Word of the Day for Tuesday, October 21, 2008

synecdoche \si-NEK-duh-kee\, noun:

• a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole or whole for a part or general for the special or vice versa.

By 1388, from Middle Latin synodoche, from Late Latin synecdoche, from Greek synekdokhe, literally "a receiving together or jointly," from synekdekhesthai "supply a thought or word, take with something else," from syn- "with" + ek "out" + dekhesthai "to receive," related to dokein "seem good".
robocall

• A prerecorded call that is sent to hundreds or thousands of telephone numbers. An automatic dialing computer goes through a targeted list of phone numbers. Or: an individual call received.

political consultant says... We need to record a celebrity robocall, provision it, and hit our base at least ten weeks before early voting.
voter says... Damn, I came home to seven robocalls on my answering machine. And nothing from Match.com.
Trivia

What famous cowboy sidekick hosted TV's Howdy Doody show while Buffalo Bob Smith recovered from a heart attack in 1954?

• Gabby Hayes, who played bearded, tobacco-chomping old codgers in Westerns featuring Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and John Wayne.

Today in History

• Battle of Trafalgar: with the simple declaration "England expects that every man will do his duty," Admiral Horatio Nelson won a tremendous victory over Napoleon's fleet off Spain's southwestern coast; it came at the cost of his life (1805)
• Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb; it lasted 13.5 hours before burning out . (1879)
• The first transatlantic message by radiotelephone was sent from Arlington, VA, to the Eiffel Tower, in 1915.
• 1925, the photoelectric cell was first demonstrated by the Westinghouse Co.
• Guggenheim: stunning Frank Lloyd Wright building housing a museum of modern art opened on Museum Mile in New York (1959)

Today's Birthdays

• Alfred Nobel (1833-1896): inventor of dynamite, founder of the Nobel Prize
• Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993): jazz trumpeter; Georg Solti (1912-1997), Manfred Mann (68) and Lee Loughnane (62) are musicians who share this birth date
• Whitey Ford (80): MLB hall-of-famer
• Ursula K. Le Guin (79): sci-fi author; another writer born on this date was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
• Judy Sheindlin (66): TV's Judge Judy
• Matt Dallas (26): the titular character on Kyle XY; also, actors Joyce Randolph (83), Carrie Fisher (52), Ken Watanabe (49) and Will Estes (30)