adjective
of, relating to, or involving acting.
The English adjective Roscian comes straight from the Latin proper adjective 搁辞蝉肠颈腻苍耻蝉, coined by and used exclusively by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106鈥43 b.c.) in honor of his older contemporary, mentor, friend, and client, the actor Quintus Roscius Gallus (ca. 126鈥62 b.c.). Acting was not a respected profession in Rome, but Roscius dignified it and devoted himself to elocution, gesture, and characterization. The Roman general, reactionary politician, and dictator Sulla (138鈥79 b.c.) even presented Roscius with a gold ring, a symbol of equestrian rank. Roscius instructed the young Cicero in elocution and delivery; Cicero successfully pleaded Roscius鈥 cause in a civil suit around 76 b.c. (Cicero鈥檚 speech Pro Quinto Roscio Comoedo survives); he and Roscius used to engage in friendly contests to see who could express emotion and character better, the actor or the orator. Roscian entered English in the early 17th century.
Because you grace the roscian sphere, / As great in Chalkstone as in Lear ….
I … found it to be a crumpled play-bill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, in that very week, of “the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic circles.”
noun
French.
special care in anticipating or catering to the needs and pleasures of others.
Every breakroom in every restaurant in the U.S. should have prominently displayed a great big poster in bold sans serif caps: 鈥辫谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别, special care in anticipating or catering to the needs and pleasures of others.鈥 笔谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别 is a French noun meaning 鈥渢houghtfulness.” 笔谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别 is a derivative of the verb 辫谤茅惫别苍颈谤, one of whose meanings is 鈥渢o anticipate.鈥 笔谤茅惫别苍颈谤 comes from Latin 辫谤补别惫别苍墨谤别 “to come before, anticipate,” a compound of the preposition and prefix prae, prae– 鈥渂efore, in advance鈥 and 惫别苍墨谤别 鈥渢o come.鈥 Prae惫别苍墨谤别 does mean 鈥渢o anticipate,鈥 but in the sense 鈥渢o forestall, prevent.鈥 笔谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别 entered English in the 18th century.
A much older and far wiser woman would have been persuaded to believe, as she believed, that in all this delicate 辫谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别 for her pleasures and her preferences the tenderest love had spoken.
My father I fear, was not remarkable in general for his tenderness or his 辫谤茅惫别苍补苍肠别 for the poor girl whom fortune had given him to protect; but from time to time he would wake up to a downright sense of kinship and duty ….
verb (used with object)
to startle into sudden activity; stimulate.
The English verb galvanize comes from the French verb galvaniser 鈥渢o make muscles contract by application of electrical current,鈥 a discovery made by the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani in 1780, when an assistant touched the exposed sciatic nerve of a dead frog with a metal scalpel that had picked up a charge, which made the dead frog’s leg kick as if alive. Galvanize in its physiological sense entered English in the early 19th century; the figurative sense 鈥渢o startle into sudden activity鈥 dates to the mid-19th century.
The presence of the enemy seemed to galvanize the growers, underscoring the subtext of Elliot’s message: that their industry was under attack, and they needed D&W’s crisis-management services.
… [Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis] looms as just barely premodern, even though she presided over the start of (and maybe even helped galvanize) the most turbulent social transformation in recent history.