Scurrilous

WORD OF THE DAY


scurrilous \ SKUR-uh-lus \ adjective 


Definition
1a: using or given to coarse language
1b: vulgar and evil
2 : containing obscenities, abuse, or slander


Examples
The actor publically apologized to his young fans for his scurrilous tweets.


"Because he was friendlier with her highness than protocol allowed …, he created a strong impression …, which boosted his status from her royal servant to close friend, which triggered much scurrilous backstage gossip among the sovereign's fawning aides and officials…."
— Colin Covert, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 29 Sept. 2017


Did You Know?
Scurrilous (and its much rarer relation scurrile, which has the same meaning) comes from Middle French scurrile. The Middle French word, in turn, comes from the Latin scurrilis, from scurra, which means "buffoon" or "jester."
Fittingly, 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined scurrilous as "using such language as only the licence [sic] of a buffoon could warrant."
Qualities traditionally associated with buffoonery—vulgarity, irreverence, and indecorousness—are qualities often invoked by the word scurrilous.
Unlike the words of a jester, however, "scurrilous" language of the present day more often intends to seriously harm or slander than to produce a few laughs.

Bludge

WORD OF THE DAY

bludge / BLUJ / Verb

Definition

1 : (chiefly Australia & New Zealand) to avoid work or responsibility

2a: (chiefly Australia & New Zealand) to get something from or live on another by imposing on hospitality or good nature 

2b: sponge

Examples

"I'll catch the ferry or bludge a ride on the new boat of one of my commodity-boomed nouveau riche friends."

 — Phil Haberland, The Guardian Express (Australia), 6 Mar. 2007

" I've never done, however, is use a hangover as an excuse to bludge." 

— Tom Elliott, The Herald Sun (Australia), 15 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

Though they can be annoying, people who bludge—bludgers—are relatively harmless. On the other hand, a bully armed with a bludgeon —a "bludgeoner"—can cause serious harm. In the 19th century, bludgeoner was shortened to bludger and used as a slang word for "pimp." 

That bludger was certainly a kind of bully, one apparently willing to wield a bludgeon now and then to insure his livelihood. In the early 20th century, bludge became the verb for what a bludger does. By then, a somewhat softened bludger had appeared in Australia and New Zealand: the pimping and the bullying were eliminated, and the parasitical tendencies reduced to mere cadging or sponging. 

Harbinger

WORD OF THE DAY

harbinger /HAHR-bun-jer /  noun 

Definition

1a: one that initiates a major change 

1b: a person or thing that originates or helps open up a new activity, method, or technology 

1c: pioneer

2a: something that foreshadows a future event 

2b: something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come

Examples

When the star running back went down with an injury in the team's first game, it turned out to be the harbinger of a disappointing season.

"A lot is riding on the results, which will be widely read as … a harbinger of the 2018 congressional midterm elections." 

— Laura Vozzella, The Washington Post, 18 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?

When medieval travelers needed lodging for the night, they went looking for a harbinger. As long ago as the 12th century, harbinger was used to mean "one who provides lodging" or "a host," but that meaning is now obsolete. 

Later on, harbinger was also being used for a person sent ahead of a main party to seek lodgings, often for royalty or a campaigning army, but that old sense has largely been left in the past, too. 

Those sent ahead would announce the approach of who was following behind, and that's how our modern sense of harbinger (from the Anglo-French herberge, meaning "lodgings") acquired the sense with which we are familiar today, that of something which foretells a future event.

Anneal

WORD OF THE DAY
anneal \ uh-NEEL \ verb
 
Definition
1a: to heat and then cool (a material, such as steel or glass) usually for softening and making less brittle
1b: to cool slowly usually in a furnace
1c: to heat and then cool (double-stranded nucleic acid) in order to separate strands and induce combination at lower temperature with complementary strands
2 : strengthen, toughen
3 : to be capable of combining with complementary nucleic acid by a process of heating and cooling


Examples
"Before and after the Eagles organized team activities last spring, Nelson Agholor retreated to his hometown for a series of training sessions with an old friend and mentor that would anneal his mind as much as his body."
— Mike Sielski, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 Oct. 2017


"Primarily I work in brass and silver-soldered brass. The process is heating and annealing the brass, bending it, soldering pieces together to get the general form and then slowly bending until the pieces fit."
— Andrew Watt, quoted in The Washington Post, 10 Sept. 2017


Did You Know?
If you were looking for a saying to apply to the word anneal, it might be "everything old is new again." The word was originally associated with one of the oldest technologies of humankind: fire. It derives from the Old English word onǣlan, which was formed from the Old English root āl, meaning "fire."
In its earliest known uses, anneal meant simply "to set on fire." That sense has become obsolete, however, and nowadays anneal is associated with metalworking and glasswork as well as a much more recent technological development.
As addressed in sense 3 of the definition, it has come to be used in the context of DNA research, in reference to the heating and cooling of double-stranded nucleic acid.

Mucilaginous

WORD OF THE DAY
mucilaginous \ myoo-suh-LAJ-uh-nus \ adjective
 
Definition
1 : sticky, viscid
2 : of, relating to, full of, or secreting mucilage


Examples
"It started quietly last summer, when social media watchers began buzzing about it. Tweens had struck on a recipe for a mucilaginous, stomach-turning substance and were posting videos of themselves playing with it. The slime trend had hit."
— Robert Klara, Adweek, 8 May 2017


"… okra is best picked right off the vine, before it gets too big. For this recipe, a simple bath in milk, a romp in a bowl of flour and cornmeal, and a dip in hot oil are all that's needed to render the mucilaginous veggie into the ambrosial stuff of cafeteria dreams."
— Courtney Bond, Texas Monthly, July 2016


Did You Know?
Unlike its meanings, there's nothing terribly sticky about the origin and use of mucilaginous. Like thousands of other words in the English language, mucilaginous (and the noun mucilage) oozed out of Latin during the 15th century.
Mucilage is from Late Latin's word for "mucus," mucilago, and is used for the gelatinous substance found in various plants, such as legumes or seaweeds. Mucilaginous stuck as the noun's adjective form and is used by scientists and foodies alike for sticky or mucous things.

Vivand

WORD OF THE DAY

viand / VYE-und / noun

Definition

1 : an item of food; especially : a choice or tasty dish

2 : (plural) provisions, food

Examples

"The family sat down to table, and a frugal meal of cold viands was deposited before them." 

— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, 1891

"No fewer than three restaurants are planned for the new hotel, including one at ground level, and two others on the top two floors of the building, providing city vistas along with the viands." 

— Lewis Lazare, The Chicago Business Journal, 13 May 2016

Did You Know?

Are you someone who eats to live, or someone who lives to eat? Either way, you'll find that the etymology of viand reflects the close link between food and life. 

Viand was borrowed into English in the 15th century from the Anglo-French viaunde or viande (viande, meaning "meat," is still found in modern French usage). 

The Anglo-French viaunde derives ultimately from the Medieval Latin vivanda ("food"), an alteration of vivendus, a participial form of the verb vivere, meaning "to live." 

Vivere is the ancestor of a number of other lively and life-giving words in English, including victual, revive, survive, convivial, and vivacious.

Obliterate

WORD OF THE DAY
obliterate \ uh-BLIT-uh-rayt \ verb
 
Definition
1a: to remove from recognition or memory
1b: to remove from existence
2: to make undecipherable by wiping out or covering over


Examples
The children's chalk drawings remained on the sidewalk until a rainstorm came along and obliterated them.


"That was before Hurricane Maria obliterated the only tropical rain forest in the United States forest system. Left behind was a scene so bare that on a recent visit, it was possible to see the concrete skyline of San Juan about 30 miles west—a previously unimaginable sight."
— Luis Ferré-Sadurní, The New York Times, 11 Oct. 2017


Did You Know?
Far from being removed from existence, obliterate is thriving in our language today with various senses that it has acquired over the years. True to its Latin source, oblitteratus—from the prefix ob-, meaning "in the way," and littera, meaning "letter"—it began in the mid-16th century as a word for removing something from memory.
Soon after, English speakers began to use it for the specific act of blotting out or obscuring anything written, and eventually its meaning was generalized to removing anything from existence. In the meantime, physicians began using obliterate for the surgical act of filling or closing up a vessel, cavity, or passage with tissue.
Its final stamp on the English lexicon was delivered in the mid-19th century: "to cancel a postage or revenue stamp."

Wifty

WORD OF THE DAY
wifty \ WIF-tee \ adjective
 
Definition
1: eccentrically silly, giddy, or inane
2: ditzy


Examples
"Developers are, by nature, dreamers and gamblers, seeing opportunity and growth where others see only the Steak & Bagel Train. Many developers appear a tad wifty, perhaps existing in some altered state of consciousness, but this project is in a class by itself."
— Karen Heller, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Oct. 2012


"… he paints a tender and sensitive portrait of a modern-day Don Quixote trapped in his own grand, wifty delusions."
— Laura Bennett, The Boston Globe, 2 July 2009


Did You Know?
Wifty is a synonym of ditzy. And, like ditzy, its origins remain unknown. The earliest print evidence of wifty goes back to the early 20th century, though the word was certainly being used in spoken English before that.
Ditzy stumbled into American slang decades later—we are able to trace it back to the 1970s. But dizzy, which in its Old English origins meant "foolish" or "stupid," has been used in a sense similar to ditzy or wifty since the 16th century.

Bombinate

WORD OF THE DAY
bombinate \ BAHM-buh-nayt \ verb
 
Definition
1: to make a sustained deep murmuring, humming, or buzzing sound
2: buzz, drone


Examples
The only sounds Jared could hear in the office that night were those of his own typing and the air conditioner bombinating.


"Black-marketeers and scalpers began buzzing around the theatres, bombinating ceaselessly, … 'Ten-for-five, ten-for five, ten-for-five.'"
— Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey, 1991


Did You Know?
Bombinate sounds like it should be the province of bombastic blowhards who bound up and bombard you with droning blather at parties—and it is. The word derives from the Greek word bombos, a term that probably originated as an imitation of a deep, hollow sound (the kind we would likely refer to as "booming" nowadays).
Latin speakers rendered the original Greek form as bombus, and that root gave forth a veritable din of raucous English offspring, including not only bombinate, but also bomb, bombard, and bound ("a leap or jump"). However, Latin bombus is not a direct ancestor of bombastic, which traces to bombyx, a Greek name for the silkworm.

Jalousie

WORD OF THE DAY
jalousie \ JAL-uh-see \ noun
 
Definition
1 : a blind with adjustable horizontal slats for admitting light and air while excluding direct sun and rain
2 : a window made of adjustable glass louvers that control ventilation


Examples
The rooms of the little bungalow were protected from the brutal tropical heat by wooden jalousies.


"All the old jalousies have been replaced with new windows framed in mahogany, but many interior doors and much of the original hardware have been retained."
— Christine Davis, The Palm Beach Daily News, 14 July 2011


Did You Know?
Etymologists are clear on the source of the word jalousie—it's French for "jealousy"—but the relationship between the emotion and the window treatments originally referred to as jalousies is not something they've speculated much about. Is it that those peering out through the original jalousie blinds were jealous of the people outside?
Or is it more likely that the jealousy festered in the hearts of those outside, who could see the blinds but not the faces and lives of the people they hid? This excerpt from the October 23, 1766 entry in the Duchess of Northumberland's diary perhaps provides a clue: "Rows of Seats with Jalousies in Front that [the women] may not be seen."

Lollygag

WORD OF THE DAY
lollygag \ LAH-lee-gag \ verb
 
Definition
1: to spend time idly, aimlessly, or foolishly
2: dawdle


Examples
Owen had a habit of lollygagging in the morning when he was supposed to be getting ready for school, and that meant that he was sometimes late.


"We were spoiled in the heart of summer by daylight that lingered until 10 p.m. We felt no sense of hurry. We could get home from work and still have almost five hours to lollygag away catching walleyes, water-skiing or having picnics on the beach."
— Sam Cook, The Duluth (Minnesota) News Tribune, 29 Sept. 2017


Did You Know?
You certainly didn't want to be known as a lollygagger at the beginning of the 20th century. Back then, lollygag was slang for "fooling around" (sexually, that is). That sense of lollygag was in use at least as long ago as 1868, and it probably originated as an alteration of the older (and more dawdlingly innocent) lallygag.
Nowadays, lollygag doesn't usually carry such naughty connotations, but back in 1946, one Navy captain considered lollygagging enough of a problem to issue this stern warning: "Lovemaking and lollygagging are hereby strictly forbidden.... The holding of hands, osculation and constant embracing of WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service], corpsmen or civilians and sailors or any combination of male and female personnel is a violation of naval discipline...."

Proximity

WORD OF THE DAY

proximity / prahk-SIM-uh-tee /noun

Definition

1: the quality or state of being proximate 

2: closeness

Examples

"[T]he company's main advantages as an exporter include proximity to the U.S. market, quality of production and its ability to alter production to suit the needs and design tastes of U.S. consumers." 

— Thomas Russell, Furniture Today, 4 Oct. 2017

"Common interests, shared experiences and momentum are the things that bind superficial relationships…, but remove the natural closeness that proximity creates and you find that having once shared a few high school classes is not enough to sustain a lifelong relationship." 

— Jonathan Look, Forbes, 24 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

The history of proximity hinges on the idea of closeness, both physical and metaphorical. English speakers borrowed the word from Middle French, which in turn acquired it from Latin proximitat-, proximitas, forms of the adjective proximus, meaning "nearest" or "next." 

A number of other languages, including Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian, derived similar words from Latin proximus. Other descendants of proximus in English include proximal, proximate, and the somewhat more rare approximal (meaning "contiguous").

Stellar

WORD OF THE DAY
stellar / STEL-er / adjective
 
Definition
1a : of or relating to the stars
1b: astral
1c: composed of stars
2: of or relating to a theatrical or film star
3a: principal, leading
3b: outstanding


Examples
Kelly's stellar academic record should help her gain acceptance to almost any college she wants to attend.


"The carbon-rich asteroid is like a time capsule from more than 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system formed. Scientists hope that the samples that Osiris-Rex collects and brings to Earth in 2023 will contain clues from the earliest history of our stellar neighborhood."
— Nicholas St. Fleur, The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2017


Did You Know?
Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped."
That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform.
Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s.

Roué

WORD OF THE DAY

roué / roo-AY / noun

Definition

1: a man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure 

2: rake

Examples

"Hugh Grant, as a roué who seems to realize that his charm is a regrettably cheap commodity, enjoyed something of a comeback in Florence Foster Jenkins." 

— Tom Gliatto, People, 17 Jan. 2017             

"[Roger Moore's] Bond was a roué, a bounder, a debonair playboy not remotely like a real spy and arguably all the better for it." 

— Alex Bilmes, Esquire, 25 May 2017

Did You Know?

Roué originated as a French word and gained momentum when it began to be used in reference to the libertine companions of Philippe II, France's regent from 1715-1723. Roué means "broken on the wheel" in French and ultimately derives from Latin rota, meaning "wheel." 

Since the wheel being referred to was an instrument of punishment, the French were implying that such dissolute beings deserved this punishment. By the end of the 18th century, English-speakers added roué to its list of synonyms for a rake, libertine, debaucher, lecher, etc.

Esemplastic

WORD OF THE DAY

esemplastic / ess-em-PLASS-tik / adjective

Definition

: shaping or having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole

Examples

"Art achieves its impact from something Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its esemplastic power, the ability to make sense out of chaos, to 'shape into one' the many truths around us." 

— Teresa Jordan, The Year of Living Virtuously: Weekends Off, 2014 

"The prison walls of self had closed entirely round him; he was walled completely by the esemplastic power of his imagination…." 

— Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, 1929

Did You Know?

"Unusual and new-coined words are, doubtless, an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and imperfect conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater," wrote English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, 1817. 

True to form, in that same work, he assembled esemplastic by melding the Greek phrase es hen, meaning "into one," with plastic to fulfill his need for a word that accurately described the imagination's ability to shape disparate experiences into a unified whole (e.g., the poet's imaginative ability to communicate a variety of images, sensations, emotions, and experiences in the unifying framework of a poem). The verb intensify was another word that Coleridge was compelled to mint while writing Biographia.

Pathos

WORD OF THE DAY

pathos / PAY-thahss / noun

Definition

1: an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion

2: an emotion of sympathetic pity

Examples

"Clowns have always been represented as tricksters and jokers, from the days of jesters all the way through Ronald McDonald, but the high jinks were always paired with pathos and humanity." 

— Vulture, 7 Sept. 2017

"The best survival movies are often harrowing; packed with loss and pathos while testing the limits of human endurance." 

— Mathew DeKinder, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?

The Greek word pathos means "suffering," "experience," or "emotion." It was borrowed into English in the 16th century, and for English speakers, the term usually refers to the emotions produced by tragedy or a depiction of tragedy. Pathos has quite a few kin in English. 

Pathetic is used to describe things that move us to pity. Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions of another. Though pathology is not literally "the study of suffering," it is "the study of diseases." You can probably guess at more relatives of pathos. Sympathy, apathy, antipathy, sociopath, and psychopath are a few.

Mandarin

WORD OF THE DAY

mandarin / MAN-drin / adjective

Definition

1 : of, relating to, or typical of a public official in the Chinese Empire of any of nine superior grades

2 : marked by polished ornate complexity of language

Examples

"I don't think there's anything about the novel that doesn't impress me: its stream of satirical invention…; its mandarin prose that perfectly conjures the trancelike drift of a modern consciousness overwhelmed by detail; and its breathtaking risks with structure…." 

— Alan Moore, quoted in The International New York Times, 10 Sept. 2016

"The good doctor's prose is measured and self-assured, replete with allusions to classical texts. Here is a wonderfully lively, promiscuous mind, unashamed of its erudition. The voice attains a richly spun, mandarin quality; the text comes to have the feeling of so much silk." 

— Rafael Campo, The Washington Post, 22 Nov. 1998

Did You Know?

The Portuguese were the first to refer to a Chinese official as a "mandarin." The word hails from the Portuguese word mandarim, which developed, by way of Malay měntěri, from Sanskrit mantrin, meaning "counselor." 

Mandarins were promoted by successfully completing the imperial Chinese examination system, which was primarily based on the teachings of Confucian texts. In time, mandarin, became a word for a pedantic official, a bureaucrat, or a person of position and influence. The noun passed into the English language in the late 16th century, and the adjective appeared in the early 17th. 

You may also know Mandarin as a word for the chief dialect of China or be familiar with the mandarin orange (the fruit's name comes from the orange color of a mandarin official's robe).

Archetype

WORD OF THE DAY

archetype / AHR-kih-type / noun

Definition

1a: the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies 

1b: prototype; 

1c: a perfect example 

2a: a transcendent entity that is a real pattern of which existing things are imperfect representations 

2b: idea 

3 : (psychology) an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C. G. Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual

Examples

"That archetype of the clean-cut, indefatigable and incorruptible agent was largely the invention of J. Edgar Hoover, who led the FBI for 48 years, from May 1924 to May 1972." 

— Vanessa Romo, NPR.org, 13 July 2017

"In Nashville, … [Shania] Twain has come to be embraced as an elder and an archetype. Carrie Underwood had to prove that she could handle one of Twain's hits when she competed on American Idol en route to becoming one of the reigning pop-country figures of the post-Shania era." 

— Jewly Hight, Vulture, 29 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

Archetype derives via Latin from the Greek adjective archetypos ("archetypal"), formed from the verb archein ("to begin" or "to rule") and the noun typos ("type"). (Archein also gave us the prefix arch-, meaning "principal" or "extreme," used to form such words as archenemy, archduke, and archconservative.) 

Archetype has specific uses in the fields of philosophy and psychology. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, for example, believed that all things have ideal forms (aka archetypes) of which real things are merely shadows or copies. 

And in the psychology of C. G. Jung, archetype refers to an inherited idea or mode of thought that is present in the unconscious of the individual. In everyday prose, however, archetype is most commonly used to mean "a perfect example of something."

Parable

WORD OF THE DAY

parable / PAIR-uh-bul / noun

Definition

1: example

2: a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle

Examples

The priest opened his homily by relating the parable of the Good Samaritan, from the Gospel of Luke.

"Remotely based on the 1844 Hans Christian Andersen tale 'The Snow Queen,' a parableabout faith and friendship, the movie ['Frozen'] retained only the central metaphor of a woman who can freeze people's hearts with her witchcraft." 

— Jesse Green, The New York Times, 15 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

Parable comes to us via Anglo-French from the Late Latin word parabola, which in turn comes from Greek parabolē, meaning "comparison." The word parabola may look familiar if you remember your geometry. The mathematical parabola refers to a kind of comparison between a fixed point and a straight line, resulting in a parabolic curve; it came to English from New Latin (Latin as used since the end of the medieval period, especially in scientific description and classification). 

Parable, however, descends from Late Latin (the Latin language used by writers in the 3rd to 6th centuries). The Late Latin term parabola referred to verbal comparisons: it essentially meant "allegory" or "speech." Other English descendants of Late Latin parabola are parole and palaver.

Tin-Pot

WORD OF THE DAY

tin-pot / TIN-PAHT / adjective 

Definition

1: cheap or trivial of its kind 

2: petty, small time, two bit 

Examples

"Every fascist, authoritarian and tin-pot dictator in history has tried to shut down dissent." 

— Michael Goodwin, The New York Post, 15 June 2017

"What a gaggle of tin-pot soldiers we were, the intelligent bored silly, the mediocre exhausted, and the dense frightened out of their wits." 

— Paul West, Harper's, January 2009

Did You Know?

Tin has never commanded as much respect as some other metals. As a reflection of this, its name has long been used in terms denoting the tawdry or petty. Tin-pot has been used for minor or insignificant things or people since the early 1800s. 

Tinhorn has named fakes or frauds (especially gamblers) since the second half of that century, and tin lizzie has been a nickname for an inexpensive car since Ford introduced the Model T. Another example is tin-pan, meaning "noisy, harsh, tinny." 

That word features in the name of the famous Tin Pan Alley , in which it evokes the tinny sound of pianos pounded furiously by musicians plugging tunes to producers.

Clew

WORD OF THE DAY

clew / KLOO / noun

Definition

1: a ball of thread, yarn, or cord

2a: something that guides through an intricate procedure or maze of difficulties 

2b: clue

3a: a lower corner or only the aft corner of a sail

3b: a metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail

3c : (plural) a combination of lines by which a hammock is suspended

Examples

"High overhead, topmen scrambled to furl and unfurl sails and tend to yards and booms and spars and various clews." 

— Corey Kilgannon, The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2009

"But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the nature of Ernest Everhard." 

— Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1908

Did You Know?

The "ball of thread" meaning of clew (from Middle English clewe and ultimately from Old English cliewen) has been with us since before the 12th century. 

In Greek mythology, Ariadne gave a ball of thread to Theseus so that he could use it to find his way out of her father's labyrinth. This, and similar tales, gave rise to the use of clew for anything that could guide a person through a difficult place. 

This use led, in turn, to the meaning "a piece of evidence that leads one toward the solution of a problem." Today, the variant spelling clue, which appeared in the 17th century, is the more common spelling for the "evidence" sense, but you'll find clew in some famous works of literature. Also, clew is the only choice for the sailing senses.

Apodictic

WORD OF THE DAY 

apodictic / ap-uh-DIK-tik / adjective

Definition

: expressing or of the nature of necessary truth or absolute certainty

Examples

"On the humbler level of recorded evidence, what is one to make of a thinker-scholar who
ruled with apodictic, magisterial certainty that 'Shakespeare's tragedies are second-class
with the exception of Lear'?" 

— George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement, 4 June 1993

"Her writing, collected in a volume titled Sweet Nothings (a title intended, one suspects, to ward off serious criticism), has an apodictic, take-it-or-leave-it quality: 'Art is a low-risk, high-reward crime.'" 

— Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, Winter 2016

Did You Know?

Apodictic is a word for those who are confident about that of which they speak. It's a handy word that can describe a conclusive concept, a conclusive person, or even that conclusive person's conclusive remarks. 

A well-known close relative of apodictic is paradigm ("an outstandingly clear or typical example"); both words are built on Greek deiknynai, meaning "to show." 

More distant relatives (from Latin dicere, a relative of deiknynai that means "to say") include diction, dictate, edict, and predict.