Word of the Day for Wednesday, August 27, 2008

naif \nah-EEF; ny-\, adjective:

1. Naive.
2. A naive or inexperienced person.

Naif comes from French, from Old French naif, "naive, natural, just born," from Latin nativus, "native, rustic," literally "born, inborn, natural," from Latin nativus, "inborn, produced by birth," from natus, past participle of nasci, "to be born."

deface

• To remove a 'friendship' from facebook due to having either accidentily adding him/her as a friend or actually adding them and reconsidering later.

"Yeah, there was this guy in my network who added me. I thought he looked ok, but his updates were really cramping my news feed, so I had to deface him."

"I went on a date with a girl I met a week before and like the day after our date she changed her status to 'in a relationship.' I defaced her."

Trivia

In which of Shakespeare's plays does the comic character Sir Toby Belch appear?

• Twelfth Night.

Today in History

• Edwin Drake: the "Father of the Petroleum Industry" drilled the first successful US oil well, near Titusville, Pennsylvania (1859)
• Krakatoa: volcano erupted in the loudest explosion ever recorded; the resultant tsunami killed 36,000 (1883)
• Kellogg-Briand Pact: multinational treaty signed in Paris outlawed war — about 11 years before the same nations took part in WWII (1928)

Today's Birthdays

• Georg Hegel (1770-1831): metaphysical philosopher
• Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945): novelist, Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy; writers C.S. Forester (1899-1966), Jeanette Winterson (49) and Dean Devlin (46) were also born on this date
• Man Ray (1890-1976): photographer and painter
• Sarah Chalke (32): Dr. Elliot Reid on Scrubs; also, actors Tommy Sands (71), Tuesday Weld (65), Barbara Bach (61), Paul Reubens (56), Diana Scarwid (53), Chandra Wilson (39) and Alexa Vega (20)
• Tony Kanal (38): musician, bassist of No Doubt