laconic

(luh-KON-ik)

Terse; concise; characterized by extreme brevity of speech.

The ancient Spartans, who lived the region of Greece known as Laconia, were famous not only for their spartan discipline, but also for their terse manner of speaking. Just how laconic were the inhabitants of Laconia? When a messenger dispatched by an enemy army announced, "If we enter Laconia, we will raze it to the ground!," the laconic response the Laconians sent back was simply: "If."

"Those Darling boys are nothing if not laconic."

 

lacuna

(luh-KYEW-nuh)

A gap or empty space.

Often referring to a blank or missing space in a manuscript, this word is from Latin lacus, which means "lake," (and is thus a relative of the name of that shallow body of water, lagoon). The plural is lacunas or lacunae (luh-KYEW-nee).

"He wants us to believe that his gut instincts and moral framework can carry him over the lacunae in his knowledge of geopolitics." - New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, commenting on presidential candidate George W. Bush

 

leman

(LEM-uhn)

1. A sweetheart.
2. An illicit lover, especially a mistress.

This archaic term derives from Middle English leofman, a combination of leof, which means "dear," and "man." (The leof that gave us leman is a linguistic relative of both love and the archaic English word lief, which means "beloved.")

"His philosophy might be summed up as: 'If life hands you lemans, then . . . enjoy!"

 

liripoop

(LEER-uh-poop)

The long tail of a hood in the costume of a medieval academic.

During the Middle Ages, academics wore a ceremonial hood with a long, hanging peak that called a liripoop (or more often, a liripipe.)

In fact, search the Internet and you'll find that even today some universities still call their graduates¹ ceremonial sashes liripipes, and charge students a liripipe fee to rent them. (It's unclear where the names liripoop and liripipe originated, beyond the fact that they're from Medieval Latin liripipium.

"As the graduation speaker droned on and on, Lisa commenced fidgeting and idly fingering her liripoop."

 

loophole

(LOOP-hohl)

A way out; an ambiguity or omission in a law or contract that allows someone to avoid complying.

Medieval architecture may not be what first springs to mind when you think of a loophole, but that's the source of this word. The narrow, vertical window in a castle wall was originally called a loop, from Middle Dutch lupen meaning "to lie in wait, to peer." These windows were wider at the outside of the wall than on the inside, which let archers shoot arrows through them with little risk. Today's loopholes offer a different sort of "window"--one that's similarly sneaky.

"You could drive an armored personnel carrier through the loopholes in that law."


louche

(loosh)

Shady; disreputable; suspicious.

English speakers borrowed this evocative word directly from French, where it's used in the same sense.

However, the French also use louche to mean "cross-eyed" or "squint-eyed," a sense that reflects this word's linguistic roots. Louche derives from Latin luscus, meaning "blind in one eye."

"There had seemed to be something a little louche in the way she had suddenly found herself alone with Ivor." --
from Aldous Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow.

 

ludic

(LOO-dik)

Characterized by playfulness.

Ludic comes from Latin ludus, meaning "play," which makes it a relative of such playful words as ludicrous. This same family of words produced allude, which in its most literal sense means "to play with." Writer David Rakoff made good use of this word in Salon magazine recently, in his amusing take-off of self-important writers writing self-importantly (and floridly) about their self-important writing lives:

"Autumn's end is signaled by the grackles, those cacophonous weird sisters, those ludic brigands, their greasy black pin feathers brilliantined in the sunlight like the multi-hued spumy plume upon an oily puddle, laying waste to the damson plum in the yard."

 

lugubrious

(luh-GOO-bree-uss, luh-GYOO-bree-uss)

Mournful, dismal gloomy -- especially to an affected or exaggerated degree.

It's from Latin lugere, meaning "to mourn."

"Ever notice how that basset hound and his owner have the very same lugubrious look?"

 

 

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