejoicing and hilarious behavior
Example:
In 1904, author H.H. Munro penned, "Mother, may I go and maffick, / Tear about and hinder traffic" in his sardonic satire about the South African War, "Reginald's Peace Poem".
History:
"Maffick" is an alteration of Mafeking Night, the British celebration of the lifting of the siege of a British military outpost during the South African War at the town of Mafikeng (also spelled Mafeking) on May 17, 1900. The South African War was fought between the British and the Afrikaners, who were Dutch and Huguenot settlers originally called Boers, over the right to govern frontier territories. Though the war did not end until 1902, the lifting of the siege of Mafikeng was a significant victory for the British because they held out against a larger Afrikaner force for 217 days until reinforcements could arrive. The rejoicing in British cities on news of the rescue produced "maffick", a word that was popular for a while, especially in journalistic writing, but is now less common.


magic carpet

• magic
• carpet
• Prince Housain's carpet
• Prince Housain
• King Solomon's carpet
• King Solomon

Imaginary flying carpet: in fairy stories, a carpet that flies through the air and is used as a form of transportation.
Example:
A magic carpet is a carpet that would transport persons who were on it instantaneously or quickly to their destination.
History:
The magic carpet of Tangu, also called "Prince Housain's carpet" was a seemingly worthless carpet from Tangu in Persia that acted as a magic carpet. It was featured in many Asian folktales, notably in "Aladdin" and "Arabian Nights".
King Solomon's carpet was reportedly made of green silk, on which Solomon's throne was placed when traveling. It was large enough for his coterie to stand upon, people on his right, spirits to his left. The wind followed Solomon's commands, and ensured the carpet and its contents would go to the proper destination. The carpet was shielded from the sun by a canopy of birds.


magniloquent

• grandiloquent
• ornate
• florid
• flowery
• euphuistic
• sonorous

[mag-NIL-uh-kwunt]
Lofty or grandiose in speech or expression; using a high-flown style of discourse; speaking in or characterized by a high-flown often bombastic style or manner.
Examples:
1) Poet Edward Weismiller told "The Baltimore Sun" (April 10, 2004) that his former tendency to be magniloquent "was stamped out" of him by his mentor John Berryman.
2) Stevens did for American poetic language what Saul Bellow was to do for prose, extending its boundaries, taking in the magniloquent, the arcane, the plainspoken, the gaudy, the low-rent. (Algis Valiunas, "Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose," Commentary, January 1, 1998)
3) A feature of Young's intellectual project is to incorporate the Elizabethan delight in metaphors both decorous and indecorous, constantly embellishing her prose with a poetic juxtaposition of the grand with the prosaic, "a constant alternation of the magniloquent and the colloquial." (Constance Eichenlaub, "Marguerite Young," Review of Contemporary Fiction, June 22, 2000)
4) Although Napoleon presented himself as "the Enlightenment embodied, bringing rationality and justice to peoples hitherto ruled in the interests of privileged castes," and although he may even have believed to some degree in the image he presented, the reality of his rule belied the magniloquent professions of moral generosity. (Algis Valiunas, "The ashes of Napoleon," Commentary, June 1, 2002)
5) Shannon, doubling as NSBA's executive director over that time, has taken wicked delight in delivering new vocabulary in his sometimes magniloquent columns about the workings of local school boards. ("Thomas A. Shannon," School Administrator, April 1996)
Synonyms: ornate, florid, flowery, euphuistic, sonorous, grandiloquent.
History, a related word:
"Magnus" means "great" in Latin; "loqui" is a Latin verb meaning "to speak." Combine the two and you get "magniloquus," the Latin predecessor of "magniloquent." English speakers started using "magniloquent" for the "bombastic" in the 1600s - even though we'd had its synonym "grandiloquent" since the 1500s. ("Grandiloquent" comes from Latin "grandiloquus," which combines "loqui" and "grandis," another word for "great" in Latin.) Today, these synonyms continue to exist side by side and to be used interchangeably, though "grandiloquent" is the more common of the two.


maieutic
relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another
Example:
Professor Collins often uses maieutic logic to encourage his students to explore and understand the various facets of a problem.
Etymology:
"Maieutic" comes from "maieutikos," the Greek word for "of midwifery." Whoever applied "maieutic" to the Socratic method of bringing forth new ideas by reasoning and dialogue must have thought the techniques of Socrates analogous to those a midwife uses in delivering a baby. A teacher who uses maieutic methods can be thought of as an intellectual midwife who assists students in bringing forth ideas and conceptions previously latent in their minds.


make a beeline for

• make a beeline
• make
• beeline
• beeline for

go straight towards
Example:
When the kids saw Santa Claus coming, they all made a beeline for him.


make a day of it

• make a day of
• make a day
• make
• day

1. Do something all day.
Example:
We were afraid of literature exam coming on Monday and all the Sunday made a day of it.
2. Amuse oneself all day long.
Example:
We decided to make a day of it and spend the day at the beach.


make a federal case out of

• make a federal case out of it
• make a federal case out of smth.

To exaggerate the seriousness of something small; to make a big deal out of something.
Example:
I was looking at your test paper to see the date. Don't make a federal case out of it.
History:
The federal courts and Supreme Court of the United States handle the most important issues of the law. So, if you overreact to something said or done, you're "making a federal case out of it," or making it more important than it needs to be.

make a hames of smth.

• make a hames of
• make a hames
• make
• hames
• make a hame
• hame

(Irish) To make a mess of smth.
Example:
I thought I wasn't when they called on Saturday but now I'm so shakky, I know what I should say and all, but I'm afarid I just will make a hames of it! ...
Etymology, more examples:
The expression is restricted to Ireland and doesn't now seem to be so very common even there. Here's one example from the "Irish Examiner" in August 2004, describing a local politician's chances in a reshuffle: "You know he'd be thrilled with Finance, and it wouldn't do you any harm to watch him make a hames of it. He could even be the scapegoat for the next election." Though the expression isn't known elsewhere, anyone who has much to do with working horses will know the term, because the hames are the two curved supports attached to the collar of a draft horse to which the traces are fastened. It's all too easy to put the hames on a horse the wrong way up, thus making a complete mess of things and risking adverse comments from bystanders. Here's a literary example, from Hugh Leonard's "Out After Dark" of 1989: "Instead I made a hames of it, mislaying a verb, marooning a noun on a foreign shore, starting a jerry-built sentence that caved in halfway through". "Hame", in lots of different spellings, was once common in dialects throughout Britain and Ireland and there are terms in Old Dutch and German that are similar. The best we can say about its origins is that it's a Germanic word, perhaps imported from Dutch around 1300 < ME "hames".
The word usually occurs in the plural. Some pubs have the name "Hamemakers Arms", others have a similar name "Homemakers Arms". The names may be derived from both "hames" and "home", or may both be derived from one of these.

make a mountain out of a molehill

• make
• mountain
• out of
• molehill
• make out
• make out of
• make
• make an elephant out of a fly
• make
• out of
• make out
• elephant
• fly

To make a problem bigger, exaggerate a problem; to turn a small, unimportant issue into a big, important one; to exaggerate the importance of something.
Examples:
1) "I can't believe you forgot to return your library book!" Damon wagged his finger at
Yvonne.
"Look, it's only one day overdue and I'm returning it right now. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill!"
2) Your 'broken arm' was only a sprained write. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
History, synonym:
A mountain is huge; a molehill is small. The ancient Greeks had a saying, "make
an elephant out of a fly," which became a proverb in French and German. By the mid-1500s people in England were saying "make a mountain out of a molehill," probably because "make", "mountain", and "molehill" all begin with "m", and alliteration helps make an expression fun to say and easier to remember.

make a pass at

• make a pass
• make
• pass

make a romantic approach to smb.; woo smb.; try to get a date with smb.
Example:
Julie made a pass at me. She sent me a love note and smiled at me.



make a play for

• make a play
• make
• play for
• make a play
• play

do something in order to obtain smth./smb., make an effort to attain smth./smb.
Examples:
1) You remember Mile High Stadium. Fans make a play for seats. But stadium security sits on their attempts to swipe souvenirs.
2) John always makes a play for new girls in the group.


make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

• One can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
• One cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
• You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
• You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
• good coat of poor cloth
• make good coat of poor cloth
• hunting horn out of a pig's tail
• make hunting horn out of a pig's tail
• put some lipstick on that pig
• hunting horn
• pig's
• tail
• pig
• hunting
• horn
• good
• coat
• poor
• cloth
• make
• silk
• purse
• out of
• sow's
• sow
• ear
• make out of
• make out

To create something valuable or beautiful out of something practically worthless or ugly.
Example:
Owen thinks that by polishing his old car, he can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
History, synonyms:
There are similar expressions in many languages; these sayings also use "good thing - bad thing" combinations (for instance, "to make good coat of poor cloth," and "to make hunting horn out of a pig's tail"). In the US there is a contemporary variant to that saying: "to put some lipstick on that pig." An English version close to this idiom has been around since 1700. A silk purse is an elegant, expensive item made of fine, shiny fibers. A sow is an adult female pig. So if anyone can take a sow's ear and turn it into a silk purse, he or she
might be able to take a bad situation and make something good out of it.



make away with

• make away
• make
• away with
• away

1. To take; to carry away;
Example: The cat made away with the bird that was sitting on top of the kitchen counter.
2. To get rid of; to rid oneself of;
3. To finish, to complete
4. To kill, to murder (someone or oneself) Example: He made away with himself.
5. To steal; To run away with stolen stuff
Example: The police gave chase, but the thieves made away with the jewels.


make ends meet

• make
• end
• meet

1. To be able to support oneself financially on one's salary; to have enough money to survive; to pay the bills, have enough to pay the expenses.
2. Barely to earn enough money to survive; to live on the edge of poverty.
Examples:
1) My dad has to work overtime almost every night, and lately he works on weekends, too. He says it's what he has to do to make ends meet.
2) On her salary, Jackie can hardly make ends meet.
3) Although the Millers are poor, they make ends meet.
History:
What does "ends" mean in this expression? Some word experts think that in the 1600s it could have meant the sum total, the end of a column of figures that were added up. Others think that in the mid-1700s it meant the beginning and the end of the financial year.


make eyes at

• make eyes
• make
• eye