Word Nerd - words of the week.

triage
tri·age (trē-äzh', trē'äzh')

Personal Source: Aldrich said this was the word used by his Texan clients in their approach with solving the multitude of issues in the application that they are working on.

Dictionary: n.

1. A process for sorting injured people into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used in hospital emergency rooms, on battlefields, and at disaster sites when limited medical resources must be allocated.
2. A system used to allocate a scarce commodity, such as food, only to those capable of deriving the greatest benefit from it.
3. A process in which things are ranked in terms of importance or priority: “For millions of Americans, each week becomes a stressful triage between work and home that leaves them feeling guilty, exhausted and angry” (Jill Smolowe).

tr.v., -aged, -ag·ing, -ag·es.

To sort or allocate by triage: triaged the patients according to their symptoms.

[French, from trier, to sort, from Old French.]

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Fuge
fugue (fyūg)

Personal Source: part of the lyrics in the song Bar-ba-sol. Album by David Cook.

Dictionary: n.

1. Music. An imitative polyphonic composition in which a theme or themes are stated successively in all of the voices of the contrapuntal structure.
2. Psychiatry. A pathological amnesiac condition during which one is apparently conscious of one's actions but has no recollection of them after returning to a normal state. This condition, usually resulting from severe mental stress, may persist for as long as several months.

[Italian fuga (influenced by French fugue, from Italian fuga), from Latin, flight.]

fugal fu'gal (fyū'gəl) adj.
fugally fu'gal·ly adv.
fugue fugue v.
fuguist fugu'ist (fyū'gĭst) n.

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Ipso Facto
ip·so fac·to (ĭp'sō făk'tō)

Personal Source: "The girls aren't even allowed in our bus, ipso facto, they don't know how the inside of our bus looks like" - David Cook interview on American Idol Tour.

Dictionary: adv.

By the fact itself; by that very fact: An alien, ipso facto, has no right to a U.S. passport.

[New Latin ipsō factō : Latin ipsō, ablative of ipse, itself + Latin factō, ablative of factum, fact.]