Duress

WORD OF THE DAY

duress / noun / dur-RESS

Definition

1: forcible restraint or restriction

2a:compulsion by threat; specifically 

2b: unlawful constraint

Examples

"I understand the impulse to marvel at Mr. Mandela's civility and eloquence, even under duress. How, it's easy to wonder, could a man form such generous, brilliant philosophies in the face of cruelty and injustice?" 

— Tayari Jones, The New York Times, 6 July 2018     

"It's a pattern that runs throughout history. People assume they can pollute for free until the pollution builds up and becomes a serious problem. Then—under duress—they start paying for the trouble." 

— Nathanael Johnson, Grist, 3 July 2018

Did You Know?

Duress is a word of hardy stock. It has been a part of the English language since the 14th century and has a number of long-lived relatives. 

Duress itself came into Middle English through the Anglo-French duresce (meaning "hardness" or "severity"), which stems from Latin durus, meaning "hard." 

Some obvious relatives of this robust root are durable, endure, and obdurate (meaning "unyielding" or "hardened in feelings"). 

Some others are dour (meaning "harsh," "unyielding," or "gloomy") and the preposition during.

Taciturn

WORD OF THE DAY

taciturn / adjective / TASS-uh-tern 
 
Definition
: temperamentally disinclined to talk

Examples
"The waiter, previously friendly and good-humored, was tonight solemn and taciturn."
— Taylor Stevens, The Informationist, 2011

"One was taciturn and steady; the other was volatile and virtuosic. When Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe met in the Wimbledon singles final in 1980, they provided a compelling study in contrasts, both in personality and playing style."
— Andrew R. Chow, The New York Times, 5 July 2018

Did You Know?
Taciturn shows up in English in the first half of the 18th century. James Miller, a British clergyman educated at Oxford, gives an early example of its use in his 1734 satiric drama, wherein a character describes a nephew with the following: "When he was little, he never was what they call Roguish or Waggish, but was always close, quiet, and taciturn."
It seems we waited unduly long to adopt this useful descendent of the Latin verb tacēre, meaning "to be silent"; we were quicker to adopt other words from the tacērefamily. 

We've been using tacit, an adjective meaning "expressed without words" or "implied," since at least the mid-17th century. And we've had the noun taciturnity, meaning "habitual silence," since at least the mid-15th century

Lode

WORD OF THE DAY

lodestar / noun / LOHD-stahr

Definition

: one that serves as an inspiration, model, or guide

Examples

"Tisvilde, on Zealand's north coast, stands out as a lodestar for the city's creative set, ever since two of those historic hotels, the Helenkilde Badehotel and Tisvilde Strandhotel, were tastefully renovated a decade ago by the former Royal Danish Ballet principal Alexander Kølpin." 

— Alex Postman, Condé Nast Traveler, March/April 2012   

"I had to spend hours preparing to be half as good as Charles. I'm still working on it. Even before I knew him, he was my lodestar—and he always will be." 

— Marc A. Thiessen, The Washington Post, 13 June 2018

Did You Know?

The literal, albeit archaic, meaning of lodestar is "a star that leads or guides," and it is a term that has been used especially in reference to the North Star. (The first half of the word derives from the Middle English word lode, meaning "course.") 

Both the literal and the figurative sense ("an inspiration or guide") date back to the 14th century, the time of Geoffrey Chaucer. 

The literal sense fell out of use in the 17th century for the most part, and so, for a while, did the figurative sense—but it appeared again 170 years later, when Sir Walter Scott used it in his 1813 poem The Bridal of Triermain.

Rubric

WORD OF THE DAY

rubric / noun / ROO-brik 
 
Definition
1: an authoritative rule; especially : a rule for conduct of a liturgical service
2a: heading, title; also
2b: class, category
3a: an explanatory or introductory commentary
3b: gloss
3c: an editorial interpolation
4: an established rule, tradition, or custom
5: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests

Examples

"… Katharine Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter, Isabel Myers (1897-1980), … devised a rubric that identified personality according to four 'easy to understand and easily relatable' categories: extravert or introvert, thinking or feeling, sensing or intuiting, judging or perceiving."
— Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2018

"The whole rubric of employer-employee relations is undergoing a transformation—and the approach of treating employees as mere units in an assembly line is fast becoming outdated. In today's context, the extent of a company's employee engagement does play a role in a professional's decision to join it."
— Avik Chanda, quoted in Business World, 27 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?
Centuries ago, whenever manuscript writers inserted special instructions or explanations into a book, they put them in red ink to set them off from the black used in the main text. (They used the same practice to highlight saints' names and holy days in calendars, a practice which gave us the term red-letter day.) 

Ultimately, such special headings or comments came to be called rubrics, a term that traces back to ruber, the Latin word for "red." While the printing sense remains in use today, rubric also has an extended sense referring to any class or category under which something is organized.

Marshal

WORD OF THE DAY

marshal / noun /  MAR-shul

Definition

1a: a high official in the household of a medieval king, prince, or noble originally having charge of the cavalry but later usually in command of the military forces

1b: a person who arranges and directs the ceremonial aspects of a gathering

2a: field marshal

2b: a general officer of the highest military rank

3a: an officer having charge of prisoners

3b: a ministerial officer appointed for a judicial district (as of the U.S.) to execute the process of the courts and perform various duties similar to those of a sheriff

3c: a city law officer entrusted with particular duties

3d: the administrative head of a city police department or fire department

Examples

The marshal confirmed that the house fires were arson and were likely set by the same person.

"On the first day, … the guy I was playing with ricocheted his ball off a tree and into a swamp. Lost ball. Except that when we get up there, the guy … says, 'Got it! Here it is!' and points down to a ball in the rough. I said, 'There's no way that's your ball. I watched it go into the swamp.' Even the marshal standing there agreed with me…." 

— Raymond Floyd, quoted in Golf Digest, June 2018

Did You Know?

Although most French words are derived from Latin, a few—among them marshal—are Germanic. In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the Germanic Franks occupied what is now France and left behind a substantial linguistic legacy, including what became medieval French mareschal. 

Mareschal came from a Frankish compound noun corresponding to Old High German marahscal, composed of marah, meaning "horse" (Old English mearh, with a feminine form mere, whence English mare), and scalc, meaning "servant" (Old English scealc). 

The original marshal was a servant in charge of horses, but by the time the word was borrowed from French into English in the 14th century, it referred primarily to a high royal official.

Oblige

WORD OF THE DAY

oblige / verb / uh-BLYJE 
 
Definition
1: to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance
2a: to put in one's debt by a favor or service
2b: to do a favor for
2c: to do something as or as if as a favor

Examples
"Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall." 

— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847

"The band has been playing the anniversary shows around the country since mid-2017, and after West Coast fans demanded a local performance, the nine-piece ska band from Boston happily obliged."
— Kelli Skye Fadroski, The Chico (California) Enterprise-Record, 29 June 2018

Did You Know?
Oblige shares some similarities with its close relative obligate, but there are also differences. Oblige derives via Middle English and the Anglo-French obliger from Latin obligare ("to bind to"), a combination of ob- ("to or toward") and ligare ("to bind"), whereas obligate descends directly from obligatus, the Latin past participle of obligare. 
Both oblige and obligate are frequently used in their past participle forms to express a kind of legal or moral constraint. 

Obligated once meant "indebted for a service or favor," but today it typically means "required to do something because the law requires it or because it is the right thing to do."
Obliged is now the preferred term for the sense that Southern author Flannery O'Connor used in a 1952 letter: "I would be much obliged if you would send me six copies."

Exigent

WORD OF THE DAY

exigent /adjective / EK-suh-junt 
 
Definition
1: requiring immediate aid or action
2a: requiring or calling for much
2b: demanding

Examples
The patients were triaged so that exigent cases would be given immediate care.

"I have argued that a warrant to seize the needle should allow the police to seize the 

haystack to search for the needle. But there's a catch: The government should ordinarily not be allowed to use whatever else they find in the haystack. If the warrant is only to seize a needle, the police can only take away and use the needle, unless there are exigent circumstances exposed by the discovery of other evidence."
— Orin Kerr, Reason, 29 June 2018

Did You Know?
Exigent is a derivative of the Latin present participle of exigere, which means "to demand." Since its appearance in Middle English, the law has demanded a lot from exigent. It first served as a noun for a writ issued to summon a defendant to appear in court or else be outlawed.
The noun's meaning was then extended to refer to other pressing or critical situations. Its adjectival sense followed and was called upon to testify that something was urgent and needed immediate aid or action. 

Nowadays, the adjective is seen frequently in legal contexts referring to "exigent circumstances," such as those used to justify a search by police without a warrant.

Cerulean

WORD OF THE DAY

cerulean /adjective / suh-ROO-lee-un 
 
Definition
: resembling the blue of the sky

Examples
"The images in Nicolas Party's paintings are simple, vivid, inexplicably funny, and profoundly odd. He paints the face of a man in a brown hat with a large snail on top, against a background of cerulean blue."
— Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue, June 2018

"The new oceanfront pool is scheduled to debut by summer's end…; complete with cabanas and a second tiki bar serving food all day, it will bring guests even closer to the cerulean Atlantic."
— Alexandra Kirkman, Forbes, 2 July 2018

Did You Know?
Cerulean comes from the Latin word caeruleus, which means "dark blue" and is most likely from caelum, the Latin word for "sky."
An artist rendering a sky of blue in oils or watercolors might choose a tube of cerulean blue pigment. 

Birdwatchers in the eastern U.S. might look skyward and see a cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea). Cerulean is not the only color name that's closely associated with the sky.
Azure (which ultimately comes from a Persian word for "lapis lazuli," a rich blue stone) describes the color of a cloudless sky and can even be a noun meaning "the unclouded sky."

Satiety

ORD OF THE DAY

satiety / noun / suh-TYE-uh-tee 
 
Definition
1a: the quality or state of being fed or gratified to or beyond capacity
1b: surfeit, fullness
2: the revulsion or disgust caused by overindulgence or excess

Examples
"Yes, avocado is high in fat, but it's the good, monounsaturated kind that helps increase satiety so you feel full with fewer calories."
— Georgia Downard, Self, June 2011

"High fiber foods increase satiety, or the feeling of fullness, and reduce appetite. Feeling fuller for longer can reduce a person's overall calorie intake."
— Laura Sant, The Preston Citizen, 20 June 2018

Did You Know?
You may have accurately guessed that satiety is related to satisfy, satiate (meaning "to satisfy fully or to excess"), and sate (which means "to glut" or "to satisfy to the full"). Satiety, along with the others, ultimately comes from the Latin word satis, which means "enough." English speakers apparently couldn't get enough of satis- derived words in the 15th and 16th centuries, when all of these words entered the language. Satiety itself was borrowed into English in the mid-1500s from the Middle French word satieté of the same meaning.

Thwart

WORD OF THE DAY

thwart /verb / THWORT

Definition
1a: to oppose successfully
1b: defeat the hopes or aspirations of
1c: to run counter to so as to effectively oppose or baffle
1d: contravene
2: to pass through or across

Examples
The baby howled when her mother thwarted her in her effort to crawl up the stairs.

"… nearly 1,850 firefighters already working the blaze planned to build 'indirect lines'— containment lines placed in front of the fire's active edge—but were faced with the possibility that their efforts could be thwarted by the weather."
— Sarah Ravani, The San Francisco Chronicle, 20 July 2018

Did You Know?
Thwart and its synonyms foil and frustrate all suggest checking or defeating another's plan or preventing the achievement of a goal.
Foil implies checking or defeating so as to discourage future efforts ("the police foiled the attempted robbery"), while frustrate suggests making all efforts, however vigorous or persistent, futile or ineffectual ("frustrated attempts at government reform").
Thwart usually indicates frustration caused by opposition ("the army thwarted an attempted coup").

Volatile

WORD OF THE DAY

volatile /adjective / VAH-luh-tul 
 
Definition
1a: characterized by or subject to rapid or unexpected change
1b: unable to hold the attention fixed because of an inherent lightness or fickleness of disposition
2a: tending to erupt into violence
2b: explosive
2b: easily aroused
2c: lighthearted, lively
3: readily vaporizable at a relatively low temperature
4a: difficult to capture or hold permanently
4b: evanescent, transitory
5: flying or having the power to fly

Examples
Our financial advisor cautioned us to be conservative with our investments while the stock market was still volatile.

"A second round of testing has been ordered for a Massachusetts charter school where elevated levels of toxic chemicals were detected. … Initial testing … found high levels of petroleum and other volatile organic compounds."
— The Associated Press, 8 July 2018

Did You Know?
Volatile was originally for the birds—quite literally. Back in the 14th century, volatile was a noun that referred to birds (especially wild fowl) or other winged creatures, such as butterflies. That's not as flighty as it sounds. 

Volatile traces back to the Latin verb volare, which means "to fly." By the end of the 16th century, people were using volatile as an adjective for things that were so light they seemed ready to fly. 

The adjective was soon extended to vapors and gases, and by the early 17th century, volatile was being applied to individuals or things as prone to sudden change as some gaseous substances. 

In recent years, volatile has landed in economic, political, and technical contexts far flown from its avian origins.

Nonchalant

WORD OF THE DAY

nonchalant /adjective / nahn-shuh-LAHNT 
 
Definition
: having an air of easy unconcern or indifference

Examples
"After the doors closed, the man … grabbed onto the train from the outside. And off he went, surfing through the subway tunnel while some commuters … rode unsuspecting inside, according to a video captured by another subway rider…. The video … shows the man holding on in a calm, nonchalant manner, even letting down one of his arms."
— Samantha Schmidt, The Washington Post, 12 July 2018

"By the time of [Jennifer] Lawrence's arrival, the teenage girl sitting next to me—a Hunger Games obsessive—was completely starstruck, gawping and garbling. Obviously, I was the nonchalant journalist, unfazed by fame and all that nonsense."
— The London Evening Standard, 20 Jan. 2014

Did You Know?
Since nonchalant ultimately comes from words meaning "not" and "be warm," it's no surprise that the word is all about keeping one's cool.

The French word nonchalant, which strolled into English in the 1700s, has essentially held the same meaning in English as in French. 

It was derived from the Old French verb nonchaloir ("to disregard") and can be traced back to Latin non ("not") and calēre," meaning "to be warm." 

Unconcerned is one synonym of nonchalant, along with casual, complacent, and insouciant.

Gaffer

WORD OF THE DAY

gaffer / noun / GAF-er 
 
Definition
1: an old man — compare gammer
2a (British): foreman, overseer
2b (British): employer
3: a head glassblower
4: a lighting electrician on a motion-picture or television set

Examples

Before the first day of shooting, the gaffer spent several days setting up all the lights.

"There were no gaffers or best boys or Foley artists who called Wilmington home. Many folks didn't even know what all those words meant."
— Amy Hotz, The Star-News (Wilmington, North Carolina), 11 May 2018

Did You Know?
Though movie and cinema buffs associate gaffer with Hollywood, the word actually pre-dates motion pictures by about 300 years. The first recorded use of gaffer dates from the 16th century, when it was used as a title of respect for an older gentleman. 

Later it was used as a generic noun for any elderly man, and then it picked up the sense "foreman" (still used in British English), perhaps because the foreman was the most experienced and, most likely, the oldest person in a work crew. 

Today gaffer is usually applied to the head lighting electrician on a movie set. The gaffer's assistant is called the best boy.

Orgulous

WORD OF THE DAY

orgulous / adjective / OR-gyuh-lus

Definition

: proud

Examples

The hotel manager tended to adopt an orgulous air with those guests who were not regular visitors and who might be unaware of the building's rich and storied history.

"He astutely recognized that intimate relations with the orgulous Kennedys could only heighten his influence. Indeed, apart from Robert Kennedy and Douglas Dillon, McNamara was the only member of Kennedy's Cabinet to enter the president's social life." 

— Jacob Heilbrunn, The New Republic, 22 Mar. 1993

Did You Know?

"In Troy, there lies the scene. From Isles of Greece / The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf'd, / Have to the port of Athens sent their ships." 

Thus William Shakespeare begins the Trojan War tale Troilus and Cressida, employing orgulous, a colorful word first adopted in the 13th century from Anglo-French orguillus. After the Bard's day, orgulous dropped from sight for 200 years; there is no record of its use until it was rejuvenated by the pens of Robert Southey and Sir Walter Scott in the early 1800s. 20th-century authors (including James Joyce and W. H. Auden) continued its renaissance, and it remains an elegant (if infrequent) choice for today's writers.

Rash

WORD OF THE DAY

rash / adjective / RASH 
 
Definition
: marked by or proceeding from undue haste or lack of deliberation or caution

Examples
"I know you're upset about not getting a raise, but I think it would be rash to quit your job in protest," said Martha to her friend.

"We were at the mall, and two of my boys were bored and asked to ride the escalator up to the second floor while I checked out. We were in a department store where I could see the escalators from where I was standing and, being flustered and overwhelmed, I made a rash decision and said, 'Sure, one time.'"
— Carmen Rasmusen Herbert, The Deseret News, 1 July 2018

Did You Know?
The earliest known uses of rash (then spelled rasch) occur in a northern dialect of 15th-century Middle English. Its earlier origins are not known for sure, though it is clearly related to a number of similar words in the Germanic languages, including Old High German rasc ("fast, hurried, strong, clever"), Old Norse röskr ("brave, vigorous"), and Middle Dutch rasch ("quick, nimble, agile, vigorous").
It is NOT, however, related to the English noun rash ("an eruption on the body," as in a "skin rash"). The noun rash, which first appeared in English around 1700, comes by way of French and Vulgar Latin from Latin rasus, the past participle of radere ("to scrape" or "to shave").

Weald

WORD OF THE DAY

weald / noun / WEELD  

Definition
1a: a heavily wooded area
1b: forest
2: a wild or uncultivated usually upland region

Examples
"With food, terroir remains the best term to define how variations in landscape and climate in a place give a region a certain identity. This is aired strikingly, with Toby Glanville's photographs of the estuary and marshes, weald and orchards—a soothing greyness, an atmosphere of English Nordic to get you into the mood and cook Harris's recipes, mostly easy to make."
— Rose Prince, The Spectator, 18 Nov. 2017

"Challenger's house was on the very edge of the hill, and from its southern face, in which was the study window, one looked across the vast stretch of the weald to where the gentle curves of the South Downs formed an undulating horizon."
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt, 1913

Did You Know?
If weald were a tree, it would have many annual rings. It has been in use as a general word for "forest" since the days of Old English, and it has also long been used, in its capitalized form, as a geographic name for a once-heavily forested region of southeast England. Weald is also often capitalized today when used to refer to wooded areas like the Weald of Kent and the Weald of Sussex in England. In time, the word branched out to designate any wild and uncultivated upland regions. A related word is wold, meaning "an upland plain or stretch of rolling land."

Debunk

WORD OF THE DAY

debunk / verb / dee-BUNK 
 
Definition
: to expose the sham or falseness of

Examples

"Illusionists and comedians Penn and Teller have made a career out of pulling back the curtain, whether to reveal the methods magicians employ in their tricks or to debunk pseudoscientific claptrap on their former television series."
— Marc Mohan, The Oregonian, 7 Mar. 2014

"The show tells great stories, but it's also devoted to helping you debunk fantastical ones. Its recurring 'Skeptic Check' feature deflates pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories."
— Erin Blakemore, The Washington Post, 26 June 2018

Did You Know?
If you guessed that debunk has something to do with bunk, meaning "nonsense," you're correct. We started using bunk around the turn of the 20th century. (It derived, via bunkum, from a remark made by a congressman from Buncombe County, North Carolina.)
Within a couple of decades, debunk was first used in print for the act of taking the bunk out of something. There are plenty of synonyms for debunk, including disprove, rebut, refute, and the somewhat rarer confute. Even falsify can mean "to prove something false," in addition to "to make something false."
Debunk itself often suggests that something is not merely untrue but also a sham; one can simply disprove a myth, but if it is debunked, the implication is that it was a grossly exaggerated or foolish claim.

Fungible

WORD OF THE DAY

fungible / adjective / FUN-juh-bul 
 
Definition
1: being of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in the satisfaction of an obligation
2: interchangeable
3: flexible

Examples

"The good news—in one way of looking at it—is that Sears had significant fungible assets of decent value to raise cash and a more than cozy relationship with a few willing buyers."
— Steve Dennis, Forbes.com, 31 May 2018

"The more difficult assessment is that this bizarro environment is a product of our resistance to the idea that our relationships to art and artists can be alive and fungible, that they can change."
— Stephen Kearse, Pitchfork, 25 June 2018

Did You Know?
Fungible—which derives from the Latin verb fungi, meaning "to perform" (no relation to the noun fungus and its plural fungi)—is a word that often shows up in legal and political contexts.
Something fungible can be exchanged for something else of the same kind. For example, when we say "oil is a fungible commodity," we mean that when a purchaser is expecting a delivery of oil, any oil of the stipulated quantity and quality will usually do.
Another example of something fungible is cash. It doesn't matter what twenty dollar bill you get—it's still worth the same amount as any other twenty dollar bill.
In contrast, something like a work of art isn't fungible; a purchaser would expect a specific, identifiable item to be delivered.
In broader use, fungible can mean "interchangeable," or sometimes "readily changeable to adapt to new situations."

Mufti

WORD OF THE DAY

mufti /noun / MUFF-tee 
 
Definition
1: ordinary dress as distinguished from that denoting an occupation or station; especially
2: civilian clothes when worn by a person in the armed forces

Examples
"Norderval sings in a soaring, evocative line. Even in mufti, her performance, not as honed as it will be after another three weeks of rehearsals, is riveting."
— Cynthia Robins, The San Francisco Chronicle, 17 June 2001

"'I'm Chief Inspector Barnaby. Can I help you?' 'Well…' She eyed him doubtfully. 'May I ask why you're in mufti?' 'In what? Oh'—he followed her stern gaze. 'I'm a detective. Plain clothes.'"
— Caroline Graham, The Killings at Badger's Drift, 1987

Did You Know?
In the Islamic tradition, a mufti is a professional jurist who interprets Muslim law.
When religious muftis were portrayed on the English stage in the early 19th century, they typically wore costumes that included a dressing gown and a tasseled cap—an outfit that some felt resembled the clothing preferred by the off-duty military officers of the day.
The clothing sense of mufti, which first appeared in English around that same time, is thought to have developed out of this association of stage costume and civilian clothing.

Agog

WORD OF THE DAY

agog / adjective / uh-GAHG

Definition

1: full of intense interest or excitement 

2: eager

Examples

We were all agog over the rumor that the famous actor would be coming to town for his next movie.

"As we went through the book, we felt like little children while turning page after page, agog at the incredible artwork! Although the subject of faeries might be considered for kids, this is not a book full of cute little Tinkerbells." 

— Ed and Cynthia Justus, The Garden Island (Lihue, Hawaii), 2 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?

English speakers have been clamoring over the word agog for over 450 years. The word probably derives from the Middle French phrase en gogues, but the semantic link between en gogues (meaning "in a state of mirth") and the earliest English uses of agog, which exist in the phrase "to set agog" ("to excite, stimulate, make eager"), are not entirely clear. 

The -gog part of the word might make one wonder if agog has a connection to the verb goggle, meaning "to stare with wide or protuberant eyes," as in the manner of one who is intensely excited about something. 

That word actually has a different origin: the Middle English gogelen, meaning "to squint." 

In many instances, agog is followed by a preposition, such as over or about.

Curfew

WORD OF THE DAY

curfew / noun / KER-fyoo

Definition

1: the sounding of a bell at evening

2a: a regulation enjoining the withdrawal of usually specified persons (such as juveniles or military personnel) from the streets or the closing of business establishments or places of assembly at a stated hour

2b: a signal to announce the beginning of a curfew

2c: the hour at which a curfew becomes effective

2d: the period during which a curfew is in effect

Examples

"In addition to park areas designed for them, adolescents can go into almost all places in Berlin, including dance clubs and bars. There are some rules, including a curfew: teens under sixteen must be out of the clubs and restaurants by ten p.m., those under eighteen must leave by midnight." 

— Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children, 2017

"He walked with her back to the chateau; the curfew had tolled for the laborious villagers of Fleurieres, and the street was unlighted and empty." 

— Henry James, The American, 1877

Did You Know?

In medieval Europe, a bell rang every evening at a fixed hour, and townspeople were required by law to cover or extinguish their hearth fires. It was the "cover fire" bell, or, as it was referred to in Anglo-French, coverfeu (from the French verb meaning "to cover," and the word for "fire"). 

By the time the English version, curfew, appeared, the authorities no longer regulated hearth fires, but an evening bell continued to be rung for various purposes—whether to signal the close of day, an evening burial, or enforcement of some other evening regulation. This "bell ringing at evening" became the first English sense of curfew. 

Not infrequently, the regulation signaled by the curfew involved regulating people's movement in the streets, and this led to the modern senses of the word.

Risorgimento

WORD OF THE DAY

risorgimento / noun / ree-zor-jih-MEN-toh

Definition

1: the 19th-century movement for Italian political unity

2a: a time of renewal or renaissance 

2b: revival

Examples

"Aware of and influenced by the English poetry of the Risorgimento, Melville kept to his own preoccupations rather than merely echoing the political stances of other poets or his acquaintances…." 

— Hershel Parker, Melville: The Making of a Poet, 2007

"If Mr. Smith offended professional historians, he found a receptive audience with Italian readers, who made 'Italy: A Modern History' a runaway bestseller, one of the most popular academic works ever published in Italy. His ideas were greeted warmly by Italian leftists, who regarded the Risorgimento as a failed revolution, but his sheer readability also contributed to sales." 

— William Grimes, The New York Times, 2 Aug. 2017

Did You Know?

During the period of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars (1796-1815), the French dominated Italy and introduced many new reforms to the Italian states. 

After the wars, the states were restored to their former rulers, the Austrians, and took on a conservative character. In response, a number of secret societies arose as part of an ideological and literary movement in support of a united Italy free of foreign domination. This movement was given the name Risorgimento, which literally translates from Italian as "rising again." 

Although most modern use of the term still refers to this movement, the word also has broader application in English, referring to revivals or renewals of any sort. This second sense is occasionally capitalized in a nod to the earlier use.