Words of the Day

Thanks to, or rather, because of 'liberal' dumbing-down, people these days have terribly limited vocabularies. Here are a couple you should know. Both definitions from Merriam-Webster.

Definition of avulsion

: a forcible separation or detachment: such as

a : a tearing away of a body part accidentally or surgically

b : a sudden cutting off of land by flood, currents, or change in course of a body of water especially : one separating land from one person's property and joining it to another's. 

Definition of affine

 (Entry 1 of 2)

: a relative by marriage : in-law

affine

adjective

Definition of affine (Entry 2 of 2)

: of, relating to, or being a transformation (such as a translation, a rotation, or a uniform stretching) that carries straight lines into straight lines and parallel lines into parallel lines but may alter distance between points and angles between lines affine geometry.

 

Here is an interesting use of 'affine' that I found this morning in  Dietrich von Hildebrand, In Defense of Purity (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1962, p. 37):

 

But not only are insensibility and purity in no way identical; insensibility [Unsinnlichkeit] . . . does not even constitute an environment particularly favorable to the virtue of purity. For it is not even the temperament  which is affine to that virtue and which makes it easier. That is to say, it is not the temperamental counterpart of purity.