Raddled

WORD OF THE DAY

raddled /adjective / RAD-uld

Definition
1a: being in a state of confusion
1b: lacking composure
2 : broken-down, worn

Examples
We were met at the door by a raddled old man who turned out to be the actor's father, and who in his day had also been an estimable presence on the London stage.

"The real skill of Swan Song is the kaleidoscopic portrait it paints of its raddled hero. The narrative moves through time from Capote's tawdry childhood and friendship with Harper Lee to his withered end in Fu Manchu pyjamas."
— Alex Preston, The Observer (London), 22 July 2018

Did You Know?
The origin of raddled is unclear. Its participial form suggests verbal parentage, and indeed there is a verb raddle just a few decades older than raddled that seems a likely source.
This raddle means "to mark or paint with raddle," raddle here being red ocher, or sometimes other pigments, used for marking animals.
Raddle eventually came to mean "to color highly with rouge," the metaphor connecting the raddling of animal husbandry with immoderate makeup application: to be raddled thusly was not a compliment.
The "confused" sense of raddled is often associated with the influence of alcohol or drugs. That connection is in keeping with the word's earliest known use, from a 1694 translation of French writer Francois Rabelais: "A … fellow, continually raddled, and as drunk as a wheelbarrow."

Proliferate

WORD OF THE DAY

proliferate / verb / pruh-LIF-uh-rayt

Definition
1: to grow or cause to grow by rapid production of new parts, cells, buds, or offspring
2a: to increase or cause to increase in number as if by proliferating
2b: multiply

Examples
"Muskies in Lake St. Clair are a world-class presence because local folks 30 years ago got smart. They agreed on a catch-and-release ethic. Catch the muskie. Put it back into the water. And watch a species proliferate."
— Lynn Henning, The Detroit News, 26 December 2018

"The surge in the price of bitcoin, and of other cryptocurrencies, which proliferated amid a craze for initial coin offerings, prompted a commensurate explosion in the number of stories and conversations about this new kind of money…."
— Nicholas Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 22 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
Proliferate is a back-formation of proliferation. That means that proliferation came first (we borrowed it from French in the 18th century) and was later shortened to form the verb proliferate.
Ultimately these terms come from Latin. The French adjective prolifère ("reproducing freely") comes from the Latin noun proles and the Latin combining form -fer.
Proles means "offspring" or "descendants," and -fer means "bearing." Both of these Latin forms gave rise to numerous other English words.
Prolific and proletarian ultimately come from proles; aquifer and words ending in -ferous have their roots in -fer.

Charisma

WORD OF THE DAY

charisma / noun / kuh-RIZ-muh

Definition
1: a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure (such as a political leader)
2: a special magnetic charm or appeal

Examples
The young singer had the kind of charisma that turns a performer into a star.

"Winner of seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, 'Evita' is the story of Eva Peron who used her charisma and charms to rise from her penniless origins to political power as the first lady of Argentina at the age of 27."
— Oscar Sales, The Press Journal (Vero Beach, Florida), 19 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?
The Greek word charisma means "favor" or "gift." It is derived from the verb charizesthai ("to favor"), which in turn comes from the noun charis, meaning "grace."
In English, charisma has been used in Christian contexts since the mid-1500s to refer to a gift or power bestowed upon an individual by the Holy Spirit for the good of the Church, a sense that is now very rare.
The earliest nonreligious use of charisma that we know of occurred in a German text, a 1922 publication by sociologist Max Weber. The sense began appearing in English contexts shortly after Weber's work was published.

Sleuth

WORD OF THE DAY

sleuth /verb / SLOOTH

Definition
1a: to act as a detective
1b: search for information
2: to search for and discover

Examples
"Farmer would go sleuthing in the archives of Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies to find evidence of an undiscovered landfall in Canada, and Ward could build a rig that trailed an 11-foot metal detector behind a combine, which is how they unearthed $1 million in pallasite fragments from several square miles of Alberta farmland."
— Joshuah Bearman and Allison Keeley, Wired, January 2019

"For more than five decades, Morse has sleuthed out long-lost family trees for a living. From his home base here in Haywood, Morse travels the world tracking down missing heirs."
— Becky Johnson, The Mountaineer (Haywood County, North Carolina), 20 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
"They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" Those canine tracks in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles set the great Sherlock Holmes sleuthing on the trail of a murderer. It was a case of art imitating etymology.
When Middle English speakers first borrowed sleuth from Old Norse, the term referred to "the track of an animal or person." In Scotland, sleuthhound referred to a bloodhound used to hunt game or track down fugitives from justice.
In 19th-century U.S. English, sleuthhound became an epithet for a detective and was soon shortened to sleuth. From there, it was only a short leap to turning sleuth into a verb describing what a sleuth does.

Myopic

WORD OF THE DAY

myopic adjective / mye-OH-pik

Definition
1a: affected by myopia
1b: of, relating to, or exhibiting myopia
1c: nearsighted
2a: lacking in foresight or discernment
2b: narrow in perspective and without concern for broader implications

Examples
"This is, on the whole, an encouraging finding. If children became myopic due to looking at objects too closely, then we'd be stuck with an unsolvable dilemma: choosing between teaching children to read and protecting their eyesight."
— Brian Palmer, Slate, 16 Oct. 2013

"But even the most myopic seer can foretell with near certainty that our traditional use of privately owned vehicles running on fossil fuels is going to be giving way to new mobility options, and soon."
— John Gallagher, The Detroit Free Press, 9 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?
Myopia is a condition in which visual images come to a focus in front of the retina of the eye, resulting in defective vision of distant objects. Those with myopia can be referred to as "myopic" (or, less formally, "nearsighted").
Myopic has extended meanings, too. Someone myopic might have trouble seeing things from a different perspective or considering the future consequences before acting. Myopic and myopia have a lesser-known relative, myope, meaning "a myopic person."
All of these words ultimately derive from the Greek myōps, which comes from myein (meaning "to be closed") and ōps (meaning "eye, face").

Adjudicate

WORD OF THE DAY

adjudicate / verb / uh-JOO-dih-kayt

Definition
1a: to make an official decision about who is right in (a dispute)
1b: to settle judicially
2: to act as judge

Examples
"… Nichols said in addition to the nine dogs brought to the shelter, it is housing 31 dogs that were confiscated in animal cruelty or neglect cases. She said the shelter has to board the dogs, feed them and care for them until the cases are adjudicated."
— Russ Coreyemp, The Times Daily (Florence, Alabama), 16 Dec. 2018

"To qualify as a couture house, which is an official designation like champagne, a brand must maintain an atelier of a certain number of artisans full time and produce a specific number of garments twice a year for a show. There are only a very few that can fulfill the requirements…. A lot have dropped out over the years …, and the governing organization that adjudicates this has relaxed some of its rules to admit younger, less resourced and guest designers…."
— Vanessa Friedman, The New York Times, 17 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?
Adjudicate is one of several terms that give testimony to the influence of jus, the Latin word for "law," on our legal language.
Adjudicate is from the Latin verb adjudicare, from judicare, meaning "to judge," which, in turn, traces to the Latin noun judex, meaning "judge."
English has other judex words, such as judgment, judicial, judiciary, and prejudice. If we admit further evidence, we discover that the root of judex is jus.
What's the verdict? Latin "law" words frequently preside in English-speaking courtrooms. In addition to the judex words, jury, justice, injury, and perjury are all ultimately from Latin jus.

Imbroglio

WORD OF THE DAY

imbroglio / noun / im-BROHL-yoh

Definition
1a: an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding
1b: a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it
1c: scandal
1d: a violently confused or bitterly complicated altercation; embroilment
1e: an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel)
2 : a confused mass

Examples
"He was close to scandal—GOP chairman during the Watergate years, vice president during the Iran-Contra imbroglio—yet was not tainted by it."
— David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe, 1 Dec. 2018

"The present imbroglio follows protracted struggles over the budget of the sheriff's office, the fate of the 911 system, the county role in reducing blight and who should pay what for animal control."
— Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, 13 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?
Imbroglio and embroilment are more than just synonyms; they're also linked through etymology. Both descend from the Middle French verb embrouiller (which has the same meaning as embroil), from the prefix em-, meaning "thoroughly," plus brouiller, meaning "to mix" or "to confuse." (Brouiller is itself a descendant of an Old French word for "broth.")
Early in the 17th century, English speakers began using embroil, a direct adaptation of embrouiller, as well as the noun embroilment.
Meanwhile, the Italians were using their own alteration of embrouiller: imbrogliare, meaning "to entangle." In the mid-18th century, English speakers embraced the Italian noun imbroglio as well.

Cumulate

WORD OF THE DAY

cumulate /verb / KYOO-myuh-layt 

Definition
1: to gather or pile in a heap
2: to combine into one
3: to build up by addition of new material

Examples
"In the alternative, the company may provide greater input to minority shareholders by allowing shareholders to cumulate their votes and cast them all for one director." 
— Gregory Monday, The Milwaukee Business Journal, 5 Mar. 2018

"The report … compares various income estimates and reaches a similar conclusion: Most Americans have realized small annual increases that ultimately cumulated into meaningful gains." 
— Robert Samuelson, The Sun Journal (Lewiston, Maine), 12 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?
Cumulate and its far more common relative accumulate both come from the Latin word cumulare, meaning "to heap up." 
Cumulare, in turn, comes from cumulus, meaning "mass." (Cumulus functions as an English word in its own right as well. It can mean "heap" or "accumulation," or it can refer to a kind of dense puffy cloud with a flat base and rounded outlines.) 
Cumulate and accumulate overlap in meaning, but you're likely to find cumulate mostly in technical contexts. The word's related adjective, cumulative, however, is used more widely.

Substantive

WORD OF THE DAY

substantive / adjective / SUB-stun-tiv

Definition

1a: having substance 

1b: involving matters of major or practical importance to all concerned

2a: considerable in amount or numbers 

2b: substantial

3a: real rather than apparent 

3b: firm; permanent, enduring

3c: belonging to the substance of a thing 

3d: essential

3e: expressing existence

4a: having the nature or function of a noun

4b: relating to or having the character of a noun or pronominal term in logic

5: creating and defining rights and duties

Examples

"How many more carefully researched reports will need to be released before we finally act in a substantive way to protect our only home, planet Earth?" 

— Edwin Andrews, The New York Times, 14 Dec. 2018

"These are the moments—funny, yet substantive and cuttingly insightful—that will remain in the collective memory long after Ralph Breaks the Internet leaves cinemas and many of its meme jokes lose their relevance." 

— Jim Vejvoda, IGN (ign.com), 20 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?

Substantive was borrowed into Middle English from the Anglo-French adjective sustentif, meaning "having or expressing substance," and can be traced back to the Latin verb substare, which literally means "to stand under." 

Figuratively, the meaning of substare is best understood as "to stand firm" or "to hold out." Since the 14th century, we have used substantive to speak of that which is of enough "substance" to stand alone, or be independent. By the 19th century, the word evolved related meanings, such as "enduring" and "essential." 

It also shares some senses with substantial, such as "considerable in quantity."

Teetotaler

WORD OF THE DA Y

teetotaler / noun / TEE-TOH-tuh-ler

Definition
1: one who practices or advocates teetotalism
2: one who abstains completely from alcoholic drinks

Examples
"… he is one of those fit older people who have redefined what 74 can look like. It probably helps that he is a teetotaler, a choice he made as a young man, having been disturbed by the effect that alcohol had on members of his family."
— David Kamp, Vanity Fair, December 2017

"The names Rockefeller and Diego Rivera are forever intertwined thanks to the Mexican artist's infamous mural at Rockefeller Center, which the family commissioned in 1932 and had demolished two years later—due in part to its depiction of the teetotaler John D. Rockefeller Jr. sipping a martini."
— Adam Rathe, Town & Country, May 2018

Did You Know?
A person who abstains from alcohol might choose tea as his or her alternative beverage, but the word teetotaler has nothing to do with tea.
More likely, the "tee" that begins the word teetotal is a reduplication of the letter "t" that begins total, emphasizing that one has pledged total abstinence.
In the early 1800s, tee-total and tee-totally were used to intensify total and totally, much the way we now might say, "I'm tired with a capital T."
"I am now … wholly, solely, and teetotally absorbed in Wayne's business," wrote the folklorist Parson Weems in an 1807 letter.
Teetotal and teetotaler first appeared with their current meanings in 1834, eight years after the formation of the American Temperance Society.

Farouche

WORD OF THE DAY

farouche / adjective / fuh-ROOSH

Definition
1a: unruly or disorderly
1b: wild
2: marked by shyness and lack of social graces

Examples
"Though she wrote three 'novels' (more extended free associations than novels as we know them), she is best thought of as a poet of small, farouche poems illustrated with doodles…."
— Rosemary Dinnage, The New York Review of Books, 25 June 1987

"Jeremy Irons's natural mode as an actor is fastidious rather than farouche, but he perfectly captures James Tyrone's professional extravagance and personal meanness."
— Michael Arditti, The Sunday Express, 11 Feb. 2018

Did You Know?
In French, farouche can mean "wild" or "shy," just as it does in English.
It is an alteration of the Old French word forasche, which derives via Late Latin forasticus ("living outside") from Latin foras, meaning "outdoors."
In its earliest English uses, in the middle of the 18th century, farouche was used to describe someone who was awkward in social situations, perhaps as one who has lived apart from groups of people.
The word can also mean "disorderly," as in "farouche ruffians out to cause trouble."

Nomothetic

WORD OF THE DAY

nomothetic / adjective / nah-muh-THET-ik

Definition
: relating to, involving, or dealing with abstract, general, or universal statements or laws

Examples
"Moreover, there is the often-incorrect assumption that crimes and offenders are sufficiently similar to be lumped together for aggregate study. In such cases the resulting nomothetic knowledge is not just diluted, it is inaccurate and ultimately misleading."
— Brent E. Turvey, Criminal Profiling, 2011

"First, they can expect to find an investigation of the ways in which males and females differ universally: that is, of the nomothetic principles grounded in biology and evolutionary psychology that govern sex-differentiated human development."
— Frank Dumont, A History of Personality Psychology, 2010

Did You Know?
Nomothetic is often contrasted with idiographic, a word meaning "relating to or dealing with something concrete, individual, or unique."
Where idiographic points to the specific and unique, nomothetic points to the general and consistent. The immediate Greek parent of nomothetic is a word meaning "of legislation"; the word has its roots in nomos, meaning "law," and -thetēs, meaning "one who establishes."
Nomos has played a part in the histories of words as varied as metronome, autonomous, and Deuteronomy.
The English contributions of -thetēs are meager, but -thetēs itself comes from tithenai, meaning "to put," and tithenai is the ancestor of many common words ending in -thesis—hypothesis, parenthesis, prosthesis, synthesis, and thesis itself—as well as theme, epithet, and apothecary.

Liaison

WORD OF THE DAY

liaison / noun / LEE-uh-zahn

Definition

1: a binding or thickening agent used in cooking

2a: a close bond or connection 

2b: interrelationship

2c: an illicit sexual relationship 

2d: affair

3a: communication for establishing and maintaining mutual understanding and cooperation (as between parts of an armed force)

3b: a person who establishes and maintains communication for mutual understanding and cooperation

4: the pronunciation of an otherwise absent consonant sound at the end of the first of two consecutive words the second of which begins with a vowel sound and follows without pause

Examples

"Brennan and Alejandro Castro agreed on a series of steps to build confidence. One called for the Cubans to post an officer in Washington to act as a formal liaison between the two countries' intelligence agencies." 

— Adam Entous, The New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2018

"… the book offers vignettes that describe Smith's childhood as the youngest of seven Irish-American kids in Chicago; his sister's short liaison with a married British man who shared the surname Smith; and a panicked hashish trip in Amsterdam." 

— Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?

If you took French in school, you might remember that liaison is the term for the phenomenon that causes a silent consonant at the end of one word to sound like it begins the next word when that word begins with a vowel, so that a phrase like beaux arts sounds like \boh zahr\. We can thank French for the origin of the term, as well. 

Liaison derives from the Middle French lier, meaning "to bind or tie," and is related to our word liable. 

Our various English senses of liaison apply it to all kinds of bonds—from people who work to connect different groups to the kind of relationship sometimes entered into by two people who are attracted to one another.

Mea Culpa

WORD (Phrase!) OF THE DAY
mea culpa / noun / may-uh-KOOL-puh

Definition
: a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error

Examples
The mayor's public mea culpa for his involvement in the scandal didn't satisfy his critics.

"The internal investigation ended with a mea culpa from the sheriff's department and a reprimand and reassignment for a deputy overseeing the property room."
— Allie Morris, The Houston Chronicle, 15 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
Mea culpa, which means "through my fault" in Latin, comes from a prayer of confession in the Catholic Church. Said by itself, it's an exclamation of apology or remorse that is used to mean "It was my fault" or "I apologize."
Mea culpa is also a noun, however. A newspaper might issue a mea culpa for printing inaccurate information, or a politician might give a speech making mea culpas for past wrongdoings.
Mea culpa is one of many English terms that derive from the Latin culpa, meaning "guilt." Some other examples are culpable ("meriting condemnation or blame especially as wrong or harmful"), culprit ("one guilty of a crime or a fault"), and exculpate ("to clear from alleged fault or guilt").

Syllogism

WORD OF THE DAY

syllogism / noun / SIL-uh-jiz-um 

Definition
1: a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion
2: a subtle, specious, or crafty argument
3: deductive reasoning

Examples
"Plato's pupil Aristotle developed the techniques of logical analysis that still enable us to get at the knowledge hidden within us. He examined propositions by stating possible contradictions and developed the syllogism, a method of proof based on stated premises." 
— Mary Lefkowitz, The New York Times Book Review, 23 Jan. 2000

"In some states … there are calls to eliminate courses in literature, philosophy, history and other fields of the humanities. Students want and need technical, employable skills, not sonnets or syllogisms, it is said." 
— Scott D. Miller, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Virginia), 3 June 2018

Did You Know?
For those trained in formal argument, the syllogism is a classical form of deduction, specifically an argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion. 
One example is the inference that "kindness is praiseworthy" from the premises "every virtue is praiseworthy" and "kindness is a virtue." 
Syllogism came to English through Anglo-French from Latin syllogismus, which in turn can be traced back to the Greek verb syllogizesthai, meaning "to infer." 
In Greek logizesthai means "to calculate" and derives from logos, meaning "word" or "reckoning." Syl- comes from syn-, meaning "with" or "together."

Venal

WORD OF THE DAY

venal / adjective / VEE-nul

Definition
1a: capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration
1b: purchasable
1c: open to corrupt influence and especially bribery
1d: mercenary
2: originating in, characterized by, or associated with corrupt bribery

Examples
"We have to prove that our institutions are more important than our ideologies, that the dream, the whisper, the precious possibility of America cannot be trampled by the corrupt and the fraudulent, the venal and the lecherous."
— Charles M. Blow, The New York Times, 9 Dec. 2018

"He held combative press conferences outlining … corporate malpractice and passed along to journalists dossiers that described the way venal oligarchs engaged in asset stripping, wasteful spending, and share dilutions."
— Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 20 Aug. 2018

Did You Know?
If you are given the choice between acts that are venal and those that are venial, go for the venial. Although the two words look and sound alike, they have very different meanings and histories.
Venal demonstrates the adage that anything can be had if the price is high enough and the morals are low enough.
That word originated with the Latin venum, which simply referred to something that was sold or for sale. Some of those transactions must have been rather shady because by the mid-1600s, venal had gained the sense of corruption it carries today.
Venial sins, - versus cardinal! - on the other hand, are pardonable, the kind that show that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
That forgiving term descends from venia, Latin for "favor," "indulgence," or "pardon."

Behest

WORD OF THE DAY

behest / noun / bih-HEST

Definition
1a: an authoritative order
1b: command
2: an urgent prompting

Examples
"Let's be clear on this, in the case of a foreclosure sale, while you might not think of it as a 'sale' because it is not a voluntary action taken by the homeowner, but rather a forced action at the behest of the lender, for tax purposes a foreclosure is treated exactly the same as a voluntary sale by the buyer."
— Tony Nitti, Forbes, 19 Nov. 2018

"He is being detained at the behest of Japanese prosecutors after Nissan alleged that he had understated his earnings and misused company assets."
— The Economist, 24 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
Today's word first appeared in Old English and was formed from the prefix be- and the verb hātan ("to command" or "to promise").
While behest was originally used only in the sense of "promise," it acquired the additional sense of "command" among speakers of Middle English.
Among contemporary English speakers, behest is no longer used in the sense of "promise" but rather denotes an authoritative or urgent request or command.
Old English hātan also gave English the now-archaic words hest (meaning "command") and hight ("being called or named").

Malinger

WORD OF THE DAY

malinger / verb / muh-LING-gur

Definition

: to pretend or exaggerate incapacity or illness (as to avoid duty or work)

Examples

Sarah's prospects for promotion aren't helped by her well-known tendency to malinger.

"[Writer Jaroslav] Hašek's meandering, unfinished comedy tells the story of a dog thief turned soldier, who blusters, pranks and malingers his way through the early days of the war." 

— Daniel Mason, The Guardian (London), 14 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?

Do you know someone who always seems to develop an ailment when there's work to be done? Someone who merits an Academy Award for his or her superb simulation of symptoms? Then you know a malingerer. 

The verb malinger comes from the French word malingre, meaning "sickly," and one who malingers feigns illness. In its earliest uses in the early 19th century, malinger usually referred to a soldier or sailor pretending to be sick or insane to shirk duty. 

Later, psychologists began using malingering as a clinical term to describe the feigning of illness in avoidance of a duty or for personal gain. Today, malinger is used in just about any context in which someone fakes sickness or injury to get out of an undesirable task.

Demotic

WORD OF THE DAY

demotic / adjective / dih-MAH-tik

Definition
1: of, relating to, or written in a simplified form of the ancient Egyptian hieratic writing
2a: of or relating to people and especially their speech
2b: popular, common
3: of or relating to the form of Modern Greek that is based on everyday speech

Examples
"[The Rosetta Stone] features three columns of the same inscription in three languages: Greek, hieroglyphs and demotic Egyptian—and is the text of a decree written by priests in 196 BC, during the reign of pharaoh Ptolemy V."
— Ashley Lime, BBC.com, 23 Nov. 2018

"When it came time to make her own wine …, she continued taking the natural path, bent earnestly to the task of revitalizing California winemaking with a demotic, punk-rock spirit."
— Jeff Gordinier et al., Esquire, 25 Apr. 2017

Did You Know?
You may recognize the root of demotic from words like democracy and demography. The source of these words is the Greek word dēmos, meaning "people."
Demotic is often used of everyday forms of language (as opposed to literary or highbrow versions). It entered English in the early 1800s and originally designated a form of ancient Egyptian cursive script which by the 5th century BCE had come into use everywhere in Egypt for business and literary purposes (in contrast to the more complex, hieratic script retained by the clergy).
Demotic has a newer specialized sense, as well, referring to a form of Modern Greek that is based on everyday speech and that since 1976 has been the official language of Greece.

Abominable

WORD OF THE DAY

abominable / adjective / uh-BAH-muh-nuh-bul

Definition

1a: (formal) worthy of or causing disgust or hatred 

1b: detestable

2: very bad or unpleasant

Examples

The children were informed that they had lost all television and computer privileges for a week because of their abominable treatment of the babysitter.

"In the original [movie "Overboard"], Goldie Hawn … stars as a spoiled, insufferable heiress who hires carpenter [Kurt] Russell to remodel a closet on her yacht. She's abominable to him at every turn, refuses to pay him and eventually pushes him off the ship." 

— Jeanne Jakle, The San Antonio Express News, 3 May 2018

Did You Know?

The tendency to hate evil omens is a vital part of the history of abominable. The word descends from the Latin verb abominari, which means "to deprecate as an ill omen" or "to detest"; abominari itself comes from ab- plus omin- ("from an omen"). 

When English speakers adopted abominable in the 14th century, they used it to express their disgust over evil or truly detestable things—and for 500 years that's the way things stood. In the 17th century, the word's meaning moderated, so that Scottish novelist William Black could write in A Princess of Thule (1873), "Sheila had nothing to do with the introduction of this abominable decoration." 

Other descendants of abominari are abominate ("to hate or loathe intensely") and abomination ("something odious or detestable").

Rapporteur

WORD OF THE DAY

rapporteur / noun / ra-por-TER

Definition
: a person who gives reports (as at a meeting of a learned society)

Examples
"The rapporteur was particularly scathing about bungled efforts to streamline the way welfare payments are made to individual recipients after delays in a shift to a new system … led thousands of people to fall into poverty."
— Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times, 16 Nov. 2018

"It's appropriate that the U.N. special rapporteur devoted to adequate housing has visited encampments in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai—and San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley."
— Rich Lowry, The National Review, 6 Nov. 2018

Did You Know?
Rapporteur was adopted into English in the 16th century and is a descendant of the Middle French verb rapporter, meaning "to bring back, report, or refer."
Other descendants of rapporter in English include rapportage (a rare synonym of reportage, in the sense of "writing intended to give an account of observed or documented events") and rapport ("a harmonious relationship," as in "The young teacher had a good rapport with the students").
The words report, reporter, reportage, etc., are also distant relatives of rapporteur; all can ultimately be traced back to the Latin prefix re-, meaning "back, again, or against," and the Latin word portare, meaning "to carry."

Campestral

WORD OF THE DAY

campestral / adjective /  kam-PESS-trul

Definition

1: of or relating to fields or open country 

2: rural

Examples

"Just about any amateur naturalist who pays attention to the birds … in campestral Maine will find an eye-opener or two here." 

— Dana Wilde, The Bangor (Maine) Daily News, 26 Oct. 2009

"When in Southeast England, depriving yourself of a chance to see Dover's famous white cliffs would be a big mistake. And so the towering chalk cliffs … were on my agenda when I embarked on a brief driving tour of the coast. I was able to thoroughly enjoy the region's rolling, campestral beauty in a three-town tour." 

— Lucas Peterson, The New York Times, 26 Jul. 2017

Did You Know?

Scamper across an open field, and then, while catching your breath, ponder this: scamper and campestral both ultimately derive from the Latin noun campus, meaning "field" or "plain." 

Latin campester is the adjective that means "pertaining to a campus." In ancient Rome, a campus was a place for games, athletic practice, and military drills. Scamper probably started with a military association as well (it is assumed to have evolved from an unattested Vulgar Latin verb, excampare, meaning "to decamp"). 

In English, campestral took on an exclusively rural aspect upon its introduction in the late 17th century, while campus, you might say, became mainly academic.

Obdurate

WORD OF THE DAY

obdurate / adjective / AHB-duh-rut

Definition

1a: stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing

1b: hardened in feelings

2: resistant to persuasion or softening influences

Examples

Obdurate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have made it difficult for the state legislature to get anything done this term.

"The emigrants were strong-willed and obdurate. Their dreams were based as much on imagination as on the writings and maps of land speculators and entrepreneurs." 

— Edward Cuddihy, The Buffalo (New York) News, 1 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?

When you are confronted with someone obdurate, you may end up feeling dour. During the encounter, you may find that you need to be durable to keep your sanity intact. 

Maybe you will find such situations less stressful in the future if you can face them knowing that the words obdurate, dour, and durable are etymological kissing cousins. All of those words trace back to the Latin adjective durus, which means "hard." 

This adjective can still be found in dura mater, the name for the tough fibrous material that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, which comes from a Medieval Latin phrase meaning, literally, "hard mother."