Assail

WORD OF THE DAY

assail / verb / uh-SAIL

Definition

1a: to attack violently 

1b: assault

2: to encounter, undertake, or confront energetically

3: to oppose, challenge, or criticize harshly and forcefully

4a : to trouble or afflict in a manner that threatens to overwhelm

4b: to be perceived by (a person, a person's senses, etc.) in a strongly noticeable and usually unpleasant way

Examples

Most worthwhile achievements require that one persevere even when assailed by doubts.

"What does it even mean to be good in a world as complex as ours, when great inequity remains unaddressed and often seems too daunting to assail, and when seemingly benign choices—which shoes to buy, which fruit to eat—can come with the moral baggage of large carbon footprints or the undercompensated labor of migrant workers?" 

— Nancy Kaffer, The Detroit (Michigan) Free Press, 9 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?

Assail comes from an Anglo-French verb, assaillir, which itself traces back to the Latin verb assilire ("to leap upon"). 

Assilire combines the prefix ad- ("to, toward") with the Latin verb salire, meaning "to leap." (Salire is the root of a number of English words related to jumping or leaping, such as somersault and sally, as well as assault, a synonym of assail.) 

When assail was first used in the 13th century, it meant "to make a violent physical attack upon." By the early 15th century, English speakers were using the term to mean "to attack with words or arguments." 

Now the verb can refer to any kind of aggressive encounter, even if it is not necessarily violent or quarrelsome, as in "Upon entering the room, we were assailed by a horrible odor."

Empirical

WORD OF THE DA Y

empirical / adjective / im-PEER-uh-kul 

Definition

1: originating in or based on observation or experience

2: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory 

3: capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment 

4: of or relating to empiricism

Examples

"'We have really good empirical research dating back to the 1980s demonstrating that kids who are restricted around treat foods often just want to eat them more,' said Charlotte Markey, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Rutgers University…." 

— Virginia Sole-Smith, The New York Times, 17 Apr. 2020

"Burger King's advertising has been telling us that the Impossible Whopper tastes just like a Whopper. And so, in the spirit of empirical science and discovery, I ventured to a Burger King this week to test the claim." 

— Eric Felten, The Examiner (Washington, DC), 31 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?

When empirical first appeared as an adjective in English, it meant simply "in the manner of an empiric." 

An empiric was a member of an ancient sect of doctors who practiced medicine based exclusively on observation or experience as contrasted with those who relied on theory or philosophy. 

The name empiric derives from Latin empīricus, itself from Greek empeirikós, meaning "based on observation (of medical treatment), experienced." 

The root of the Greek word (-peiros) is a derivative of peîra, meaning "attempt, trial, test."

Longeur

WORD OF THE DAY

longueur / noun / lawn-GUR 

Definition

: a dull and tedious passage or section (as of a book, play, or musical composition) — usually used in plural

Examples

The otherwise crisp pacing of the movie is marred by some unnecessary longueurs that do little to advance the main story.

"Small, clever musicals are fragile things, though, and I don't want to oversell this one in praising it. 'Scotland, PA' still needs to cure a few structural hiccups (the first act seems to end twice) and to address its longueurs and lapses of logic." 

— Jesse Green, The New York Times, 23 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?

You've probably come across long, tedious sections of books, plays, or musical works before, but perhaps you didn't know there was a word for them. English speakers began using the French borrowing longueur in the late 18th century. 

As in English, French longueurs are tedious passages, with longueur itself literally meaning "length." 

An early example of longueur used in an English text is from 18th-century writer Horace Walpole, who wrote in a letter, "Boswell's book is gossiping; . . . but there are woful longueurs, both about his hero and himself."

Homonymous

WORD OF THE DAY

homonymous / adjective/  hoh-MAH-nuh-mus

Definition

1: ambiguous

2: having the same designation

3: of, relating to, or being homonyms

Examples

"The Chelyabinsk meteorite became a media celebrity after the videos of its explosion in mid-air, occurring in February 2013 near the homonymous city, went viral on social networks." 

— Luca Maltagliati, Nature, 17 Feb. 2017

"Like the bird homonymous with his name, 'Cro' operates like he's under the cover of night. Though Cromartie's numerically best game came against Tulane this fall, in which the senior recorded six tackles and a sack, Downing tabbed South Florida and Connecticut as the raider's brightest." 

— Katherine Fominykh, The Capital Gazette (Annapolis, Maryland), 12 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?

The "ambiguous" sense of homonymous refers mainly to words that have two or more meanings. Logicians and scientists who wanted to refer to (or complain about) such equivocal words chose a name for them based on Latin and Greek, from Greek hom- ("same") and onyma ("name"). 

In time, English speakers came up with another sense of homonymous referring to two things having the same name (Hawaii, the state, and Hawaii, the island, for example). Next came the use of homonymous to refer to homonyms, such as see and sea. 

There's also a zoological sense. Sheep and goats whose right horn spirals to the right and left horn spirals to the left are said to be homonymous.

Instigate

WORD OF THE DAY

instigate / verb / IN-stuh-gayt

Definition

1: to goad or urge forward 

2: provoke

Examples

"The big thing about effective advertising is that it uses data effectively to instigate behavior." 

— Nicole Ortiz, Adweek, 14 Apr. 2020

"In his usual genuine and silly fashion, [Chris] Martin sincerely explained his intent for making the live video and instigating a new series of live 

Instagram performances. 'What would be nice would be to check in with some of you out there and see how you're doing…. I had an idea that we could call this thing "Together At Home." And who knows, maybe tomorrow someone else will take it over,' he said." 

— Sean Glaister, The Johns Hopkins (University) News-Letter, 6 Apr. 2020

Did You Know?

Instigate is often used as a synonym of incite (as in "hoodlums instigating violence"), but the two words differ slightly in their overall usage. 

Incite usually stresses an act of stirring something up that one did not necessarily initiate ("the court's decision incited riots"). 

Instigate implies responsibility for initiating or encouraging someone else's action and usually suggests dubious or underhanded intent ("he was charged with instigating a conspiracy"). 

Another similar word, foment, implies causing something by means of persistent goading ("the leader's speeches fomented a rebellion"). Deriving from the past participle of the Latin verb instigare, instigate stepped into English in the 16th century, after incite and ahead of foment.

Preen

WORD OF THE DAY

preen /  verb / PREEN

Definition

1 of a bird: to groom with the bill especially by rearranging the barbs and barbules of the feathers and by distributing oil from the uropygial gland

2a: to dress or smooth (oneself) up

2b: primp

3: to pride or congratulate (oneself) on an achievement

4: to make oneself sleek

5: to behave or speak with obvious pride or self-satisfaction

Examples

"Adding a water source to your yard also will attract birds, providing not only drinking water for them but a place to wash their feathers and preen." 

— Joan Morris, The Mercury News (San Jose, California), 13 Apr. 2020

"We keep tight control over our [Instagram] accounts' aesthetics, down to the color scheme…. A select few follow the lead of celebrities who log on to publicize their lavish lives to millions, turning Instagram into a place to preen and present a reality far above the mundane." 

— Diti Kohli, The Boston Globe, 8 Apr. 2020

Did You Know?

Preen hatched in 14th-century Middle English, and early on it displayed various spelling forms, including prenen, prayne, prene, and preyne. 

The word traces to Anglo-French puroindre, or proindre, linking pur-, meaning "thoroughly," with uindre, oindre, meaning "to anoint or rub." 

One of the first writers known to apply preen to the human act of primping was Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. 

Centuries later (sometime during the late 19th century), the prideful meaning of preen hatched, joining another bird-related word, plume, which was being used with the meaning "to pride or congratulate (oneself)" from the first half of the 17th century.

Decoupage

WORD OF THE DAY

decoupage / noun / day-koo-PAHZH 

Definition

1: the art of decorating surfaces by applying cutouts (as of paper) and then coating with usually several layers of finish (such as lacquer or varnish)

2: work produced by such art

Examples

Her eye was drawn to a small table that had been decorated with decoupage.

"… the Glen House is bathed in natural light, heated by hydroelectric power and dotted with bits of history along with whimsical artwork that celebrates nature just outside, respectfully (witness the deer head mounted above the fireplace; it's a decoupage made from reclaimed fabric that picks up on the accents of the room)." 

— Moira McCarthy, The Boston Herald, 29 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?

Decoupage originated in France in the 17th century as a means of artistically decorating pieces of furniture with pictures. It took a few centuries, but by the mid-20th century decoupage became a household name in American interior decoration. 

The word is fashioned from Middle French decouper, meaning "to cut out." Decouper, in turn, pastes together the prefix de- ("from" or "away") and couper ("to cut). 

Other descendants of couper include coppice (a growth of small trees that are periodically cut), coupé (a horse-drawn carriage for two with a driver outside and whose name is thought to be from French carrosse coupé, literally, "cut-off coach"), and the clear-cut coupon.

Neoteric

WORD OF THE DAY

neoteric / adjective / nee-uh-TAIR-ik 

Definition

1: recent in origin 

2: modern

Examples

"From the runways of Paris to the boutiques of New York to the time-sucking scroll of my social media-feeds, it seemed as if every few weeks I encountered some neoteric innovation that made me smirk or scratch my head, sometimes simultaneously." 

— Jacob Gallagher, The Wall Street Journal, 30 Dec. 2019

"The projects I have designed mirror the correlation between past and present, always celebrating the old and welcoming the neoteric. I am respectful of the strong impressive history and strive to elevate the level of what has been left behind in time." 

— Melinda Bell Dickey, quoted in The Danville (Virginia) Register & Bee, 15 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

An odd thing about neoteric is that this word for things that are modern and new is itself rather old. It's been part of English since at least 1596, and its roots go back even further—to ancient Greek. We adapted the word from Late Latin neōtericus, which also means "recent." 

Neōtericus in turn comes from Late Greek neōterikós and ultimately from Greek néos, meaning "new" or "young." 

As old as its roots are, however, neoteric itself entered English later than its synonyms modern (which appeared earlier in the 16th century) and newfangled (which has been with us since the 15th century).

Disabuse

WORD OF THE DAY

disabuse / verb / diss-uh-BYOOZ 

Definition

: to free from error, misconception, or fallacy

Examples

"While it's difficult to predict how the practice of hiring will evolve over time, one thing is clear: it is extremely difficult to disabuse people of their biases, especially when those biases become cultural norms." 

— Mark Travers, Forbes, 22 Mar. 2020

"[Anton] Chekhov has a way of disabusing us of our specialness, of making us realize that our problems are, in fact, just like everyone else's." 

— Megan O’Grady, The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?

We know the verb abuse as a word meaning "to misuse," "to mistreat," or "to revile." But when disabuse first appeared in the early 17th century, there was a sense of abuse, now obsolete, that meant "to deceive." 

Sir Francis Bacon used that sense, for example, when he wrote in 1605, "You are much abused if you think your virtue can withstand the King's power." The prefix dis- has the sense of undoing the effect of a verb, so it's not surprising that disabuse means "to undeceive." 

English speakers didn't come up with the idea of joining dis- to abuse all on their own, however. It was the French who first appended their prefix dés- to their verb abuser. 

English disabuse is modeled after French désabuser.

Malapropism

WORD OF THE DAY

malapropism / noun / MAL-uh-prah-piz-um 

Definition

1: the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase

2: the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context

Examples

"A malapropism is using the wrong word, but one that sounds similar to the right word—like saying that medieval cathedrals are supported by flying buttocks. A good malapropism can throw you off, so that you scrape your head trying to figure out the error, and then having to think what the word should have been. (It's flying buttresses, by the way)." 

— Britt Hanson, The Tuscon (Arizona) Weekly, 3 July 2014

"[Gilda Radner] brought a lot of charm and energy as a player [on Saturday Night Live]; from her impressions of Lucille Ball … to her unforgettable characters like … the malapropism-prone Emily Litella, the geeky Lisa Loopner and the letter-reading Roseanne Roseannadanna." 

— Paolo Alfar, Screen Rant, 10 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals, was known for her verbal blunders. 

"He is the very pine-apple of politeness," she exclaimed, complimenting a courteous young man. 

Thinking of the geography of contiguous countries, she spoke of the "geometry" of "contagious countries," and she hoped that her daughter might "reprehend" the true meaning of what she was saying. 

She regretted that her "affluence" over her niece was small. 

The word malapropism derives from this blundering character's name, which Sheridan took from the French term mal à propos, meaning "inappropriate."

Stymie

WORD OF THE DAY

stymie / verb / STYE-mee 

Definition

1: to present an obstacle to 

2: stand in the way of

Examples

"Ventura County supervisors are reviving an effort to build a bicycle path for commuting and recreation in a railroad corridor that parallels Highway 126, a project that's been stymied in the past by agricultural interests who say it could jeopardize their crops." 

— Kathleen Wilson, The Ventura County (California) Star, 23 Mar. 2020

"A bout with polio when she was 18 months old has left her wheelchair bound, but it's clear … that it hasn't stymied her instinct for leadership. Heumann would go on to serve under Presidents Clinton and Obama as an advisor on disability rights…." 

— David Alm, Forbes, 26 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

Golf was being played in Scotland as early as the 15th century, but it wasn't until the 19th century that the sport really caught on in England and North America. 

It was also in the 19th century that the word stymie entered English as a noun referring to a golfing situation in which one player's ball lies between another ball and the hole on the putting green, thereby blocking the line of play. 

Later, stymie came to be used as a verb meaning "to bring into the position of, or impede by, a stymie." 

By the early 20th century, the verb was being applied in similarly vexing non-golf contexts.

Refulgence

WORD OF THE DAY

refulgence / noun / rih-FULL-junss 

Definition

1: a radiant or resplendent quality or state 

2: brilliance

Examples

"Looking back, … I am inclined to date the burgeoning refulgence of our love to something more like the calendar equivalent of April." 

— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, 2010

"In reality, Poinsettia's bracts, like holly's berries, only said 'blood' to the very devout. Most people saw in their scarlet a warmth, cheeriness and opulence that made it the season's special hue…. In the centuries ahead, that refulgence would … make it the plant of the winter holidays for countless millions, whether Christian, secular or other." 

— Mark Griffiths, Country Life, 21 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?

"The full bow of the crescent moon peeps above the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence, as the glow of a good man's deeds shines for a while upon his little world after his sun has set, lighting the fainthearted travellers who follow on towards a fuller dawn." 

So British author Sir Henry Rider Haggard described the light of the moon in King Solomon's Mines, published in 1885. 

Haggard's example reflects both the modern meaning and the history of refulgence. 

That word derives from Latin refulgēre, which means "to shine brightly" and which is itself a descendant of the verb fulgēre, meaning "to shine." Fulgēre also underlies effulgence, a shining synonym of refulgence.

Pelagic

WORD OF THE DAY

pelagic / adjective / puh-LAJ-ik 

Definition

1: of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea 

2: oceanic

Examples

"Smith counted 10 rock pigeons and another red-breasted merganser, along with a thin-billed pelagic cormorant and three Brandt's cormorant." 

— Paul Rowley, The Vashon-Maury Island (Washington) Beachcomber, 14 Jan. 2020

"Bait fish schools usually long gone at this juncture are still fairly thick in Tampa Bay, Charlotte Harbor and out in the Gulf as well. Most of the pelagic species that migrate by our coast in the fall are still being caught with some regularity offshore." 

— Zach Zacharias, The Herald Tribune (Sarasota, Florida), 15 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?

Pelagic comes to us from Greek, via Latin. The Greek word pelagikos became pelagicus in Latin and then pelagic in English. 

Pelagikos is derived from pelagos, the Greek word for the sea—it is also a source of archipelago—plus the adjectival suffix -ikos. 

Pelagic first showed up in dictionaries in 1656; a definition from that time says that Pelagick (as it was then spelled) meant "of the Sea, or that liveth in the Sea." 

Centuries later, writers are still using pelagic with the same meaning, albeit less frequently than its more familiar synonym oceanic.

Flotsam

WORD OF THE DAY

flotsam / noun / FLAHT-sum

Definition

1a: floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo

1b: (broadly) floating debris

2a: a floating population (as of emigrants or castaways)

2b: miscellaneous or unimportant material

2c: debris, remains

Examples

The young couple's apartment was adorned with the flotsam and jetsam of thrift stores and yard sales.

"The set is one room—but what a room, stuffed with the furniture, flotsam and jetsam of a half-century. And it's not like the stage crew could go out and rent a lot of 1930s-era furniture. So the company has borrowed furniture from local residents for the duration of the play." 

— Cheryl Schweizer, The Columbia Basin Herald (Moses Lake, Washington), 6 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?

English speakers started using flotsam, jetsam, and lagan as legal terms in the 16th and 17th centuries (the earliest evidence of flotsam dates from around the early 1600s). 

The three words were used to establish claims of ownership to the three types of seaborne, vessel-originated goods they named. Flotsam was anything from a shipwreck (the word comes from Old French floter, meaning "to float"). 

Jetsam and lagan were items thrown overboard to lighten a ship. 

Lagan was distinguished from jetsam by having a buoy attached so the goods could be found if they sank. 

In the 19th century, when flotsam and jetsam took on extended meanings, they became synonyms, but they are still very often paired.

Aggrandize

WORD OF THE DAY

aggrandize / verb / uh-GRAN-dyze 

Definition

1a: to make great or greater 

1b: increase, enlarge

2a: to make appear great or greater 

2b: praise highly

3: to enhance the power, wealth, position, or reputation of

Examples

"I read [Ball Four by Jim Bouton] when I was 14, and, although I've never gone back to re-read or study it, it changed my view of the so-called heroes that played and play sports at a high level. They were and are great at what they do…. But they are only human, with remarkable skills and contributions to be appreciated. In some ways and cases, though, they are ordinary, less than ordinary, not to be aggrandized or worshipped." 

— Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 11 July 2019

"By definition and disposition, the spy presents a daunting challenge to the historian. Expected to be elusive and deceptive, secret agents prefer to swallow written evidence, not preserve it. Then, if they survive to write memoirs, they often aggrandize their achievements at the expense of truth." 

— Harold Holzer, The Wall Street Journal, 2 Aug. 2019

Did You Know?

Aggrandize has enhanced the English vocabulary since the early 17th century. 

English speakers adapted agrandiss-, the stem of the French verb agrandir, to form aggrandize, and later used the French form agrandissement as the basis of the noun aggrandizement. 

The root of agrandiss- is Latin; it comes from grandis, meaning "large, great." 

Nowadays, both noun and verb are regularly paired (somewhat disparagingly) with the prefix self- to refer to individuals bent on glorifying themselves, as sports writer Alan Shipnuck demonstrates in a 2015 Sports Illustrated article, writing "golf is not a sport that smiles upon the self-aggrandizing."

Verboten

WORD OF THE DAY

verboten / adjective / ver-BOH-tun 

Definition

1a: forbidden

1b: prohibited by dictate

Examples

"An array of other city meetings have been canceled…. Scott said his office is working as fast as it can to find new, 21st-century solutions to the needs of the community and of city government at a time when physical gatherings are verboten." 

— Kevin Rector and Liz Bowie, The Baltimore Sun, 30 Mar. 2020

"Yet divorce was still frowned on in British society—and marrying a divorcee whose former spouse was still alive was verboten according to the Church of England. This is why Edward VIII had to abdicate the throne for his brother George VI: He couldn't be both the head of his country's Church—a role established, ironically, by his divorced ancestor Henry VIII—and the husband of a divorced woman with two living spouses." 

— Kate Williams, CNN.com, 22 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

Despite its spelling, the adjective verboten has nothing to do with verb, or any of the other words in English related to Latin verbum. 

Rather, verboten comes from German, and originally from Old High German farboten, the past participle of the verb farbioten, meaning "to forbid." 

(Forbid itself derives from Old English forbēodan, a relative of farbioten.) 

Verboten is used to describe things that are forbidden according to a law or a highly regarded authority. 

There also exists the rarely used noun verboten, meaning "something forbidden by authority," as in "well-established verbotens."

Truckle

WORD OF THE DAY

truckle / verb / TRUK-ul 

Definition

1: to act in a subservient manner 

2: submit

Examples

"Walt Whitman became a pop star for reminding his countrymen of the duty never to truckle: 'Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.'" 

— Virginia Heffernan, The Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2018

"More, though, than simply truckling to mass taste, [Gore] Vidal is clearly using the pulp format to figure out what he's good at (sardonic worldliness) and what he's not (romance). And through it all, he keeps the words flowing." 

— Louis Bayard, The New York Times, 12 Apr. 2015

Did You Know?

When truckle was first used in English in the 15th century, it meant "small wheel" or "pulley." 

Such small wheels were often attached to the underside of low beds to allow them to be easily moved under high beds for storage. These beds came to be known as truckle beds (or trundle beds), and a verb truckle—meaning "to sleep in a truckle bed"—came into being. 

By the 17th century, the fact that truckle beds were pushed under larger standard beds had inspired a figurative sense of truckle: "to yield to the wishes of another" or "to bend obsequiously." 

The initial verb sense became obsolete; the newer sense is fairly rare but is still in use.

Quintessence

WORD OF THE DAY

quintessence / noun / kwin-TESS-unss 

Definition

1: the fifth and highest element in ancient and medieval philosophy that permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies

2: the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form

3: the most typical example or representative

Examples

Roasting marshmallows over an open fire and making s'mores is the quintessence of camping in the great outdoors.

"Native, which opened in 2016 and garnered the number 12 spot on this year's World's 50 Best Bars list, is discretely located above a Japanese noodle restaurant in a 200-year-old building. Shiny steel-and-glass skyscrapers, the quintessence of modernity, cast shadows on this historic structure." 

— Liza Weisstuch, The Daily Beast, 17 Dec. 2019

Did You Know?

Long ago, when people believed that the earth was made up of four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—they thought the stars and planets were made up of yet another element. 

In the Middle Ages, people called this element by its Medieval Latin name, quinta essentia, literally, "fifth essence." 

Our forebears believed the quinta essentia was essential to all kinds of matter, and if they could somehow isolate it, it would cure all disease. 

We have since given up on that idea, but we kept quintessence, the offspring of quinta essentia, as a word for the purest essence of a thing. 

Some modern physicists have given quintessence a new twist—they use it to refer to a form of the dark energy believed to make up almost 70 percent of the energy in the observable universe.

Lorn

WORD OF THE DAY

lorn / adjective / LORN 

Definition

1: left alone and forlorn 

2: desolate, forsaken

Examples

"So the day passes, and it is evening. Rough and I have been to see a grave. It is a lorn place, and the wind has grown shrill, and we come home feeling rather desolate." 

— Rosa Mulholland, "Bracken Hollow" in Irish Monthly, February 1890

"Romantic poets had a particular fondness for the lone, lorn shore—while a string of impressionist painters expounded the moral usefulness of the beach…." 

— DJ Taylor, The Mail on Sunday (London), 19 July 1998

Did You Know?

Lorn and forlorn are synonyms that mean "desolate" or "forsaken." 

The similarity in form and meaning of the two words is hardly a coincidence. 

Lorn comes down to us from loren, the Middle English past participle of the verb lesen ("to lose"), itself a descendant of the Old English lēosan. 

Similarly, forlorn comes from the Middle English forloren, a descendant of the Old English verb forlēosan, which also means "to lose." 

The for- in forlorn is an archaic prefix meaning, among other things, "completely," "excessively," or "to exhaustion." 

Nowadays, forlorn is considerably more common than lorn. 

Lorn does, however, appear as the second element in the compound lovelorn ("bereft of love or of a lover").

Collimate

WORD OF THE DAY

collimate / verb / KAH-luh-mayt 

Definition

: to make parallel

Examples

"Amazingly, some astrophysical jets—streams of charged particles collimated and accelerated over astronomical distances—also exhibit a helical structure." 

— Mario Livio, The Huffington Post, 6 Dec. 2017

"Multiple sessions will demonstrate how to set up different kinds of telescopes.… Another session will be held on collimating the reflector, which means aligning everything so it works well." 

— Rebecca Hazen, The Houston Chronicle, 1 Feb. 2018

Did You Know?

One might expect a science-y word like collimate to have a straightforward etymology, but that's not the case. 

Collimate comes from Latin collimāre, a misreading of the Latin word collineāre, meaning "to direct in a straight line." 

The erroneous collimāre appeared in some editions of the works of ancient Roman statesman Cicero and scholar Aulus Gellius. 

The error was propagated by later writers—most notably by astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler, who wrote in Latin. 

And so it was the spelling collimate, rather than collineate, that passed into English in the 19th century as a verb meaning "to make (something, such as light rays) parallel."

Appellation

WORD OF THE DAY

appellation / noun / ap-uh-LAY-shun 

Definition

1a: an identifying name or title 

1b: designation

2: a geographical name (as of a region, village, or vineyard) under which a winegrower is authorized to identify and market wine

3(archaic): the act of calling by a name

Examples

"Mr. Bling is the preferred appellation of Mauricio Benitez, a Colombian artist who has made portraits of Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, and several of the Kardashians and whose preferred medium is Swarovski crystals." 

— Amanda Whiting, The Washingtonian, 22 Dec. 2019

"The late Gary Andrus, founder of Pine Ridge, was wise enough over the years to purchase vineyards in several appellations of Napa Valley." 

— Tom Hyland, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

Ask a Frenchman named Jacques his name, and you may very well get the reply, "Je m'appelle Jacques." 

The French verb appeler means "to call (by a name)," so Jacques' answer literally translates to "I call myself Jacques." 

Knowing the function of appeler makes it easy to remember that appellation refers to the name or title by which something is called or known. 

Appeler and appellation also share a common ancestor: Latin appellāre, meaning "to call upon, name, or designate," formed by combining the prefix ad- ("to") with another verb, pellere ("to beat against, push, or strike"). 

Appellāre is also the root of English's appeal (by way of Anglo-French and Middle English), as well as appellate, which is used to indicate a court where appeals are heard.