Ambient

 WORD OF THE DAY

ambient / adjective / AM-bee-unt

Definition
1a: existing or present on all sides
1b: encompassing
2 (of electronic music): quiet and relaxing with melodies that repeat many times

Examples
"These sophisticated spaces are stocked with elements to lure homeowners outdoors: water and fire features; … ambient lighting to set the mood."
— Rachel Hutton, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 21 Oct. 2020

"The fear might go away after a couple of scenes, or even right after a first entrance. 'Sort of like in movies when all ambient noise fades away and everything goes out of focus but the path ahead,' says Leontyne Mbele-Mbong."
— Lily Janiak, The San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Oct. 2020

Did You Know?
Biologists explore the effects of ambient light on plants; acoustics experts try to control ambient sound; and meteorologists study ambient pressure, air, or temperature.
All this can make ambient seem like a technical term, but when it first saw light of day, that all-encompassing adjective was as likely to be used in poetry as in science.
John Milton used it in Paradise Lost, and Alexander Pope wrote of a mountain "whose tow'ring summit ambient clouds conceal'd."
Both poets and scientists who use ambient owe a debt to the Latin verb ambire, meaning "to go around," the grandparent of our English word.

Ulterior

WORD OF THE DAY

ulterior / adjective / ul-TEER-ee-er

Definition

1: going beyond what is openly said or shown and especially what is proper

2a: further, future

2b: more distant

2c: situated on the farther side

Examples

"People need someone in office that they can trust, that they know has no ulterior motives or is beholden to any entities other than the city." 

— Mark Rockeymoore, quoted in The San Marcos (Texas) Daily Record, 20 Oct. 2020

"Dreyer describes Seuss's personal collection of paintings and sculptures as 'secret art.' Geisel literally kept them in the closet … and his widow, Audrey Geisel, has never sold an original Seuss. She authorized high-quality lithograph prints so the public can see the ulterior side of her late husband." 

— The Alexandria (Virginia) Times, 6 Dec. 2011

Did You Know?

Although now usually hitched to the front of the noun motive to refer to a hidden need or desire that inspires action, ulterior began its career as an adjective in the 17th century describing something occurring at a subsequent time, such as "ulterior measures" taken after a lawful request. 

It then started to be used to mean both "more distant" (literally and figuratively) and "situated on the farther side." 

The "hidden" sense, which is most familiar today, followed after those, with the word modifying nouns like purpose, design, and consequence. 

Ulterior comes directly from the Latin word for "farther" or "further," itself assumed to be from ulter, meaning "situated beyond."

 

Posthumous

WORD OF THE DAY

posthumous / adjective / PAHSS-chuh-muss

Definition
1: born after the death of the father
2: published after the death of the author
3: following or occurring after death

Examples
Published eleven years following his death in 1969, John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces earned the author posthumous fame as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

"Sharon Jones may no longer be with us, but her legacy continues to endure in the form of posthumous releases. Daptone Records released a new Dusty Springfield cover from the upcoming Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings album, Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Rendition Was In."
— Emily Tan, Spin, 7 Oct. 2020

Did You Know?
The etymology of the word posthumous tells a complex story. In Latin, posterus is an adjective meaning "coming after" (from post, meaning "after").
The comparative form of posterus is posterior, and its superlative form is postumus, which means, among other things, "last."
Postumus had specific application in referring to the last of a man's children, which in some cases meant those born after he had died.
Latin speakers incorrectly identified the -umus in this word with humus, meaning "dirt" or "earth" (suggesting the ground in which the unfortunate father now lay).

The Latin spelling became posthumus, as if the word were formed from post and humus, and both the "h" and the suggestion of "after burial" or "after death" carried over into English 

Mogul

WORD OF THE DAY

mogul / noun / MOH-gul

Definition
1a (capitalized Mogul): an Indian Muslim of or descended from one of several conquering groups of Mongol, Turkish, and Persian origin
1b: Great Mogul
2a: a great personage
2b: magnate

Examples
"The philanthropic foundation created by the hedge fund mogul Ray Dalio is donating $50 million to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to address health social inequalities."
— The New York Times, 14 Oct. 2020

"The Atlanta rap mogul is walking around Super Sound Studios, the recording haven he purchased last year, talking into the heel of his phone."
— Melissa Ruggieri, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 25 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
Started by Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan, the Muslim Mogul dynasty ruled much of India from the early 16th century to the mid-18th century.
The Moguls (whose name is also spelled Moghul or Mughal) were known for their talented and powerful rulers (called "Great Moguls"), so it's no surprise that in English the word mogul came to denote a powerful person, as in today's familiar references to "media moguls."
Skiers might wonder if such power moguls have anything to do with the name they use for a bump in a ski run, but that hilly homonym has nothing to do with Asian Mogul dynasties.
We picked up the skier's mogul from German dialect, from a word that is probably related to the Viennese mugl, meaning "small hill."

 

Vaunted

 WORD OF THE DAY

vaunted / adjective / VAWN-tud

Definition
: highly or widely praised or boasted about

Examples
The team was able to overcome their opponents' vaunted defense and achieve an upset victory.

"She's been known to include works by vaunted artists in her videos, and with her husband Jay-Z, she's built up an important collection of Black art."
— Alex Greenberger, Art News, 3 Aug. 2020

Did You Know?
The verb vaunt has been used since the 15th century with the meaning "to make a vain display of one's own worth or attainments"—in other words, "to brag or boast."
Over time, vaunt developed the meaning "to boast of (something)," as in "the promotional flier vaunts the natural beauty of the area," and gave rise to the adjectival form vaunted.
The history of vaunt and vaunted leads back to the Latin word vānus, meaning "vain" or "empty."
The word vain itself is also a descendant of vānus.

Emigrate

 WORD OF THE DAY

emigrate / verb / EM-uh-grayt

Definition
: to leave one's place of residence or country to live elsewhere

Examples
"… graduates and skilled technical workers are also emigrating, usually with a plan to save up for a few years and then return."
— The Economist, 5 Nov. 2013

"Vuong's parents emigrated by boat from Vietnam five years earlier and settled in Modesto."
— Marijke Rowland, The Modesto (California) Bee, 10 Oct. 2020

Did You Know?
Migrate, emigrate, and immigrate are all about being on the move.
The source of all three is the Latin word migrare, which means "to move from one place to another." Emigrate and immigrate sound alike, and both involve leaving one location and arriving in another, but they are applied differently:
emigrate stresses leaving the original place, while immigrate focuses on arriving in the new one.
You won't have trouble keeping them straight if you remember that the prefix e- means "away," as in eject, and the prefix im- or in- means "into," as in inject.

Cohesive

 WORD OF THE DAY

cohesive / adjective / koh-HEE-siv

Definition
1: exhibiting or producing cohesion
2: causing parts or members to unify or stick together

Examples
"His hair was slicked artfully back from his brow in one cohesive wave."
— Kate Christensen, In the Drink, 1999

"Our closely-knit sales team had been doing great since we started working from home back in March and so far had been able to maintain performance goals. Part of what made the team cohesive before the pandemic was that we regularly engaged in fun social activities … where we could informally talk business."
— Eva Del Rio, The Gainesville (Florida) Sun, 24 Aug. 2020

Did You Know?
Cohesive describes something that sticks together literally or figuratively.
To get into the stickiness of the matter, look at the word's etymology: cohesive ultimately derives from Latin haerere, meaning "to stick."
Other descendants of haerere in English include:
adhere (literally meaning "to stick")
adhesive (a word for a substance for sticking things together)
inhere (meaning "to belong by nature or habit")
hesitate (which implies remaining stuck in place before taking action)

Haerere also teamed up with the prefix co- to form cohaerere, an ancestor of cohesive
cohesion ("a sticking together")
cohere ("to stick together")
and coherent ("able to stick together" or "logically consistent").

Bugbear

 WORD OF THE DAY

bugbear / noun / BUG-bair

Definition
1: an imaginary goblin or specter used to excite fear
2a: an object or source of dread
2b: a continuing source of irritation
2c: problem

Examples
"Taxation without representation was famously a bugbear of American colonists in the 18th century."
— The Economist, 2 July 2020

"Why? Why? What a beast of a word that is—the detective's bugbear. I thought I had it, until you said Great Scott! I'll tell you why."
— P. G. Wodehouse, Something New, 1915

Did You Know?
Bugbear sounds like some kind of grotesque hybrid creature from fable or folklore, and that very well may be what the word's creator was trying to evoke.
When the word entered English in the 16th century, it referred to any kind of creature made up to frighten someone; in 1592, Thomas Nashe wrote of "Meere bugge-beares to scare boyes."
The word's first element refers not to the familiar creatures one encounters in the garden, but to a different bug entirely: since the 15th century, bug (from Middle English bugge, meaning "hobgoblin"—that is, a mischievous goblin) has referred to a ghost or goblin.
The bear in bugbear is the one still feared today, and suggests what such made-up creatures were perhaps described as resembling.

Fulvous

 WORD OF THE DAY

fulvous / adjective /  FULL-vus

Definition

1: of a dull brownish yellow 

2: tawny

Examples

The dog had an unusual coat of fulvous fur with black and white splotches.

"I planned to visit the Pine Barrens to marvel at the fulvous leaves rioting to autumnal frenzy." 

— Denis Hamill, The Independent (East Hampton, New York), 15 Nov. 2017

Did You Know?

Fulvous has never been a common word. You are most likely to encounter it in texts from the 19th century—unless, that is, you care about ducks. 

In that case, you might know about a kind of whistling-duck called the fulvous tree duck, which is a brownish duck with long legs and a long neck and an unusual world distribution. 

It lives in isolated populations in North America, South America, India, and Africa—remarkably without geographic variation. 

But back to fulvous: it shares a meaning with its direct ancestor, the Latin word fulvus, and fulvus itself is believed to possibly share an ancestor with flavus, Latin for "yellow."

Snivel

 WORD OF THE DAY

snivel / verb / SNIV-ul

Definition
1: to run at the nose
2a: to snuff mucus up the nose audibly
2b: snuffle
3: to cry or whine with snuffling
4: to speak or act in a whining, sniffling, tearful, or weakly emotional manner

Examples
"Leonard … really wanted to meet the Microsoft co-founder.… It didn't go so great, as Leonard lost his cool and sniveled all over Gates' tie."
— Kurt Schlosser, GeekWire, 29 Mar. 2018

"'It says single women aged 45 and older are barely visible and at the bottom of the food chain for dating and relationships,' I sniveled into the phone to a close friend, reading aloud from the blog I had found."
— Jennifer Byrne, The Guardian, 20 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?
There's never been anything pretty about sniveling. Snivel, which originally meant simply "to have a runny nose," was probably snyflan in Old English.
It's likely related to sniffle, not surprisingly, and also to an Old English word for mucus, snofl.
It's even related to the Middle Dutch word for a cold, snof, and the Old Norse word for "snout," which is snoppa.
There's also a connection to nan, a Greek verb meaning "flow."
Nowadays, we mostly use snivel as we have since the 1600s: to refer to self-pitying whining, whether or not such sniveling is accompanied by unchecked nasal flow.

Farrier

WORD OF THE DAY

farrier / noun / FAIR-ee-er

Definition
: a person who shoes horses

Examples
"His first memory was of a mule his father owned named Hyacinth, and his subsequent memories were all of the saddlebred horses his father trained, or retrained…. His father had begun as a farrier, then added working with sour or broken-down animals and getting them back into the show ring."
— Jane Smiley, Horse Heaven, 2000

"To make sure she was suited to the work, Debi apprenticed with a veteran farrier in Florida. Then she signed up for training with Glace Rider, who runs the Pennsylvania Institute for Horseshoeing near State College. For nine weeks, Debi rode with him and learned how to trim hooves, rework shoes and treat laminitis and other foot problems."
— Kevin Kirkland, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 18 May 2020

Did You Know?
Farrier is now usually applied specifically to a blacksmith who specializes in shoeing horses, a skill that requires not only the ability to shape and fit horseshoes, but also the ability to clean, trim, and shape a horse's hooves.
When farrier first appeared in English (as ferrour), it referred to someone who not only shoed horses, but who provided general veterinary care for them as well.
Middle English ferrour was borrowed from the Anglo-French word of the same form, which referred to a blacksmith who shoes horses.
That word derives from the verb ferrer ("to shoe horses"), which can ultimately be traced back to Latin ferrum, meaning "iron."

Emissary

 WORD OF THE DAY

emissary / noun / EM-uh-sair-ee

Definition
1a: one designated as the agent of another
1b: representative
2: a secret agent

Examples
"America has a long tradition of deploying political emissaries. They can have the authority of a direct line to the president."
— The Economist, 13 Aug. 2020

"He had founded that fellowship of the Black Arrow, as a ruined man longing for vengeance and money; and yet among those who knew him best, he was thought to be the agent and emissary of the great King-maker of England, Richard, Earl of Warwick."
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow, 1888

Did You Know?
An emissary is often a person who is sent somewhere in order to act as a representative.
The key in that sentence is sent; emissary derives from Latin emissus, the past participle of the verb emittere, meaning "to send out." 
By the early 17th century, it was a commonly seen and heard word. An earlier common emittere descendant is emit.
In addition, emittere itself comes from Latin mittere ("to send"), which is an ancestor of many English words, including admit, commit, mission, omit, permit, premise, promise, and submit.

Impeccable

 WORD OF THE DAY

impeccable / adjective / im-PECK-uh-bul

Definition

1a: free from fault or blame 

1b: flawless

2: not capable of sinning or liable to sin

Examples

Although the restaurant was a bit expensive, we found its memorable cuisine, luxurious decor, and impeccable service to be well worth the price.

"They were honored for their impeccable character, integrity and exemplary service to our community." 

— Blake Dowling, The Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat, 28 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?

The word impeccable has been used in English since the 16th century. 

It derives from the Latin word impeccabilis, a combination of the Latin prefix in-, meaning "not," and the verb peccare, meaning "to sin." 

Peccare has other descendants in English. There is peccadillo, meaning "a slight offense," and peccant, meaning "guilty of a moral offense" or simply "faulty." 

There is also peccavi, which comes from Latin, where it literally means "I have sinned"; in English the word functions as a noun meaning "an acknowledgment of sin."

Bailiwick

 WORD OF THE DAY

bailiwick / noun /  BAY-lih-wik

Definition

1 (law enforcement): the office or jurisdiction of a bailiff

2a: the sphere in which one has superior knowledge or authority 

2b: a special domain

Examples

"Until his death in 1764, at 67, [William Hogarth's] soul resided in Drury Lane and Grub Street, the bailiwick of actors, tradesmen and engravers like himself." 

— Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 30 Nov. 1997

"Staging theater in unusual but thematically appropriate locations is nothing new to Seghers, who once … seated theatergoers in a barn to watch a young man's obsession with horses play out in 'Equus.' 'This is right in his bailiwick,' said John DiDonna, who chairs the theater department at Valencia College. 'Jeremy lives to do shows that are site-specific or environmental.'" 

— Matthew J. Palm, The Orlando Sentinel, 6 Aug. 2020

Did You Know?

The first half of the word bailiwick comes from the Middle English word for "bailiff"—in this case, a term referring to a sheriff or chief officer of a town in medieval England, not the officer who assists today in U.S. courtrooms. 

Bailiff derives, via Anglo-French, from Latin bajulare, meaning "to carry a burden." The second half of bailiwick comes from wik, a Middle English word for "dwelling place" or "village," which ultimately derives from Latin vicus, meaning "village." (This root also gave us -wich and -wick, suffixes used in place names like Norwich and Warwick.) 

Although bailiwick dates from the 15th century, the "special domain" sense did not appear in English until the middle of the 19th century.

Reprove

 WORD OF THE DAY

reprove / verb / rih-PROOV

Definition
1: to scold or correct usually gently or with kindly intent
2a: to express disapproval of
2b: censure
3: to express rebuke or reproof

Examples
"'Being in confinement has made me reflect on what actually matters—which is progress and seeing others achieve greatness.' [Joan] Smalls is taking to her Instagram account to reprove those that have remained silent during a time when the whole world is looking for reform."
— Harper's, 11 June 2020

"'Kitchen Confidential' caused a ruckus in both the culinary and literary worlds and became a national bestseller. [Anthony] Bourdain was recognized—in some quarters, reproved—for his brutal honesty about restaurant life as well as his vivid prose style."
— Tom Beer, Newsday (Long Island, New York), 8 June 2018

Did You Know?
Reprove, rebuke, reprimand, admonish, reproach, and chide all mean to criticize.
Reprove implies an often kindly intent to correct a fault.
Rebuke suggests a sharp or stern criticism (as in "In the interview, the candidate sternly rebuked the agendas of those running against her").
Reprimand implies a severe, formal, often public or official rebuke ("He was reprimanded before the ethics committee").
Admonish suggests earnest or friendly warning and counsel ("The assistant manager was admonished to control expenses").
Reproach and chide suggest displeasure or disappointment expressed in mild scolding ("The teacher reproached the student for tardiness" and "The child was chided by his nana for untidiness"). Incidentally, the resemblance of reprove to prove is not coincidental—both words can be traced back to the Latin probare ("to test" or "to prove").

Hallowed

 WORD OF THE DAY

hallowed / adjective / HAL-oad

Definition
1: holy, consecrated
2: sacred, revered

Examples
"The first thing one learns in attending concerts of classical music is never to applaud between movements. Doing so, we are told, shows disrespect for the composer's intentions and the performers' interpretation. In Saturday night's concert by the Spokane Symphony..., that hallowed rule was enthusiastically, even raucously, broken."
— Larry Lapidus, The Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington), 26 Mar. 2017

"First as a litigator who fought tenaciously for the courts to recognize equal rights for women, one case at a time, and later as the second woman to sit on the hallowed bench of the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg left a legacy of achievement in gender equality that had women of varied ages and backgrounds grasping for words this weekend to describe what she meant to them."
— Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press, 20 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
The adjective hallowed probably doesn't give you the shivers—or does it?
Hallowed is the past participle of the verb hallow, a term that descends from the Middle English halowen.
That word can be traced back to the Old English adjective hālig, meaning "holy." During the Middle Ages, All Hallows' Day was the name for what Christians now call All Saints' Day, and the evening that preceded All Hallows' Day was All Hallows' Eve or All Hallow Even—or, as we know it today, Halloween.

Perseverate

 WORD OF THE DAY

perseverate / verb / per-SEV-uh-rayt

Definition
1a: to repeat or recur persistently
1b: to go back over previously covered ground
2a: to exhibit perseveration
2b: to show especially by speech or some other form of overt behavior the continual involuntary repetition of a mental act

Examples
To ensure the accuracy of data, the scientist necessarily perseverates, repeating each experiment many times and comparing the results.

"I have been perseverating on the same questions, chewing on the same information, running through the same scenarios endlessly."
— Brynn Lackie, The Toronto Sun, 7 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
Looking at perseverate and perseveration, you may guess that the latter was formed by adding a suffix to the former, but that is not the case.
Perseveration is actually the older term. It has been around since the 1500s, when it was used as a synonym of perseverance (which at one time was pronounced, like perseverate and perseveration, with the stress on sev, instead of on ver).
In the early 1900s, psychologists adopted perseveration for the act of repeating a behavior over and over again—for instance, continually repeating the same syllable or word might be called "verbal perseveration."
Shortly afterward, those scientists wanted a verb for such acts of repetition, so they changed the -tion of perseveration to -ate and perseverate was born.

Erudite

 WORD OF THE DAY

erudite / adjective / AIR-uh-dyte

Definition
: having or showing knowledge that is gained by studying

Examples
"And so the arguments about animal minds went on, often technical, sometimes absurd, at times brilliant, in many guises and versions. They were catalogued and analyzed at length by Pierre Bayle…. (Bayle was a Protestant also living in exile in Holland, an erudite scholar and original thinker, and one of the great skeptics of the seventeenth century.)"
— Noga Arikha, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, 2007

"[Marilynne Robinson] narrates the ecology of the area and some of its human history, pointing out the generations of headstones hidden among a tiny sea of hills. She is formidably erudite but punctuates her speech with the surprisingly sweet refrain 'you know?'"
— Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 25 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
Erudite derives from Latin eruditus, the past participle of the verb erudire, meaning "to instruct."
A closer look at that verb shows that it is formed by combining the prefix e-, meaning "missing" or "absent," with the adjective rudis, which means "rude" or "ignorant." (Rudis is also the source of the English word rude.)
We typically use rude to mean "discourteous" or "uncouth" but it can also mean "lacking refinement" or "uncivilized."
Taking these meanings into account, erudite stays true to its etymology: someone who is erudite has been transformed from a roughened or uninformed state to a polished and knowledgeable one through a devotion to learning.

 

Candidate

 WORD OF THE DAY

candidate / noun / KAN-duh-dayt

Definition
1a: one that aspires to or is nominated or qualified for an office, membership, or award
1b: one likely or suited to undergo or be chosen for something specified
2: a student in the process of meeting final requirements for a degree

Examples
"But there are nine vaccine candidates around the world that have reached phase III trials, the large, final stage of testing that usually comes before regulatory approval. It is likely that not all of them will reach the clinic."
— Clare Wilson, The New Scientist, 19 Sept. 2020

"No modern presidential election has been decided by campaign spending. That is because both candidates always have enough cash to achieve the single main point of it: near-universal name recognition among voters in the dozen or fewer swing states that determine the outcome."
— The Economist, 19 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
When a man running for public office in ancient Rome greeted voters in the Forum, the center of judicial and public business, he wore a toga that had been whitened with chalk.
As a result, the Latin word for someone seeking office came to be candidatus, meaning literally "clothed in white."
Candidatus, in turn, comes from the adjective candidus, meaning "white."
Candidatus was adopted into English as candidate, and since the 17th century that word has had an uncontested seat in the language.

Hallowed

 WORD OF THE DAY

hallowed / adjective / HAL-oad

Definition
1: holy, consecrated
2: sacred, revered

Examples
"The first thing one learns in attending concerts of classical music is never to applaud between movements. Doing so, we are told, shows disrespect for the composer's intentions and the performers' interpretation. In Saturday night's concert by the Spokane Symphony..., that hallowed rule was enthusiastically, even raucously, broken."
— Larry Lapidus, The Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington), 26 Mar. 2017

"First as a litigator who fought tenaciously for the courts to recognize equal rights for women, one case at a time, and later as the second woman to sit on the hallowed bench of the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg left a legacy of achievement in gender equality that had women of varied ages and backgrounds grasping for words this weekend to describe what she meant to them."
— Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press, 20 Sept. 2020

Did You Know?
The adjective hallowed probably doesn't give you the shivers—or does it?
Hallowed is the past participle of the verb hallow, a term that descends from the Middle English halowen. That word can be traced back to the Old English adjective hālig, meaning "holy."
During the Middle Ages, All Hallows' Day was the name for what Christians now call All Saints' Day, and the evening that preceded All Hallows' Day was All Hallows' Eve or All Hallow Even—or, as we know it today, Halloween.