docile
adjective DAH-sul
What It Means
Docile is used to describe those who are easily taught, led, or managed.
// Though the professor feared a rowdy incoming class, he found that his new students were docile and eager to learn.
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Tag: Adjective
Word Of The Day
contumacious
adjective
stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.
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
skookum
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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