  This week's word: REBARBATIVE  Not one of the nice words,
rebarbative means unattractive, objectionable, annoying,
repellant. It comes to us directly from the French rebarbatif,
meaning literally to "face each other, beard to beard." That
derives in turn from barbe, "beard," all going back to the Latin
barba. We get barb and barber from the same source.  To
understand how facing each other, beard to beard, came to
signify something repellant, think of the related verb, to
beard, to confront someone boldly or challenge. Beard and
rebarbative are literally in-your-face words, with the
disagreeableness inherent in such a situation.  Example: Though
they had once been friendly, Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov
fell out over Wilson's review of Nabokov's translation of
Puskhin and thereafter exchanged rebarbative remarks in the
pages of the New York Review of Books.  From last week: Tim
contributed a memorable comment on last week's word, nonage:
"What comes between nonage and dotage? Midage?"