sabot
[sa-BOH]
1. A wooden shoe worn in various European countries.
2. A strap across the instep in a shoe, especially of the sandal type.
3. A shoe having a sabot strap.
4. A thrust-transmitting carrier that positions a missile in a gun barrel or launching tube and that prevents the escape of gas ahead of the missile.
5. A dealing box designed to hold several decks of playing cards.
Example:
All her kind, at least in the countryside, wore... sabots, well past the century's end. (Eugen Weber, France, "Fin de Siecle")
History, related words:
The term "sabot" may have first been introduced into English in a 1607 translation from French: "Wooden shoes," readers were informed, are "properly called sabots." The gun-related sense appeared in the mid-1800s with the invention of a wooden gizmo that kept gun shells from shifting in the gun barrel. Apparently, someone thought the device resembled a wooden shoe and named it "sabot" (with later generations of this device carrying on the name). Another kind of French sabot - a metal "shoe" used to secure rails to railway ties - is said to be the origin of the word "sabotage," from workers destroying the sabots during a French railway strike in the early 1900s. The word "sabot" is probably related to "savate," a Middle French word for an old shoe.


saccade
[sak-KAHD]
A small rapid jerky movement of the eye especially as it jumps from fixation on one point to another (as in reading).
Example:
In reading, the eyes scan the text in a series of saccades and form what can be thought of as still photographs processed by the brain.
History:
"Saccade" is a French word meaning "twitch" or "jerk." It galloped into English in the early 18th century as a term used in horseback riding for a quick check using the reins. (Today, this meaning is too specialized for entry in "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary", but it is stabled in "Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged".) In 1879, French ophthalmologist Emile Javal observed that a reader's eyes make a series of short jumps, which he referred to in French as saccades. It wasn't until 1938, however, when experimental psychologist Robert Woodworth wrote about the pioneering Javal and his saccades, that the ocular use of the word was seen in an English publication.


sacrosanct

• os sacrum
• os
• sacrum

[SAK-roh-sankt]
1. Sacred; inviolable.
2. Treated as if holy; immune from criticism or violation.
Examples:
1) The family was viewed as sacrosanct: divorce was highly unusual and children were expected to be grateful for the sacrifices that parents, who postponed their own gratifications in forming a family, made on their behalf. (Alan Wolfe, "One Nation, After All")
2) Espionage is about redefining Good and Evil, the violable and the sacrosanct. (Edward Shirley, "Know Thine Enemy")
3) For years the respected scientist's theories were treated as sacrosanct by his colleagues, and only recently have his ideas been seriously challenged.
Etymology, related words:
In "sacrosanct", "sacro" and "sanctus" were combined long ago to form a phrase meaning "hallowed by a sacred rite." "Sacro" means "by a sacred rite" and comes from "sacrum," a Latin noun that lives on in English anatomy as the name for our pelvic vertebrae - a shortening of "os sacrum," which literally means "holy bone." "Sanctus" means "sacred" and gave us "saint" and obvious words like "sanctimony," "sanctify," and "sanctuary."


saga
[SAH-guh]
1. A prose narrative recorded in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries of historic or legendary figures and events of the heroic age of Norway and Iceland.
2. A modern heroic narrative resembling the Icelandic saga.
3. A long detailed account.
Example:
The author's latest book is a saga about four hikers trapped atop a snowy mountain for six days.
History:
The original sagas were prose narratives that were roughly analogous to modern historical novels. They were penned in Iceland in the 12th and 13th centuries and blended fact and fiction to tell the tales of famous rulers, legendary heroes, or even plain folks. And they were aptly named; "saga" traces back to an Old Norse root that means "what is said or told." When English speakers borrowed the term back in the early 1700s, they used it to describe those first Icelandic stories. Later, "saga" was broadened to cover anything that resembled such a story, and eventually it was further generalized to cover any long, complicated scenario.


sagacious
[suh-GAY-shus]
Of keen penetration and judgment; discerning and judicious; knowing; shrewd; wise.
Examples:
1) Edward's uncle, a sagacious scholar equally at home with Celtic myth and Eastern wisdom, declines his nephew's request to tell the story of Hamlet (it would come too close to home). (John Gross, "New York Times", December 3, 1984)
2) Others worked up sagacious-sounding comments about the French author that would serve until they could read some of his books themselves, or until the current interest fades. (Maureen Dowd, "Nobel Panel's Pick Keeps Cognoscenti Guessing," New York Times, October 18, 1985)
3) John Adams, another of the doctor's Congressional colleagues, said of him: "Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanic arts. (Richard M. Ketchum, "Saratoga")
Etymology:
"Sagacious" derives from Latin "sagax" ("keen; shrewd; clever").


saggar
A protective box enclosing ceramic ware while it is being fired.
Example:
The processes of making pottery are demonstrated here, and the building complex includes an engine house and a saggar maker's shop, where fireclay cases were made for holding batches of pots during firing. (Bailey, Brian. A guide to Britain's industrial past. - London: Whittet Books Ltd, 1985)
History:
In large-scale pottery manufacture years ago, the furnaces (called bottle kilns from their shape) were usually heated by coal or coke furnaces. Flames, ashes and corrosive gases would have damaged the pottery if it wasn't protected by being put into "saggars", a word that seems to be a contraction of "safeguard". These were hollow squat cylinders with flat tops and bottoms so they could be stacked in the kiln, often in piles 30 feet high or more. Saggars were made from a type of fireclay that was mixed with a proportion of ground-up reused saggar called "grog"; they only lasted for about forty firings, so every large works had its own saggar-makers. These men had assistants whose job was to make the heavy flat bottoms of the saggars, beating the fireclay into shape inside an iron hoop using a mallet called a mawl (pronounced [maw] in Staffordshire). These assistants, lads in their teens, were the "saggar-maker's bottom knockers". These and related jobs - such as the "batter-outs" who beat out the strips of clay for the sides of the saggars - vanished when kilns began to be fired instead by clean gas or electricity so that protective saggars weren't needed.
Some modern small-scale potters still use saggars, but as an enclosure to allow materials such as seaweed or pine needles to be placed against the piece to create interesting markings or colourings. Isn't it interesting that the only people who fire in saggars today use them for exactly the opposite function to traditional potters - to make marks on the ware?"


saguaro

• giant cactus
• giant
• cactus

[suh-WAHR-uh]
A tall columnar usually sparsely-branched cactus ("Carnegiea gigantea") of dry areas of the southwestern United States and Mexico that bears white flowers and a scaly reddish edible fruit and that may attain a height of up to 50 feet (16 meters).
Example:
For a brief period in spring, ...the saguaro has a silly aspect, as white flowers bloom atop its columnar trunk, like a frilly little Easter hat... (Christine Temin, "Boston Globe", September 4, 1994)
History, synonym:
For people living in Arizona and southeastern California, the word "saguaro" won't be anything new. Perhaps you know this emblem of all things Southwestern simply as the "giant cactus," another of its common names. The word "saguaro" originated in Opata, a language spoken by peoples of the Sonoran Desert region of Mexico. It came into English by way of the Spanish spoken by the Mexican settlers of the American West. The very saguaros we see today may well have been around when the word was first noted, some 150 years ago - this amazing cactus can live for up to 200 years, particularly - in the Arizonan desert, and it is in bloom in May and June.


salad days

• salad day
• salad
• days
• day

A time of youthful inexperience, innocence, or indiscretion.
Example:
Those were his salad days, and he thought they might last forever. (David Gergen, "'They Love You. Watch Out' ", New York Times, February 2, 1997)
Etymology:
"Salad days" was coined by Shakespeare in "Antony and Cleopatra":
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood.


salient

• prominent
• projecting
• sally
• Salientia
• salmon
• somersault

[SAIL-yunt, SAY-lee-unt]
1. Shooting out or up; jutting forward beyond a line.
Synonym: projecting.
2. Forcing itself on the attention; conspicuous; noticeable; standing out conspicuously; of notable significance.
Synonym: prominent.
3. Leaping; springing; jumping.
4. An outwardly projecting part of a fortification, trench system, or line of defense.
5. A projecting angle or part.
Examples:
1) The senator's speech was filled with so much twisted rhetoric that it was hard to identify its salient points.
2) The strength of the hypothesis is that it simultaneously explains all these salient features, none of which had satisfactory independent explanations. (Paul F. Hoffman and Daniel P. Schrag, "Snowball Earth," Scientific American, January 2000)
3) He was killed during an attack on German positions dug into Ploegsteert Wood on the Ypres salient. (Russell Jenkins and Stephen Farrell, "Search begins for family of Flanders fusilier," Times (London), January 10, 2000)
Etymology:
"Salient" first popped up in English in the mid-17th century, and in its earliest English uses meant "moving by leaps or springs" (such as a salient cheetah) or "spouting forth" (such as a salient fountain). Those senses aren't too much of a jump from the word's parent, the Latin verb "salire", which means "to leap". "Salire" has leaped into many English words; it's also an ancestor of "somersault" (a forward or backward roll performed by the body; make a complete forward or backward roll) and "sally" ("to leap forth or rush out suddenly"), as well as "Salientia", the name for an order of amphibians that includes frogs, toads, and other notable jumpers, and perhaps "salmon" - the "leaping" fish. Today, "salient" is usually used to describe things that are physically prominent (such as a salient nose) or that stand out figuratively (such as the salient features of a painting).


salmagundi
[sal-muh-GUHN-dee]
1. A salad plate usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, served with oil and vinegar.
2. Any mixture or assortment; a medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.
Examples:
1) A glance at the schedule is enough to make one feel that one would rather go out and shoot songbirds than stay in and watch the dismal salmagundi of game shows, repeats and soap operas. (Jane Shilling, "My brother and other animals", Daily Telegraph, August 22, 1998)
2) What the BBC has the nerve to call Vanity Fair is a baffling salmagundi of Nineties accents, 1800s clothes, Wardour Street plotting, and a sort of language never spoken by any human being at any point in history. ("Stop betraying the classics", Independent, November 4, 1998)
Etymology:
"Salmagundi" comes from French "salmigondis".


salt of the earth

• salt
• earth

1. Highly respected people; people of high morals, with permanent and indestructible humanity.
2. Common people; honest, hard-working people.
Example:
The Swensons are plain, decent people - salt of the earth, eh.
History:
In the ancient world, salt was considered indestructible, thus it was used to seal (and to dry the text of) agreements.
At the same time, to the ancient Hebrews and some other peoples (e.g., the Eastern Slavs) salt symbolized hospitality, durability and purity. To eat the salt of the King was to owe him utmost fidelity. Eating bread and salt together sealed an unbreakable friendship. Jesus said if it lost its taste is was good for nothing. It was also currency; e.g., soldiers were, at one time, paid in salt, and probably, hence the word "salary" appeared. In India, if you eat someone's salt, you are bound to be loyal to him or her - a betrayal of the debt of salt is the worst kind.




salubrious
[suh-LOO-bree-us]
Favorable to health; promoting health; healthful.
Examples:
1) A physician warned him his health was precarious, so Montague returned to the United States, shelved his legal ambitions and searched for a salubrious climate where he might try farming. ("Teeing Off Into the Past At Oakhurst," New York Times, May 2, 1999)
2) For years, her mother has maintained that the sea air has a salubrious effect on both her spirits and her vocal cords. (Anita Shreve, "Fortune's Rocks")
3) Uptown, however, the tanners' less salubrious quarter is notorious for its stench. ("Byzantium," Toronto Star, February 7, 1999)
Etymology:
"Salubrious" is from Latin "salubris" ("healthful"), from "salus" ("health").


salutary
[SAL-yuh-ter-ee]
1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous.
2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.
Examples:
1) Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations - charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs - and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens. (Fareed Zakaria, "Bigger Than the Family, Smaller Than the State," New York Times, August 13, 1995)
2) Surviving a near-death experience has the salutary effect of concentrating the mind. (Kenneth T. Walsh and Roger Simon, "Bush turns the tide," U.S. News, February 28, 2000)
3) And they washed it all down with sharp red wines, moderate amounts of which are known to be salutary. (Rod Usher, "The Fat of the Land," Time Europe, January 8, 2000)
Etymology:
"Salutary" derives from Latin "salutaris", from "salus, salut-" ("health").


sanctum

• sanctums
• sancta

(pl. sanctums or sancta)
1. A sacred place.
2. A place of retreat where one is free from intrusion.
Examples:
1) What's more, the babble of radios, televisions and raised voices from the other households in the condominium rarely penetrated this sanctum. (Tim Parks, "Mimi's Ghost")
2) Seymour has spent most of her research time in that sanctum of the professional biographer, the London Library. (John Mullan, "The agony and the ecstasy", The Guardian, December 23, 2000)
Etymology:
"Sanctum" comes from the Latin, meaning "holy, sacred, or inviolable".


sang-froid

• sangfroid
• calmness

also sangfroid [sang-FRWAH]
Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances.
Synonym: calmness.
Examples:
1) The Treasury Secretary's sang-froid in moments of crisis. ("Keeping the Boom From Busting," New York Times, July 19, 1998)
2) Both men were mightily impressed by the calmness of the Americans on board, particularly among the women. "I had, during my sojourn in America," Beaumont said later, "a thousand occasions to see the sang-froid of the American." (Michael Kammen, "Wrecked on the Fourth of July," New York Times, July 6, 1997)
3) Gaviria knew Alberto as an impulsive but cordial man capable of maintaining his sangfroid under the most stressful circumstances. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "News of a Kidnapping")
Etymology:
"Sang-froid" is from the French; it literally means "cold blood": "sang" ("blood") + "froid" ("cold").


sangfroid

• sang-froid

[SAHN-FRWAH] (the vowel in the first syllable is pronounced nasally without any following consonant)
self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain
Example:
Harry thought he would be a jittery, stumbling mess on the day of his presentation, but instead surprised himself and impressed others with his sangfroid.
Etymology:
If you're a lizard, "cold-blooded" means your body temperature is strongly influenced by your environment. If you're an English-speaking human, it means you are callous and unfeeling. If you're a French speaker, it means that you're calm, cool, and collected in stressful situations. By the mid-1700s, English speakers were already using "cold-blooded" (that term has been around since the late 1500s), but they must have liked the more positive spin the French put on having "cold blood" because they borrowed the French "sang-froid" (literally, "cold blood") for someone who is imperturbable under strain. The French term, by the way, developed from the Latin words "sanguis" ("blood") and "frigidus" ("cold").


sapid
[SAP-id]
1. Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor.
2. Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.
Examples:
1) Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid. (David William Cheever, "Tobacco," The Atlantic, August 1860)
2) I've raved about the elegant and earthy lobster-and-truffle sausage, the sapid sea bass with coarse salt poached in lobster oil, and the indescribably complex and delectable ballottine of lamb stuffed with ground veal, sweet-breads and truffles. (James Villas, "Why Taillevent thrives," Town & Country, March 1, 1998)
Etymology:
"Sapid" comes from Latin "sapidus" ("savory"), from "sapere" ("to taste")


sartorial
[sar-TOR-ee-ul]
Of or relating to a tailor or tailored clothes; (broadly) of or relating to clothes.
Example:
"Far be it from me to criticize your sartorial choices," said Helen, laughing, "but do you really think that shirt goes with those pants?"
History:
It's easy to uncover the root of "sartorial." Just strip off the suffix "-ial", and you discover the Latin noun "sartor," meaning "tailor" (literally, "one who patches or mends"). Sartorial splendor has been the stuff of voguish magazines for years, and even "sartor" itself has occasionally proven fashionable, as it did in 1843, when Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of "coats whose memory turns the sartor pale," or in the 1870 title "The Sartor, or British journal of cutting, clothing, and fashion". "Sartorial" has been in style with English speakers since at least 1823.


sashay

• sashay down

[sash-AY]
1. To make the sliding dance step called chasse.
2. To walk, glide, go; to stroll.
3. To strut or move about in an ostentatious or conspicuous manner.
4. To proceed or move in a diagonal or sideways manner.
Examples:
1) Cameras flashed and fans screamed as the latest pop princess sashayed down the red carpet.
2) They sashayed down to the beach.
Etymology:
The French verb "chasse" ("to make a sliding dance step") danced into English unaltered in the early 19th century, but as the word gained popularity in America people often had difficulty pronouncing and transcribing its French rhythms. By 1836, "sashay" had begun to appear in print in American sources. Authors such as Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, and John Updike have all since put their names on the word's dance card and have enjoyed the liveliness and attitude "sashay" adds to descriptions of movement. They and many, many others have helped "sashay" slide away from its French dance origins to strut its stuff in descriptions of various walks and moves.


satiety

• surfeit
• fullness
• satiate
• sate

1. the quality or state of being fed or gratified to or beyond capacity
Synonyms: surfeit, fullness
Example:
Our host presented one sumptuous dish after another, and we ate to satiety.
2. the revulsion or disgust caused by overindulgence or excess
Etymology:
You may have guessed that "satiety" is related to "satisfy", "satiate" (meaning "to satisfy fully or to excess"), or "sate" (which means "to glut" or "to satisfy to the full"). If so, you guessed right. "Satiety", along with the others, ultimately comes from the Latin word "satis," which means "enough". English speakers apparently couldn't get enough of "satis"-derived words in the 15th and 16th centuries, which is when all of these words entered the language. "Satiety" itself was borrowed into English in 1533 from the Middle French word "satiete" of the same meaning.


saturnine
[SAT-er-nyne, SAT-uhr-nyn]
1. Born under or influenced astrologically by the planet Saturn.
2. Cold and steady in mood; slow to act or change.
3. Of a gloomy or surly disposition.
4. Having a sardonic or bitter aspect.
Examples:
1) His saturnine spirit appealed to younger bohemians who were anxious to make idols of an earlier generation's tormented souls, but even so, it cannot have been easy for Rothko always to be the pessimist among the optimists. (Jed Perl, review of "Mark Rothko: A Biography, by James E.B. Breslin", New Republic, January 24, 1994)
2) A saturnine prison guard sits and broods - and every now and then, gets up and shoots an unseen prisoner. (John Walsh, review of "The Silence Between Two Thoughts", Independent, June 11, 2004)
3) He only knew his mother from photos, which showed her to be a saturnine woman with a permanent frown.
Etymology:
Eeyore is saturnine. The gloomy, cynical character of A. A. Milne's gray donkey typifies the personality type the ancient Romans ascribed to individuals born when the planet Saturn was rising in the heavens. Both the name of the planet and today's featured adjective derive from the name of the Roman god of agriculture, who was often depicted as a bent old man with a stern, sluggish, and sullen nature. In Medieval times Saturn was believed to be the most remote planet from the Sun and thus coldest and slowest in its revolution. The Latin name for Saturn was "Saturnus," which is assumed to have yielded the word "Saturninus" (meaning "of Saturn") in Medieval Latin; that form was adapted to create English "saturnine" in the 15th century.


saviour sibling

• saviour
• sibling

Using an embryos for some desirable genetic characteristic that would help cure a sickly existing child.
Example:
An example of a "saviour sibling" would be to create a baby whose umbilical cord blood could save the life of a sibling with a rare blood disorder.
Etymology:
The term is a specific application of the more general "designer b