Vocabulary

Patozone

Vocabulary

Taken mostly from MW Word of the Day emails

accoutrement

noun | uh-KOO-truh-munt

1 a : equipment, trappings; specifically : a soldier's outfit usually not including clothes and weapons — usually used in plural

b : an accessory item of clothing or equipment — usually used in plural

2 : an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device — usually used in plural

Accoutrement and its relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter. Their French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "seam" and ultimately traces to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." You probably won't be too surprised to learn that consuere is also an ancestor of couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves.

advise

verb | ud-VYZE

1 a :to give a recommendation about what should be done : to give advice to

b :caution, warn

c : recommend

2 : to give information or notice to : inform

3 : to talk with someone in order to decide what should be done : consult

Today's word was borrowed into Middle English in the 14th century as avise (spelling variants with the d found in the Modern English advise began showing up in the 15th century). The word is derived from the Anglo-French aviser, itself from avis, meaning "opinion." That avis is not to be confused with the Latin word avis, meaning "bird" (an ancestor of such English words as avian and aviation). Instead, it results from the Old French phrase ce m'est a vis ("that appears to me"), a partial translation of Latin mihi visum est, "it seemed so to me" or "I decided." We advise you to remember that the verb advise is spelled with an s, whereas the related noun advice includes a stealthy c.

agita

noun | AJ-uh-tuh

: a feeling of agitation or anxiety

Judging by its spelling and meaning, you might think that agita is simply a shortened version of agitation, but that's not the case. Both agitation and the verb it comes form, agitate, derive from Latin agere, meaning "to drive." Agita, which first appeared in American English in the mid-late 20th century, comes from a dialectical pronunciation of the Italian word acido, meaning "heartburn" or "acid," from Latin acidus. (Agita is also occasionally used in English with the meaning "heartburn.") For a while the word's usage was limited to New York City and surrounding regions, but the word became more widespread in the mid-1990s.

akimbo

adjective or adverb | uh-KIM-boh

1 : having the hand on the hip and the elbow turned outward

2 : set in a bent position

It's akimbo nowadays, but in Middle English, the adverbial phrase in kenebowe was used for the bent, hand-on-hip arm (or later, for any bent position). Originally, the term was fairly neutral, but now saying that a person is standing with "arms akimbo" implies a posture that communicates defiance, confidence, aggressiveness, or arrogance. In her novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott took the word one step further, extending it into the figurative realm when she explained that tomboyish Jo had not been invited to participate in an elegant event with the other young ladies of the neighborhood because "her elbows were decidedly akimbo at this period of her life."

alleviate

verb | uh-LEE-vee-ayt

: relieve, lessen such as a : to make (something, such as suffering) more bearable b : to partially remove or correct (something undesirable)

Alleviate derives from the past participle of Late Latin alleviare ("to lighten or relieve"), which in turn was formed by combining the prefix ad- and the adjective levis, a Latin word meaning "having little weight," which also gave rise to the adjective light (as in "not heavy") in English. We acquired alleviate in the 15th century, and for the first few centuries the word could mean either "to cause (something) to have less weight" or "to make (something) more tolerable." The literal "make lighter" sense is no longer used, however, and today we have only the "relieve" sense. Incidentally, not only is alleviate a synonym of relieve, it's also a cousin; relieve comes from levare ("to raise"), which in turn comes from levis.

amanuensis

noun | uh-man-yuh-WEN-sis

one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript

In Latin, the phrase servus a manu translates loosely as "slave with secretarial duties." (The noun manu, meaning "hand," gave us words such as manuscript, which originally referred to a document written or typed by hand.) In the 17th century the second part of this phrase was borrowed into English to create amanuensis, a word for a person who is employed (willingly) to do the important but sometimes menial work of transcribing the words of another. While other quaint words, such as scribe or scrivener, might have similarly described the functions of such a person in the past, these days we're likely to call him or her a secretary or an administrative assistant.

amortize

verb | AM-er-tyze

1 : to pay off (an obligation, such as a mortgage) gradually usually by periodic payments of principal and interest or by payments to a sinking fund

2 : to gradually reduce or write off the cost or value of (something, such as an asset)

When you amortize a loan, you "kill it off" gradually by paying it down in installments. This is reflected in the word's etymology. Amortize derives via Middle English and Anglo-French from Vulgar Latin admortire, meaning "to kill." The Latin noun mors ("death") is a root of admortire; it is related to our word murder, and it also gave us a word naming a kind of loan that is usually amortized: mortgage. Amortize carries a different meaning in the field of corporate finance, where it means to depreciate the cost or value of an asset (as, for example, to reduce interest revenue on that asset for tax purposes).

anathematize

verb | uh-NATH-uh-muh-tyze

: curse, denounce

When 16th-century English speakers needed a verb meaning "to condemn by anathema" (that is, by an official curse from church authority), anathematize proved to be just the right word. But anathematize didn't originate in English as a combination of the noun anathema and the suffix -ize. Rather, our verb is based on forebears in Late Latin (anathematizare) and Greek (anathematizein). Anathematize can still indicate solemn, formal condemnation, but today it can also have milder applications. The same is true of anathema, which now often means simply "a vigorous denunciation," or more frequently, "something or someone intensely disliked or loathed."

apropos

preposition | ap-ruh-POH

: with regard to (something) : concerning

English speakers borrowed apropos from the French phrase à propos, literally "to the purpose." Since it first appeared in the 17th century, apropos has been used as an adverb, adjective, noun, and preposition. Left alone, the word probably wouldn't have gotten much attention, but in 1926 noted language expert H. W. Fowler declared of apropos "that it is better always to use of rather than to after it…." While this prescription seems to be based on the use of the preposition de ("of") in the French construction à propos de, rather than the actual usage history of apropos in English, some language commentators take Fowler's recommendation to be virtually a commandment. But others have noted that apropos is sometimes used by itself in professionally edited prose, or, more rarely, is followed by to.

arbitrary

adjective | AHR-buh-trair-ee

1 : depending on individual discretion (as of a judge) and not fixed by law

2 : autocratic, despotic

3 a : based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something

b :existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will

Arbitrary is derived from the same source as arbiter. The Latin word arbiter means "judge," and English adopted it, via Anglo-French, with the meaning "one who judges a dispute"; it can now also be used for anyone whose judgment is respected. Arbitrary traces back to the Latin adjective arbitrarius ("done by way of legal arbitration"), which itself comes from arbiter. In English arbitrary first meant "depending upon choice or discretion" and was specifically used to indicate the sort of decision (as for punishment) left up to the expert determination of a judge rather than defined by law. Today, it can also be used for anything determined by or as if by a personal choice or whim.

assay

verb | a-SAY

1 a : to analyze (something, such as an ore) for one or more specific components

b : to judge the worth of : estimate

2 : try, attempt

3 : to prove to be of a particular nature by means of analysis

Usage experts warn against confusing the verbs assay and essay. Some confusion shouldn't be surprising, since the two words look alike and derive from the same root, the Middle French essai, meaning "test" or "effort" (a root that, in turn, comes from the Late Latin exagium, meaning "act of weighing"). At one time, the two terms were synonyms, sharing the meaning "try" or "attempt," but many modern usage commentators recommend that you differentiate the two words, using essay when you mean "to try or attempt" (as in "he will essay a dramatic role for the first time") and assay to mean "to test or evaluate" (as in "the blood was assayed to detect the presence of the antibody").

bibelot

noun | BEE-buh-loh

: a small household ornament or decorative object : trinket

Can you think of a six-letter synonym of bibelot that starts with the letter "g"? No? How about an eight-letter one? Crossword puzzle whizzes might guess that the words we are thinking of are gewgaw and gimcrack. Like these, bibelot, which English speakers borrowed from French, has uses beyond wordplay. In addition to its general use as a synonym of trinket, it can refer specifically to a miniature book of elegant design (such as those made by Tiffany and Faberge). It also appears regularly in the names of things as diverse as restaurants and show dogs.

bifurcate

verb | BYE-fer-kayt

: to divide or cause to divide into two branches or parts

Yogi Berra, the baseball great who was noted for his head-scratching quotes, is purported to have said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Yogi's advice might not offer much help when making tough decisions in life, but perhaps it will help you remember today's word, bifurcate. A road that bifurcates splits in two like the one in Yogi's adage. Other things can bifurcate as well, such as an organization that splits into two factions. Bifurcate derives from the Latin bifurcus, meaning "two-pronged," a combination of the prefix bi- ("two") and the noun furca ("fork"). Furca, as you can probably tell, gave us our word fork.

bombard

verb | bahm-BARD

1 : to attack especially with artillery or bombers

2 : to assail vigorously or persistently (as with questions)

3 : to subject to the impact of rapidly moving particles (as electrons)

In the late Middle Ages, a bombard was a cannon used to hurl large stones at enemy fortifications. Its name, which first appeared in English in the 15th century, comes from the Middle French bombarde, which in turn was probably a combination of the onomatopoeic bomb- and the suffix -arde (equivalent to the English -ard). The verb bombard blasted onto the scene in English in the 17th century, with an original meaning of "to attack especially with artillery"; as weapons technology improved throughout the centuries, such artillery came to include things like automatic rifles and bomber aircraft. Nowadays one can be bombarded figuratively in any number of ways, such as by omnipresent advertising messages or persistent phone calls.

bona fides

noun | boh-nuh-FYE-deez

1 : good faith : sincerity

2 : the fact of being genuine

3 : evidence of one's good faith or genuineness

4 : evidence of one's qualifications or achievements

Bona fides looks like a plural word in English, but in Latin, it's a singular noun that literally means "good faith." When bona fides entered English, it at first stayed very close to its Latin use—it was found mostly in legal contexts and it meant "honesty or lawfulness of purpose," just as it did in Latin. It also retained its singular construction. Using this original sense one might speak of "a claimant whose bona fides is unquestionable." But in the 20th century, use of bona fides began to widen, and it began to appear with a plural verb in certain contexts. For example, a sentence such as "the informant's bona fides were ascertained" is now possible.

bosky

adjective | BAH-skee

1 : having abundant trees or shrubs

2 : of or relating to a woods

Bosk, busk, bush—in Middle English these were all variant spellings of a word meaning "shrub." Although bush and busk survived into modern English (busk only barely; its use is limited to occurrences in some dialects of northern Britain), bosk disappeared from the written language for a while. It wasn't gone entirely, though: in the early 17th century it provided the root for the woodsy adjective bosky. Since its formation, bosky has been firmly rooted in our language, and its widespread popularity seems to have resurrected its parental form. By the early 19th century, bosk (also spelled bosque) had reappeared in writing, but this time with the meaning "a small wooded area."

broadside

noun | BRAWD-syde

1 a : a sizable sheet of paper printed on one side; also : a sheet of paper printed on one or both sides and folded (such as for mailing)

1 b : something (such as a ballad) printed on a broadside

2 : all the guns on one side of a ship; also : their simultaneous discharge

3 : a volley of abuse or denunciation : a strongly worded attack

4 : a broad or unbroken surface

What do sheets of printed paper and a ship's artillery have in common? Not a whole lot besides their broadsides. The printing and naval senses of broadside arose independently of one another. Printed broadsides may have first been decrees intended for public posting, so they were necessarily printed on one side of large sheets of paper. Soon even matters printed on one side of smallish sheets were called broadsides—advertisements, for example, or the so-called "broadside ballads," popular ditties that people stuck on the wall to sing from. In the nautical sense, broadside was originally the entire side of a ship above the water—which is where the guns were placed. The further use of broadside to refer to firing of the guns eventually led to the figurative "volley of abuse" sense.

burgle

verb | BER-gul

1 :to break into and steal from

2 : to commit burglary against

Burglary, which means "forcible entry into a building especially at night with the intent to commit a crime (such as theft)," and burglar ("one who commits burglary") have been with us since the 16th century. Burgle and its synonym burglarize didn't break into the language until the 19th century. Burgle is a back-formation (that is, a word formed by removing a suffix or prefix) from burglar. Burglarize comes from burglar as well, with the addition of the familiar -ize ending. Both verbs were once disparaged by grammarians—burgle was considered to be "facetious" and burglarize was labeled "colloquial"—but they are both now generally accepted. Burglarize is more common in American English, whereas burgle is preferred in British English.

censure

verb | SEN-sher

: to find fault with and criticize as blameworthy

Censure and its synonyms criticize, reprehend, condemn, and denounce all essentially mean "to find fault with openly." Additionally, censure carries a strong suggestion of authority and often refers to an official action. Criticize implies finding fault with someone's methods, policies, or intentions, as in "the commentator criticized the manager's bullpen strategy." Reprehend implies sharp criticism or disapproval, as in "a teacher who reprehends poor grammar." Condemn usually suggests a final unfavorable judgment, as in "the group condemned the court's decision." Denounce adds to condemn the implication of a public declaration, as in "her letter to the editor denounced the corrupt actions of the mayor's office."

chthonic

adjective | THAH-nik

: of or relating to the underworld : infernal

Chthonic might seem a lofty and learned word, but it's actually pretty down-to-earth in its origin and meaning. It comes from chthōn, which means "earth" in Greek, and it is associated with things that dwell in or under the earth. It is most commonly used in discussions of mythology, particularly underworld mythology. Hades and Persephone, who reign over the underworld in Greek mythology, might be called "chthonic deities," for example. Chthonic has broader applications, too. It can be used to describe something that resembles a mythological underworld (e.g., "chthonic darkness"), and it is sometimes used to describe earthly or natural things (as opposed to those that are elevated or celestial).

coalesce

verb | koh-uh-LESS

1 : to grow together

2a : to unite into a whole : fus

b : to unite for a common end : join forces

3 : to arise from the combination of distinct elements

Coalesce unites the prefix co- ("together") and the Latin verb alescere, meaning "to grow." (The words adolescent and adult also grew from alescere.) Coalesce, which first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, is one of a number of verbs in English (along with mix, commingle, merge, and amalgamate) that refer to the act of combining parts into a whole. In particular, coalesce usually implies the merging of similar parts to form a cohesive unit.

confrere

noun | KAHN-frair

: colleague, comrade

Confrere arrived in English from Anglo-French in the 15th century, and ultimately derives from the Medieval Latin confrater, meaning "brother" or "fellow." (Frater, the root of this term, shares an ancient ancestor with our word brother.) English speakers also began using another descendant of confrater in the 15th century: confraternity, meaning "a society devoted to a religious or charitable cause." In the past, confrere was often used specifically of a fellow member of a confraternity, but these days it is used more generally.

conversant

adjective | kun-VER-sunt

: having knowledge or experience

The adjectives conversant and conversational are related; both are descendants of Latin conversari, meaning "to associate with." Conversant dates to the Middle Ages, and an early meaning of the word was simply "having familiar association." One way to associate with others is to have a conversation with them—in other words, to talk. For a short time in the 19th century conversant could mean "relating to or suggesting conversation," but for the most part that meaning stayed with conversational while conversant went in a different direction. Today, conversant is sometimes used, especially in the United States, with the meaning "able to talk in a foreign language," as in "she is conversant in several languages," but it is more often associated with knowledge or familiarity, as in "conversant with the issues."

crucible

noun | KROO-suh-bul

1 : a vessel in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted

2 : a severe test

3 : a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development

Crucible looks like it should be closely related to the Latin combining form cruc- ("cross"), but it isn't. It was forged from the Medieval Latin crucibulum, a noun for an earthen pot used to melt metals, and in English it first referred to a vessel made of a very heat-resistant material (such as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high degree of heat. But the resemblance between cruc- and crucible probably encouraged people to start using crucible to mean "a severe trial." That sense is synonymous with one meaning of cross, a word that is related to cruc-. The newest sense of crucible ("a situation in which great changes take place"—as in "forged in the crucible of war") recalls the fire and heat that would be encountered in the original heat-resistant pot.

denegation

noun | den-ih-GAY-shun

: denial

Even if we didn't provide you with a definition, you might guess the meaning of denegation from the negation part. Both words are ultimately derived from the Latin verb negare, meaning "to deny" or "to say no," and both first arrived in English in the 15th century. Negare is also the source of our abnegation ("self-denial"), negate ("to deny the truth of"), and renegade (which originally referred to someone who leaves, and therefore denies, a religious faith). Even deny and denial are negare descendants. Like denegation, they came to us from negare by way of the Latin denegare, which also means "to deny."

depredate

verb | DEP-ruh-dayt

1 : to lay waste : plunder, ravage

2 : to engage in plunder

Depredate derives primarily from the Latin verb praedari, meaning "to plunder," an ancestor to our words predator and prey. Dating to the 17th century, the word most commonly appears in contexts relating to nature and ecology, where it is often used to describe the methodical, almost automatic destruction of life. That's how the film critic Stanley Kauffman, for example, used it to summarize the plot of the famous horror movie Jaws (1975): "A killer shark depredates the beach of an island summer resort. Several people are killed. Finally, the shark is killed. That's the story."

diminution

noun | dim-uh-NOO-shun

: the act, process, or an instance of becoming gradually less (as in size or importance) : the act, process, or an instance of diminishing : decrease

We find written evidence for diminution going back to the 14th century, including use in Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English poetical work Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer used "maken dyminucion" ("make diminution") in contrast to the verb "encrece" ("increase"). Diminution came to English by way of Anglo-French from Latin. Its Latin ancestor deminuere ("to diminish") is also an ancestor of the English verb diminish, which entered the language in the 15th century, and the related diminishment, a synonym of diminution that English speakers have been using since the 16th century.

disparate

adjective | DISS-puh-rut

1 : containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements

2 : markedly distinct in quality or character

Have you ever tried to sort differing objects into separate categories? If so, you're well prepared to understand the origins of disparate. The word, which first appeared in English in the 16th century, derives from disparatus, the past participle of the Latin verb disparare, meaning "to separate." Disparare, in turn, comes from parare, a verb meaning "to prepare." Other descendants of parare in English include both separate and prepare, as well as repair, apparatus, and even vituperate ("to criticize harshly and usually publicly"). Disparate also functions as a noun. The noun, which is rare and usually used in the plural, means "one of two or more things so unequal or unlike that they cannot be compared with each other," as in "The yoking of disparates, the old and the new, continues to be a [poet Anne] Carson strategy" (Daisy Fried, The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2013).

disport

verb | dih-SPORT

1 : divert, amuse

2 : display

3 : to amuse oneself in light or lively fashion : frolic

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the earliest writers to amuse the reading public with the verb disport. Chaucer and his contemporaries carried the word into English from Anglo-French, adapting it from desporter, meaning "to carry away, comfort, or entertain." The word can ultimately be traced back to the Latin verb portare, meaning "to carry." Deport, portable, and transport are among the members of the portare family.

edacious

adjective | ih-DAY-shus

1 : having a huge appetite : ravenous

2 : excessively eager : insatiable

Tempus edax rerum. That wise Latin line by the Roman poet Ovid translates as "Time, the devourer of all things." Ovid's correlation between rapaciousness and time is appropriate to a discussion of edacious. That English word is a descendant of Latin edax, which is a derivative of the verb edere, meaning "to eat." In its earliest known English uses, edacious meant "of or relating to eating." It later came to be used generally as a synonym of voracious, and it has often been used specifically in contexts referring to time. That's how Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle used it when he referred to events "swallowed in the depths of edacious Time."

élan

noun | ay-LAHN

: vigorous spirit or enthusiasm

Once upon a time, English speakers did not have élan (the word, that is; we have always had the potential for vigorous spirit). We had, however, the verb elance, meaning "to throw," that was used for the launching of darts, javelins, and similar weaponry. Elance is derived from the Middle French (s')eslancer, meaning "to rush or dash" (that is, "to hurl oneself forth"). Elance enjoyed only a short flight in English, largely falling into disuse by the mid-1800s, around which time English speakers picked up élan, another French word that traces back, via the Middle French noun eslan ("dash, rush"), to (s')eslancer. We copied élan in form from the French, but we dispensed with the French sense of a literal "rush" or "dash," retaining the sense of enthusiastic animation that we sometimes characterize as dash.

emissary

noun | EM-uh-sair-ee

1 : one designated as the agent of another : representative

2 : a secret agent

An emissary is often a person who is sent somewhere in order to act as a representative. The key word in that sentence is sent; emissary derives from Latin emissus, the past participle of the verb emittere, meaning "to send out." Emissary first appeared in print in English in the early 1600s, not too long after the arrival of another emittere descendant: emit. In addition, emittere itself comes from Latin mittere ("to send"), which is an ancestor of many English words, including admit, commit, mission, omit, permit, premise, promise, and submit.

ensconce

verb | in-SKAHNSS

1 : to place or hide securely : conceal

2 : to establish or settle firmly, comfortably, or snugly

You might think of a sconce as a type of candleholder or lamp, but the word can also refer to a defensive fortification, usually one made of earth. Originally, then, a person who was ensconced was enclosed in or concealed by such a structure, out of harm's way. One of the earliest writers to apply the verb ensconce with the general sense of "hide" was William Shakespeare. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, the character Falstaff, hoping to avoid detection when he is surprised during an amorous moment with Mrs. Ford, says "She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind the arras." (An arras is a tapestry or wall hanging.)

enthrall

verb | in-THRAWL

: to hold spellbound : charm

In Middle English, enthrallen meant "to hold in thrall." Thrall then, as now, meant "bondage" or "slavery"; it comes from an Old Norse word, thraell, which is probably related to an Old High German word for "servant." An early figurative use of enthrall appeared in the following advice from the 16th century, translated from a Latin text by Thomas Newton: "A man should not … enthrall his credit and honour to Harlots." But we rarely use even this sense of mental or moral enslavement anymore. Today the word is often used in its participle form, enthralled, which sometimes means "temporarily spellbound" ("we listened, enthralled, to the old woman's oral history"), but more often suggests a state of being generally captivated, delighted, or taken by some particular thing.

extemporaneous

adjective | ek-stem-puh-RAY-nee-us

1 : composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment : impromptu

2 : provided, made, or put to use as an expedient : makeshift

Extemporaneous, which comes from Latin ex tempore ("out of the time"), joined the English language sometime in the mid-17th century. The word impromptu was improvised soon after that. In general usage, extemporaneous and impromptu are used interchangeably to describe off-the-cuff remarks or speeches, but this is not the case when they are used in reference to the learned art of public speaking. Teachers of speech will tell you that an extemporaneous speech is one that has been thoroughly prepared and planned but not memorized, whereas an impromptu speech is one for which absolutely no preparations have been made.

farceur

noun | fahr-SER

1 : joker, wag

2 : a writer or actor of farce or satire

You've probably already spotted the "farce" in farceur. But although farceur can now refer to someone who performs or composes farce, it began life as a word for someone who is simply known for cracking jokes. Appropriately, farceur derives via Modern French from the Middle French farcer, meaning "to joke." If you think of farce as a composition of ridiculous humor with a "stuffed" or contrived plot, then it should not surprise you that farce originally meant "forcemeat"—seasoned meat used for a stuffing—and that both farce and farceur can be ultimately traced back to the Latin verb farcire, meaning "to stuff."

fester

verb | FESS-ter

1 : to generate pus

2 : putrefy, rot

3 a : to cause increasing poisoning, irritation, or bitterness : rankle

b : to undergo or exist in a state of progressive deterioration

Fester entered English in the 14th century. It was used as we now use the word fistula for an abnormal passage leading from an abscess or hollow organ and permitting passage of fluids or secretions. It was also applied as a word for a sore that discharges pus. The connection between fester and fistula is no accident—both descend from Latin fistula, which has the same meaning as the English word but can also mean "pipe" or "tube" or "a kind of ulcer." Fester made the trip from Latin to English by way of Anglo-French. The word's use as a verb meaning "to generate pus" has also developed extended senses implying a worsening state.

flagrant

adjective | FLAY-grunt

: conspicuously offensive; especially : so obviously inconsistent with what is right or proper as to appear to be a flouting of law or morality

In Latin, flagrare means "to burn," and flagrans means "burning" or "fiery hot" (both literally and figuratively). When it was first used in the 16th century, flagrant had the same meaning as flagrans, but by the 18th century it had acquired its current meaning of "conspicuously bad." Some usage commentators warn against using flagrant and blatant interchangeably. While both words denote conspicuousness, they are not exact synonyms. Blatant is usually used of some person, action, or thing that attracts disapproving attention (e.g., "a blatant grammatical error"). Flagrant is used similarly, but usually carries a heavier weight of violated morality (e.g., "flagrant abuse of public office").

flat-hat

verb | FLAT-hat

: to fly low in an airplane in a reckless manner : hedgehop

Legend has it that the term flat-hat originated with an incident back in the days of barnstormers in which a pedestrian's hat was crushed by a low-flying airplane. According to one version of the tale, the reckless pilot was subsequently required to purchase a new hat for the hapless pedestrian. It seems unlikely that such an event actually took place, but we can well imagine how fear of having one's hat smashed flat by a passing airplane might have given rise to such a vivid verb. Flat-hat is first known to have appeared in English in 1940. Another word for flying low to the ground, the verb hedgehop, debuted at least 14 years earlier (and its related gerund hedgehopping is known to be a bit older still).

fruition

noun | froo-ISH-un

1 : pleasurable use or possession : enjoyment

2 a : the state of bearing fruit

b : realization

Fruition must come from the word fruit, right? Not exactly. Fruition and fruit are related (both ultimately come from the Latin verb frui, meaning "to enjoy"), but they were derived independently. The original meaning of fruition had nothing to do with fruit. Rather, when the term was first used in the early 15th century, it meant only "pleasurable use or possession." Not until the 19th century did fruition develop a second meaning, "the state of bearing fruit," possibly as the result of a mistaken assumption that fruition evolved from fruit. The "state of bearing fruit" sense was followed quickly by the figurative application to anything that can be "realized" and metaphorically bear fruit, such as a plan or a project.

garble

verb | GAR-bul

1 : to sift impurities from

2 a : to alter or distort as to create a wrong impression or change the meaning

b : to introduce textual error into (a message) by inaccurate encipherment, transmission, or decipherment

Garble developed from Late Latin cribellare, a verb meaning "to sift." Arabic speakers borrowed cribellare as gharbala, and the Arabic word passed into Old Italian as garbellare; both of these words also meant "to sift." When the word first entered Middle English as garbelen, its meaning stayed close to the original; it meant "to sort out the best." But that sort of sifting can cause a distortion, and in early Modern English garble came to mean "to distort the sound or meaning of."

gauche

adjective | GOHSH

1 : lacking social experience or grace; also : not tactful : crude

2 : crudely made or done

Gauche is one of several words that come from old suspicions or negative associations surrounding the left side and use of the left hand. In French, gauche literally means "left," and it has the extended meanings "awkward" and "clumsy." These meanings may have come about because left-handed people could appear awkward trying to manage in a right-handed world, or perhaps they came about because right-handed people appear awkward when they try to use their left hand. In fact, awkward comes from the Middle English awke, meaning "turned the wrong way" or "left-handed." On the other hand, adroit and dexterity have their roots in words meaning "right" or "on the right side."

glabrous

adjective | GLAY-brus

: smooth; especially : having a surface without hairs or projections

"Before them an old man, / wearing a fringe of long white hair, bareheaded, / his glabrous skull reflecting the sun's / light…." No question about it—the bald crown of an old man's head (as described here in William Carlos Williams's poem "Sunday in the Park") is a surface without hairs. Williams's use isn't typical, though. More often glabrous appears in scientific contexts, such as the following description of wheat: "The white glumes are glabrous, with narrow acuminate beaks." And although Latin glaber, our word's source, can mean simply "bald," when glabrous refers to skin with no hair in scientific English, it usually means skin that never had hair (such as the palms of the hands).

gregarious

adjective | grih-GAIR-ee-us

1 a :tending to associate with others of one's kind : social

b : marked by or indicating a liking for companionship : sociable

c : of or relating to a social group

2 a : (of a plant) growing in a cluster or a colony

b : living in contiguous nests but not forming a true colony — used

When you're one of the herd, it's tough to avoid being social. The etymology of gregarious reflects the social nature of the flock; in fact, the word grew out of the Latin noun grex, meaning "herd" or "flock." When it first began appearing in English texts in the 17th century, gregarious was applied mainly to animals, but by the 18th century it was being used for social human beings as well. By the way, grex gave English a whole flock of other words too, including egregious, aggregate, congregate, and segregate.

haphazard

adjective | hap-HAZZ-erd

: marked by lack of plan, order, or direction

The hap in haphazard comes from an English word that means "happening," as well as "chance or fortune," and that derives from the Old Norse word happ, meaning "good luck." Perhaps it's no accident that hazard also has its own connotations of luck: while it now refers commonly to something that presents danger, at one time it referred to a dice game similar to craps. (The name ultimately derives from the Arabic al-zahr, meaning "the die.") Haphazard first entered English as a noun (again meaning "chance") in the 16th century, and soon afterward was being used as an adjective to describe things with no apparent logic or order.

hebetude

noun | HEB-uh-tood

: lethargy, dullness

Hebetude usually suggests mental dullness, often marked by laziness or torpor. As such, it was a good word for one Queenslander correspondent, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the Weekend Australian of "an epidemic of hebetude among young people who … are placing too great a reliance on electronic devices to do their thinking and remembering." Hebetude comes from Late Latin hebetudo, which means pretty much the same thing as our word. It is also closely related to the Latin word for "dull," hebes, which has extended meanings such as "obtuse," "doltish," and "stupid." Other hebe- words in English include hebetudinous ("marked by hebetude") and hebetate ("to make dull").

holus-bolus

adverb | hoh-lus-BOH-lus

: all at once

The story of holus-bolus is not a hard one to swallow. Holus-bolus originated in English dialect in the mid-19th century and is believed to be a waggish reduplication of the word bolus. Bolus is from the Greek word bōlos, meaning "lump," and has retained that Greek meaning. In English, bolus has additionally come to mean "a large pill," "a mass of chewed food," or "a dose of a drug given intravenously." Considering this "lumpish" history, it's not hard to see how holus-bolus, a word meaning "all at once" or "all in a lump," came about.

immense

adjective | ih-MENSS

1 : marked by greatness especially in size or degree; especially : transcending ordinary means of measurement

2 : supremely good

Just how big is something if it is immense? Huge? Colossal? Humongous? Ginormous? Or merely enormous? Immense is often used as a synonym of all of the above and, as such, can simply function as yet another way for English speakers to say "really, really, really big." Immense is also used, however, in a sense which goes beyond merely really, really, really big to describe something that is so great in size or degree that it transcends ordinary means of measurement. This sense harks back to the original sense of immense for something which is so tremendously big that it has not been or cannot be measured. This sense reflects the word's roots in the Latin immensus, from in- ("un-") and mensus, the past participle of metiri ("to measure").

inalienable

adjective | in-AY-lee-uh-nuh-bul

: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred

inhere

verb | in-HEER

: to be inherent : to be a fixed element or attribute

You're probably familiar with inherent, the adjective meaning "part of the constitution or natural character of something," but were you aware of its less common relative inhere? This verb looks like it could be a back-formation of inherent (a back-formation is a word created by removing a prefix or suffix from an existing word), but usage evidence of the two words makes it difficult to tell for sure. Both inhere and inherent date to the late 16th century and are derived from the Latin verb inhaerēre ("to inhere"), which was itself formed by combining in- with haerēre, a verb meaning "to adhere."

lamster

noun | LAM-ster

: a fugitive especially from the law

Lamsters as a class are probably as old as the law from which they flee, but the term lamster didn't sneak into our language until the early 1900s, less than ten years after the appearance of the earliest known evidence of the noun lam, meaning "sudden or hurried flight especially from the law" (as in the phrase "on the lam"). Both words have an old verb relation, though. Lam has meant "to beat soundly" or "to strike or thrash" since the late 16th century (and consequently gave us our verb lambaste), but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it developed another meaning: "to flee hastily." The origins of the verb are obscure, but etymologists suggest that it is Scandinavian in origin and akin to the Old Norse lemja, meaning "to thrash."

legerity

noun | luh-JAIR-uh-tee

: alert facile quickness of mind or body

When legerity first appeared in English in the 1500s, it drew significantly upon the concept of being "light on one's feet," and appropriately so. It is derived from the Middle and Old French legereté ("lightness"), which was formed from the Old French adjective leger ("light in weight"). Leger comes from an assumed Vulgar Latin adjective, leviarius, a descendent of the older Latin levis ("having little weight"). These days, legerity can describe a nimbleness of mind as well as of the feet. A cousin of legerity in English is legerdemain, meaning "sleight of hand" or "a display of skill or adroitness." Legerdemain comes from the French phrase leger de main, meaning "light of hand."

ludic

adjective | LOO-dik

: of, relating to, or characterized by play : playful

Here's a serious word, just for fun. That is to say, it means "fun," but it was created in all seriousness around 1940 by psychologists. They wanted a term to describe what children do, and they came up with "ludic activity." That may seem ludicrous—why not just call it "playing"?—but the word ludic caught on, and it's not all child's play anymore. It can refer to architecture that is playful, narrative that is humorous and even satirical, and literature that is light. Ludic is ultimately from the Latin noun ludus, which refers to a whole range of fun things—stage shows, games, sports, even jokes. The more familiar word ludicrous also traces back to the same source.

mansuetude

noun | MAN-swih-tood

the quality or state of being gentle : meekness, tameness

Mansuetude was first used in English in the 14th century, and it derives from the Latin verb mansuescere, which means "to tame." Mansuescere itself comes from the noun manus (meaning "hand") and the verb suescere ("to accustom" or "to become accustomed"). Unlike manus, which has many English descendants (including manner, emancipate, and manicure), suescere has only a few English progeny. One of them is desuetude, which means "disuse" and comes to us by way of Latin desuescere ("to become unaccustomed"). Two others are custom and accustom, which derive via Anglo-French from Latin consuescere, meaning "to accustom."

manumit

verb | man-yuh-MIT

: to release from slavery

To set someone free from captivity is in effect to release that person from the hand, or control, of the captor. You can use this analogy to remember that manumit derives ultimately from the Latin noun manus, meaning "hand," and the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to let go" or "send." The two roots joined hands in Latin to form the verb manumittere (meaning "to free from slavery"), which in turn passed into Anglo-French as manumettre and eventually into Middle English as manumitten. Manus has handed down other words to English as well. One of them is emancipate, which is both a relative and synonym of manumit.

marginalia

noun | mahr-juh-NAY-lee-uh

1 : marginal notes or embellishments (such as in a book)

2 : nonessential items

We don't consider a word's etymology to be marginalia, so we'll start off by telling you the etymology of this one. Marginalia is a New Latin word that borrows from the Medieval Latin adjective marginalis ("marginal") and ultimately from the noun margo, meaning "border." Marginalia is a relatively new word; it dates from the 19th century despite describing something—notes in the margin of a text—that had existed as far back as the 11th century. An older word, apostille (or apostil) once referred to a single annotation made in a margin, but that word is rare today.

melee

noun | MAY-lay

: a confused struggle; especially : a hand-to-hand fight among several people

Fray, donnybrook, brawl, fracas: there are many English words for confused and noisy fights, and in the 17th century melee was thrown into the mix. It comes from the French mêlée, which in turn comes from the Old French meslee, meaning "mixture." Meslee comes from the Old French verb mesler, or medler, which means "to mix." This verb is also the source of medley ("a mixture or hodgepodge") and meddle ("to mix oneself in others' affairs" or "to interfere").

meme

noun | MEEM

1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

2 : an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media

In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, British scientist Richard Dawkins defended his newly coined word meme, which he defined as "a unit of cultural transmission." Having first considered, then rejected, mimeme, he wrote: "Mimeme comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like gene." (The suitable Greek root was mim-, meaning "mime" or "mimic." The English suffix -eme indicates a distinctive unit of language structure, as in grapheme, lexeme, and phoneme.) Like any good meme, meme caught on and evolved, eventually developing the meaning known to anyone who spends time online, where it's most often used to refer to any one of those silly captioned photos that the Internet can't seem to get enough of.

nobby

adjective | NAH-bee

: cleverly stylish : chic, smart

Nobby comes from the noun nob, which is used in British English to mean "one in a superior position in life." (Nob may have begun as a slang word for "head," but etymologists aren't completely sure. A possible connection to noble has been suggested as well.) Appearing in English in the 18th century, nobby was first used to describe people in society's upper echelons. It has since extended in usage to describe the places frequented by such people, as well as their genteel customs. Charles Dickens, for example, wrote in Bleak House (1853) of "[r]especting this unfortunate family matter, and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet."

onerous

adjective | AH-nuh-rus

1 : involving, imposing, or constituting a burden : troublesome

2 : having legal obligations that outweigh the advantages

Onerous, which traces back to the Latin onus, meaning "burden," has several synonyms. Like onerous, burdensome, oppressive, and exacting all refer to something which imposes a hardship of some kind. Onerous stresses a sense of laboriousness and heaviness, especially because something is distasteful ("the onerous task of cleaning up the mess"). Burdensome suggests something which causes mental as well as physical strain ("the burdensome responsibilities of being a supervisor"). Oppressive implies extreme harshness or severity in what is imposed ("the oppressive tyranny of a police state"). Exacting suggests rigor or sternness rather than tyranny or injustice in the demands made or in the one demanding ("an exacting employer who requires great attention to detail").

opine

verb | oh-PYNE

1 : to express opinions

2 : to state as an opinion

Opine has been around since the 15th century, and while it certainly is not a rare word today, it hasn't always been taken seriously. Commentators have described it as a stilted word, appropriate only in facetious use—and, indeed, it does have a tendency to turn up in humorous writing. Recent evidence, however, suggests that it is being used in perfectly respectable contexts more often. It typically serves to emphasize that the opinion being reported is just that—an opinion. Opine is not a back-formation of opinion; both words derived independently from the Middle French opiner ("to express one's opinion") and the Latin opinari, meaning "to have an opinion" or "to think."

oppugn

verb | uh-PYOON

1 : to fight against

2 : to call in question

Oppugn was first recorded in English in the 15th century. It came to Middle English from the Latin verb oppugnare, which in turn derived from the combination of ob-, meaning "against," and pugnare, meaning "to fight." Pugnare itself is descended from the same ancient word that gave Latin the word pugnus, meaning "fist." It's no surprise, then, that oppugn was adopted into English to refer to fighting against something or someone, either physically (as in "the dictatorship will oppugn all who oppose it") or verbally (as in "oppugn an argument"). Other descendants of pugnare in English include the equally aggressive pugnacious, impugn, repugnant, and the rare inexpugnable ("incapable of being subdued or overthrown").

pace

preposition | PAY-see

: contrary to the opinion of — usually used as an expression of deference to someone's contrary opinion

Though used in English since the 19th century, the preposition pace has yet to shed its Latin mantle, and for that reason it's most at home in formal writing or in contexts in which one is playing at formality. The Latin word pace is a form of pax, meaning "peace" or "permission," and when used sincerely the word does indeed suggest a desire for both. This Latin borrowing is unrelated to the more common noun pace (as in "keeping pace") and its related verb ("pacing the room"); these also come from Latin, but from the word pandere, meaning "to spread."

Pandemonium

noun | pan-duh-MOH-nee-um

1 : the capital of Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost

2 : the infernal regions : hell

3 : (not capitalized) a wild uproar : tumult

When John Milton needed a name for the gathering place of all demons for Paradise Lost, he turned to the classics as any sensible 17th-century writer would. Pandæmonium, as the capital of Hell is known in the epic poem, combines the Greek prefix pan-, meaning "all," with the Late Latin daemonium, meaning "evil spirit." (Daemonium itself traces back to the far more innocuous Greek word daimōn, meaning "spirit, deity.") Over time, Pandæmonium (or Pandemonium) came to designate all of hell and was used as well for earthbound dens of iniquity. By the late-18th century, the word implied a place or state of confusion or uproar, and from there, it didn't take long for pandemonium to become associated with states of utter disorder and wildness.

perfunctory

adjective | per-FUNK-tuh-ree

1 : characterized by routine or superficiality : mechanical

2 : lacking in interest or enthusiasm

Perfunctory is a word whose origins are found entirely in Latin. It first appeared in English in the late 16th century and is derived from the Late Latin perfunctorius, meaning "done in a careless or superficial manner." (Perfunctorius was also borrowed for the synonymous, and now archaic, English adjective perfunctorious at around the same time.) Perfunctorius comes from the earlier Latin perfunctus, a past participle of perfungi, meaning "to accomplish" or "to get through with." That verb is formed by combining the prefix per-, meaning "through," with the verb fungi, meaning "to perform." Fungi can be found in the roots of such words as function, defunct, and fungible.

picaresque

adjective | pik-uh-RESK

: of or relating to rogues or rascals; also : of, relating to, suggesting, or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist

Picaresque derives from Spanish picaresco, which means "of or relating to a picaro," the picaro being the rogue or bohemian usually at the center of picaresque fiction. The typical picaro is a wandering individual of low social standing who happens into a series of adventures among people of various higher classes, and often relies on wits and a little dishonesty to get by. The first known novel in this style is Lazarillo de Tormes (circa 1554), an irreverent work about a poor boy who works for a series of masters of dubious character. The novel has been attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, but his authorship is disputable.

plausible

adjective | PLAW-zuh-bul

1 : seemingly fair, reasonable, or valuable but often not so

2 : superficially pleasing or persuasive

3 : appearing worthy of belief

Today the word plausible usually means "reasonable" or "believable," but it once held the meanings "worthy of being applauded" and "approving." It comes to us from the Latin adjective plausibilis ("worthy of applause"), which in turn derives from the verb plaudere, meaning "to applaud or clap." Other plaudere descendants in English include applaud, plaudit (the earliest meaning of which was "a round of applause"), and explode (from Latin explodere, meaning "to drive off the stage by clapping").

poltroon

noun | pahl-TROON

: a spiritless coward : craven

When you get down to synonyms, a poltroon is just a chicken. Barnyard chickens are fowl that have long been noted for timidity, and the name chicken has been applied to human cowards since the 17th century. Poltroon has been used for wimps and cravens for even longer, since the early 16th century at least. And if you remember that chickens are dubbed poultry, you may guess that the birds and the cowards are linked by etymology as well as synonymy. English picked up poltroon from Middle French, which in turn got it from Old Italian poltrone, meaning "coward." The Italian term has been traced to the Latin pullus, a root that is also an ancestor of pullet ("a young hen") and poultry.

portentous

adjective | por-TEN-tuss

1 : of, relating to, or constituting a portent

2 : eliciting amazement or wonder : prodigious

3 a : being a grave or serious matter

b : self-consciously solemn or important : pompous

c : ponderously excessive

At the heart of portentous is portent, a word for an omen or sign, which comes to us from the Latin noun portentum of the same meaning. And indeed, the first uses of portentous did refer to omens. The second sense of portentous, describing that which is extremely impressive, developed in the 16th century. A third definition—"grave, solemn, significant"—was then added to the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary in 1934. The word's connotations, however, have since moved into less estimable territory. It now frequently describes both the pompous and the excessive.

precocious

adjective | prih-KOH-shus

1 : exceptionally early in development or occurrence

2 : exhibiting mature qualities at an unusually early age

Precocious got started in Latin when the prefix prae-, meaning "ahead of," was combined with the verb coquere, meaning "to cook" or "to ripen," to form the adjective praecox, which means "early ripening" or "premature." By the mid-1600s, English speakers had turned praecox into precocious and were using it especially of plants that produced blossoms before their leaves came out. By the 1670s, precocious was also being used to describe humans who developed skills or talents before others typically did.

prehension

noun | pree-HEN-shun

1 : the act of taking hold, seizing, or grasping

2 : mental understanding : comprehension

3 : apprehension by the senses

It's easy to grasp the origins of prehension—it descends from the Latin verb prehendere, which means "to seize" or "to grasp." Other descendants of prehendere in English include apprehend ("arrest, seize"), comprehend ("to grasp the nature or significance of"), prehensile ("adapted for seizing or grasping"), prison, reprise ("a repeated performance"), and reprisal ("a retaliatory act"). Even the English word get comes to us from the same ancient root that led to the Latin prehendere.

propagate

verb | PRAH-puh-gayt

1 : to reproduce or cause to reproduce biologically : multiply

2 : to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area : extend

3 : to pass along to offspring

4 : to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (such as an idea or belief) : publicize

The origins of propagate are firmly rooted in the field of horticulture. The word was borrowed into English in the 16th century from Latin propagatus, the past participle of the verb propagare, which means "to set (onto a plant) a small shoot or twig cut for planting or grafting." Propagare, in turn, derives from propages, meaning "layer (of a plant), slip, offspring." It makes sense, therefore, that the earliest uses of propagate referred to facilitating reproduction of a plant or animal. Nowadays, however, the meaning of propagate extends to the "reproduction" of something intangible, such as an idea or belief. Incidentally, propaganda also comes to us from propagare, although it took a somewhat different route into English.

regimen

noun | REJ-uh-mun

1 a : a systematic plan (as of diet, therapy, or medication) especially when designed to improve and maintain the health of a patient

b : a regular course of action and especially of strenuous training

2 : government, rule

3 : the characteristic behavior or orderly procedure of a natural phenomenon or process

We borrowed regimen straight from Latin, spelling and all—but in Latin, the word simply meant "rule" or "government." In English, it usually refers to a system of rules or guidelines, often for living a healthy life or taking a regular dose of exercise. The Latin regimen derives from another Latin word, the verb regere, which means "to lead straight" or "to rule." If you trace straight back from regere, you'll find that regimen has plenty of lexical kin, including correct, erect, region, rule, and surge. If you are using the training sense of regimen, be careful not to confuse the word with regiment, another regere descendant, which is used for a military unit.

repudiate

verb | rih-PYOO-dee-ayt

1 : to divorce or separate formally from (a woman)

2 : to refuse to have anything to do with : disown

3 a : to refuse to accept; especially : to reject as unauthorized or as having no binding force

b : to reject as untrue or unjust

4 : to refuse to acknowledge or pay

In Latin, the noun repudium refers to the rejection of a spouse or prospective spouse, and the related verb repudiare means "to divorce" or "to reject." In the 16th century, English speakers borrowed repudiare to create the English verb repudiate, which they used as a synonym of divorce when in reference to a wife and as a synonym of disown when in reference to a member of one's family. They also used the word more generally in the sense of "to reject or cast off." By the 18th century repudiate had also come to be used for the rejection of things that one does not accept as true or just, ranging from opinions and accusations to contracts and debts.

robot

noun | ROH-baht

a :a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (such as walking or talking) of a human being; also : a similar but fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized

b : an efficient insensitive person who functions automatically

2 : a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks

3 : a mechanism guided by automatic controls

In 1920, Czech writer Karel Ĉapek published a play titled R.U.R. Those initials stood for "Rossum's Universal Robots," which was the name of a fictional company that manufactured human-like machines designed to perform hard, dull, dangerous work for people. The machines in the play eventually grew to resent their jobs and rebelled—with disastrous results for humans. During the writing of his play, Ĉapek consulted with his brother, the painter and writer Josef Ĉapek, who suggested the name robot for these machines, from the Czech word robota, which means "forced labor." Robot made its way into our language in 1922 when R.U.R. was translated into English.

salubrious

adjective | suh-LOO-bree-us

: favorable to or promoting health or well-being

Salubrious and its synonyms healthful and wholesome all mean favorable to the health of mind or body. Healthful implies a positive contribution to a healthy condition (as in Charles Dickens' advice to "take more healthful exercise"). Wholesome applies to something that benefits you, builds you up, or sustains you physically, mentally, or spiritually. Louisa May Alcott used this sense in Little Women: "Work is wholesome.... It keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence...." Salubrious is used similarly to both words but tends to apply chiefly to the helpful effects of climate or air.

savant

noun | sa-VAHNT

1 : a person of learning; especially : one with detailed knowledge in some specialized field (as of science or literature)

2 : a person affected with a mental disability (such as autism) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music); especially : autistic savant

Savant comes from Latin sapere ("to be wise") by way of Middle French, where savant is the present participle of savoir, meaning "to know." Savant shares roots with the English words sapient ("possessing great wisdom") and sage ("having or showing wisdom through reflection and experience"). The term is sometimes used in common parlance to refer to a person who demonstrates extraordinary knowledge in a particular subject, or an extraordinary ability to perform a particular task (such as complex arithmetic), but who has much more limited capacities in other areas.

scour

verb | SKOW-er

1 : to move about quickly especially in search

2 : to go through or range over in or as if in a search

There are two distinct homographs of the verb scour in English. One means to clean something by rubbing it hard with a rough object; that scour, which goes back to at least the early 14th century, probably derives—via Middle Dutch and Old French—from a Late Latin verb, excurare, meaning "to clean off." Today's word, however, which appears in the 13th century, is believed to derive from the Old Norse skūr, meaning "shower." (Skūr is also distantly related to the Old English scūr, the ancestor of our English word shower.) Many disparate things can be scoured. For example, one can scour an area (as in "scoured the woods in search of the lost dog") or publications (as in "scouring magazine and newspaper articles").

shofar

noun | SHOH-far

: the horn of an animal (usually a ram) blown as a trumpet by the ancient Hebrews in battle and during religious observances and used in modern Judaism especially during Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur

One of the shofar's original uses was to proclaim the Jubilee year (a year of emancipation of Hebrew slaves and restoration of alienated lands to their former owners). Today, it is mainly used in synagogues during the High Holy Days. It is blown daily, except on Shabbat, during the month of Elul (the 12th month of the civil year or the 6th month of the ecclesiastical year in the Jewish calendar), and is sounded a number of times during the Rosh Hashanah services, and again at the end of the last service (known as neilah) on Yom Kippur. The custom is to sound the shofar in several series that alternate shorter notes resembling sobbing and wailing with longer unbroken blasts.

slake

verb | SLAYK

1 : satisfy, quench

2 : to cause (a substance, such as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with water : hydrate

There is no lack of obsolete and archaic meanings when it comes to slake. Shakespearean scholars may know that in the Bard's day slake meant "to subside or abate" ("No flood by raining slaketh ...." — The Rape of Lucrece) or "to lessen the force of" ("It could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart." — Henry VI, Part 3). The most erudite word enthusiasts may also be aware of earlier meanings of slake, such as "to slacken one's efforts" or "to cause to be relaxed or loose." These early meanings recall the word's Old English ancestor sleac, which not only meant "slack" but is also the source of that modern term.

splenetic

adjective | splih-NET-ik

: marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite

In early Western physiology, a person's physical qualities and mental disposition were believed to be determined by the proportion of four bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The last of these was believed to be secreted by the spleen, causing feelings of disposition ranging from intense sadness (melancholia) to irascibility. This now-discredited association explains how the use of splenetic (deriving from the Late Latin spleneticus and the Latin splen, meaning "spleen") came to mean both "bad-tempered" and "given to melancholy" as well as "of or relating to the spleen." In later years, the "melancholy" sense fell out of use, but the sense pertaining to ill humor or malevolence remains with us today.

steadfast

adjective | STED-fast

1 a : firmly fixed in place : immovable

b : not subject to change

2 : firm in belief, determination, or adherence : loyal

Steadfast has held its ground in English for many centuries. Its Old English predecessor, stedefæst, combined stede (meaning "place" or "stead") and fæst (meaning "firmly fixed"). An Old English text of the late 10th century, called The Battle of Maldon, contains our earliest record of the word, which was first used in battle contexts to describe warriors who stood their ground. Soon, it was also being used with the broad meaning "immovable," and as early as the 13th century it was applied to those unswerving in loyalty, faith, or friendship. Centuries later, all of these meanings endure.

tare

noun | TAIR

1 : a deduction from the gross weight of a substance and its container made in allowance for the weight of the container; also : the weight of the container

2 : counterweight

Tare came to English by way of Middle French from the Old Italian term tara, which is itself from the Arabic word ṭarḥa, meaning "that which is removed." One of the first known written records of the word tare in English is found in the naval inventories of Britain's King Henry VII. The record shows two barrels of gunpowder weighing, "besides the tare," 500 pounds. When used of vehicles, tare weight refers to a vehicle's weight exclusive of any load. The term tare is closely tied to net weight, which is defined as "weight excluding all tare."

temporize

verb | TEM-puh-ryze

1 : to act to suit the time or occasion : to yield to current or dominant opinion

2 : to draw out discussions or negotiations so as to gain time

Temporize comes from the Medieval Latin verb temporizare ("to pass the time"), which itself comes from the Latin noun tempus, meaning "time." Tempus is also the root of such words as tempo, contemporary, and temporal. If you need to buy some time, you might resort to temporizing—but you probably won't win admiration for doing so. Temporize can have a somewhat negative connotation. For instance, a political leader faced with a difficult issue might temporize by talking vaguely about possible solutions without actually doing anything. The point of such temporizing is to avoid taking definite—and possibly unpopular—action, in hopes that the problem will somehow go away. But the effect is often just to make matters worse.

tendentious

adjective | ten-DEN-shus

: marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view : biased

Tendentious is one of several words English speakers can choose when they want to suggest that someone has made up his or her mind in advance. You may be partial to predisposed or prone to favor partisan, but whatever your leanings, we're inclined to think you'll benefit from adding tendentious to your repertoire. A derivative of the Medieval Latin word tendentia, meaning "tendency," plus the English suffix -ious, tendentious has been used in English as an adjective for biased attitudes since at least the end of the 19th century.

toothsome

adjective | TOOTH-sum

1 : agreeable, attractive

2 : of palatable flavor and pleasing texture : delicious

One meaning of tooth is "a fondness or taste for something specified." Toothsome comes from this definition of tooth plus the suffix -some, meaning "characterized by." Although toothsome was at first used to describe general attractiveness, it quickly developed a second sense that was specific to the sense of taste (perhaps because from as far back as Chaucer's time, tooth could also refer specifically to eating and the sense of taste). In addition, toothsome is now showing signs of acquiring a third sense, "toothy" (as in "a toothsome grin"), but this sense is not yet established enough to qualify for dictionary entry.

turpitude

noun | TER-puh-tood

: inherent baseness : depravity; also : a base act

Turpitude came to English from Latin turpitudo by way of Middle French. Turpitudo comes from turpis, which means "vile" or "base." Turpitude is often found in the phrase "moral turpitude," an expression used in law to designate an act or behavior that gravely violates the moral sentiment or accepted moral standards of the community. A criminal offense that involves moral turpitude is one that is considered wrong or evil by moral standards, in addition to being the violation of a statute.

vermicular

adjective | ver-MIK-yuh-ler

1a :resembling a worm in form or motion

b : vermiculate

2 : of, relating to, or caused by worms

What does the word vermicular have in common with the pasta on your plate? If you're eating vermicelli (a spaghetti-like pasta made in long thin strings) the answer is vermis, a Latin noun meaning "worm." If you dig deep enough, you'll find that vermis is the root underlying not only vermicular and vermicelli, but also vermiculate, which can mean either "full of worms" or "tortuous." It is also the source of vermin and worm, both of which in their earliest usage referred, despite their vermicular etymology, to any creeping or crawling creature, including wingless insects and reptiles.

vindicate

verb | VIN-duh-kayt

1 : avenge

2 a : to free from allegation or blame

b : confirm, substantiate

c : to provide justification or defense for : justify

d : to protect from attack or encroachment : defend

3 : to maintain a right to

It's not surprising that the two earliest senses of vindicate are "to set free" (a sense that is now obsolete) and "to avenge." Vindicate, which has been used in English since at least the mid-16th century, derives from Latin vindicatus, the past participle of the verb vindicare, meaning "to set free, avenge, or lay claim to." Vindicare, in turn, derives from vindex, a noun meaning "claimant" or "avenger." Other descendants of vindicare in English include such vengeful words as avenge itself, revenge, vengeance, vendetta, and vindictive. Closer cousins of vindicate are vindicable ("capable of being vindicated") and the archaic word vindicative ("punitive").

vituperate

verb | vye-TOO-puh-rayt

1 : to criticize or censure severely or abusively

2 : to use harsh condemnatory language

Vituperate has several close synonyms, including berate and revile. Berate usually refers to scolding that is drawn out and abusive. Revile means to attack or criticize in a way prompted by anger or hatred. Vituperate can be used as a transitive or intransitive verb and adds to the meaning of revile by stressing an attack that is particularly harsh or unrelenting. It first appeared in English in the mid-16th century and can be traced back to two Latin words: the noun vitium, meaning "fault," and the verb parare, meaning "to make or prepare."

vociferous

adjective | voh-SIF-uh-rus

: marked by or given to vehement insistent outcry

Vociferous, deriving from a combination of the Latin vox ("voice") with ferre ("to carry"), is one of a number of English words that describe those who compel attention by being loud and insistent. Vociferous implies a vehement shouting or calling out, but to convey the insistency of a demand or protest, clamorous might be a better choice. You could use strident to suggest harsh and discordant noise in a protest, or obstreperous to imply loud, unruly and aggressive resistance to restraint. But someone who is noisy and turbulent due to high spirits rather than dissatisfaction might more aptly be called boisterous.

waif

noun | WAYF

1 a : a piece of property found (as washed up by the sea) but unclaimed

b : (plural) stolen goods thrown away by a thief in flight

2a : something found without an owner and especially by chance

b : a stray person or animal; especially : a homeless child

3 : an extremely thin and usually young woman

Waif itself is a stray, if we consider its first meaning the home from which it came. Tracing back to an Anglo-French adjective waif meaning "stray, unclaimed," the English noun waif referred in its earliest 14th century uses to unclaimed found items, such as those gone astray (think cattle) and those washed ashore (think jetsam), as well as to the king's (or lord's) right to such property. Stolen goods abandoned by a thief in flight eventually came to be referred to as waifs as well, as later did anything found without an owner and especially by chance. (It's interesting to note that the verb waive, used in modern English in phrases like "waive a fee" or "waive one's rights" comes from the same Anglo-French source as waif and was at one time used to mean "to throw away (stolen goods).") The emphasis on being found faded as waif came to be applied to any stray animal or person, and especially to a homeless child, and in the late 20th century the current most common meaning of "an extremely thin and usually young woman" developed.

wreak

verb | REEK

1 : to cause the infliction of (vengeance or punishment)

2 : to give free play or course to (malevolent feeling)

3 : bring about, cause

Wreak is a venerable word that first appeared in Old English as wrecan, meaning "to drive, drive out, punish, or avenge." Wrecan is related to a number of similar words in the Germanic languages, including Middle Dutch wreken ("to punish, avenge"), Old High German rehhan ("to avenge"), Old Norse reka ("to drive, push, or avenge"), and Gothic wrikan ("to persecute"). It may also be related to Latin urgēre ("to drive on, urge"), the source of the English verb urge. In modern English, vengeance is a common object of the verb wreak, reflecting one of its earlier uses in the sense "to take vengeance for"—as when Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus proclaims "We will solicit heaven, and move the gods / To send down Justice for to wreak our wrongs."

yawp

verb | YAWP

1 : to make a raucous noise : squawk

2 : clamor, complain

Yawp first appeared sometime in the 15th century. This verb comes from Middle English yolpen, most likely itself derived from the past participle of yelpen, meaning "to boast, call out, or yelp." Interestingly, yawp retains much of the meaning of yelpen, in that it implies a type of complaining which often has a yelping or squawking quality. An element of foolishness, in addition to the noisiness, is often implied as well. Yawp can also be a noun meaning "a raucous noise" or "squawk." The noun yawp arrived on the scene more than 400 years after the verb. It was greatly popularized by "Song of Myself," a poem by Walt Whitman containing the line "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

yeasty

adjective | YEE-stee

1 : of, relating to, or resembling yeast

a : immature, unsettled

b : marked by change

c : full of vitality

d : frivolous

The word yeast has existed in English for as long as the language has existed. Spellings have varied over time—in Middle English it was yest and in Old English gist or giest—but the word's meaning has remained basically the same for centuries. In its first documented English uses in the 1500s, the adjective yeasty described people or things with a yellowish or frothy appearance similar to the froth that forms on the top of fermented beverages (such as beers or ales). Since then, a number of extended figurative senses of yeasty have surfaced, all of which play in some way or another on the excitable, chemical nature of fermentation, such as by connoting unsettled activity or significant change.

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