Excellent Religious Image Resource

I stumbled across this free database of digital resources for religious studies. It's a collaboration of theological libraries around the world, providing access to "digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, postcards, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, shape-note tune books, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography." You can browse through subjects or search by keyword.


Since I am finishing up a paper on Revelation, I thought I'd search "Revelation." I found this 16th century engraving. No wonder John fell to the ground in horror.

Short Hairs (New Word No. 3)

See if you can figure out what LBJ means in this statement about Walt Rostow (found in WSJ book review):

"He's going to be my goddamn intellectual," the president exulted, "and I'm going to have him by his short hairs."

Yup, you got it.

The Urban Dictionary entry reads:

A euphemism for "pubic hairs," itself in this context a euphemistic metonymy for "balls". It is used mostly in expressions such as "to have someone by the short hairs," which is to say "to have someone in a very difficult or hopeless situation," equivalent to "to have someone by the balls."

I don't know about you, but I've never heard 'metonymy' and 'balls' in the same sentence.

This discovery led me to another find: a blog dedicated to one of my own favorite topics, the abuse of the word "literally." I mean, it is like literally the best blog I've ever read.

Flotilla (New Word No. 2)

A flotilla is a fleet of small ships, as opposed to a squadron of large warships. It's of Spanish origin, but still used for some divisions of the United States Coast Guard.

Justin Taylor quoted Rev. David Short, using flotilla in his explanation of the Anglican communion.

The global communion is, at it were, 38 ships that are all chained together in the historic faith that we have received in the Scriptures, that is expressed in the creeds, in the formularies of the Anglican Church. We are a flotilla of 38 ships sailing toward, say, England. Since 2002, two of the independent provinces [US and Canada] have decided that we are going to sail in a different direction, say, Australia. So the chain that binds all these provinces together is being stretched and stretched. The ships are calling on two of the ships—Canada and the US—to turn around and head in the historic direction that the church has been heading.

Apparatchik (New Word No. 1)

Word choice in writing is so important. The well-placed word can add meaning, force, irony, even assonance that it's well-meaning synonym could only dream of conjuring.

I am fortunate to read good writing on a regular basis. Since I love good writing and since word choice is a strong component to good writing, I love reading new words. I love learning new words.

By far my favorite Google search feature is it's "define:" search. It has helped me countless times. And it not only helps with basic lexical units, but also technical jargon, slang and foreign phrases more akin to encyclopedia entries, like Hegelian dialectic or oeuvre (two recent searches). Now, I know a two-minute read is no sufficient primer on philosophical schools of thought, but I make no claim of expertise. I am an amateur.

In order to beef up my post count and to share my new words with persons other than my patient wife, I'm going to start posting new words here when I learn them, including the context and definition. The context is key, because I can't learn new words in a Word-A-Day format. A setting must capture the word in my mind.

My first word is apparatchik. Karl Rove used it in a WSJ editorial about the Democratic primary:

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton can win with delegates elected in primaries and caucuses. In a real irony, the Democratic Party will settle its nominee battle with the aristocratic device of superdelegates -- party apparatchiks, interest group leaders and elected officials, many of whom gained their post years ago.

Apparatchik (says Wikipedia) originated as the colloquial term given to unelected professional functionaries of the Communist Party in the Soviet republic - those who had their position because of ideology, regardless the skill set required for the job. They were, literally, "agents of the apparatus."

It can be used now (a la Karl Rove) "to describe people who cause bureaucratic bottlenecks in otherwise efficient organizations. It is also frequently used to describe individuals appointed to positions in any government on the basis of ideological or political loyalty rather than competence." (NOTE: Technically, the plural is apparatchiki, not Rove's apparatchiks. However, I think Rove's usage is better.)