Longanimity

 WORD OF THE DAY

longanimity / noun / long-guh-NIM-uh-tee

Definition
1: a disposition to bear injuries patiently
2: forbearance

Examples
The fans continue to show their longanimity by coming back year after year to cheer on the perpetually losing team.

"Most of the conspirators were gentlemen in their early thirties and the majority had wild pasts. They were frustrated men of action, 'swordsmen' the priests called them, and 'they had not the patience and longanimity to expect the Providence of God.'"
— Jessie Childs, God's Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England, 2014

Did You Know?
Longanimity is a word with a long history. It came to English in the 15th century from the Late Latin adjective longanimis, meaning "patient" or "long-suffering." 
Longanimis, in turn, derives from the Latin combination of longus ("long") and animus ("soul"). Longus is related to English's long and is itself an ancestor to several other English words, including longevity ("long life"), elongate ("to make longer"), and prolong ("to lengthen in time").
Now used somewhat infrequently in English, longanimity stresses the character of one who, like the figure of Job in the Bible, endures prolonged suffering with extreme patience.

Undertaker

 WORD OF THE DAY

undertaker / noun / UN-der-tay-ker

Definition

1: one who undertakes 

1b: one who takes the risk and management of business 

1c: entrepreneur

2: one whose business is to prepare the dead for burial and to arrange and manage funerals

3: an Englishman taking over forfeited lands in Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries

Examples

The undertaker offered the family several choices of coffins for the burial service.

"The movement towards home-thrown funerals is being spearheaded by Heidi Boucher, a self-proclaimed home death-care guide. Boucher is what could best be described as half holistic hippie, and half 19th century undertaker." 

— Rob Hoffman, The Times Union (Albany, New York), 24 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?

You may wonder how the word undertaker made the transition from "one who undertakes" to "one who makes a living in the funeral business." 

The latter meaning descends from the use of the word to mean "one who takes on business responsibilities." In the 18th century, a funeral-undertaker was someone who undertook, or managed, a funeral business. There were many undertakers in those days, undertaking all sorts of businesses, but as time went on undertaker became specifically identified with the profession of arranging burial. 

Today, funeral director is more commonly used, but undertaker still appears.

Kindred

 WORD OF THE DAY

kindred / adjective / KIN-drud

Definition
1a: of a similar nature or character
1b: like
2: of the same ancestry

Examples
"Osterholm over the last few decades has been part of expert panels addressing … infectious zoonotic viruses kindred to Covid-19 such as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)."
— Todd Wilkinson, The Mountain Journal (Bozeman, Montana), 12 Apr. 2020

"This study also highlights how identifying with the personality traits of a musician who feels like a kindred spirit can have positive psychological benefits for the listener.…"
— Christopher Bergland, Psychology Today, 5 July 2020

Did You Know?
If you believe that advice and relatives are inseparable, the etymology of kindred will prove you right. Kindred comes from a combination of kin and the Old English word ræden ("condition"), which itself comes from the verb rædan, meaning "to advise."
Kindred entered English as a noun first during the Middle Ages. That noun, which can refer to a group of related individuals or to one's own relatives, gave rise to the adjective kindred in the 14th century.

Testimonial

 WORD OF THE DAY

testimonial / noun / tess-tuh-MOH-nee-ul

Definition
1a: a statement testifying to benefits received
1b: a character reference
1c: letter of recommendation
2a: an expression of appreciation
2b: tribute
3: evidence, testimony

Examples
"According to research from UPS, … 40% [of Millennials] refer to online reviews and testimonials before purchasing a product…."
— Bill McLoughlin, Furniture Today, 9 Dec. 2019

"Members of the Emerson College Student Union rallied behind a pass/fail policy in a list of demands that included eight pages of student testimonials. Many described difficult home situations, illnesses, financial struggles, and general anxiety that impacts their academic performance."
— Diti Kohli, The Boston Globe, 27 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?
In 1639, Scottish poet William Drummond responded to the politics of his day with a facetious set of new laws, including one stipulating that "no man wear a ... periwig, unless he have a testimonial from a town-clerk, that he is either bald, sickly, or asham'd of white hairs."
Testimonials take different forms, but always, like in Drummond's faux law, they provide affirmation or evidence. (Testimonial traces to Latin testimonium, meaning "evidence" or "witness.")
In the 19th century, testimonial developed a new use, referring to a tribute—that is, a gift presented as a public expression of appreciation.
Today, testimonial is most often used to refer to a statement that endorses a product or service.

Requite

 WORD OF THE DAY

requite / verb / rih-KWYTE

Definition
1a: to make return for
1b: repay
1c: to make retaliation for
1d: avenge
2: to make suitable return to for a benefit or service or for an injury

Examples

"Before [Steve Junga] was The Blade's inimitable authority on high school sports, he was a 7-year-old on the East Side in love with the Tigers, who in 1968 requited him by rallying from a three-games-to-one deficit against Bob Gibson and the Cardinals to win the World Series."
— David Briggs, The Blade (Toledo, Ohio), 7 Apr. 2020

"She watched as her son developed a real affection for basketball, even as the game didn't always requite his feelings (he didn't crack the varsity team in high school until he was a senior)."
— Steve Hummer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 24 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?
You might be familiar with the phrase "unrequited love."
Love that has not been requited is love that has not been returned or paid back in kind, which brings us to the common denominator in the above definitions for requite—the idea of repayment, recompense, or retribution.
The quite in requite is a now obsolete English verb meaning "to quit" or "to pay." (Quite is also related to the English verb quit, the oldest meanings of which include "to pay up" and "to set free.") 
Quiten, the Middle English source of quite, can be traced back through Anglo-French to Latin quietus, meaning "quiet" or "at rest," a word which is also an ancestor of the English word quiet.

Estival

 WORD OF THE DAY

estival / adjective / ESS-tuh-vul

Definition
: of or relating to the summer

Examples
"Horror stories are far more estival than autumnal. Before I ever read [Stephen] King, I learned to love being scared at summer camp, where the older kids would tell us ghost stories by campfire and flashlight. Horror ripens when the pole is tilted toward the sun—when school is out, children are unsupervised, heat makes people crazy, unexplored woods begin to beckon…."
— Jeva Lange, The Week, 10 July 2019

"As an estival nod, fresh summer daisies bedecked the tables that were covered with blue, white and red linens, the order of the French colors."
— Nell Nolan, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), 19 July 2016

Did You Know?
Estival and festival look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. 

Estival traces back to aestas, which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us estivate, a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state—a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernating). 

Festival also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from festivus, a term that means "festive" or "merry." 

Festivus is also the ancestor of festive and festivity as well as the much rarer festivous (which also means "festive") and infestive ("not merry, mirthless").

Exhort

WORD OF THE DAY

 

exhort / verb  / ig-ZORT 

 

Definition

1a: to incite by argument or advice

1b: urge strongly

2a: to give warnings or advice

2b: make urgent appeals

 

Examples

 "You'd think it was easy, making a little cube with dots, but it's hard to make a die that isn't biased. The foreman would walk up and down exhorting us: 'The fate of honest men and women lies in your hands. A single crooked die can ruin a man for life.'"

— Margot Livesey, Banishing Verona, 2004

 

"Teen-age activist Greta Thunberg told world political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday that their inaction on the climate crisis was 'fueling the flames by the hour.' The 17-year-old exhorted the World Economic Forum audience to 'act as if you loved your children above all else.'"

— Vicky McKeever, CNBC.com, 23 Jan. 2020

 

Did You Know?

Exhort is a 15th-century coinage. It derives from the Latin verb hortari, meaning "to incite," and it often implies the ardent urging or admonishing of an orator or preacher.

English speakers apparently took to the root hort, fiddling around with different prefixes to create other words similar in meaning to exhort.

They came up with adhort (meaning the same as exhort) and dehort (a word similar to exhort and adhort but with a more specific meaning of "to dissuade").

Adhort all but vanished after the 17th century.

Dehort had a slightly better run than adhort, but it is now considered archaic.

Inveigh

 WORD OF THE DAY

inveigh /verb / in-VAY

Definition
1: to protest or complain bitterly or vehemently
2: rail

Examples
"Wearing a blue suit, [Hannah] Gadsby begins by pointing to a prop dog made of crayons onstage, immediately making fun of herself, a notable shift since 'Nanette,' when she inveighed against self-deprecation."
— Jason Zinoman, The New York Times¸ 26 May 2020

"I see their anger spiking in Facebook conversations and unfurling across Twitter threads. They inveigh against the new high-occupancy lanes on Interstate 15; against the paid parking at casinos…."
— Geoff Carter, The Las Vegas Weekly, 27 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?
You might complain or grumble about some wrong you see, or, for a stronger effect, you can inveigh against it.
Inveigh comes from the Latin verb invehere, which joins the prefix in- with the verb vehere, meaning "to carry."
Invehere literally means "to carry in," and when inveigh first appeared in English, it was also used to mean "to carry in" or "to introduce."
Extended meanings of invehere, however, are "to force one's way into," "to attack," and "to assail with words," and that's where the current sense of inveigh comes from.
A closely related word is invective, which means "insulting or abusive language." This word, too, ultimately comes from invehere.

Dulcet

 WORD OF THE DAY

dulcet / adjective / DUL-sut

Definition
1: sweet to the taste
2: pleasing to the ear
3: generally pleasing or agreeable

Examples
"James Blake has long been one of our favorite live performers, bringing his gentle, dulcet tenor and aching emotion to each and every concert."
— Patrick Ryan, USA Today, 10 Apr. 2020

"About six weeks after bottling, the stout proved to be great. It was full bodied and rich with a dark chocolate note, roasted flavors, tart and dulcet cherry flavors and a bit of tannins like you would find in a fine red wine."
— Gordon Kendall, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times, 24 Mar. 2020 

Did You Know?
Dulcet has many linguistic ancestors, including the Latin dulcis, Anglo-French douz, and Middle English doucet—all meaning "sweet."
The dulcet dulcis has contributed many sweet terms to English. Among these are the musical direction dolce ("to be played sweetly, softly"), Dulciana (a type of pipe organ stop made up of flue pipes), dolcian (a small bassoon-like instrument used in the 16th and 17th centuries), and dulcimer (an American folk instrument).
On a similar note, the word dulcify means "to make sweet," and the adjective doux, derived from Old French douz, is used in wine circles to describe champagne that is sweet.

Braggadocio

 WORD OF THE DAY

braggadocio /noun / brag-uh-DOH-see-oh 

Definition
1a: empty boasting
1b: arrogant pretension
1c: cockiness
2a: a person given to arrogant boasting
2b: braggart

Examples
"The musical numbers, all penned by Miranda, slide easily from the braggadocio of '90s rap to the lilt of Harlem jazz and beyond. Miraculously, nothing sounds excessively show-tuney." 
— Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 30 June 2020

"It's the first time in his life that Jack has hit anyone, but there are a lot of intangibles behind it (all those fake fights and phantom punches thrown, all that idle braggadocio from stunt men between takes), and with a beginner's luck it lands just right on the side of Petty's face…."
— Daniel Pyne, Twentynine Palms, 2010

Did You Know?
Though Braggadocio is not as well-known as other fictional characters like Pollyanna, the Grinch, or Scrooge, in lexicography he holds a special place next to them as one of the many characters whose name has become an established word in English. 

The English poet Edmund Spenser originally created Braggadocio as a personification of boasting in his epic poem "The Faerie Queene".
As early as 1594, about four years after the poem was published, English speakers began using the name as a general term for any blustering blowhard.

Cognizable

 WORD OF THE DAY

cognizable / adjective / KAHG-nuh-zuh-bul

Definition

1: capable of being judicially heard and determined

2: capable of being known

Examples

"The state also argued that the plaintiffs failed to show 'that they have suffered a cognizable burden to their right to vote' or that Florida’s election procedures are unconstitutional." 

— Dara Kam, The Naples (Florida) Daily News, 28 May 2020

"Meanwhile, the board majority appeared to be likewise deliberately or negligently unaware of state law, and operated outside of any cognizable board or committee procedure." 

— Marie-Louise Ramsdale, The Post & Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), 21 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?

It's easy to recognize the cogni- in cognizable and in other English words that have to do with knowing: cognitive, incognito, precognition, and recognition, for example. They're all from Latin cognōscere ("to get to know" or "to acquire knowledge of"). 

Cognizable was formed in the 17th century from the root of cognizance, which in English means "knowledge" or "awareness." 

Cognizance traces to cognōscere via Anglo-French conoisance and conoissant, meaning "aware" or "mindful." 

Cognizable was used in its legal sense almost from its introduction, and that meaning continues to be most common today.

Quiescent

WORD OF THE DAY

quiescent / adjective /  kwy-ESS-unt

Definition

1a: marked by inactivity or repose 

1b: tranquilly at rest

2: causing no trouble or symptoms

Examples

"'Inflation' means a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services, either at the consumer or producer level. It certainly is dormant or quiescent right now." 

— Edward Lotterman, The St. Paul (Minnesota) Press, 28 July 2019

"Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2000, cancer therapies have moved closer toward personalized medicine—tailoring treatments to an individual's genetic fingerprint or DNA—to help predict responses to therapy or to flag differences between aggressive and quiescent disease." 

— Susan Jenks, Florida Today (Brevard County, Florida), 1 Oct. 2015

Did You Know?

Quiescent won't cause you any pain, and neither will its synonyms latent, dormant, and potential—at least not immediately. All four words mean "not now showing signs of activity or existence." 

Latent usually applies to something that has not yet come forth but may emerge and develop, as in "a latent talent for opera singing." 

Dormant implies a state of inactivity similar to sleep, as in "their passions lay dormant." Potentia­l applies to what may or may not come to be. "A potential disaster" is a typical example. 

Quiescent, which traces to Latin quiēscere (meaning "to rest" or "to be quiet"), often suggests a temporary cessation of activity, as in "a quiescent disease" or "a summer resort quiescent in wintertime."

 

Beholden

WORD OF THE DAY

beholden / adjective / bih-HOHL-dun

Definition

1: being under obligation for a favor or gift 

2: indebted

Examples

"When the Second Continental Congress ratified the final text of this Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, it was launching into uncharted territory. They were creating a vision for a country that did not yet exist. As Ronald Reagan would later say, 'This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.'" 

— Brad Wenstrup, The Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, 4 July 2020

"Group sizes will remain beholden to the gatherings limits put in place by the governor's state of emergency order for managing the state's economy and government amid the COVID-19 pandemic." 

— Michael Frett, The St. Albans (Vermont) Messenger, 23 June 2020

Did You Know?

Have you ever found yourself under obligation to someone else for a gift or favor? It's a common experience and, not surprisingly, many of the words describing this condition have been part of the English language for centuries. 

Beholden is recorded in the Middle-English Arthurian poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 

Indebted, which entered English through Anglo-French, is older and still very much in use. 

Those who don't mind sounding like English speakers of yore have another synonym of beholden to choose from: a now-archaic sense of bounden. 

That word is today more often used with the meaning "made obligatory" or "binding," as in "our bounden duty."

Yaw

 WORD OF THE DAY

yaw / verb / YAW 

Definition
1a (of a ship): to deviate erratically from a course (as when struck by a heavy sea)
1b: to move from side to side
1c (of an airplane, spacecraft, or projectile): to turn by angular motion about the vertical axis
2a: to change from one to another repeatedly
2b: alternate

Examples
"A crane had been brought in to lift the submersible from the truck onto the raft.… Even with its heavy load the raft pitched and yawed as it was towed along."
— Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos, Blue Gold, 2000

"All told, even as the U.S. GDP has grown, our air and water have become cleaner. And while policies yawed between Democratic and Republican administrations, the long-term trend has been toward stronger and better controls that have not, despite the dire warnings from the pro-business sector, crippled the economy."
— editorial, The Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2020

Did You Know?
In the heyday of large sailing ships, numerous nautical words appeared on the horizon. Yaw is one such word.
Its origin isn't exactly known, but it began turning up in print in the 16th century, first as a noun (meaning "movement off course" or "side to side movement") and then as a verb.
For centuries, it remained a sailing word—often alongside pitch ("to have the front end rise and fall")—with occasional extended use as a synonym of the verb alternate.
When the era of airplane flight dawned, much of the vocabulary of sailing found new life in aeronautics, and "yawing" was no longer confined to the sea.
Nowadays, yaw, pitch, and roll are just as likely to be used by pilots and rocket scientists to describe the motion of their crafts.

Malaise

WORD OF THE DAY

malaise / noun / muh-LAYZ

Definition

1: an indefinite feeling of debility or lack of health often indicative of or accompanying the onset of an illness
2: a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being

Examples

"Nothing can make you forget the malaise of social distancing like the pain of being a teenager." 
— Ariel Shapiro, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2020

"While the bats' social distancing could possibly limit a pathogen's spread, Stockmaier doesn't think these isolating behaviours have evolved to protect other bats. Instead, he says they may be a consequence of the bats' malaise and lethargy from feeling ill." 
— Jake Buehler, New Scientist, 6 May 2020

Did You Know?
Malaise, which ultimately traces back to Old French, has been part of English since the 18th century.
One of its most notable uses, however, came in 1979—well, sort of. U.S. President Jimmy Carter never actually used the word in his July 15 televised address, but it became known as the "malaise speech" all the same. 
In the speech, Carter described the U.S. as a nation facing a "crisis of confidence" and rife with "paralysis and stagnation and drift." He spoke of a "national malaise" a few days later, and it's not hard to see why the "malaise" name stuck. 
The speech was praised by some and criticized by others, but whatever your politics, it remains a vivid illustration of the meaning of malaise.

Vivacious

 WORD OF THE DAY

vivacious / adjective / vuh-VAY-shus 

Definition
1: lively in temper, conduct, or spirit
2: sprightly

Examples
The host was a vivacious woman with a knack for making people feel comfortable.

"Totoro, the story of two young girls and the wood spirits they befriend, is vivacious and warmhearted, trafficking in the everyday magic and fertile imagination of childhood."
— Jason Bailey, The New York Times, 5 June 2020

Did You Know?
It's no surprise that vivacious means "full of life," since it can be traced back to the Latin verb vivere, meaning "to live." 
The word was created around the mid-17th century using vivax, a vivere derivative meaning "long-lived, vigorous, or high-spirited." 
Other descendants of vivere in English include survive, revive, and victual—all of which came to life during the 15th century—and vivid and convivial, both of which surfaced around the same time as vivacious.
Somewhat surprisingly, the word live is not related; it comes to us from the Old English word libban.

Midriff

WORD OF THE DAY

midriff / noun / MID-riff

Definition
1a: the mid-region of the human torso 
1b: midsection
2a: a section of a garment that covers the midriff
2b: a garment that exposes the midriff
3a: a body partition of muscle and connective tissue, specifically the partition separating the chest and abdominal cavities in mammals 
3b: diaphragm

Examples
Even the store's winter line of clothing includes a number of midriff-baring tops, albeit paired with oversized cardigans or flannel shirts.

"I love printed shift dresses that just float over the midriff or little leather skirts to bring out your edgier side." 
— Aramide Esubi, The Chicago Tribune, 22 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?
Midriff is now most commonly encountered in the mid-torso or clothing-related senses. These senses are relatively young, having appeared, respectively, in the early 19th and mid-20th centuries.
For most of its history, however, midriff has been used to refer to the diaphragm (a large flat muscle separating the lungs from the stomach area).
The diaphragm sense has been with us for more than 1,000 years, with the earliest known uses being found in Old English manuscripts such as Bald's Leechbook, a medical text that is believed to date back to the 9th century.
The riff in midriff comes from Old English hrif ("belly, womb"). Hrif is akin to Old High German href ("womb") and probably also to Latin corpus ("body").

Grubstake

 WORD OF THE DAY

grubstake / verb / GRUB-stayk

Definition

: to provide with material assistance (such as a loan) for launching an enterprise or for a person in difficult circumstances

Examples

"Kimbro, on the other hand, traveled widely, still hoping to find the speculator who would grubstake him for the big attack on the hidden field. He would go anywhere, consult with anyone, and offer almost any kind of inducement: 'Let me have the money, less than a year, ten-percent interest, and I'll give you one-thirty-second of my participation.'"
— James A. Michener, Texas, 1985

"When my entrepreneurial father had the bright idea to start a microfilm company, he asked my grandfather for financial help, only to be refused.… Eventually his brother, Frank, a doctor, grubstaked him for $500 to help start the company, a tidy sum in those days."
— Phil Power, Bridge Magazine (Michigan), 28 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?
Grubstake is a linguistic nugget that was dug up during the famous California Gold Rush, which began in 1848. Sometime between the first stampede and the early 1860s, when the gold-seekers headed off to Montana, prospectors combined grub ("food") and stake, meaning "an interest or share in an undertaking."
At first grubstake was a noun, referring to any kind of loan or provisions that could be finagled to make an undertaking possible (with the agreement that the "grubstaker" would get a cut of any profits).
By the 1870s, grubstake was also showing up as a verb meaning "to give someone a grubstake," and, since at least 1900, shortly after the Klondike Gold Rush, it has been applied to other situations in which a generous benefactor comes through with the funds.

Demure

WORD OF THE DAY

demure / adjective / dih-MYOOR

Definition

1: reserved, modest

2a: affectedly modest, reserved, or serious 

2b: coy

Examples

"Her demure demeanor belies the inner Goth girl who once hung out with Mötley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne. She maintains art forms her first priority for being alive. The social distancing produced by the coronavirus is nothing new to her." 

— Kathaleen Roberts, The Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal, 21 June 2020

"While Amelia Bloomer's name became a punch line, Susan B. Anthony would be remembered for a much different fashion statement: a demure red shawl, one example of which survives in the Smithsonian." 

— Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, 12 June 2019

Did You Know?

In the nearly four centuries that demure has been in use, its meaning has only shifted slightly. While it began solely as a descriptive term for people of quiet modesty and sedate reserve—those who don't draw attention to themselves, whether because of a shy nature or determined self-control—it came to be applied also to those whose modesty and reservation is more affectation than sincere expression. 

While demure sounds French and entered the language at a time when the native tongue of England was borrowing many French words from the Normans who gained control of the country after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the etymological evidence requires that we exercise restraint: the word's origin remains obscure.

Aficionado

WORD OF THE DAY

aficionado / noun / uh-fish-ee-uh-NAH-doh

Definition

1: a person who likes, knows about, and appreciates a usually fervently pursued interest or activity 

2: devotee

Examples

Mickey's brother, an aficionado of jazz, was a regular at the downtown clubs and often bought new records on the day they were released.

"But assessing the investment value of a vintage watch or a vintage car—a popular pastime among aficionados—can be a tricky business. Supply, or lack of it, often dictates which models appreciate, and which lose value." 

— Stephen Williams, The New York Times, 18 June 2020

Did You Know?

The affection an aficionado has for their favorite subject isn't merely emotional—it's also etymological. Back in the early 1800s, English borrowed aficionado from the past participle of the Spanish verb aficionar, which means "to inspire affection." 

That verb comes from the Spanish noun afición, meaning "affection." Both Spanish words trace to the Latin affectiō (which is also an ancestor of the English word affection). 

Affectiō, in turn, is from afficere ("to influence") and gave English speakers the noun and verb affect.

Risible

WORD OF THE DAY

risible / adjective / RIZZ-uh-

Definition

1a: capable of laughing

1b: disposed to laugh

2a: arousing or provoking laughter 

2b: laughable

3: associated with, relating to, or used in laughter

Examples

"When they arrived … they were treated to a sight that was as surreal as it was risible: Kamo Petrossian dressed in whites and sporting a captain's hat complete with gold braid and embroidered badge, strutting about the sun deck, clutching a champagne flute." 

— Peter Crawley, Mazzeri, 2013

"In the tradition of risible cable reality hits like Married at First Sight and 90 Day Fiancé, [Netflix's] new 'social experiment' Love Is Blind follows couples who've been thrust on the fast track to marriage. The twist is that they don't lay eyes on each other until they're engaged; each 'date' consists solely of a chat between one man and one woman lounging in separate 'pods.'" 

— Judy Berman, Time, 27 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?

If someone makes a ridiculous remark about your risible muscles, they are not necessarily deriding your physique. 

Risible can also mean "associated with laughter," so risible muscles can simply be the ones used for laughing. (You've also got a set of risorius muscles around your mouth that help you smile.) 

Next time you find something laughable, tip your hat to ridēre, the Latin verb meaning "to laugh" that gave us risible as well as ridiculous and deride.