Coax

WORD OF THE DAY

coax / verb / KOHKS

Definition
1a: to influence or gently urge by caressing or flattering
1b: wheedle
2: to draw, gain, or persuade by means of gentle urging or flattery
3: to manipulate with great perseverance and usually with considerable effort toward a desired state or activity

Examples
"Toasting the pine nuts until they're properly golden brown to the center and not just on the surface is key in coaxing out maximum flavor."
— Molly Willett, Bon Appétit, December 2019/January 2020

"Recycling is still important, but it's not the whole answer to our problem with getting rid of 'stuff.' What we really need is to shut our eyes and ears to the advertising that coaxes us to buy more, and spend our money on only the things we really need."
— Dorothy Turcotte, The Grimsby Lincoln (Ontario) News, 6 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?
In the days of yore, if you made a "cokes" of someone, you made a fool of them. Cokes—a now-obsolete word for "fool"—is believed to be the source of the verb coax, which was first used in the 16th century (with the spelling cokes) to mean "to make a fool of." Soon, the verb also took on the kinder meaning of "to make a pet of." As might be expected, the act of "cokesing" was sometimes done for personal gain. By the 17th century, the word was being used in today's senses that refer to influencing or persuading people by kind acts or words. By the 19th century, the spelling cokes had fallen out of use, along with the meanings "to make a fool of" and "to make a pet of."

Trenchant

WORD OF THE DAY

trenchant / adjective / TREN-chunt

Definition
1: keen, sharp
2a: vigorously effective and articulate
2b: caustic
3a: sharply perceptive
3b: penetrating
3c: clear-cut, distinct

Examples
"Felix had a confident, gayly trenchant way of judging human actions which Mr. Wentworth grew little by little to envy; it seemed like criticism made easy."
— Henry James, The Europeans, 1878

"Whether you view it as a trenchant treatise on the contemporary effects of Marxism, or just a wonderfully odd glimpse into a fading star of the fashion industry, Celebration is at turns beguiling, fascinating, and true, which is what one should want and need out of a documentary."
— Josh Kupecki, The Austin Chronicle, 18 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?
The word trenchant comes from the Anglo-French verb trencher, meaning "to cut," and may ultimately derive from the Vulgar Latin trinicare, meaning "to cut in three."
Hence, a trenchant sword is one with a keen edge; a trenchant remark is one that cuts deep; and a trenchant observation is one that cuts to the heart of the matter.
Relatives of trenchant in English include the noun trench ("a long ditch cut into the ground") and the verb retrench ("to cut down or pare away" or "to cut down expenses").

Injunction

WORD OF THE DAY

injunction / noun / in-JUNK-shun

Definition
1a: the act or an instance of enjoining
1b: order, admonition
2: a court order requiring a party to do or refrain from doing a specified act

Examples
The family gathered in the room to hear the matriarch's dying injunctions.

"The Benton County district filed a lawsuit asking for the division of fees to be declared unconstitutional and seeking an injunction to have the disputed money held in escrow."
— Tom Sissom, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 22 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?
Injunction derives, via Anglo-French and Late Latin, from the Latin verb injungere, which in turn is based on jungere, meaning "to join."
Like our verb enjoin, injungere means "to direct or impose by authoritative order or with urgent admonition." (Not surprisingly, enjoin is also a descendant of injungere.)
Injunction has been around in English since at least the 15th century, when it began life as a word meaning "authoritative command."
In the 16th century, it developed a legal second sense applying to a court order. It has also been used as a synonym of conjunction, another jungere descendant meaning "union," but that sense is extremely rare.

Dissemble

WORD OF THE DAY

dissemble /verb / dih-SEM-bul

Definition
1: to hide under a false appearance
2a: to put on the appearance of
2b: simulate
3a: to put on a false appearance
3b: to conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense

Examples
"The front room of the gallery will feature the artist's new work presented in large scale and a salon style arrangement of miniature vignettes that dissemble various elements of his inhabited landscapes."
— The Register-Star (Hudson, New York), 14 Nov. 2019

"She nodded again, and her eyes closed. It was very pleasant to Darrow that she made no effort to talk or to dissemble her sleepiness. He sat watching her till the upper lashes met and mingled with the lower, and their blent shadow lay on her cheek; then he stood up and drew the curtain over the lamp, drowning the compartment in a bluish twilight."
— Edith Wharton, The Reef, 1912

Did You Know?
We don't have anything to hide: dissemble is a synonym of disguise, cloak, and mask.
Disguise implies a change in appearance or behavior that misleads by presenting a different apparent identity ("The prince disguised himself as a peasant").
Cloak suggests a means of hiding a movement or an intention ("The military operation was cloaked in secrecy").
Mask suggests some often obvious means of hiding or disguising something ("The customer smiled to mask her discontent").
Dissemble (from Latin dissimulare, meaning "to disguise or conceal") stresses the intent to deceive, especially about one's own thoughts or feelings, and often implies that the deception is something that would warrant censure if discovered.

Misbegotten

WORD OF THE DAY

misbegotten /adjective / miss-bih-GAH-tun

Definition
1a: unlawfully conceived
1b: illegitimate
2a: having a disreputable or improper origin
2b: ill-conceived
2c: contemptible, deformed

Examples
The city's misbegotten attempt to install new traffic signals at the busy intersection only caused greater confusion for motorists.

"Stillness fills the remaining six pictures. Paradoxically, each presents evidence of human activity: a harbor city, a partly constructed building, a garbage truck, a muddy road, a cat sitting curbside and a rusty engine from a military plane that crashed in 1942 and now rests in the landscape, like a misbegotten icon."
— David Pagel, The Los Angeles Times, 4 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?
In the beginning, there was the Old English begiten, and begiten begot the Middle English begotyn, and begotyn begot the modern English begotten, and from thence sprung misbegotten.
That description may be a bit flowery, but it accurately traces the path that led to misbegotten.
All of the Old English and Middle English ancestors listed above basically meant the same thing as the modern begotten, the past participle of beget, meaning "to father" or "to produce as an effect or outgrowth."
That linguistic line brought forth misbegotten by adding the prefix mis- (meaning "wrong," "bad," or "not") in the mid-1500s.

Numismatic

WORD OF THE DAY

numismatic /adjective / noo-muz-MAT-ik

Definition
1: of or relating to the study or collection of coins, tokens, and paper money
2a: of or relating to currency
2b: monetary

Examples
Andrew brought his father's collection of 19th-century coins to an antique dealer to find out if any were of numismatic value.

"Many a well-meaning metal detector enthusiast has taken aggressive measures to clean the old coins they unearth—including harsh scrubbing and abrasives like sandpaper. The coin may come out as bright and shiny as the day it was new, but its value can be destroyed in the process. Whatever the condition of the coin, it's probably better to consult with a local coin collectors' or numismatic group or experts before doing anything that can't be reversed."
— Mason Dockter, The Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, 30 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?
The first metal coins are believed to have been used as currency by the Lydians, a people of Asia Minor, during the 7th century B.C.E., and it is likely that folks began collecting coins not long after that.
The name that we give to the collection of coins today is numismatics, a word that also encompasses the collection of paper money and of medals.
The noun numismatics and the adjective numismatic came to English (via French numismatique) from Latin and Greek nomisma, meaning "coin."
Nomisma in turn derives from the Greek verb nomizein ("to use") and ultimately from the noun nomos ("custom" or "law").
From these roots we also get numismatist, referring to a person who collects coins, medals, or paper money.

Judgment (var. judgement)

WORD OF THE DAY

judgment /noun / JUJ-munt

Definition
1a: the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing
1b: an opinion or estimate so formed
2a: the capacity for judging : discernment
2b: the exercise of this capacity
3a: a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion
3b: an opinion so pronounced
4: a formal decision given by a court
5: a divine sentence or decision

Examples
Theresa showed good judgment by clearing her family out of the house as soon as she smelled gas.

"The March hotel-tax increase and a $900 million housing bond proposal on the November ballot await judgment from voters."
— Michael Smolens, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?
Judgment can also be spelled judgement, and usage experts have long disagreed over which spelling is the preferred one.
Henry Fowler asserted that "the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] prefers the older & more reasonable spelling. Judgement is therefore here recommended…."
William Safire held an opposite opinion, writing, "My judgment is that Fowler is not to be followed on his spelling of judgement."
Judgement is in fact the older spelling, but it dropped from favor and for centuries judgment was the only spelling to appear in dictionaries. That changed when the OED (Fowler's source) was published showing judgement as an equal variant.
Today, judgment is more popular in the U.S., whereas both spellings make a good showing in Britain.

Bootless

WORD OF THE DAY

bootless / adjective / BOOT-lus

Definition
: useless, unprofitable

Examples
"At the first glimpse of his approach, Don Benito had started, a resentful shadow swept over his face; and, as with the sudden memory of bootless rage, his white lips glued together."
— Herman Melville, Benito Cereno, 1855

"We were forced out of the car for the second time that day and hustled into a jeep, unable to see where we were going. It peeled out, turning left, then right, then right again, before pulling over to the other side of the road, in a bootless attempt to mask the location of their base."
— Simon Ostrovsky, Vice, 27 May 2014

Did You Know?
This sense of bootless has nothing to do with footwear. The "boot" in this case is an obsolete noun that meant "use" or "avail."
That boot descended from Old English bōt and is ultimately related to our modern word better, whose remote Germanic ancestor meant literally "of more use."
Of course, English does also see the occasional use of bootless to mean simply "lacking boots," as Anne Brontë used the word in Agnes Grey (1847): "And what would their parents think of me, if they saw or heard the children rioting, hatless, bonnetless, gloveless, and bootless, in the deep soft snow?"

Stipulate

WORD OF THE DAY

stipulate / verb / STIP-yuh-layt

Definition
1a: to make an agreement or covenant to do or forbear something
1b: contract
2: to demand an express term in an agreement
3: to specify as a condition or requirement (as of an agreement or offer)
4: to give a guarantee of

Examples
"The county charter stipulates that county council appoint four citizens—two from each of the major political parties—to the election board. Those four then select a fifth member, who may be of any political affiliation, to serve as chairperson."
— Eric Mark, The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), 9 Jan. 2020

"If Zendaya's grandfather inspired Rue's hoodie, it was her grandmother who inspired her second collection in collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger, Tommy x Zendaya.…  She was also motivated by the diversity of body types in her family tree to stipulate that the lines she works on also come in plus sizes…."
— Jessica Chia, Allure, 21 Nov. 2019

Did You Know?
Like many terms used in the legal profession, stipulate has its roots in Latin. It derives from stipulatus, the past participle of stipulari, a verb meaning "to demand a guarantee (from a prospective debtor)."
Stipulate has been a part of the English language since the 17th century. In Roman law, oral contracts were deemed valid only if they followed a proper question-and-answer format; stipulate was sometimes used specifically of this same process of contract making, though it also could be used more generally for any means of making a contract or agreement.
The "to specify as a condition or requirement" meaning of stipulate also dates to the 17th century, and is the sense of the word most often encountered in current use.

Probity

WORD OF THE DAY

probity /noun / PROH-buh-tee

Definition
1: adherence to the highest principles and ideals
2: uprightness

Examples
The tale of young George Washington's refusal to tell a lie after cutting down his father's cherry tree was told to us as grade schoolers to illustrate his probity.

"The schoolmaster was often the most trusted man in America's rural school districts. While some of his students might hold different opinions, the schoolmaster's probity, impartiality and wisdom were valued by the community."
— Dan Krieger, The San Luis Obispo (California) Tribune, 21 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?
Probity and its synonyms honesty, honor, and integrity all mean uprightness of character or action, with some slight differences in emphasis.
Honesty implies a refusal to lie or deceive in any way.
Honor suggests an active or anxious regard for the standards of one's profession, calling, or position. Integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge.
Probity, which descends from Latin probus, meaning "honest," implies tried and proven honesty or integrity.

Cupid

WORD OF THE DAY

Cupid / noun / KYOO-pid

Definition

1: the Roman god of erotic love

2 (not capitalized): a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow

Examples

I purchased a large Valentine's Day card decorated with hearts and cupids.

"St. Clair said the library won't actively purchase more cake pan designs but would welcome additional holiday-themed designs such as a Christmas tree, a jack o' lantern, cupid or a witch." 

— Pamela Thompson, The Ashland (Nebraska) Gazette, 13 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?

According to Roman mythology, Cupid was the son of Mercury, the messenger god, and Venus, the goddess of love. In Roman times, the winged "messenger of love" was sometimes depicted in armor, but no one is sure if that was intended as a sarcastic comment on the similarities between warfare and romance, or a reminder that love conquers all. 

Cupid was generally seen as a good spirit who brought happiness to all, but his matchmaking could cause mischief. 

Venus wasn't above using her son's power to get revenge on her rivals, and she once plotted to have the beautiful mortal Psyche fall in love with a despicable man. But the plan backfired: Cupid fell in love with Psyche, and she eventually became his immortal wife.

Gustatory

WORD OF THE DAY

gustatory / adjective / GUSS-tuh-tor-ee

: relating to or associated with eating or the sense of taste

Examples
"December may be full of sparkling holiday soirees, intimate dinners with friends or boisterous family gatherings. This glorious gustatory time is perfect for preparing luscious hors d'oeuvres, creative cocktails, delectable desserts and time-honored traditional treats."
— Robin Glowa, The Ridgefield (Connecticut) Press, 14 Dec. 2019

"But I recently discovered that all the aforementioned fatteners aren't the Most Dangerous Food at your friendly neighborhood/highway-side convenience store. No. It's this dang-near-basketball-size, strawberry-cheese muffin. I encountered this gustatory Public Enemy No. 1 recently when I got gas at a convenience store in southwest Little Rock, then decided to go inside. Just for coffee, mind you."
— Helaine Williams, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 17 Nov. 2019

Did You Know?
Gustatory is a member of a finite set of words that describe the senses with which we encounter our world, the other members being visual, aural, olfactory, and tactile. Like its peers, gustatory has its roots in Latin—in this case, the Latin word gustare, meaning "to taste." 

Gustare is a somewhat distant relative of several common English words, among them choose and disgust, but it is a direct ancestor of gustatory, gustation, meaning "the act or sensation of tasting," and degustation, meaning "the action or an instance of tasting especially in a series of small portions."

Resile

WORD OF THE DAY

resile / verb / rih-ZYLE

Definition

1a: recoil, retract 

1b: to return to a prior position

Examples

"Sir Keir Starmer, who has also announced his candidacy, said his aim was also to restore 'trust' in Labour. The manifesto, he conceded, was 'overloaded,' yet he did not resile from its ambitions." 

— The Telegraph (London), 6 Jan. 2020

"Morrison is determined for the card trials to succeed, with community support, and won't resile from his view that the best form of welfare remains a job. Critics of the program misconceive what welfare is about, he says." 

— Max Koslowski, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?

Resile is a resilient word: it's been in use in English since the early 1500s. It's also a cousin of resilient, and both words derive from the Latin verb resilire, which means "to jump back" or "recoil." (Resilire, in turn, comes from salire, meaning "to leap.") 

Resilient focuses on the ability of something to "bounce back" from damage, whereas resile generally applies to someone or something that withdraws from an agreement or "jumps back" from a stated position. 

Resile is a word that shows up only occasionally in U.S. sources; it is more common in British and especially Australian English.

Obloquy

WORD OF THE DAY

obloquy / noun / AH-bluh-kwee

Definition
1a: a strongly condemnatory utterance
1b: abusive language
2a: the condition of one that is discredited
2b: bad repute

Examples
The manager walked quickly back to the dugout as insults and obloquy rained down from the stands.

"During [literary critic Harold Bloom's] extremely prolific career, his audience was split between adulation and obloquy."
— Benjamin Ivry, The Forward, 14 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?
English speakers can choose from several synonyms to name a tongue-lashing.
Abuse is a good general term that usually stresses the anger of the speaker and the harshness of the language, as in "scathing verbal abuse."
Vituperation often specifies fluent, sustained abuse; "a torrent of vituperation" is a typical use of this term. Invective implies vehemence comparable to vituperation but may suggest greater verbal and rhetorical skill; it may also apply especially to a public denunciation, as in "blistering political invective."
Obloquy, which comes from the Late Latin ob- (meaning "against") plus loquī (meaning "to speak"), suggests defamation and consequent shame and disgrace; a typical example of its use is "subjected to obloquy and derision."

Debonair

WORD OF THE DAY

debonair /adjective / deb-uh-NAIR \

Definition
1: suave, urbane
2 : lighthearted, nonchalant


Examples
"Bacs, 47, has sharp features, including a pointed nose; he carries permanent stubble and slicks back his silvered hair, in the style of a debonair, world-conquering James Bond villain."
— Cam Wolf, GQ, May 13, 2019

"The fat kolaches and muffins go fast, but that still leaves treats to take home: piercingly sweet lemon bars, debonair key lime tarts, and petite, fairy-tale-perfect chocolate cakes peeking out from cascades of pink icing."
— Patricia Sharpe, The Texas Monthly, April 2019

Did You Know?
In Anglo-French, someone who was genteel and well-brought-up was described as deboneire—literally "of good family or nature" (from the three-word phrase de bon aire). When the word was borrowed into English in the 13th century, it basically meant "courteous," a narrow sense now pretty much obsolete.
Today's debonair incorporates charm, polish, and worldliness, often combined with a carefree attitude (think James Bond). And yes, we tend to use this sense mostly, though not exclusively, of men.
The "carefree" characteristic of a debonair person influenced the modern "lighthearted, nonchalant" sense of the word, as illustrated by film critic Owen Gleiberman: "It wouldn't be wrong to call Ocean's Eleven a trifle, but it's a debonair trifle made with high-wire effrontery, the kind that can't be faked.
This giddy and glancing charade is one of the most sheerly pleasurable movies to come out this year…."

Infantilize

WORD OF THE DAY

infantilize / verb / IN-fun-tye-lyze

Definition
1: to make or keep infantile
2: to treat as if infantile

Examples
"Food manufacturers have been infantilizing us by selling calorie-dense, salty, sweet stuff in brightly colored packages with exciting punctuation for a very long time. And we're buying it."
— Tamar Haspel, The Washington Post, 23 Dec. 2019

"In China, we like to believe we honor the elderly. We pamper them with gifts of fancy fruit baskets, imported foods and other indulgences. But this shallow perspective on aging infantilizes the elderly and neglects to preserve their dignity."
— Frankie Huang, The New York Times, 7 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?
Infantilize is just a baby, relatively speaking. It first saw the light of day in the early 1900s, when social scientists started using the term to discuss the ways in which treating humans as helpless can prolong or encourage their dependency on others.
The adjective infantile, which gave birth to infantilize, is far more mature: it dates to the 17th century. Infantile sometimes literally means "relating to infants"—that is, to children in the first year of life—but it also has a broader meaning.
If you chide someone for their infantile behavior, you rebuke the person for acting immaturely or childishly.

Canard

WORD OF THE DAY

canard / noun / kuh-NARD

Definition
1a: a false or unfounded report or story; especially
1b: a fabricated report
1c: a groundless rumor or belief
2: an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of supporting surfaces
2b: a small airfoil in front of the wing of an aircraft that can increase the aircraft's performance

Examples
"Naysayers have been saying that theater is dying, of course, only since the moment it was born. And as a theater critic, I work to debunk that persistent canard."
— Lily Janiak, The San Francisco Chronicle, 18 Dec. 2019

"NHL players can't play in the Olympics because—though contrary to every publicly available metric—the league continues to trot out the canard about how interrupting the season is injurious to teams' financial health. Yes, players can get hurt in midseason competition…. Players also get hurt in exhibition games, but the owners have never considered canceling those matches that in essence are meaningless."
— Larry Brooks, The New York Post, 14 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?
In 16th-century France, vendre des canards à moitié was a colorful way of saying "to fool" or "to cheat." The French phrase means, literally, "to half-sell ducks."
No one now knows just what was meant by "to half-sell"; the proverb was probably based on some story widely known at the time, but the details have not survived.
At any rate, the expression led to the use of canard, the French word for "duck," with the meaning of "a hoax" or "a fabrication."
English speakers adopted this canard in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of canard, used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft.

Ancillary

WORD OF THE DAY

ancillary / adjective / AN-suh-lair-ee

Definition
1: of lower or secondary class or rank
1b: subordinate, subsidiary
2a: providing additional help or support
b: auxiliary, supplementary

Examples
One ancillary benefit of Beatrice's job at the movie theater is the ability to catch an early glimpse of new releases.

"Ohio's medical marijuana industry has spawned dozens of growers, dispensaries and processors, and while those businesses receive the most attention, an entire industry of ancillary companies has also sprung up."
— Patrick Cooley, The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, 2 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?
Ancillary derives from the English word ancilla, a rare word that means "an aid to achieving or mastering something difficult."
That word derives from Latin, in which it means "female servant."
While English ancilla is unlikely to be encountered except in very specialized contexts (such as philosophy or quantum computing), ancillary picks up on the notion of providing aid or support in a way that supplements something else.
In particular, the word often describes something that is in a position of secondary importance, such as the "ancillary products in a company's line."

Scumble

WORD OF THE DAY

scumble / verb / SKUM-bul

Definition
1a: to make (something, such as color or a painting) less brilliant by covering with a thin coat of opaque or semiopaque color applied with a nearly dry brush
1b: to apply (a color) in this manner
2: to soften the lines or colors of (a drawing) by rubbing lightly

Examples
"In an accomplished artist's hands, oil paint is fluid; it can be scumbled or glazed; it's a more versatile medium than tempera."
— Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, 11 Mar. 2018

"Yet even more than usual, Ms. Yiadom-Boakye paints so hastily that she undoes her own best efforts. Backgrounds are often so light that you can see the weave of the linen underneath; faces are reworked carelessly, and the edges between the figures and backgrounds become scumbled."
— Jason Farago, The New York Times, 11 May 2017

Did You Know?
The history of scumble is blurry, but the word is thought to be related to the verb scum, an obsolete form of skim, meaning "to pass lightly over."
Scumbling, as first perfected by artists such as Titian, involves passing dry, opaque coats of oil paint over a tinted background to create subtle tones and shadows.
Although the painting technique dates to the 16th century, use of the word scumble is only known to have begun in the late 18th century.
The related noun form soon followed.

Hierophant

WORD OF THE DAY

hierophant / noun / HYE-uh-ruh-fant

Definition
1a: a priest in ancient Greece; specifically
1b: the chief priest of the Eleusinian mysteries
2a: a person who explains
2b: expositor
2c: one who defends or maintains a cause or proposal
2d: advocate

Examples
"My choir knew their order and moved into it neatly. One expects that nowadays; then, one often saw choirs jostling about, even arguing aloud about where to stand. I bowed to the High Priestess—here was no Polykrates who'd expect to be noticed first—took in the other hierophants with a general reverence, and made the Archon my homage."
— Mary Renault, The Praise Singer, 1978

"The art world is a balkanized anarchy, with lots of little insides, lots of little games, better and worse people, hierophants and hustlers."
— Peter Schjeldahl, The Village Voice, 6 June 2019

Did You Know?
Hierophant, hieroglyphics, and hierarch have a common root: hieros, a Greek word meaning "sacred."
Hieroglyphics joins hieros with a derivative of glyphein, the Greek verb for "to carve."
Hierarch, a word that can refer to a religious leader in a position of authority, joins hieros with a derivative of archein, meaning "to rule."
Hierophant itself joins the root with a derivative of phainein, which means "to show." The original hierophants were priests of the ancient Greek city of Eleusis who performed sacred rites.
In the 17th century, when the word was first documented in English, it referred to these priests.
By the 19th century, English speakers were using the term in a broader sense.
A hierophant can now be a spokesperson, a commentator, an interpreter, or a leading advocate.