Word(s) of the day

Or, new words I discovered at last night's spelling bee:

Dirigibility
[f. DIRIGIBLE a.: see -ILITY.]
The quality of being dirigible; controllability.
1875 Q. Rev. CXXXIX. 137 One most important use of dirigibility would be in facilitating the descent, and in avoiding the many dangers to which the aeronaut, in his present helpless position, is so often exposed. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 25 Mar. 9/2 Proving the dirigibility of the aerostat. 1903 Ibid. 16 Nov. 7/3 Wireless dirigibility experiments. 1908 B'ham Inst. Mag. Jan. 254 The problem of..perfect dirigibility of dynamic flying machines.

What's especially pleasurable about that word is the presence of so many "i"s (it was given to another contestant, unfortunately, so it was not mine to spell.) Also that I had always presumed dirigble meant something like "inflated" although this kind of makes more sense. But we finally have an alternative to words like blimpiness. Time to celebrate.

Enclitic
[ad. L. enclitic-us, a. Gr. -, f. on + to lean.]
A. adj. That ‘leans its accent on the preceding word’ (Liddell and Scott): in Greek grammar the distinctive epithet of those words which have no accent, and which (when phonetic laws permit) cause a secondary accent to be laid on the last syllable of the word which they follow. Hence applied to the analogous Latin particles -que, -ve, -ne, etc., and in mod. use (with extension of sense) to those unemphatic words in other langs. that are treated in pronunciation as if forming part of the preceding word.

1656 BLOUNT Glossogr., Enclitick, that inclines or gives back. 1750 HARRIS Hermes I. v. (1786) 85 note, The Diversity between the Contradistinctive Pronouns, and the Enclitic, is not unknown even to the English Tongue. 1855 BROWNING Grammarian's Funeral, Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De. 1867 RAWLINSON Anc. Mon. IV. iv. 227 The pronouns had in certain cases an enclitic form.

I did get to spell this word, and I got it wrong. The first "i" is long, like "eye," so I dickered a bit with myself and spelled it enclytic, which is perfectly reasonable, just wrong. This is also a word I expect I will never ever use.

Leguminous
(lgjumns) [f. L. legmin-, legmen + -OUS.]
1. Of or pertaining to pulse; of the nature of pulse.
1656 in BLOUNT Glossogr. 1767 A. YOUNG Farmer's Lett. to People 45 Raising leguminous crops like field pease. 1827 H. STEUART Planter's G. (1828) 498 This practice will by no means preclude the cultivation of leguminous crops. 1898 Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 591 Meat, leguminous vegetables and bread contain the same alkali.
2. Bot. Of or pertaining to the family Leguminosæ, which includes peas, beans, and other plants which bear legumes or pods.
1677 GREW Anat. Plants IV. III. v. (1682) 187 The Cod of the Garden Bean (and so of the rest of the Leguminous kind) opens on one side. 1785 MARTYN Rousseau's Bot. iii. (1794) 39 The greater part of the leguminous or pulse tribe. 1807 J. E. SMITH Phys. Bot. 446 Linnæus..asserts..that ‘among all the leguminous or papilionaceous tribe there is no deleterious plant to be found’. 1830 LINDLEY Nat. Syst. Bot. 88 Myrospermum, a spurious Leguminous genus. 1854 HOOKER Himal. Jrnls. I. ii. 50 A most elegant leguminous tree. 1890 A. R. WALLACE Darwinism 24 Climbing leguminous plants escape both floods and cattle.
b. Resembling what pertains to a leguminous plant.
1688 R. HOLME Armoury II. 97/1 The top [of Goats Rue] is branched, upon each stands many leguminous, or pulse~like flowers. 1725 BRADLEY Fam. Dict. s.v. Sainfoin, They are leguminous Flowers, White and sometimes Red. 1830 LINDLEY Nat. Syst. Bot. 87 Another and a more invariable character [of the Pea tribe] is to have a leguminous fruit.

I love the brevity and obcurity of that definition, mainly because it's use of the word pulse in a manner most of us today are entirely unfamiliar with:

Pulse
Pronunciation: 'p&ls
Etymology: Middle English puls, probably from Anglo-French puuiz gruel, from Latin pult-, puls, probably from Greek poltos: the edible seeds of various crops (as peas, beans, or lentils) of the legume family; also : a plant yielding pulse

It's interesting to note that Pulse, to beat, and Pulse, beans share a similar etymology. I suppose beating or pulverizing beans was common enough to lend the term to the actual plant.

But back to leguminous, not only is it a word that means bean-like, but it reminds me of the words luminous and bituminous, thus it sounds like you're descriping some kind of glowing, exalted, bean.

And now for a word I didn't hear at the spelling bee but just like to carry in my back pocket:

Dithyramb

(dræmb) [ad. L. dthyrambus, a. Gr. (origin unknown). In F. dithyrambe. Also used in the Latin form.]
Gr. Antiq. A Greek choric hymn, originally in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus, vehement and wild in character; a Bacchanalian song.
1603 HOLLAND Plutarch's Mor. 1358 According as Aeschylus saith: The Dithyrambe with clamours dissonant Sorts well with Bacchus. 1847 GROTE Greece II. xxix. IV. 118 The primitive Dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honour of Dionysus. 1873 SYMONDS Grk. Poets v. 118 The Dithyramb never lost the tempestuous and enthusiastic character of Bacchic revelry.
b. transf. A metrical composition having characteristics similar to this.
1656 S. HOLLAND Zara III. iii. 153 The Musick having charmed their sences with a Celestiall Dithyramb [pr. Dyrathamb]. [1727-51 CHAMBERS Cycl. s.v., Some..modern writers, have composed Latin pieces of all kinds of verse indifferently..without any order, or distribution into strophes, and call them dithyrambi.] 1859 A. A. BONAR in Spurgeon Treas. Dav. Ps. vii. heading, Ewald suggests, that it [Shiggaion] might be rendered ‘a confused ode’, a Dithyramb. 1860 ADLER Fauriel's Prov. Poetry i. 8 Martial dithyrambs, full of ardor and highmindedness.
c. A speech or writing in vehement or inflated style.
1863 GEO. ELIOT Romola xxxix, What dithyrambs he went into about eating and drinking. 1863 Sat. Rev. 153 M. Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, has poured forth a rhapsody, or dithyramb, or whatever, under a classical name, expresses exaggerated and inflated nonsense. 1877 MORLEY Crit. Misc. Ser. II. 4 Mr. Carlyle..has reproduced in stirring and resplendent dithyrambs the fire and passion..of the French Revolution.

And frankly, the c. definition brings me back to a word I promised to deliver last week and which means almost the same thing as above:

Bloviate

Brit. /blvet/, U.S. /bloviet/ [Prob. < BLOW v.1 + -viate (in e.g. DEVIATE v., ABBREVIATE v., etc.); cf. -ATE3.]
intr. To talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.
1845 Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio) 14 Oct. 3/1 Peter P. Low, Esq., will with open throat..bloviate about the farmers being taxed upon the full value of their farms, while bankers are released from taxation. 1887 Amer. Missionary Sept. 258 And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically? 1923 N.Y. Times 23 Aug. 14/4 We all like to bloviate against ‘corporations’, and there is no tenderness in New Jersey for the Public Service Railway Company. 1957 Amer. Hist. Rev. 62 1014 Occasionally a candidate makes some great pronouncement or drastic shift of position in such an oration, but more often he merely talks, or, as Harding put it, ‘bloviates’, being concerned more with the political effect of his remarks than with their meaning. 2002 Mother Jones May-June 82/2 Chávez seems enamored of the sound of his own voice, and he has an unpopular habit of taking over Venezuela's TV and radio stations to bloviate about his reforms.

So there we have it. Note that thanks are due to a dear friend who has loaned me a password and ID for an online OED. Therefore many of the links above will not work unless you have your own subscription. And the pronunciation key doesn't cut and paste. But those are minor quibbles.