Mutt

WORD OF THE DAY

mutt / noun / MUT

Definition

1a: a stupid or insignificant person 

1b: fool

2a: a mongrel dog 

2b: cur

Examples

Our family's new dog is an affable, shaggy-haired mutt who is a delight to anyone who visits our home.

"I worried that my new acquisition was unexceptional: a mutt on the small side of medium with a shiny black coat, an extra-long nose and ears that stick out at the angle of bat wings in flight. I fell in love at obedience class, where he demonstrated what I took for a drive to excel." 

— Nora Caplan-Bricker, The New York Times Magazine, 17 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?

Mutt can now be used with either affection or disdain to refer to a dog that is not purebred, but in the word's early history, in the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century, it could also be used to describe a person—and not kindly: mutt was another word for "fool." 

The word's history lies in another insult. It comes from muttonhead, another Americanism that also means essentially "fool." 

Muttonhead had been around since the early 19th century but it was not unlike an older insult with the same meaning: people had been calling one another "sheep's heads" since the mid-16th century.

Comestible

WORD OF THE DAY

comestible / adjective /  kuh-MESS-tuh-bul

Definition

1: edible

Examples

"After all the figs have fully ripened on our farm…, we'll start collecting grapes if the birds haven't nabbed them first and then comes the olive harvest, our most precious comestible commodity." 

7

"My kids eat Spam because I ate it, and I eat it because my mother ate it: two generations and counting of comestible nostalgia, a sort of legacy." 

— Sabina Murray, The New York Times, 6 Aug. 2019

Did You Know?

Did you expect comestible to be a noun meaning "food"? You're probably not alone. 

As it happens, comestible is used both as an adjective and a noun. The adjective is by far the older of the two; it has been part of English since at least the 1400s. In fact, one of its earliest known uses was in a text printed in 1483 by William Caxton, the man who established England's first printing press. 

The noun (which is most often used in the plural form comestibles) dates to the late 1700s.

Fawn

WORD OF THE DAY

fawn / verb / FAWN

Definition

1 : to court favor by a cringing or flattering manner

2 : to show affection — used especially of a dog

Examples

"Like tech C.E.O.s today, Edison attracted an enormous following, both because his inventions fundamentally altered the texture of daily life and because he nurtured a media scrum that fawned over every inch of his laboratory and fixated on every minute of his day." 

— Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 28 Oct. 2019

"I had planned to dislike Remo, the acting professor whose Chekhov class I took last spring. I had planned to feel this way because all the theater people I knew who took his classes fawned over him in a way that drove me nuts." 

— Eliya O. Smith, The Harvard Crimson, 10 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?

Some people will be glad to learn the origins of fawn—and there's a hint about the word's etymology in that declaration. 

Middle English speakers adapted an Old English word meaning "to rejoice" to create the verb faunen, which shifted in spelling over time to become fawn. 

That Old English word, in turn, derives from fagan, meaning "glad." Fagan is also an ancestor of the English adjective fain, whose earliest (now obsolete) meaning is "happy" or "pleased." 

This fawn is not, however, related to the noun fawn, referring to a young deer. For that we can thank the Latin noun fetus, meaning "offspring."

Retinue

WORD OF THE DAY

retinue / noun / RET-uh-noo

Definition
: a group of retainers or attendants

Examples
"The Handkerchief Prince was trailed by a retinue of 40 or so Japanese media members, complete with satellite trucks."
— Anthony Rieber, Newsday, 29 Mar. 2014

"Russian mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova, as the duchess who fully expects to marry Rodolfo, enjoyed the Entrance of Entrances, high on the statue of a horse, dressed in royal

Did You Know?
Retinue derives via Middle English from the Anglo-French verb retenir, meaning "to retain." Another word deriving from retenir is retainer, which means, among other things, "one who serves a person of high position or rank."
In the 14th century, that high person of rank was usually a noble or a royal of some kind, and retinue referred to that person's collection of servants and companions.
Nowadays, the word is often used with a bit of exaggeration to refer to the assistants, guards, publicists, and other people who accompany an actor or other high-profile individual in public.
You might also hear such a collection called a suite or entourage, two other words derived from French.

Sempiternal

WORD OF THE DAY

sempiternal / adjective / sem-pih-TER-nul

Definition
1a: of never-ending duration
1b: eternal

Examples
"For those who don't ride public transit and for most of their adulthoods travel via automobile between a few tightly curated situations ... Bourbon Street's sempiternal carnival gives them unmediated contact with all sorts of people they might not otherwise encounter."
— Jules Bentley, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), 20 Aug. 2018

"But by Page 10, I knew I'd never read 'Moby-Dick.' The novel—if you can call such an idiosyncratic book by any generic name—hit me like a storm out of nowhere. It contained a wild deluge of thoughts and ideas and sempiternal images."
— Amy Wilentz, The Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2011

Did You Know?
Despite their similarities, sempiternal and eternal come from different roots.
Sempiternal is derived from the Late Latin sempiternalis and ultimately from semper, Latin for "always." (You may recognize semper as a key element in the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps: semper fidelis, meaning "always faithful.")
Eternal, on the other hand, is derived, by way of Middle French and Middle English, from the Late Latin aeternalis and ultimately from aevum, Latin for "age" or "eternity."
Sempiternal is much less common than eternal, but some writers have found it useful. 19th-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, wrote, "The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, … to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why…."

Heterodox

WORD OF THE DAY

heterodox / adjective /HET-uh-ruh-dahks

Definition
1a: contrary to or different from an acknowledged standard, a traditional form, or an established religion
1b: unorthodox, unconventional
2 : holding unorthodox opinions or doctrines

Examples
"His heterodox moves have been the ones requiring most careful explanation on social media. He bucks his party in not voting for measures he supports … because he disagrees with the underlying legislative approach."
— Isaac Stanley-Becker and Felicia Sonmez, The Washington Post, 20 May 2019

"Why, you're ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that only means that you're ashamed to have heterodox opinions."
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

Did You Know?
It's true: individuals often see other people's ideas as unconventional while regarding their own as beyond reproach.
The antonyms orthodox and heterodox developed from the same root, Greek doxa, which means "opinion."
Heterodox derives from doxa plus heter-, a combining form meaning "other" or "different"; orthodox pairs doxa with orth-, meaning "correct" or "straight."

Fortitude

WORD OF THE DAY

fortitude / noun / FOR-tuh-tood

Definition
: strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage

Examples
"She showed fortitude in 2013, when the restaurant, known for its cheery pink exterior, had a major fire. The taqueria soon reopened with a new, brick exterior and the same great food, and Perez said business is better than ever."
— Cassidy McDonald, The Wisconsin State Journal, 22 Sept. 2015

"… Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow.  There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance."
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Did You Know?
Fortitude comes from the Latin word fortis, meaning "strong," and in English it has always been used primarily to describe strength of mind.
For a time, the word was also used to mean "physical strength"; William Shakespeare used that sense in Henry VI, Part 1:
"Coward of France! How much he wrongs his fame /
Despairing of his own arm's fortitude."
But despite use by the Bard, that second sense languished and is now considered obsolete.

Expedite

WORD OF THE DAY

expedite / verb / EK-spuh-dyte

Definition
1a: to accelerate the process or progress of
1b: speed up
2: to execute promptly
3: issue, dispatch

Examples
To expedite the processing of your request, please include your account number on all documents.

"The task force stemmed from an executive order issued earlier this year by Gov. Ron DeSantis that said the state should expedite work on water quality problems across the Sunshine State over the next five years."
— Chad Gillis, The News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida), 8 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?
If you're really intent on expediting something, you jump in with both feet—or place a single foot where it will be most effective!
And when you do, you're drawing on the etymology of expedite itself. The word comes from the Latin verb expedire ("to extricate, prepare, be useful"), a word that traces back to the root ped- or pes, meaning "foot."
Expedite has been used in English since at least the 15th century.

Recondite

WORD OF THE DAY

recondite / adjective / REK-un-dyte

Definition
1a : difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend
1b: deep
2: of, relating to, or dealing with something little known or obscure
3a: hidden from sight
3b: concealed

Examples
"Ocampo (1903-1993) is a legend of Argentinian literature, and this collection of her short stories brings some of her most recondite and mysterious works to the English-speaking world."
— Publisher's Weekly Review, 25 June 2019

"Deforestation, desertification, and sea-level rise are topographic, horizontal crises of land-clearing, creeping dunes, and saltwater surges. The realm of rocks, by contrast, seems too motionless and too recondite to be shaped by unnatural shifts above."
— Rebecca Giggs, The Atlantic, July 2019

Did You Know?
While the adjective recondite may be used to describe something difficult to understand, there is nothing recondite about the word's history. It dates to the early 1600's, when it was coined from the synonymous Latin word reconditus.
Recondite is one of those underused but useful words that's always a boon to one's vocabulary, but take off the re- and you get something very obscure: condite is an obsolete verb meaning both "to pickle or preserve" and "to embalm."
If we add the prefix in- to condite we get incondite, which means "badly put together," as in "incondite prose."
All three words have Latin condere at their root; that verb is translated variously as "to put or bring together," "to put up, store," and "to conceal."

Carouse

WORD OF THE DAY

carouse / verb / kuh-ROWZ ("OW" as in 'cow')

Definition
1: to drink liquor freely or excessively
2a: to take part in a drunken revel
2b: engage in dissolute behavior

Examples
Each fall the campus newspaper runs an editorial urging students to recognize that studying and getting involved in official campus activities benefits them far more than carousing does.

"Maroon leather chairs still line the high-ceilinged reading room where once area businessmen in white shirts and ties repaired to enjoy a Scotch and a fine cigar. And a grand staircase still leads to the basement, where members caroused around a four-lane bowling alley."
— Tom Mooney, The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, 29 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?
Sixteenth-century English revelers toasting each other's health sometimes drank a brimming mug of spirits straight to the bottom—drinking "all-out," they called it.
German tipplers did the same and used the German expression for "all out"—gar aus.
The French adopted the German term as carous, using the adverb in their expression boire carous ("to drink all out"), and that phrase, with its idiomatic sense of "to empty the cup," led to carrousse, a French noun meaning "a large draft of liquor."
And that's where English speakers picked up carouse in the 1500's, first as a noun (which later took on the sense of a general "drunken revel"), and then as a verb meaning "to drink freely."

Teleological

WORD OF THE DAY

teleological / adjective / tel-ee-uh-LAH-jih-kul

Definition
: exhibiting or relating to design or purpose especially in nature

Examples
"The standard story about mass printing is a story of linear, teleological progress. It goes like this: Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, books were precious objects, handwritten by scribes and available primarily in Latin. Common people … were left vulnerable to exploitation by powerful gatekeepers—landed élites, oligarchs of church and state—who could use their monopoly on knowledge to repress the masses. After Gutenberg, books became widely available, setting off a cascade of salutary movements and innovations…."
— Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 23 Sept. 2019

"A team of psychology researchers at Boston University (BU) asked chemists, geologists and physicists … to evaluate explanations for different natural phenomena. The statements included purpose-based (or teleological) explanations such as 'Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe,' or 'The Earth has an ozone layer in order to protect it from UV light.' Scientists who were not under time pressure tended to accurately reject these purpose-based explanations. Meanwhile, scientists who were instructed to assess the statements quickly were more likely to endorse these teleological explanations…."
— Live Science, 29 Oct. 2012

Did You Know?
Teleological (which comes to us, by way of New Latin, from the Greek root tele-, telos, meaning "end or purpose") and its close relative teleology both entered English in the 18th century, followed by teleologist in the 19th century.
Teleology has the basic meaning of "the study of ends or purposes." A teleologist attempts to understand the purpose of something by looking at its results.
A teleological philosopher might argue that we should judge whether an act is good or bad by seeing if it produces a good or bad result, and a teleological explanation of evolutionary changes claims that all such changes occur for a definite purpose.

Incongruous

WORD OF THE DAY

incongruous / adjective / in-KAHN-gruh-

PrevNext
Definition
1: lacking congruity
1a: not harmonious
1b: incompatible
1c: not conforming
1d: disagreeing
1c: inconsistent within itself
1d: lacking propriety
1e: unsuitable

Examples
The sight of a horse and carriage amongst the cars on the road was a bit incongruous.

"The gunplay scene was so incongruous with the rest of the film that one wonders if [director Michael] Engler added the assassination storyline to simply beef up the movie's runtime."
— John Vaaler, The Middlebury (Vermont) Campus, 3 Oct. 2019


Did You Know?
Incongruous is a spin-off of its antonym, congruous, which means "in agreement, harmony, or correspondence."
Etymologists are in agreement about the origin of both words: they trace to the Latin congruus, from the verb congruere, which means "to come together" or "to agree."
The dates of these words' first uses in English match up pretty well, too. Both words are first known to have appeared in English in the early 1580s.

Gambit

WORD OF THE DA Y

gambit / noun / GAM-bit

Definition
1: a chess opening in which a player risks one or more pawns or a minor piece to gain an advantage in position
2a: a remark intended to start a conversation or make a telling point 
2b: topic
3a : a calculated move
3b: stratagem

Examples
"The tournament, first held in 1934, was Roberts's gambit for attracting attention, members, and money. He persuaded Jones to come out of retirement to compete in it—an instant lure to fans and players alike—but at first Jones wouldn't agree to calling it the Masters, finding the word too grandiose."
— Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 24 June 2019

"Obviously, most suspense novels rely on keeping the reader in the dark about something. But a big, glaring omission in what is presented as first-person interior monologue—as if the person is redacting their own thoughts—is one of the least impressive gambits."
— The Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2019

Did You Know?
In 1656, a chess handbook was published that was said to have almost a hundred illustrated gambetts. That early spelling of gambit is close to the Italian word gambetto, from which it is derived.
Gambetto, which is from gamba, meaning "leg," was used for an act of tripping—especially one that gave an advantage, as in wrestling.
The original chess gambit is an opening in which a bishop's pawn is sacrificed to gain some advantage, but the name is now applied to many other chess openings.
After being pinned down to chess for years, gambit finally broke free of the hold and showed itself to be a legitimate contender in the English language by weighing in with other meanings.

Bruit

WORD OF THE DAY

bruit / verb / BROOT

Definition
: report, rumor — usually used with about

Examples
"Analysts have bruited about the notion that Comcast and Disney might team up and divide Fox's assets to prevent a drawn-out bidding war—a turn of events that Mr. Iger has dismissed."
— Edmund Lee, The New York Times, 20 June 2018

"In the new bio-pic 'Judy,' Renée Zellweger stars as Judy Garland…. The narrowly focussed yet emotionally expansive film has been bruited about as a likely springboard for a statuette for its lead actress ever since the movie's première, last month, at the Telluride Film Festival."
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2019

Did You Know?
Back in the days of Middle English, the Anglo-French noun bruit, meaning "clamor" or "noise," rattled into English. Soon English speakers were also using it to mean "report" or "rumor" (it was applied especially to favorable reports).
They also began using bruit the way the verb noise was used (and still occasionally is) with the meaning "to spread by rumor or report" (as in "The scandal was quickly noised about").
The English noun bruit is now considered archaic, apart from a medical sense that is pronounced like the French word and refers to one of the abnormal sounds heard on auscultation.

Armistice

WORD OF THE DAY

armistice / noun / AHR-muh-stus

Definition
1: temporary stopping of open acts of warfare by agreement between the opponents
2: truce

Examples
The Korean War ended with an armistice signed in July of 1953, though a permanent peace accord was never reached.

"[Ralph] Bunche, a Howard University professor, was an African-American scholar and diplomat who achieved prominence in 1949 after negotiating armistice agreements between Israel and four Arab states, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
— Richard Freedman, The Vallejo (California) Times-Herald, 24 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?
Armistice descends from Latin sistere, meaning "to come to a stand" or "to cause to stand or stop," combined with arma, meaning "weapons."
An armistice, therefore, is literally a cessation of arms. Armistice Day is the name that was given to the holiday celebrated in the United States on November 11 before it was renamed Veterans Day by Congress in 1954.
The original name refers to the agreement between the Allied Powers and Germany to end hostilities that constituted the First World War—an agreement designated to take effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Lyric

WORD OF THE DAY

lyric /adjective / LEER-ik

Definition
1a: suitable for singing to the lyre or for being set to music and sung
1b: of, relating to, or being drama set to music
1c: operatic
2a : expressing direct usually intense personal emotion especially in a manner suggestive of song
2b: exuberant, rhapsodic
3 (of an opera singer): having a light voice and a melodic style

Examples
Critics are praising the novel as a lyric masterpiece that bravely lays out the emotional tensions experienced by its young protagonist.

"Norgren's encores were dazzling, as the cosmic cowboy tune 'The Power' combined psychedelic guitar lines and his headlong rush of lyric imagery careening into the chorus…."
— Jay N. Miller, The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, Massachusetts), 29 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?
To the ancient Greeks, anything lyrikos was appropriate to the lyre. That elegant stringed instrument was highly regarded by the Greeks and was used to accompany intensely personal poetry that revealed the thoughts and feelings of the poet.
When the adjective lyric, a descendant of lyrikos, was adopted into English in the 1500s, it too referred to things pertaining or adapted to the lyre.
Initially, it was applied to poetic forms (such as elegies, odes, or sonnets) that express strong emotion, to poets who write such works, or to things meant to be sung.
Over time, it was extended to anything musical or rhapsodic.
Nowadays, lyric is also used as a noun naming either a type of poem or the words of a song.

Espouse

WORD OF THE DAY

espouse / verb / ih-SPOWZ

Definition
1: marry
2a: to take up and support as a cause
2b: become attached to

Examples
"Tradition associates [the period of the Lyrid meteor showers] with the Chinese teacher and philosopher Confucius, one of the first to espouse the principle: 'Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.'"
— The Telegraph (UK), 10 Oct. 2019

"The beloved musical [Fiddler on the Roof] was revived entirely in Yiddish…. Directed by Oscar and Tony Award-winner Joel Grey, the timeless show captures the strength of Jewish people and their traditions, while espousing universal themes of love, belonging and community."
— Madeleine Fernando, Billboard.com, 3 May 2019

Did You Know?
As you might guess, the words espouse and spouse are related, both deriving from the Latin verb spondēre, meaning "to promise" or "to betroth."
In fact, the two were once completely interchangeable, with each serving as a noun meaning "a newly married person" or "a husband or wife" and also as a verb meaning "to marry."
Their semantic separation began in the 18th century, when the noun espouse fell out of use. Nowadays, espouse is most often seen or heard as a verb used in the figuratively extended sense "to commit to and support as a cause."
Spouse continued to be used in both noun and verb forms until the 20th century, when its verb use declined and it came to be used mainly as a noun meaning "husband or wife."

Chilblain

WORD OF THE DAY

chilblain / noun / CHIL-blayn

Definition
: an inflammatory swelling or sore caused by exposure (as of the feet or hands) to cold

Examples
"If you thought chilblains only belonged in 19th century novels, think again. They crop up in response to extreme cold…. You're more likely to get chilblains in extreme weather through sitting in an under-heated house or working in a chilly office than walking through sub-zero temperatures outside."
— JR Thorpe, Bustle, 7 Feb. 2019

"Mrs. Goddard's school was in high repute…; she had an ample house and garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands."
— Jane Austen, Emma, 1815

Did You Know?
Given that chilblains are caused by exposure to cold conditions, it may not surprise you to know that the first element of this word comes from the noun chill.
The second element, blain, may be less familiar, though the word blain ("an inflammatory swelling or sore") is still used by English speakers. Both elements of chilblain have Anglo-Saxon roots.
Chill comes from Old English ciele ("frost" or "chill"), which is akin to ceald, an Old English ancestor of the modern cold.
Blain comes from Old English blegen (of the same meaning as blain). These two words were first brought together (as the compound chyll blayne) in the 1500s.

Posthaste

WORD OF THE DAY

posthaste / adverb / POHST-HAYST

Definition
: with all possible speed

Examples
"You must leave posthaste," Virginia theatrically admonished her guests, "or you'll miss your ferry!"

"These goats show almost nothing of the skittishness that we tend to expect of wild, hoofed mammals such as deer and elk, which almost always flee posthaste the instant they see a person (or, often as not, given the sensitivity of their senses, they smell or hear one)."
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City (Oregon) Herald, 9 Aug. 2019

Did You Know?
In the 16th century, the phrase "haste, post, haste" was used to inform posts (as couriers were then called) that a letter was urgent and must be hastily delivered.
Posts would then speedily gallop along a route with a series of places at which to get a fresh horse or to relay the letter to a fresh messenger. William Shakespeare was one of the first to use a version of the phrase adverbially in Richard II.
"Old John of Gaunt ... hath sent post haste
To entreat your Majesty to visit him,"
the Bard versified. He also used the phrase as an adjective (a use that is now obsolete) in Othello: "The Duke ... requires your haste-post-haste appearance," Lieutenant Cassio reports to the play's namesake.
Today, the word still possesses a literary flair attributable to the Bard.

Sobriquet

WORD OF THE DAY

sobriquet / noun / SOH-brih-kay

Definition
1: a descriptive name or epithet
2: nickname

Examples
"As a member of Congress, he voted against so many bills that he earned the 'Dr. No' sobriquet…."
— Ben Terris, The Washington Post, 3 Sept. 2019

"[H]e had a rather flightly and dissolute mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate friends he was better known by the sobriquet of 'The Artful Dodger'…."
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1839

Did You Know?
This synonym of nickname has the same meaning in modern French as it does in English. In Middle French, however, its earlier incarnation soubriquet referred to both a nickname and a tap under the chin.
Centuries later, the connection between these two meanings isn't clear, but what is clear is that the "nickname" meaning of sobriquet was well established in French by the time English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th century—and was the only meaning that was adopted.
In current English, the spelling sobriquet is most common, but soubriquet is also an accepted variant.

Apocryphal

Word of the Day : November 1, 2019

apocryphal / adjective / uh-PAH-kruh-ful

Definition

1a: of doubtful authenticity 

1b: spurious

2 often capitalized Apocryphal : of or resembling the Apocrypha

Examples

"The first official sighting of the creature dates from 1912, although apocryphal stories have the monster overturning the canoe of a Quapaw Indian and sinking a Confederate gunboat during the Civil War." 

— Scott Liles, The Baxter Bulletin (Mountain Home, Arkansas), 28 Aug. 2019

"In the chapter on cetology, we have to plow through a dozen pages of whale species, some of them possibly apocryphal, before we get to the payoff, a motto for freelance writers: 'Oh Time, Strength, Cash and Patience!'" 

— Mary Norris, The New York Times, 26 June 2019

Did You Know?

In Bible study, the term Apocrypha refers to sections of the Bible that are not sanctioned as belonging to certain official canons. In some Protestant versions, these sections appear between the Old and New Testaments. More generally, the word refers to writings or statements whose purported origin is in doubt. 

Consequently, the adjective apocryphal describes things like legends and anecdotes that are purported to be true by way of repeated tellings but that have never been proven or verified and, therefore, most likely are not factual. 

Both apocrypha and apocryphal derive, via Latin, from the Greek verbal adjective apokrýptein, meaning "to hide (from), keep hidden (from)," from krýptein ("to conceal, hide").