panoptic: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

[Dictionary.com]

	Word of the Day for Sunday, March 3, 2013 panoptic \pan-OP-tik\, adjective: 1. permitting the viewing of all parts or elements: a panoptic stain used in microscopy; a panoptic aerial photograph of an enemy missile base. 2. considering all parts or elements; all inclusive: a panoptic criticism of modern poetry. Thus, the technical writing embodied in these reports enabled panoptic surveillance, comparisons of operations to standards, corrections, rewards, efficient operations, the accumulation of capital, and the betterment of the human condition. -- Bernadette Longo, Spurious Coin, 2000 …the panoptic metaphor of photography as a surveillance technology doesn't hold. -- George Robertson, FutureNatural, 1996 First used in English in the early 1800s, panoptic comes from the Greek panoptos, which literally means "all-seeing." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom? Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges Check out the Quote of the Day ›› Lexical Investigations: Balaclava A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same... Read more ›› Dictionary.com Word of the Day You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: e-dict...@googlegroups.com Subscriber since: January 06, 2008 Unsubscribe from the Word of the Day To subscribe to the Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wor...@lists.lexico.com ©2013 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to the Word of the Day can also be managed online   Tell a friend about the Word of the Day!