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Wednesday November 11, 2009

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daedal [DEE-duhl]

adjective

1. Complex and ingenious in design or function.
2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious.

• Here, for example, is how the Irish monk looks to the crew as the ship sails away from his island: "The long lines of his drape slowly extended themselves straight up to the sky, and the faint brilliance of his upturned face, framed between the ebony columns of his lifted arms, seemed to be in some unfailing daedal communication with the radiant direction of his reaching."
  William F. Gavin, "`Delilah's' shipshape vignettes", Washington Times, Jul 13, 1997
• I cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete immortality. If he lives, he lives as I knew him and clothed as I knew him and with his unalterable voice, in a heaven of daedal flowers or a hell of ineffectual flame; he lives, dreaming and talking and explaining, explaining it all very earnestly and preposterously, so I picture him, into the ear of the amused, incredulous, principal person in the place.
  H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946) An English author, best known for the science fiction genre. First and Last Things
• Let those who to this daedal Valley throng And by my tumid Ashes pass along, Let them be glad with this consoling Thought: I got a Market Value for my Song.
  Wallace Irwin (1875 - 1959) An American writer. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr.

Origin of the Word

Daedal, approximately 1585, derives from Latin, 'daedalus': skillful; from Greek, 'daidalos': skillful, cunningly created.