Category: Word of the Day

Word Of The Week

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2022

abient

[ ab-ee-uhnt ]SHOW IPA 

adjective

tending to move away from a stimulus or situation.

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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF ABIENT?

Abient “tending to move away from a stimulus or situation” comes from the Latin term abiēns (stem abient-) “going away,” the present participle of the verb abīre “to go away, exit, depart.” Abīre is formed from the preposition ab “from, away” and the verb īre “to go,” which has two stems: -ient and -it. The verb īre also gives rise to ambīre “to go around,” inīre “to go into, begin,” and trānsīre “to go across, cross,” and to see evidence of all these Latin verbs in English today, compare ambient and ambition, initial and initiate, and transient and transit. The -it stem also pops up in circuit (from Latin circumīre“to go round, circle”), exit (from exīre“to go out”), and even obituary (from obīre “to go toward,” often used euphemistically in the sense “to meet one’s death”). Abient was first recorded in English in the early 1930s.

HOW IS ABIENT USED? 

In the case of negative affect, the motivating experience can be best described, not as punishing, but as experience that tends to be psychologically noxious and difficult to tolerate. Such experience instigates abientbehavior—behavior that tends to produce avoidance and to reduce attention to and/or communion with the object of the affect when there is an object.

CHARLES D. SPIELBERGER, “AFFECT AND BEHAVIOR: ANXIETY AS A NEGATIVE AFFECT,” ANXIETY AND BEHAVIOR, 1966

To avoid writing, I engage in abientbehavior: walking the dog, cleaning the floor, ironing T-shirts, or reading junk mail.

NATALIE HARWOOD, THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO LEARNING LATIN, 2003

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(Ukrainian) Word Of The Week

Ukrainian Word of the Day

2022-03-1616

benner
 бачити
PRONOUNCED LIKE~bachyty

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DEFINITION~SEE

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Word Of The Week

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2022

eggcorn

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[ eg-kawrn ] SHOW IPA  

a word or phrase that is a seemingly logical alteration of another word or phrase that sounds similar and has been misheard or misinterpreted.

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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF EGGCORN?

Eggcorn “a seemingly logical alteration of a misheard word or phrase” is a coinage by linguistics professor Geoffrey K. Pullum based on the word acorn. The logic here is that people unfamiliar with the term acorn (from Old English æcern) may mistake the word as a compound of egg and corn because of acorns’ size and shape. An eggcorn is a type of folk etymology based on an honest mistake, as we saw in the etymology for the recent Word of the Day armscye, which is often incorrectly believed to come from “arm’s eye,” after the location and shape of an armscye. What makes something an eggcorn is that, unlike folk etymology proper, which results in a change to a word or phrase based on a nearly universal misconception, eggcorns tend to reflect common mistakes at the individual level—no matter how widespread these mistakes may be—that do not change the spelling of the mistaken word or phrase. Also important is that eggcorns are based on logical misunderstandings, so not every gross misspelling on the average social media feed qualifies as an eggcorn. While eggcorn is attested as early as the early 19th century, its present sense dates from 2003.

HOW IS EGGCORN USED?

Whether step foot in is, or originally was, an eggcorn has been hotly but inconclusively debated. However, no one argues that set foot in is anything other than standard English. So step foot in is one of those phrases that we’re probably better off not using even though there’s little reason to object if others use them.

BARBARA WALLRAFF, “WORD COURT,” THE ATLANTIC, SEPTEMBER 2006

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote …. “the Congress we’re about to get will be its [predecessor’s] spit and image: familiar faces, timeworn histrionics, unending paralysis.” Spit and image? …. Did Bruni just drop an eggcorn in America’s journal of record? …. As Language Log points out, he didn’t drop (lay?) an eggcorn at all. In fact, “spit and image” is the older version of the expression. Both may be alterations of an earlier form, “spitten image.”

DAVID SHARIATMADARI, “THAT EGGCORN MOMENT,” THE GUARDIAN, SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

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Word of the Day

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 02, 2022

gnomon

[ noh-mon ] SHOW IPA

noun

the raised part of a sundial that casts the shadow; a style.

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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF GNOMON?

Gnomon “the raised part of a sundial that casts the shadow” is a borrowing by way of Latin gnōmōn from Ancient Greek gnṓmōn “interpreter, discerner.” From there, gnṓmōn is derived from the verb gignṓskein (stem gnō-) “to know, perceive, judge,” and the stem gnō- also appears in other Ancient Greek-origin terms such as agnostic (literally “without knowledge”) and diagnosis (literally “means of discernment”). Because Ancient Greek and Latin are distantly related, Latin contains numerous words related to knowledge that also feature the telltale gn- element, including cognitive (“learned”), incognito (“unknown”), ignorant (“not knowing”), and recognize (“know again”). Gnomon was first recorded in English in the 1540s.

HOW IS GNOMON USED?

The pork clock was excavated in the 1760s from the ruins of the Villa dei Papiri, a grand country house in the Roman town of Herculaneum. Early scholars were quick to realize that the unprepossessing object was a sundial, though some experts argued that it was modeled after a water jug rather than a ham …. The original clock is missing its gnomon, the part of a sundial that casts a shadow, but an 18th-century museum curator described it having one in the shape of a pig’s tail…TRACI WATSON, “ANCIENT SUNDIAL SHAPED LIKE HAM WAS ROMAN POCKET WATCH,” NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, JANUARY 19, 2017

Though not exactly a clock, the Samrat Yantra—or supreme instrument—is the largest sundial in the world, measuring more than 88 feet in height. Made of marble and local stone with a gnomon that stands at 90 feet, this time-keeping attraction can tell accurate time, with just a two-second margin of error, day or night.“TRAVEL PICKS: TOP 10 CLOCKS AROUND THE WORLD,” REUTERS, APRIL 5, 2013

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Word Of The Day

contumacious

adjective

stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.

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Contumacious “stubbornly perverse or rebellious” is derived from the noun contumacy “obstinate resistance to authority,” ultimately from the Latin adjective contumāx “unyielding, stubborn.” The -tum- element in contumāx is of uncertain origin, but there are two hypotheses. The definition-based theory connects -tum- to the verb temnere “to despise,” which is also the source of the stem tempt-, as in contempt, while the spelling-based theory connects -tum- to the verb tumēre “to swell,” the source of tumescent and tumor. Contumacious was first recorded in English in the 1590s.

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Word of the Week

UESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2022

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skookum

[ skoo-kuhm ] 

adjective

large; powerful; impressive.

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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF SKOOKUM?

Skookum “large, powerful, impressive” derives from Chinook Jargon, a pidgin spoken primarily during the 1800s in the Pacific Northwest that still has hundreds of speakers today. A pidgin is a simplified language variety that fuses elements from multiple languages, and Chinook Jargon is primarily based on four sources: English, French, Lower Chinook (a Chinookan language once spoken along the Columbia River), and Nootka (a Wakashan language still spoken along the western coast of Vancouver Island). However, skookum entered Chinook Jargon instead of Lower Chehalis, a Salishan language once spoken in the southwestern coastal area of the Olympic Peninsula; skookum derives from Lower Chehalis skwəkwə́m “ghost, spirit, monster.” Skookum was first recorded in English circa 1830.

HOW IS SKOOKUM USED?

[Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato] is perhaps now most widely associated with Baroque and bel canto opera—her skookum approach to the aria “Tanti affetti” from Rossini’s “La Donna del Lago,” with its dizzying runs and leaps up and down the staff, has made her rendition a cult favorite—but she is no less at ease with the gentle lines of the American songbook. JOEL ROZEN, “OPERA’S MISS CONGENIALITY TAKES ON A RARE ‘CINDERELLA,’” THE NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 6, 2018

At the head of the anti-statehood efforts was the lobbyist for the Alaska Packers Association, W.C. Arnold. “The fishing and cannery industries employed W.C. Arnold, a man so powerful that he was called ‘Judge Arnold,’” Alaskan historian Claus Kaske told the San Francisco Chronicle in September of 2008. “Arnold was a skookum lobbyist, and he told Congress that business was paying the cost of running the territory.”DAVE KIFFER, “KETCHIKAN SUPPORTED ALASKA STATEHOOD, EVENTUALLY CHRONICLE, DAILY NEWS FOUGHT THE BATTLE LOCALLY,” SITNEWS, JANUARY 03, 2009

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Word of the Week

diasporic

[ dahy-uh–spawr-ik, ‐spor-ik ] 

adjective

of, being, or relating to any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland, either involuntarily or by migration.

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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF DIASPORIC?

Diasporic “of or relating to any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland” is formed from the Ancient Greek noun diasporá “scattering, dispersion,” from the preposition diá “through, across” and the noun sporá “sowing, seed,” the latter from the verb speírein “to sow.” This verb comes from the Proto-Indo-European root sper- “to strew,” which is also the source of English spread, spritz, and sprout as well as Ancient Greek spérma “seed” (compare sperm) and sporás “strewn, scattered” (compare sporadic). Another possible cognate of diasporic is Latin spargere “to scatter,” the source of words such as aspersion, disperse, and sparse. Diasporic was first recorded in English in the early 1800s.

HOW IS DIASPORIC USED?

During the early days of Cahokia, around 1050, emissaries from the city traveled north to sites in what is now Wisconsin, spurring the local creation of platform mounds and sculpted landscapes similar to those in the Cahokian heartland .… In each place where Cahokians remade themselves, they contended with local communities, as well as their individual memories of their homeland. Cahokian migrants made houses that mimicked those at home; they built according to celestial alignments from home; and in diasporic settings, they made iconographic designs honoring mythic heroes from their homeland.JAYUR MEHTA, “CAHOKIAN CULTURE SPREAD ACROSS EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 1,000 YEARS AGO IN AN EARLY EXAMPLE OF DIASPORA,” CONVERSATION, OCTOBER 30, 2020

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