Word - 125

UMAMI \oo-MAH-mee\ noun

: a taste sensation that is meaty or savory and is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides (as glutamate and aspartate)

Example sentence:
"Vegetarian dishes are usually difficult to meld with big red wines unless the dish includes umami, from ingredients such as intensely flavored mushrooms…." (The San Francisco Chronicle, August 22, 2008)

Did you know?

A Japanese scientist was the first to discover the savory taste of the amino acid glutamic acid, which was found to occur in soup stocks made with seaweed. This fifth basic taste -- alongside sweet, sour, salty, and bitter -- was named "umami," meaning "savoriness" in Japanese. Umami can be experienced in foods such as mushrooms, anchovies, and mature cheeses, as well as in foods enhanced with monosodium glutamate, or MSG, a sodium salt derived from glutamic acid.

Word - 124

FORAY \FOR-ay\ noun

1 : a sudden or irregular invasion or attack for war or spoils : raid

*2 : a brief excursion or attempt especially outside one's accustomed sphere

Example sentence:

The book marks the novelist's first foray into nonfiction.

Did you know?

"Foray" comes from Middle English "forrayen" and probably traces back to an Anglo-French word that meant "raider" or "forager." It's related to the word "forage," which usually means "to wander in search of food or forage." A "foray," in its earliest sense, was a raid for plunder. Relatively recently, "foray" began to take on a broader meaning. In a sense, a "foray" is still a trip into a foreign territory. These days, though, looting and plundering needn't be involved in a "foray." When you take a "foray," you dabble in an area, occupation, or pastime that's new to you.

Word - 123

EXTRICATE \EK-struh-kayt\ verb

1 : to distinguish from a related thing

*2 : to free or remove from an entanglement or difficulty

Example sentence:
Joe looked for a way to extricate himself gracefully from the long and tedious conversation with his chatty colleague.

Did you know?

It can take an ample amount of dexterity -- manual, verbal, or mental -- to free yourself from a tangled situation. This can be seen in "extricate," a word derived from Latin "extricatus," which combines the prefix "ex-" ("out of") with the noun "tricae," meaning "trifles or perplexities." (The resemblance of "tricae" to our word "trick" is no illusion; it's an ancestor.) While a number of words (such as "disentangle") share with "extricate" the meaning of "to free from difficulty," "extricate" suggests the act of doing so with care and ingenuity, as in "Through months of careful budgeting, he was able to extricate himself from his financial burdens."

Word - 122

VELD \VELT\ noun

: a grassland especially of southern Africa usually with scattered shrubs or trees

Example sentence:
"Less than 200 years ago, thousands upon thousands of quaggas roamed the grassy veld of southern Africa." (Sharon Begley, Newsweek, June 18, 1984)

Did you know?

"Veld" (also spelled "veldt") comes from Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaners, the descendants of the Dutch and Huguenot people who settled in southern Africa in the 17th century. Literally, "veld" means "field," and is akin to "feld," the Old English predecessor of "field." English speakers adopted the Africa-specific sense of "veld" in the 19th century. "Veld" refers to open country in southern Africa. Different regions of "veld" are distinguished by their elevations. There is the Highveld, the Lowveld, and the Middle Veld, each with different geographical characteristics. Another term associated with "veld" is "kopje" (or "koppie" -- both are pronounced \KAH-pee\). This word came to English from Afrikaans (and ultimately from a Dutch word meaning "small head" or "cup") and refers to a small hill, particularly one on the African veld.