Vilify

WORD OF THE DAY

 

VILIFY \ VIL-uh-fye \ verb

 

Definition

1: to lower in estimation or importance

 

2a: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against

2b: defame

 

Examples

Janet's angry letter chastised members of the media for vilifying her brother, the disgraced ex-councilman.

"But her daughter … denies the allegations against her mother. Instead, she believes the person who made the initial complaints was merely looking to vilify her mother after her own termination."
— Evan Peter Smith, Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio), June 30, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Vilify came to English by way of the Middle English vilifien and the Late Latin vilificare from the Latin adjective vilis, meaning "cheap" or "vile." It first appeared in English in the 15th century. Also debuting during that time was another verb that derives from vilis and has a similar meaning: vilipend. When they were first used in English, both vilify and vilipend meant to regard someone or something as being of little worth or importance. Vilipend now carries an additional meaning of "to express a low opinion of somebody," while vilify means, more specifically, to express such an opinion publicly in a way that intends to embarrass a person or ruin his or her reputation.

Grandiloquence

WORD OF THE DAY

 

GRANDILOQUENCE \ gran-DIH-luh-kwunss \ noun

 

Definition

: a lofty, extravagantly colorful, pompous, or bombastic style, manner, or quality especially in language

 

Examples

The grandiloquence of the columnist's writing gave him a reputation as a blowhard, but his opinions were deep and carefully considered.

"It seems that the only thing that flows more freely than money in Washington is the grandiloquence of the partisans in each party."
— Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, Virginia), September 29, 2014

 

Did You Know?

Grandiloquence, which first appeared in English in the late 16th century, is one of several English words pertaining to speech that derive from the Latin loqui, meaning "to speak." Other offspring of loqui include eloquent ("marked by fluent expression"), loquacious ("full of excessive talk"), and soliloquy ("a long dramatic monologue").

 

Grandiloquence comes (probably via Middle French) from the Latin adjective grandiloquus, which combines loqui and the adjective grandis ("grand or great"). A word that is very similar in meaning to grandiloquence is magniloquence—and the similarity is not surprising. Magniloquence combines loqui with magnus, another Latin word meaning "great."

Indomitable

WORD OF THE DAY

 

INDOMITABLE \ in-DAH-muh-tuh-bul \ adjective

 

Definition

1: incapable of being subdued

2: unconquerable

 

Examples

The memorial celebrates the indomitable spirit of the pioneers who ventured forth in search of a new life.

"The stones, removed as part of structural improvements to the bridge, speak to the indomitable nature of 19th-century workers, often immigrants, who somehow—with horses and pulleys— managed to move around that staggering weight."

— Sean Kirst, Syracuse.com (New York), June 16, 2015

 

Did You Know?

The prefix in- means "not" in numerous English words (think of indecent, indecisive, inconvenient, and infallible). When in- teamed up with the Latin domitare ("to tame"), the result was a word meaning "unable to be tamed."

 

Indomitable was first used in English in the 1600s as a synonym of wild, but over time its sense of untamability turned from a problem to a virtue. By the 1800s, indomitable was being used for people whose courage and persistence helped them to succeed in difficult situations.

Pachyderm

WORD OF THE DAY

 

PACHYDERM \ PAK-ih-derm \ noun

 

Definition

 

1: any of various non-ruminant mammals (such as an elephant, a rhinoceros, or a hippopotamus) of a former group (Pachydermata) that have hooves or nails resembling hooves and usually thick skin

 

2: elephant

 

Examples

"The archetypal Seuss hero … was Horton, a conscientious pachyderm who was duped by a lazy bird into sitting on her egg."
— Eric Pace, New York Times, September 26, 1991

"Each month, as Nandi bounds closer to her first birthday on Aug. 20, we will keep you in the know on what’s new with this precious pachyderm’s progress." — Johanna Willett, Arizona Daily Star, June 18, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Pachydermos in Greek means literally "having thick skin" (figuratively, it means "dull" or "stupid"). It's from pachys, meaning "thick," and derma, meaning "skin." In the late 1700s the French naturalist Georges Cuvier adapted the Greek term as pachyderme and used it for any one of a whole assemblage of hoofed animals having thickish skin: elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, tapirs, horses, pigs, and more.

English speakers learned the word from French in the early 1800s. The adjective pachydermatous means "of or relating to the pachyderms" or "thickened" (referring to skin). Not too surprisingly, it also means "callous" or "insensitive" (somewhat unfairly to elephants, which are actually known to be rather sensitive).

Yaw

WORD OF THE DAY

 

yaw \ YAW \ verb

 

Definition

1a : (of a ship) to deviate erratically from a course (as when struck by a heavy sea); especially

1b: to move from side to side

1c : (of an airplane, spacecraft, or projectile) to turn by angular motion about the vertical axis

 

2: alternate

 

Examples

The ship yawed hard to starboard when the rogue wave hit it broadside.

"In 2002, contractors … explored the wreck using a remotely-operated submarine. They found ropes and lights from previous visits, and worked out how the big plane skipped and yawed across the water before sinking to the bottom."
— Steve Weintz, Medium.com, February 1, 2015

 

Did You Know?

In the heyday of large sailing ships, numerous nautical words appeared on the horizon, many of which have origins that have never been traced. Yaw is one such word. It began showing up in print in the 16th century, first as a noun (meaning "movement off course" or "side to side movement") and then as a verb. For more than 350 years it remained a sailing word, with occasional side trips to the figurative sense "to alternate." Then dawned the era of airplane flight in the early 20th century, and "yawing" was no longer confined to the sea. Nowadays, people who love boats still use yaw much as the sailors of old did, but pilots and astronauts also refer to the "yawing" of their crafts.

Meticulous

WORD OF THE DAY

 

METICULOUS \ muh-TIK-yuh-lus \ adjective

 

Definition

: marked by extreme or excessive care in the consideration or treatment of details

 

Examples

The composer's meticulous, almost obsessive, attention to detail is evident in even the smallest musical flourishes that the average listener will likely never notice.

"The Australian-American [Justine] Larbalestier's scholarly background is on full display in her latest novel, with its meticulous attention to detail and strong emphasis on overlooked voices from history." |
— Jennifer Hubert Swan, New York Times, May 31, 2015

 

Did You Know?

It may surprise you to learn that meticulous is derived from the Latin word for "fearful"—meticulosus—and ultimately comes from the Latin noun metus, meaning "fear."

Although meticulous currently has no "fearful" meanings, it was originally used as a synonym of frightened and timid. This sense had fallen into disuse by 1700, and in the 19th century meticulous acquired a new sense of "overly and timidly careful" (probably influenced by the French word méticuleux).

This in turn led to the current meaning of "painstakingly careful," with no connotations of fear at all. The newest use was controversial among some usage commentators at first, but it has since become by far the most common meaning and is no longer considered an error.

Octothorpe

WORD OF THE DAY

 

OCTOTHORPE \ AHK-tuh-thorp \ noun

 

Definition

 

: the symbol #

 

Examples

"To demonstrate and test the varying thicknesses that a pen is capable of imparting, Ivy League students often begin by writing an octothorpe—known to some plebians as a 'hashtag.'"
— Evan Siegel, Columbia Spectator (Columbia University), December 6, 2014

"Whatever it ought to be called, Messina chose to use this symbol for collating Twitter searches in 2007 because he wanted a sign that could be input from a low-tech cellphone. He had two options: octothorpe or asterisk. He chose the former."
— Roman Mars, Slate.com, December 17, 2014

 

Did You Know?

A versatile symbol with many names (among them hash mark, number sign, and pound sign), the octothorpe has become popularized as the go-to symbol for marking trending topics on Twitter and other social media. It is believed to have been adopted by the telecommunications industry with the advent of touch-tone dialing in the 1960s. Stories abound about how the odd symbol got its name.

The octo- part almost certainly refers to the eight points on the symbol, but the -thorpe remains a mystery. One story links it to a telephone company employee who happened to burp while talking about the symbol with co-workers. Another relates it to the athlete Jim Thorpe and the campaign to restore posthumously his Olympic medals, which were taken away after it was discovered that he played baseball professionally previous to the 1912 Games. A third claims it derives from an Old English word for "village."

Superannuated

WORD OF THE DAY

 

SUPERANNUATED \soo-per-AN-yuh-way-tud \ adjective

 

Definition

1: outmoded, old-fashioned

 

2a : incapacitated or disqualified for active duty by advanced age
2b : older than the typical member of a specified group

 

Examples

The article focused on senior citizens who retire from the workplace and return to school to become superannuated graduate students.

"A handful of superannuated navy ships let rip with their ear-splitting horns, cheering the speedboats on, while military officers gathered on the pier to snap cellphone shots of the flashing hulls…."
— Jamie Dettmer, The Daily Beast, June 8, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Superannuated was first put to use in English in the 1600s, having been borrowed from Medieval Latin superannuatus, past participle of superannuari ("to be too old")—from Latin super- ("over" or "above") and annus ("year"). Shortly thereafter, we made our own verb, superannuate, from the adjective.

 

Superannuate means "to dismiss or retire from service with a pension" as well as "to declare obsolete," meanings that are still in active service. Superannuated can mean "outmoded or old-fashioned," as in "superannuated slang" or the "superannuated navy ships" of our second example, or it can simply mean "older than usual," as in our first example sentence.

Stringent

WORD OF THE DAY

STRINGENT \ STRIN-junt \ adjective

 

Definition

1: tight, constricted

 

2: marked by rigor, strictness, or severity

 

3: marked by money scarcity and credit strictness

 

Examples

Brandon and Sarah had to adjust to living on a stringent budget during the four months when Brandon was looking for a job.

"In an effort to address the perils of climate change, the county supervisors voted 3–2 to adopt the most stringent greenhouse-gas-emission restrictions of any county in California…."
— Nick Welsh, Santa Barbara (California) Independent, May 21, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Words that are synonymous with stringent include rigid, which implies uncompromising inflexibility ("rigid rules of conduct"), and rigorous, which suggests hardship and difficulty ("the rigorous training of firefighters"). Also closely related is strict, which emphasizes undeviating conformity to rules, standards, or requirements ("strict enforcement of the law").

Stringent usually involves severe, tight restrictions or limitations ("the college has stringent admissions rules"). That's logical. After all, rigorous and rigid are both derived from rigēre, the Latin word meaning "to be stiff," and stringent and strict developed from the Latin verb stringere, meaning "to bind tight."

Innocuous

WORD OF THE DAY

 

INNOCUOUS \ ih-NAH-kyuh-was \ adjective

 

Definition

1a: producing no injury
1b: harmless

 

2a: not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings or hostility

2b: inoffensive, insipid

 

Examples

The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent.

-Peter Conrad

 

Their gas-shells, in particular, seem to have been almost innocuous.

-"The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.)" by Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

 

Did you know?

Innocuous has harmful roots—it comes to us from the Latin adjective innocuus, which was formed by combining the negative prefix in- with a form of the verb nocēre, meaning "to harm" or "to hurt."

In addition, nocēre is related to the truly "harmful" words noxious, nocent, and even nocuous. Innocent is from nocēre as well, but like innocuous it has the in- prefix negating the hurtful possibilities. Innocuous first appeared in print in 1631 with the clearly Latin-derived meaning "harmless or causing no injury" (as in "an innocuous gas"). The second sense is a metaphorical extension of the idea of injury used to indicate that someone or something does not cause hurt feelings, or even strong feelings ("an innocuous book" or "innocuous issues," for example).

Duffer

WORD OF THE DAY

duffer \ DUFF-er \ noun

 

Definition

1a : a peddler especially of cheap flashy articles

1b : something counterfeit or worthless

 

2: an incompetent, ineffectual, or clumsy person; especially
2b: a mediocre golfer

 

Examples

Most of the people playing in the charity tournament were duffers, but it was all for a good cause.

"The snow is melting, and the grass from the area's golf courses are beginning to look like an oasis, beckoning veterans and duffers alike."
— Matt Becker, Observer-Dispatch (Utica, New York), April 12, 2015

 

Did You Know?

Duffers have never really been straight shooters—on or off the golf course. The original duffers of the mid-18th century were shysters of the first order, merchants who palmed off trashy goods as if they were highly valuable (they often implied to unwary buyers that the goods had been smuggled and were very rare). Over time, the meaning of duffer was extended from a no-good peddler to anyone who was "no good," not just because the individual had low morals, but because he or she was incompetent or stupid. The term has been applied to hopelessly bad golfers since the late 19th century.

Estival

WORD OF THE DAY

 

ESTIVAL \ ESS-tuh-vul \ adjective

 

Definition

: of or relating to the summer

 

Examples

The children were reveling in their weeks of summer vacation, filling their school-free estival afternoons with swimming and playing.

"Guests heeded the dress suggestion and came in the estival attire requested on the Betty Hunley-created invitation: 'white linen, seersucker or summer chic.'"
— Nell Nolan, Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), July 31, 2010

 

Did You Know?

Estival and festival look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. Estival traces back to aestas, which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us estivate, a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state—a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation).

Festival also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from festivus, a term that means "festive" or "merry." Festivus is also the ancestor of festive and festivity as well as the much rarer festivous (which also means "festive") and infestive, meaning "not merry, mirthless."

Jaundiced

WORD OF THE DAY

 

JAUNDICED \ adjective \ JAWN-dist

 

Definition

1: affected with or as if with a disease characterized by yellow pigmentation of the skin

 

2: exhibiting or influenced by envy, distaste, or hostility

 

Examples

"Since I tend to have a jaundiced view toward marriage in general," said George, "I'm not the guy you should be asking for wedding tips."

"Accumulated wisdom helps us process facts, but the circumstances of our current world may require the hopeful view of youth rather than the jaundiced perspective of experience."
— Mark Tibergien, ThinkAdvisor.com, June 1, 2015

 

Did You Know?

The adjective jaundiced, which was introduced into English in the mid-17th century, is the direct result of the older noun jaundice. The physical condition called jaundice involves a yellowish coloring of the skin, tissues, and body fluids caused by the presence of coloring matter from bile.

In ages past, people believed that a hostile, irritable temperament indicated an excess of bile in one's body. This belief not only led to the extended use of jaundiced, but it also resulted in a similar use of the adjective bilious, which can mean either "marked by or suffering from liver dysfunction and especially excessive secretion of bile" or "ill-tempered."

Garderobe

WORD OF THE DAY

GARDEROBE \ GAR-drohb \ noun

Definition

1: a wardrobe or its contents

2: a private room : bedroom

3: privy, toilet

Examples

On our tour of the castle, the guide made sure to point out the garderobe. 

"Located in Langley-on-Tyne, Northumberland, the castle has the best-preserved medieval latrines, or garderobes, in Europe. Historians think it was a garrison because it has 12." — Sue Kovach Shuman, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), April 30, 2006

Did You Know?

Garderobe entered the English language in the 15th century and continues in use to this day, though its frequency has diminished significantly since the 19th century. Originally, its primary duty was to provide English speakers with a word for a room or closet in which to store clothing. Later, by extension, it was used for private bedrooms and bathrooms. Today you are most likely to encounter the word in a description of an old castle, such as in our example sentences. Garder, the French word for "guard" on which garderobe is based, has also served English well by directly contributing to the formation of such words as award, guard, regard, and, yes, wardrobe.

Hoosegow

WORD OF THE DAY

 

hoosegow \ HOOSS-gow \ noun

 

Definition

: jail

 

Examples

The perpetrator was sentenced to three months in the hoosegow.

"Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds has issued a blunt warning to pet owners: treat your dogs and cats humanely or you might wind up in the hoosegow."
— Bill Hendrick, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 16, 2014

 

Did You Know?

In Spanish, juzgado means "panel of judges, courtroom." The word is based on the Spanish past participle of juzgar, meaning "to judge," which itself was influenced by Latin judicare—a combination of jus, "right, law," and dicere, "to decide, say." When English speakers of the American West borrowed juzgado in the early 1900s, they recorded it the way they heard it: hoosegow. They also associated the word specifically with the jail that was usually in the same building as a courthouse. Today, hoosegow has become slang for any place of confinement for lawbreakers.

Categorical

WORD OF THE DAY

 

CATEGORICAL

\ kat-uh-GOR-ih-kul \ adjective

 

Definition

1: absolute, unqualified

 

2: of, relating to, or constituting a category

 

Examples

"For his part, Morell, who became deputy CIA director in 2010 and twice served as acting director before retiring in 2013, was categorical in his denial."
— Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy DC, May 13, 2015

"Following the AT&T Byron Nelson [tournament], Spieth ranked as the No. 12 celebrity people aspire to be in the future. His other categorical rankings—from endorsement to influence to trend-setter to trustworthiness—all saw similar results."
— Candace Carlisle, Dallas Business Journal, June 10, 2015

 

Did You Know?

The ancestor of categorical and category has been important in logic and philosophy since the days of Aristotle. Both English words derive from Greek katēgoria, which Aristotle used to name the 10 fundamental classes (also called "predications" or "assertions") of terms, things, or ideas into which he felt human knowledge could be organized.

Ironically, although those categories and things categorical are supposed to be absolute and fundamental, philosophers have long argued about the number and type of categories that exist and their role in understanding the world. High-level philosophical disputes aside, the word categorical continues to refer to an absolute assertion, one that involves no conditions or hypotheses (for example, the statement "all humans are mortal").

Apprehensive

WORD OF THE DAY

 

APPREHENSION \ noun \ ap-rih-HEN-shun \

 

Definition

1a : the act or power of perceiving or comprehending

1b : the result of apprehending mentally : conception

 

2a: seizure by legal process

2b: arrest

 

3a: suspicion or fear especially of future evil

3b: foreboding

 

Examples

"Oddly combined with her sharp apprehension … was the primitive simplicity of her attitude…."
— Edith Wharton, The Reef, 1912

"Rife with memories of lessons learned and laughter shared and full of hopeful apprehension facing uncertain futures in a big, brave new world, 241 seniors graduated from Princeton Senior High School Friday evening."

— Tammie Toler, Princeton (West Virginia) Times, June 5, 2015

 

Did You Know?

The Latin verb prehendere really grabs our attention. It means "to grasp" or "to seize," and it is an ancestor of various English words. It teamed up with the prefix ad- (which takes the form ap- before p and means "to," "toward," or "near") to form apprehendere, the Latin predecessor of our words apprehension, apprehend, and apprehensive. When prehendere joined the prefix com- ("with," "together," "jointly"), Latin got comprehendere, and English eventually got comprehend, comprehension, and comprehensive.

 

Prehendere also gave us the words comprise, prehensile ("adapted for seizing or grasping"), prison, reprehend, and reprise, among others.

Precarious

WORD OF THE DAY

 

PRECARIOUS \prih-KAIR-ee-us \ adjective

 

Definition

1a: dependent on uncertain premises

1b: dubious

 

2a : dependent on chance circumstances, unknown conditions, or uncertain developments

2b : dangerously lacking in security or steadiness

 

Examples

The books were stacked high in a precarious tower that was liable to topple at any moment.

"[Margaret] Atwood, whose futuristic fictions include 'The Handmaid's Tale,' 'Oryx and Crake' and 'MaddAddam,' knows that the entire premise of trees growing to be harvested for paper for print books many decades hence is a bit precarious. 'I am sending a manuscript into time,' she wrote in a prepared statement. 'Will any human beings be waiting there to receive it?'"
— Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2015

 

Did You Know?

 

"This little happiness is so very precarious, that it wholly depends on the will of others." Joseph Addison, in a 1711 issue of Spectator magazine, couldn't have described the oldest sense of precarious more precisely—the original meaning of the word was "depending on the will or pleasure of another."

Prayers and entreaties directed at that "other" might or might not help, but what precariousness really hangs on, in the end, is prex, the Latin word for prayer. From prex came the Latin word precarius, meaning "obtained by entreaty," from whence came our own adjective precarious. Anglo-French priere, also from precarius, gave us prayer.