Latin

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: SUBVENTION When more than 350 editors gathered in New Orleans last week for the 16th national conference of the American Copy Editors Society, many came on their own dime; they lacked subvention . In a broad sense, the word (pronounced sub-VEN-shun)

Dozens of people gather every Sunday morning in the Gothic sanctuary of St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church to pray for the future of a tradition that's deeply rooted in the past. Before the Latin prayers begin, they seek God's intercession for the future of the Tridentine Mass - a form of liturgy established in the 16th century but now celebrated only in churches with special permission. If the speculation around the Vatican is right, their prayers might be answered. Rumors have swirled for months that Pope Benedict XVI will formally grant permission to all Catholic churches to perform what's commonly - though incorrectly - known as the Latin Mass.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: GRAVAMEN Terms from law sometimes sidle into the general language. One such is gravamen (pronounced gruh-VAY-men), meaning the most serious part of a complaint or accusation. It derives from the Latin gravis , "heavy," and came into English in the seventeenth century as an ecclesiastical term for formal presentation of a grievance.

Each week The Sun's  John McIntyre  presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: MINATORY No doubt you had such a teacher as Mrs. Jessie Perkins. She taught me in the fifth and sixth grades, and when she stood at the blackboard, illustrated a point of grammar or arithmetic, and said, "That's all there is to it," fixing us with a look that brooked no dissent, we shrank from her minatory gaze.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: RECONDITE A subject, a branch of knowledge, or a particular kind of information is recondite (pronounced RECK-un-dite) if it is little known, obscure, abstruse. For you, it might be physics, or grammar, or the infield fly rule. The word comes from the Latin reconditus , meaning "hidden" or "put away.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: VICISSITUDES All is flux, said Heraclitus, and we know all too well that many changes are not for the better. So it's useful to have vicissitudes (pronounced vuh-SISS-i-tyoods), a word identifying sudden changes in circumstances or fortune, usually unwelcome or unpleasant.