Commodius

Word of the Day

 

commodious \ kuh-MOH-dee-us \ adjective

 

Definition

 

1a: comfortably or conveniently spacious
1b: roomy

 

Examples

"Branch … says the top priority for a moviegoer is comfortable seating. To meet that demand, Hendrick Construction … removed the theater's 1,800 traditionally narrow, fabric-covered folding seats and replaced them with 800 more commodious, densely padded, soft grey vinyl recliners nearly 3 feet in width."

— Roberta Fuchs, Mecklenburg Times (Charlotte, North Carolina), March 2, 2015

"The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Adam had no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a commodious position where the fruit was thickest."

— George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

 

Did You Know?

Although it's now used to mean "roomy," in the 16th century commodious was regularly used to mean "handy" or "serviceable," a meaning that is true to the word's Latin ancestor, commodum, meaning "convenience."
Poet William Cowper used the word in that original sense in a letter referring to a vessel that served double duty, carrying mackerel and herring from a seaside town to London, then making the return trip carrying passengers. As Cowper observed, "The cheapness of the conveyance made it equally commodious for dead fish and lively company." (No doubt the arriving passengers had a lively smell, which may be one reason why Cowper also noted that some visitors to the seaside town were company whom "people who were nice in the choice of their company, were rather fearful of keeping company with.")

Portmanteau

Word of the Day

 

portmanteau \ port-MAN-toh \ noun

 

Definition

1: a large suitcase

 

2: a word or morpheme whose form and meaning are derived from a blending of two or more distinct forms

 

Examples

The word "ginormous" is a portmanteau of "gigantic" and "enormous."

"… the rumors that the singer [Rihanna] is now dating Leonardo DiCaprio may or may not be true, but they do give the world the portmanteau RihCaprio."

— Alison Herman, Flavorwire, March 20, 2015

 

Did You Know?

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain words from the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" and is told that slithy is "like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word."

 

Although slithy hasn't caught on (it's made up of slimy and lithe, according to Humpty Dumpty), another portmanteau invented by Carroll has in fact found a place in the language: chortle (supposedly from chuckle and snort). English includes other portmanteaus, too, such as brunch (breakfast and lunch) and dramedy (drama and comedy). Following Carroll's lead, English speakers have come to call these fairly common words by the not-so-common name for a type of traveling bag with two compartments. The technical (and simpler) term for such words is blend.

Savvy

Word of the Day

 

savvy \ SAV-ee \ verb

 

Definition

: to understand

 

Examples

"The agency's Denver office sent Siringo, who savvied some Spanish, to Santa Fe."
— Ollie Reed Jr., Albuquerque (New Mexico) Tribune, June 30, 2001

"And kudos to Stan for the sensitivity. Savvying the tension between Ted and Peggy, Stan offers a sincere, 'Buck up chief.'"
— Marisa Nadolny, The Day, March 25, 2015

 

Did You Know?

You may be familiar with the noun savvy, meaning "practical know-how" (as in "her political savvy"), and the adjective use (as in "a savvy investor"). And if you've seen any of the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you also know that the verb is used as an informal, one-word question meaning "Do you understand?" (as in "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?"). But Jack Sparrow (i.e., Johnny Depp) didn't invent the term. Both the noun and the verb came into use around 1785.

 

Savvy is based on the Portuguese term sabe, meaning "he knows," which itself is from Latin sapere, meaning "to be wise." Creole speakers interpreted the Portuguese term as sabi and began using it as one would "know." Eventually, the Creole sabi evolved into today's word.

Lissome

Word of the Day

 

lissome \ LISS-um \ adjective

 

Definition

1: easily flexed

 

2: lithe, nimble

 

Examples

The lissome figures of the swimmers wriggled up and down the lanes of the pool.

"One pas de deux, by Vernard J. Gilmore and Sarah Daley, whose arms floated from her lissome torso like drifting silk, offered a rare glimpse of the choreography's eerie capriciousness."
— Gia Kourlas, New York Times, December 8, 2014

 

Did You Know?

Lissome (sometimes spelled lissom) is a gently altered form of its synonym, lithesome. While lissome tends to be the more popular choice these days, the two words have similar pasts. They both appeared in the second half of the 18th century, and they both trace back to the much older lithe ("supple" or "graceful"), which first appeared in English during the 14th century and comes from an Old English word meaning "gentle."

 

Lissome can also be an adverb meaning "in a supple or nimble manner," but this use is rare.

Tyro

Word of the Day

 

tyro \ TYE-roh \ noun

 

Definition

 

1: a beginner in learning

2: novice

 

Examples

The ranch has one riding trail for tyros and several more challenging options for experienced riders.

"The young Falcons tyro is up for the challenge after missing the first two games of the season with an ankle injury he carried through pre-season."
— Sunshine Coast Daily, March 25, 2015

Did You Know?

The word tyro is hardly a newcomer to Western language. It comes from the Latin tiro, which means "young soldier," "new recruit," or more generally, "novice." The word was sometimes spelled tyro as early as Medieval Latin, and can be spelled tyro or tiro in English (though tyro is the more common American spelling). Use of tyro in English has never been restricted to the original "young soldier" meaning of the Latin term. Writers in the 17th and 18th centuries wrote of tyros in various fields and occupations. Herman Melville used tyro to refer to men new to whaling and life at sea. The word is sometimes used attributively—that is, directly before another noun—as it has been since the 17th century, as in phrases like "tyro reporter" and "tyro actors."

Null

Word of the Day

 

null \ NULL \ adjective

 

Definition

1a: having no legal or binding force
1b: invalid

 

2a: amounting to nothing 

2b: nil

 

3a: having no value

3b: insignificant

 

4: having no elements

 

Examples

The court will declare the city ordinance null if it is found to be in conflict with state law.

"Michigan voters in November rejected two ballot questions that would essentially have allowed the state Natural Resources Commission to decide the hunting of wolves. But a legislative maneuver made those votes null."
— John Barnes, Kalamazoo (Michigan) Gazette, December 23, 2014

 

Did You Know?

English borrowed null from the Anglo-French nul, meaning "not any." That word, in turn, traces to the Latin word nullus, from ne-, meaning "not," and ullus, meaning "any." We sometimes use null with the meaning "lacking meaning or value," as in "By the time I heard it, the news was null."
In math, null is sometimes used to mean "containing nothing"; for example, the set of all whole numbers that are divisible by zero is the null set (that is, there are no numbers that fit that description). The phrase null and void is a term in its own right, defined as "having no validity."

Quidnunc

Word of the Day

 

quidnunc \ KWID-nunk \ noun

 

Definition

1a: a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip

1b: busybody

 

Examples

We were naturally curious when the moving van appeared in the Michaelsons' driveway, but the neighborhood quidnunc, Mrs. Dyer, had already heard that Mr. Michaelson was being transferred to a new job out of town.

"To spend time with a book in order to read scandalous revelations about real-life people is not an elevated or honourable thing to do, but it appeals to the gossip-sharing quidnunc in all of us."

— John Walsh, The Independent (London), July 22, 2003

 

Did You Know?

"What's new?" That's a question every busybody wants answered. Latin-speaking Nosey Parkers might have used some version of the expression quid nunc, literally "what now," to ask the same question. Appropriately, the earliest documented English use of quidnunc to refer to a gossiper appeared in 1709 in Sir Richard Steele's famous periodical, The Tatler. Steele is far from the only writer to ply quidnunc in his prose, however. You can also find the word among the pages of works by such writers as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But don't think the term is old news—it sees some use in current publications, too.

Omnipotent

Word of the Day

omnipotent \ ahm-NIP-uh-tunt \ adjective

Definition: having virtually unlimited authority or influence
Examples
Small children often believe their parents to be omnipotent, capable of commanding any situation or resolving any problem they find before them.
"As test scores become the omnipotent factor in what determines an effective educator, a successful student, or the quality of a school, awe-inspired learning moments begin to pale in comparison to the urgency of bubbling in a correct answer." — Laurie Futterman, Miami Herald, March 11, 2015

Did You Know?
The word omnipotent made its way into English through Anglo-French, but it ultimately derives from the Latin prefix omni-, meaning "all," and the word potens, meaning "potent." The omni- prefix has also given us similar words such as omniscient (meaning "all-knowing") and omnivorous(describing an animal that eats both plants and other animals).
Although omnipotent is used in general contexts to mean "all-powerful" (as in "an omnipotent warlord"), its original applications in English referred specifically to the power held by an almighty God. The word has been used as an English adjective since the 14th century; since 1600 it has also been used as a noun referring to one who is omnipotent.

Ailurophile

Word of the Day

ailurophile \ eye-LOOR-uh-fyle \ noun

Definition: a cat fancier : a lover of cats

Examples

Ailurophiles, young and old, are sure to love the art museum's new exhibit featuring paintings and photographs of felines, ranging from tabbies to man-eaters.

"Yes, it's book one of a series…. And yes, the primary villain is a cat, whereas I'm an unashamed ailurophile. … But none of that mattered when I closed the back cover—I just wanted more, more, more."
— Katie Ward Beim-Esche, Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 2014

Did You Know?
Although the word ailurophile has only been documented in English since the early 1900s, ailurophiles have been around for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians were perhaps history's greatest cat lovers, pampering and adorning felines, honoring them in art, even treating them as gods. But the English word ailurophile does not descend from Egyptian; rather, it comes from a combination of the Greek word ailouros, which means "cat," and the suffix -phile, meaning "lover." If Egyptian cat-loving sentiments leave you cold and you're more sympathetic to medieval
Europeans who regarded cats as wicked agents of evil, you might prefer the word ailurophobe (from ailouros plus -phobe, meaning "fearing or averse to"). That's a fancy name for someone who hates or fears cats.

Rebarbative

rebarbative \ rih-BAR-buh-tiv \ adjective

 

Definition

: repellent, irritating

 

Examples

The cantankerous professor found the music, clothing, and slang favored by her students to be rebarbative.

"For all the complaints about his abrasiveness, the shadow chancellor is simply doing his job.… He once gave me a heartfelt radio interview in which he suggested, like the character in the Roger Rabbit movie, that he was not so much bad but 'just drawn that way,' and that maturity had taken the edge off his rebarbative manner."

— Anne McElvoy, The Guardian, February 22, 2015

 

Did You Know?

You may be surprised to learn that today's word traces back to the Latin word for beard—barba—making it a very distant relative of the English word beard. But there is some sense to the connection. After all, beards may not be repellent, but they can be prickly and scratchy. Another descendant of Latin barba is the English word barb, which can refer to a sharp projection (as found on barbed wire) or a biting critical remark, both of which can discourage others from getting too close. An interesting side note: barber too traces back to barba—but by way of an Anglo-French word for beard.

Bilk

Word of the Day

 

bilk \ BILK \ verb

 

Definition

1a: to block the free development of
1b: frustrate

 

2a : to cheat out of something valuable : defraud

2b : to evade payment of or to

 

3: to slip away from

 

Examples

The investigation revealed that the garage had been bilking motorists for repairs that had never been made.

"Two women were convicted Thursday of taking part in a scheme in which unnecessary medical procedures were carried out in order to bilk insurance companies out of more than $50 million."

— Sean Emery, Orange County Register (California), March 7, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Initially, "bilking" wasn't considered cheating—just good strategy for cribbage players. Language historians aren't sure where bilk originated, but they have noticed that its earliest uses occur in contexts referring to cribbage. Part of the scoring in cribbage involves each player adding cards from his or her hand to a pile of discards called the "crib." At the end of a hand, the dealer gets any points in the crib. Strategically, then, it's wisest for the dealer's opponent to discard non-scoring cards—the ones most likely to "balk," or put a check on, the dealer's score. Etymologists theorize that "bilk" may have originated as an alteration of that card-game "balk."

Febrile

Word of the Day

 

febrile \ FEB-ryle \ adjective

 

Definition

1a: marked or caused by fever

1b: feverish

 

Examples

The patient exhibited a rash and febrile symptoms that were consistent with a certain rare tropical infection.

"Febrile seizures typically occur between the ages of 6 months and 6 years old. They happen when a fever spikes very quickly...."

— Vikki Ortiz Healy, Chicago Tribune, August 4, 2014

 

Did You Know?

Not too surprisingly, febrile originated in the field of medicine. Its first noted use was in the work of the 17th-century medical reformer Noah Biggs. Biggs used it in admonishing physicians to care for their "febrile patients" properly. Both feverish and febrile are from the Latin word for fever, which is febris. Nowadays, febrile is used in medicine in a variety of ways, including references to such things as "the febrile phase" of an illness. And, like feverish, it also has an extended sense, as in "a febrile emotional state."

Juncture

Word of the Day

 

juncture \ JUNK-cher \ noun

 

Definition

1: joint, connection

 

2: a point of time; especially : one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances

 

Examples

"At this juncture in the editing process," said Philip, "it is important that all facts have been double-checked and sources verified."

"Obasohan's absence came at a critical juncture when the game got away from the Crimson Tide...."
— Kevin Scarbinsky, AL.com, March 3, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Juncture has many relatives in English—and some of them are easy to spot, whereas others are not so obvious. Juncture derives from the Latin verb jungere ("to join"), which gave us not only join and junction but also conjugal ("relating to marriage") and junta ("a group of persons controlling a government").

 

Jungere also has distant etymological connections to joust, jugular, juxtapose, yoga, and yoke. The use of juncture in English dates back to the 14th century. Originally, the word meant "a place where two or more things are joined," but by the 17th century it could also be used of an important point in time or of a stage in a process or activity.

Bicoastal

Word of the Day

 

 

bicoastal \ bye-KOAST-ul \ adjective

 

Definition

: of or relating to or living or working on both the east and west coasts of the United States

 

Examples

Richard and Laura had become a bicoastal couple, often shuttling between their primary home in New York and their vacation ranch in San Diego.

"Mish grew up in Southern California and now lives near the Chesapeake Bay. She uses those bicoastal influences to inspire her beachy, nautical designs."

— Zoë Read, Baltimore Sun, January 1, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Bicoastal is a word whose meaning shifted in the 1970s to reflect our mobile society. Prior to that, the term was occasionally used in general contexts involving both coasts (as in "a bicoastal naval defense"). These days bicoastal is almost always associated with people who make frequent trips between one coast and the other. An article with a Los Angeles dateline published in The New York Times in 1983 declared bicoastal to be "a popular term among an affluent, mobile set of Angelenos." But Angelenos weren't the only ones using the term—by that time, the word had already been appearing in national magazines

Trevail

Word of the Day

 

travail \ truh-VAIL \ noun

 

Definition

1a : work especially of a painful or laborious nature : toil1b : a physical or mental exertion or piece of work : task, effort

1c : agony, torment

 

2: childbirth, labor

 

Examples

"Japan's electronics industry has been able to hold on to its status as a powerhouse exporter in spite of numerous travails, such as the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s."
— Tatsuo Ito, Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2015

"But this is not the first time Bono has dabbled in journalism, or exposed himself to the unforgiving gaze of the blogosphere. Other literary travails include a blog for the Financial Times in which he describes meeting the Japanese prime minister…."
— Alexandra Topping, The Guardian, January 13, 2009

 

Did You Know?

Etymologists are pretty certain that travail comes from trepalium, the Late Latin name of an instrument of torture. We don't know exactly what a trepalium looked like, but the word's history gives us an idea.

 

Trepalium is derived from the Latin tripalis, which means "having three stakes" (from tri-, meaning "three," and palus, meaning "stake"). From trepalium sprang the Anglo-French verb travailler, which originally meant "to torment" but eventually acquired the milder senses "to trouble" and "to journey."
The Anglo-French noun travail was borrowed into English in the 13th century, followed about a century later by travel, another descendant of travailler.

Anfractuous

Word of the Day

 

anfractuous \ an-FRAK-chuh-wus \ adjective

 

Definition

1: full of windings and intricate turnings

2: tortuous

 

Examples

"Dr. X almost never left the boundaries of Old Shanghai, which was part of a separate district; more to the point, he stuck to a small but anfractuous subregion…."
— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, 1995

"The anfractuous remainder of the plot is a booby trap for anyone trying to explain it."
— James MacKillop, Syracuse (New York) New Times, November 9, 2011

 

Did You Know?

Plots and paths can be anfractuous. They twist and turn but do not break. Never mind that our English word comes from Latin anfractus (same meaning as anfractuous), which in turn comes from the Latin verb frangere, meaning "to break." (Frangere is also the source of fracture, fraction, fragment, and frail.)

 

The prefix an- here means "around." At first, anfractuous was all about ears and the auditory canal's anfractuosity, that is, its being curved rather than straight. Now anfractuous has been around some 400 years, without a break, giving it plenty of time to wind its way into other applications; e.g., there can be an anfractuous thought process or an anfractuous shoreline.

Purport

Word of the Day

 

purport \ per-PORT \ verb

 

Definition

1a: to have the often specious appearance of being, intending, or claiming (something implied or inferred); also

1b: claim

 

2: intend, purpose

 

Examples

The authors purport to offer irrefutable proof of a conspiracy, but in reality their book gives us nothing but unproven conjecture.

"A disclosure requirement does not purport to be a solution, in and of itself, to a problematic public practice—no more than a news report about a scandal claims to resolve it."
— Chris Gates, New York Times, March 2, 2015

 

Did You Know?

The verb purport passed into English in the late 1300s. It derives from the Anglo-French verb purporter (meaning both "to carry" and "to mean"), which itself combined the prefix pur- ("thoroughly") and the verb porter ("to carry").

Like its French parent, purport originally referred to the indubitable meaning or intention conveyed in a text or statement. Inevitably, what was purported sometimes faced contradiction or doubt. By the late 17th century, use of purport reflected this fact in its now common sense referring to claims, assertions, or appearances that only seem to be true on the surface.

Incisive

Word of the Day

 

incisive \ in-SYE-siv \ adjective

 

Definition

 

: impressively direct and decisive (as in manner or presentation)

 

Examples

"Albee, 84 and frail from recent heart surgery, smiled broadly as he came on stage to take a bow Saturday. He knows that 'Virginia Woolf' is the play that will forever be synonymous with his name, and he could not have hoped for a more incisive rendering of it."
— Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times, October 14, 2012

"For more than two decades, Carr focused his considerable talents on media criticism, lacing his columns with incisive commentary and wit."
— Terrence McCoy and Justin Moyer, Washington Post, February 13, 2015

 

 

Did You Know?

Incisive has meant "impressively direct and decisive" since around 1834 and derives from the Latin verb caedere, meaning "to cut." Its linguistic kin include many cuttings from the fruitful stem caedere, such as scissors, chisel, incise ("to cut into or engrave"), excise ("to remove by cutting"), incisor ("a front tooth typically adapted for cutting"), incision ("cut" or "gash"), precise ("minutely exact"), and concise ("brief").

In addition to the meaning illustrated above, incisive also carries a couple of lesser-known literal meanings relating to cutting: "having a cutting edge or piercing point" (as in "incisive fangs"), and, in dentistry, "of, relating to, or situated near the incisors."

Eidetic

Word of the Day

 

eidetic \ eye-DET-ik \ adjective

 

Definition

 

: marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images

 

Examples

Thanks to her eidetic memory, Kirsten was able to recall every last detail of what happened that night, including the colors of each person's outfit.

"Jason Bateman, making his feature directing debut after directing episodes of his 'Arrested Development' series, plays an adult who uses a loophole to enter a spelling bee and whose eidetic memory all but guarantees he will win if he chooses."

— From a movie review by Duane Dudek in the Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee),

 

Did You Know?

"Eidetic" is the technical adjective used to describe what we more commonly call a photographic memory. The word ultimately derives from the Greek noun "eidos," meaning "form." The ability of certain individuals to recall images, sounds, or events with uncanny accuracy is a subject of fascination for researchers in the field of psychology. Among notable people who were reputed to have eidetic memories is the late television comic Jackie Gleason, who reportedly was able to memorize an entire half-hour script in a single reading.

 

Also - for those who follow "The Big Bang Theory" on television, you know that Sheldon Cooper also sports such a memory.

Capricious

Word of the Day

 

capricious \ kuh-PRISH-us \ adjective

Definition

1: governed or characterized by caprice
2: impulsive, unpredictable

 

Examples

The court ruled that the punishment was arbitrary and capricious.

"Some of her songs are humorous, even capricious, though many reflect on the more hidden of life's injustices."

— St. Augustine (Florida) Record, February 27, 2015

Did You Know?

The noun caprice, which first appeared in English in the mid-17th century, is a synonym of whim. Evidence shows that the adjective capricious debuted about sixty years before caprice; it's likely, however, that both words derived via French from the Italian capriccio, which originally referred not to a sudden desire but to a sudden shudder of fear.
Capriccio in turn derives from the Italian capo, meaning "head," and riccio, the word for "hedgehog." Someone who shuddered in fear, therefore, was said to have a "hedgehog head"—meaning that his or her hair stood on end like the spines of a hedgehog.

Diapause

Word of the Day

 

diapause \ DYE-uh-pawz \ noun

Definition

: a period of physiologically enforced dormancy between periods of activity

 

Examples

Although insects most often enter diapause when they are pupae, diapause can occur during any life stage.

"Last week I discovered dozens of Monarch butterfly eggs at the ranch when a cold front pushed … migrants down to the Texas funnel. The early moving butterflies broke their reproductive diapause to lay hundreds of eggs."
— Monica Maeckle, MySanAntonio.com, September 25, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Diapause, from the Greek word diapausis, meaning "pause," may have been coined by the entomologist William Wheeler in 1893. Wheeler's focus was insects, but diapause, a spontaneous period of suspended animation that seems to happen in response to adverse environmental conditions, also occurs in the development of crustaceans, snails, and other animals.
Exercising poetic license, novelist Joyce Carol Oates even gave the word a human application in her short story "Visitation Rights" (1988): "Her life, seemingly in shambles, ... was not ruined; ... injured perhaps, and surely stunted, but only temporarily. There had been a diapause, and that was all...."