Word of the Day
futilitarian
noun
a person who believes that human hopes are vain, and human strivings unjustified.
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Futilitarian is a humorous blend of futile and utilitarian. The word was coined in scorn for the utilitarian philosophy for the jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Futilitarian entered English in the 19th century.
how is futilitarian used?
A lot of artists in America tend to be self-deprecating futilitarians, because we鈥檝e grown up in a culture in which art doesn鈥檛 matter except, occasionally, as a high-end investment.
For it is significant that much of the work of Bierce seems to be that of what he would have called a futilitarian, that he seldom seems able to find a suitable field for his satire, a foeman worthy of such perfect steel as he brings ot he encounter …
tabula rasa
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First recorded in 1525鈥�35, tabula rasa is from Latin tabula r膩sa 鈥渟craped tablet, clean slate鈥�
behemoth
noun
any creature or thing of monstrous size or power: The army's new tank is a behemoth. The cartel is a behemoth that small business owners fear.
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The traditional etymology of the Hebrew noun behemoth is that it is an augmentative or intensive plural of 产蓹丑脓尘腻丑 鈥渂east,鈥� a derivative of the West Semitic root bhm 鈥渢o be dumb.鈥� It is also possible that Hebrew 产蓹丑脓尘腻丑 is an adaptation to Hebrew phonology of Egyptian p-ehe-mau 鈥渉ippopotamus鈥� (literally 鈥渙x of the water鈥�). Behemoth entered English in the 14th century.
how is behemoth used?
… in a play for the ideological high ground, Mr. de Blasio has cast Uber as a corporate behemoth with a singular goal.
Power – this one word sums up the rise in concerns on the left about tech behemoth Facebook.