Entry: Kamikaze (n.)
In context: "'Then there are what I might call your Kamikaze-style liars.'"
Definition: ‘The wind of the gods’ (see small-type note above).
Other: This one turned out to be pretty fascinating.
The word was originally used in Japanese lore with reference to the supposed divine wind which blew on a night in August 1281, destroying the navy of the invading Mongols.
One of the Japanese airmen who in the war of 1939–45 made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets (usu. ships).
Etymology: Japanese, ‘divine wind’, < kami god, kami n. + kaze wind.
SNOOT score: 4
Page: 773
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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