Elegiac

 WORD OF THE DAY

elegiac / adjective / el-uh-JYE-ak

Definition
1a: of, relating to, or consisting of two dactylic hexameter lines the second of which lacks the arsis in the third and sixth feet
1b: written in or consisting of elegiac couplets
1c: noted for having written poetry in such couplets
1d: of or relating to the period in Greece about the seventh century b.c. when poetry written in such couplets flourished
2a: of, relating to, or comprising elegy or an elegy
2b: expressing sorrow often for something now past

Examples
"And so 'Names of Horses,' a very different but also elegiac poem, with its litany of remembered farm animals' names, helped lead to 'Names of My Mother's Friends'…, with its litany of women's names of a previous generation, and its tribute to names and ways of life that have passed out of currency."
— Judy Kronenfeld, The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, California), 3 Apr. 2021

"The novel is elegiac in a way, but it's also a celebration of the city's artistic spirit. Looking back gives us an opportunity to think how we can bring that spirit back because it's been such a vital part of our history and who we are."
— Jasmin Darznik, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
Elegiac was borrowed into English in the 16th century from Late Latin elagiacus, which in turn derives from Greek elegeiakos.
Elegeiakos traces back to the Greek word for "elegiac couplet," which was elegeion.
It is no surprise, then, that the earliest meaning of elegiac referred to such poetic couplets. These days, of course, the word is also used to describe anything sorrowful or nostalgic.
As you may have guessed, another descendant of elegeion in English is elegy, which in its oldest sense refers to a poem in elegiac couplets, and now can equally refer to a somewhat broader range of laments for something or someone that is now lost.

Gadfly

 WORD OF THE DAY

gadfly / noun / GAD-flye

Definition
1: any of various flies (such as a horsefly, botfly, or warble fly) that bite or annoy livestock
2: a person who stimulates or annoys other people especially by persistent criticism

Examples
"One of a handful of well-known corporate gadflies, she often cut a distinctive figure, appearing in costumes that she thought would underscore her messages to company leaders. For an American Broadcasting Company meeting in 1966, not long after the network's campy series 'Batman' had its premiere, she wore a Batman mask; for a meeting of U.S. Steel shareholders in 1968, she wore an aluminum dress."
— Emily Flitter, The New York Times, 7 Nov. 2018

"Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation, there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality. Such public intellectuals as Tesla leader and prolific Twitter gadfly Elon Musk have opined about the statistical inevitability of our world being little more than cascading green code."
— Fouad Khan, Scientific American, 1 Apr., 2021

Did You Know?
The history of gadfly starts with gad, which now means "chisel" but which formerly could designate a spike, spear, or rod for goading cattle.
Late in the 16th century, gad was joined with fly to designate any of several insects that aggravate livestock.
Before too long, we began applying gadfly to people who annoy or provoke others. One of history's most famous gadflies was the philosopher Socrates, who was known for his constant questioning of his fellow Athenians' ethics, misconceptions, and assumptions.
In his Apology, Plato describes Socrates' characterization of Athens as a large and sluggish horse and of Socrates himself as the fly that bites and rouses it.
Many translations use gadfly in this portion of the Apology, and Socrates is sometimes referred to as the "gadfly of Athens."

 

Flotilla

 WORD OF THE DAY

flotilla / noun / floh-TILL-uh

Definition
1a: a fleet of ships or boats
1b: a navy organizational unit consisting of two or more squadrons of small warships
2: an indefinite large number

Examples
"Sometimes, a hot bite, a cold drink, and a flotilla of paddle boats is just right. In fact, after this winter of our discontent, it's just perfect."
— Merrill Shindler, The Daily Breeze (Torrance, California), 19 Mar. 2021

"The vessel was sunk during an engagement with a Japanese flotilla of much larger battleships, cruisers and destroyers."
— Tim Stanley, The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World, 7 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
Flotilla comes from the diminutive form of the Spanish noun flota, meaning "fleet."
Flota derives via Old French from Old Norse floti and is related to Old English flota (meaning "ship" or "fleet"), an ancestor to English's float.
Much like other words referring to groups of particular things (such as swarm), flotilla has taken on expanded usage to refer simply to a large number of something not necessarily having to do with nautical matters, often with humorous effect (e.g., "a flotilla of rather mature-looking male models" — Jed Perl, The New Republic).

Desolate

WORD OF THE DAY

desolate / adjective / DESS-uh-lut

Definition
1a: devoid of inhabitants and visitors
1b: deserted
2: joyless, disconsolate, and sorrowful through or as if through separation from a loved one
3a: showing the effects of abandonment and neglect
3b: dilapidated
3c: barren, lifeless
3d: devoid of warmth, comfort, or hope
3e: gloomy

Examples
"In the final stretch of the long journey from Pyongyang to Moscow, a Russian diplomat loads his family's possessions onto a wooden cart.… Through the biting February cold, the cart inches through the desolate North Korean countryside as the diplomat pushes from behind to help the group of eight reach the Russian borders."
 — Jean H. Lee, The Wilson Quarterly, 3 Mar. 2021

"Julien Baker, as she's adding reverb to her guitar, strives to add chilling effects to her already desolate words, not to make them feel more relatable. She wants them to sting."
— Bre Offenberger, The Post (Athens, Ohio), 5 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
The word desolate hasn't strayed far from its Latin roots: its earliest meaning of "deserted" mirrors that of its Latin source dēsōlātus, which comes from the verb dēsōlāre, meaning "to leave all alone, forsake, empty of inhabitants."
That word's root is sōlus, meaning "lone, acting without a partner, lonely, deserted," source too of sole, soliloquy, solitary, solitude, and solo.
Desolate also functions as a verb with its most common meanings being "to lay waste" and "to make wretched; to make someone deeply dejected or distressed."

 

Heliacal

 WORD OF THE DAY

heliacal / adjective / hih-LYE-uh-kul

Definition
: relating to or near the sun — used especially of the last setting of a star before and its first rising after invisibility due to conjunction with the sun

Examples
"Early sky watchers kept watch on the heavens in their attempts to correlate celestial and terrestrial activity and noticed that, during this brutally hot season, the star Sirius rose around the same time as the sun (its 'heliacal rising,' as we call it today), and the two moved across the daytime sky together."
— Dennis Mammana, The Noozhawk (Santa Barbara, California), 9 Aug. 2020

"Throughout the ancient world, the reappearance of Sirius in the morning dawn was a significant event. In Egypt, its heliacal rising coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile River, as well as the most oppressive period of desert heat, including a greater frequency of thunderstorms brought about by a monsoon effect from the Red Sea."
— David L. DeBruyn, The Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle, 25 Aug. 2019

Did You Know?
The word heliacal rose in the mid-16th century. Its source is the Greek word hēlios, meaning "sun."
Helios is also the Sun god of ancient Greece.
Heliacal often suggests a relationship between a star and the sun as they appear to the human eye in the sky.
It is also used in reference to the ancient Egyptian year, which began on the date when Sirius (or the Dog Star) first appeared on the eastern horizon at sunrise.
English speakers have referred to this year as the heliacal year or the Sothic year. (Sothic comes from "Sōthēs," the Greek word for Sirius.)

Chouse

 WORD OF THE DAY

chouse / verb / CHOWSS

Definition
: cheat, trick

Examples
In Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, the miserable Mr. Cruncher fumes, "If I ain't … been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with!"

"Why should not my friend be choused out of a little justice for the first time?"
— David Garrick, The Irish Widow,1772

Did You Know?
"You shall chouse him of Horses, Cloaths, and Mony," wrote John Dryden in his 1663 play Wild Gallant. Dryden was one of the first English writers to use chouse, but he wasn't the last.
That term—which may derive from a Turkish word, çavuş, meaning "doorkeeper" or "messenger"—has a rich literary past, appearing in works by Samuel Pepys, Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, among others, but its use dropped off in the 20th century.
In fact, English speakers of today may be more familiar with another chouse, a verb used in the American West to mean "to drive or herd roughly."
In spite of their identical spellings, the two chouse homographs are not related (and the origin of the latter is unknown).

Altruism

 WORD OF THE DAY

altruism / noun / AL-troo-iz-um

Definition
1: unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
2: behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

Examples
Julian's altruism is evident in the way he spends his time, including the ten hours per week that he spends volunteering at the homeless shelter.

"To that end, he advises his congregants to quit pursuing material desires and refocus their energies on acts of kindness and altruism that provide long-term happiness."
— Ralph Mancini, The Leader-News (Washburn, North Dakota), 25 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
Altruism refers to a quality possessed by people whose focus is on something other than themselves, and its root reveals the object of those generous tendencies.
Altruism derives from the French word autrui, meaning "other people."
Autrui, in turn, developed from the Old French term autre, which means "other" and which itself comes from Latin alter, also meaning "other."
That Latin source eventually caused a curious thing to happen. Under the influence of alter, the French autrui gave rise to the altrui- of both the French altruisme and the English altruism.
The English term has been in service since at least the mid-1800s.

Copious

 WORD OF THE DAY

copious / adjective / KOH-pee-us

Definition
1a: yielding something abundantly
1b: plentiful in number
2a: full of thought, information, or matter
2b: profuse or exuberant in words, expression, or style
3a: present in large quantity
3b: taking place on a large scale

Examples
Jacqueline took copious notes during the long lecture and shared them with the rest of her study group.

"Her grandmother had trimmed her lashes when she was a baby to 'stimulate growth,' and it seemed to have worked, for now she was blessed with a flurry of thick, black lashes that other girls could only achieve with copious layers of mascara, and not even then."
— Susie Yang, White Ivy, 2020

Did You Know?
Copious dates to the 14th century, during the era of English known as Middle English.
Like most terms entering the language then, it comes ultimately from Latin, from the word copia, meaning "abundance." (Cornucopia combines this same root with cornu, meaning "horn," to form the phrase "horn of plenty.")
Latin copia combines the prefix co- and -op, * ops, meaning "wealth" or "power." (That asterisk means that ops is assumed to have existed or has been reconstructed by means of comparative evidence.)
The latter also features in the history of opulent, meaning "wealthy" or "luxurious."

Rictus

 WORD OF THE DAY

rictus / noun / RIK-tus

Definition

1: the gape of a bird's mouth

2a: the mouth orifice

2b: a gaping grin or grimace

Examples

"You could make a strong case that the current face of the Mariners' franchise, generically speaking, is frozen in a rictus of frustration.… Perhaps one day soon a savior will emerge and lead the Mariners to unachieved heights." 

— Larry Stone, The Seattle Times, 31 Mar. 2021

"To [Jim Carrey] fans, it's fun to watch him return to sketch comedy—the medium that offered his big break back in the early ’90s—turn that rubber face into a rictus, and wiggle his glued-on eyebrows." 

— Alison Herman, The Ringer, 9 Oct. 2020

Did You Know?

Rictus began its English career in the late 17th century as a technical term for the mouth of an animal, the new science of zoology clearly calling for some Latin to set its lingo apart from the language of farmers. 

In Latin, rictus means "an open mouth"; it comes from the verb ringi, meaning "to open the mouth." 

Zoologists couldn't keep the word to themselves, though. English speakers liked its sound too much, and they thought it would be good for referring to a gaping grin or grimace. 

James Joyce used the word in both Ulysses (1922) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), writing in the latter, "Creatures were in the field…. Goatish creatures with human faces…. A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces."

Peruse

 WORD OF THE DAY

peruse / verb / puh-ROOZ

Definition
1a: to examine or consider with attention and in detail
1b: study
1c: to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner
2a: read
2b: to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner

Examples
Dmitri perused the menu while we waited for a table.

"Your best friend here is eBird.org, a crowd-sourced website managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where birders file checklists and where you can peruse a map of hot spots (ebird.org/hotspots) to find out what's been seen near you in recent days."
— Ty Burr, The Boston Globe, 1 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
Peruse has long been a literary word, used by such famous authors as William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, and Thomas Hardy, and it tends to have a literary flavor even in our time.
Peruse can suggest paying close attention to something, but it can also simply mean "to read."
The "read" sense, which is not especially new and was in fact included in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, has drawn some criticism over the years for being too broad.
Some commentators have recommended that peruse be reserved for reading with great care and attention to detail.
But the fact remains that peruse is often used in situations where a simple "read" definition could be easily substituted. It may suggest either an attentive read or a quick scan.

Divers

 WORD OF THE DAY

divers / adjective / DYE-verz

Definition

1: of an indefinite number greater than one 

2: various

Examples

"Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated 'by hook and by crook,' the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it."
— Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," 1820

"Carrick Venn was an original, a man of restless curious tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, was often full of visitors: a cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, painters, experimenters in divers forms of expression."
— Edith Wharton, "The Bolted Door," 1909

Did You Know?
Divers is not a misspelling of diverse—it is a word in its own right. Both words come from Latin diversus, meaning "turning in opposite directions," and both historically could be pronounced as either DYE-verz (like the plural of the noun diver) or dye-VERSS.
Divers (now pronounced more frequently as DYE-verz) is typically used before a plural noun to indicate an unspecified quantity ("a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments" — Jane Eyre); it's a rather formal word and not commonly encountered.
Diverse (usually dye-VERSS) is frequently called upon to emphasize variety.
It means either "dissimilar" or "unlike" (as in "a variety of activities to appeal to the children's diverse interests") or "having distinct or unlike elements or qualities" ("a diverse student body").

Blithesome

 WORD OF THE DAY

blithesome / adjective / BLIGHTH-sum 

Definition
1: with lightheartedness or unconcern
2: gay, merry

Examples
"The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy."
— Herman Melville, The Piazza Tales, 1856

"Writing and producing comedy is no laughing matter. A subtle alchemy is required if it is to work—a strange magic involving both the playwright, the director and the cast. One slip and the most blithesome of comedies becomes either ponderous sludge or hopelessly contrived and blunt-ended."
— Chris Moore, The Press (Christchurch, New Zealand), 9 Sept. 2019

Did You Know?
Blithe had been bounding about in the language for six centuries before English speakers attached a -some to its tail to make blithesome.
Poet Robert Greene appears to have been among the first to employ the extension. In his 1594 poem "A Looking Glasse for London and England" he wrote,
"these [large leather bottles] of the richest wine, / Make me think how blithesome we will be."
The suffix -some has over the centuries produced a great number of adjectives (many less popular than they once were) but it typically does so by binding itself to a noun or a verb, as we see in irksome, awesome, fearsome, and bothersome.
But blithesome came from blithe—also an adjective—and is in fact a synonym of that word. A few other -some words, such as gladsome and lonesome, were formed likewise.

Exhilarate

 WORD OF THE DAY

exhilarate / verb / ig-ZIL-uh-rayt

Definition
: to make (someone) very happy and excited or elated

Examples
"To be working, to be making a film for the cinema, at a time when so many people were wondering if that would ever be possible again, was exhilarating. We proved to ourselves the heady fact that we can still work, even under this pandemic, it does not need to rob us of everything we cherish."
— Tilda Swinton, quoted in The Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press, 10 Mar. 2021

"Maxey's flashes have exhilarated, but his small stature, inefficient shooting, and defensive shortcomings loom large. If the Sixers truly want to compete, he's the kind of long-term project you might exchange for a win-now piece."
— Christopher Kline, The Sixer Sense (thesixersense.com), 20 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
Many people find exhilarate a difficult word to spell. It's easy to forget that silent "h" in there, and is it an "er" or "ar" after the "l"?
It may be easier to remember the spelling if you know that exhilarate ultimately derives from the Latin adjective hilarus, meaning "cheerful." (This also explains why the earliest meaning of exhilarate is "to make cheerful.")
Exhilarate comes from exhilaratus, the past participle of exhilarare, which is formed by combining ex- and hilarare, a verb that derives from hilarus and means "to cheer or gladden."
If hilarus looks familiar, that may be because it's also the source of hilarious and hilarity (as well as hilariously and hilariousness, of course). 

Importunate

 WORD OF THE DAY

importunate / adjective / im-POR-chuh-nut

Definition
1a: troublesomely urgent
1b: overly persistent in request or demand
2: troublesome

Examples
"It seems apt that in the play's first scene, set at 6 a.m. in Lagos, Nigeria, an importunate young customer asks the barber he's so rudely awakened to give him an 'aerodynamic' cut."
— Ben Brantley, The New York Times, 4 Dec. 2019

"But when I spoke to Nadella he allowed that when you see people in their homes, with their noisy children and importunate pets, struggling to stay focussed and upbeat, 'you have a different kind of empathy for your co-workers.'"
— John Seabrook, The New Yorker, 1 Feb. 2021

Did You Know?
Importunate has been part of the English language since the 16th century, and the synonymous importune arrived even earlier, in the 15th century.
The seemingly superfluous inclusion of the suffix -ate in importunate is a bit mysterious; one theory is that English speakers modeled the adjective after words like obstinate.
Importune and importunate come from Latin importunus.
The prefix im- means "not," and importunus can be contrasted with Latin opportunus, which shares its meaning with and is the ancestor of our opportune, meaning "suitable or timely."
The connection is obscure now, but opportunus itself harks back to the Latin phrase ob portum, meaning "[coming] to harbor."
Importune, and later importunate, once meant "inopportune, untimely," but that sense is now obsolete.

Paean

 WORD OF THE DAY

paean / noun / PEE-un

Definition
1: a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph
2a: a work that praises or honors its subject
2b: encomium, tribute

Examples
"But Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town,' set amid the mountains there, is no folksy paean to simplicity. It's a boldly experimental play about the beauty of the everyday, and human beings' tragic propensity to look right past that."
— Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2021

"Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, has a smart new book out advising us to 'Think Again,' in the words of his title. He explores in part what goes wrong when smart people are too righteous, and he offers a paean to intellectual humility."
— Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, 3 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
According to the poet Homer, the Greek god Apollo sometimes took the guise of Paean, physician to the gods.
The earliest musical paeans were hymns of thanksgiving and praise that were dedicated to Apollo.
They were sung at events ranging from boisterous festivals to public funerals, and they were the traditional marching songs of armies heading into battle.
Over time, the word became generalized, and it is now used for any kind of tribute.

Shrive

 WORD OF THE DAY

shrive / verb / SHRYVE

Definition
1: to administer the sacrament of reconciliation to
2: to free from guilt

Examples
"Once every three months, Pancho took his savings and drove into Monterey to confess his sins, to do his penance, and be shriven and to get drunk, in the order named."
— John Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven, 1932

"Each Saturday he confessed humbly at St Francis' Church, then shrived penitents for long hours at the cathedral, never stinting his homilies."
— James Griffin, The Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1986

Did You Know?
We wouldn't want to give the history of shrive short shrift, so here's the whole story.
It began when the Latin verb scribere (meaning "to write") found its way onto the tongues of certain Germanic peoples who brought it to Britain in the early Middle Ages.
Because it was often used for laying down directions or rules in writing, Old English speakers used their form of the term, scrīfan, to mean "to prescribe or impose."
The Church adopted scrīfan to refer to the act of assigning penance to sinners and, later, to hearing confession and administering absolution.
Today shrift, the noun form of shrive, makes up half of "short shrift," a phrase meaning "little or no attention or consideration." Originally, "short shrift" was the barely adequate time for confession before an execution.

Archipelago

 WORD OF THE DAY

archipelago / noun / ahr-kuh-PEL-uh-goh

Definition
1: an expanse of water with many scattered islands
2: a group of islands
3a: something resembling an archipelago
3b: a group or scattering of similar things

Examples
"The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,100 islands, is recognized globally as a megadiverse nation and a biodiversity hotspot."
— The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 30 Mar. 2021

"For those who have the choice, an island is a place to go to simplify life, to strip it bare of the constant attention-battering of our world. When Francis was writing he was not to know that, by the time of publication, isolation would have left its island home to push us two metres apart, to make us archipelagos."
— Philip Marsden, The Spectator, 3 Oct. 2020

Did You Know?
The Greeks called it the Aegean Pelagos and the Italians referred to it as Arcipelago (meaning "chief sea"), but English speakers now call it the Aegean Sea.
Numerous islands dot its expanse, and 16th-century English speakers adopted a modified form of its Italian name for any sea with a similar scattering of islands.
In time, archipelago came to refer to the groups of islands themselves, and now it is often used figuratively, as in, for example, "an archipelago of high-rise buildings."

Fustian

 WORD OF THE DAY

fustian / noun / FUSS-chun

Definition
1a: a strong cotton and linen fabric
1b: a class of cotton fabrics usually having a pile face and twill weave
2a: high-flown or affected writing or speech 
2b: anything high-flown or affected in style

Examples
"In 1798, William Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at the cottage of his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge…. Twenty-five years later, William Hazlitt, who was also in residence at the time, still remembered his first sight of the future poet laureate, a tall 'Don Quixote-like' figure, quaintly dressed in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons."
— Rachel Cook, The Guardian, 14 Apr. 2020

"The last couple of Lyric 'Rigoletto' productions have ranged from muddled to disastrous, but this one, using handsome sets that originated at the San Francisco Opera in 1997 and deftly staged by revival director E. Loren Meeker, works to tell the story directly, without fuss or fustian."
— John von Rhein, The Chicago Tribune, 9 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?
Fustian first entered English in the 13th century, by way of Anglo-French, as a term for a kind of fabric. (Its ultimate Latin source is probably the word fustis, meaning "tree trunk.")
Several centuries into use as a noun and an attributive noun, fustian spread beyond textiles to describe pretentious writing or speech.
Christopher Marlowe was a pioneer in the word's semantic expansion: in his 16th-century play Doctor Faustus, he employs the word in this new way when the student Wagner says,
"Let thy left eye be diametarily [sic] fixed upon my right heel, with quasi vestigiis nostris insistere,"
and the clown replies,
"God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian."
And later, the titular doctor himself is called "Dr. Fustian" repeatedly by a horse dealer—an apt misnomer considering the Doctor's speech habits.

Succumb

 WORD OF THE DAY

succumb / verb / suh-KUM

Definition
1: to yield to superior strength or force or overpowering appeal or desire
2: to be brought to an end (such as death) by the effect of destructive or disruptive forces

Examples
"Of all the food experiences I have missed in the last year, one stands out: my regular trip to a falafel stall on the edge of London's Shepherd's Bush Market. It sold the greatest falafels I've ever tasted: crisp and crunchy on the outside, succumbing to a fluffy interior, bright green with parsley and coriander."
— Keith Kendrick, Good Food, March 2021

"Georgia is in possession of the only unfinished manuscript that her deceased relative left behind, and her own mom wants her to sell the rights so they can get some cash. Georgia succumbs to the pressure and enters a deal in which another author will finish the book's second half."
— Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
If the idea of someone succumbing brings to mind the image of a person lying down before more powerful forces, you have an excellent grasp of the Latin that gave English succumb.
Succumb derives from the French word succomber, which is itself from the Latin word succumbere, meaning "to fall down" or "to yield."
Succumbere was formed by combining sub-, meaning "under," with -cumbere, meaning "to lie down." The earliest application of succumb in the late 15th century was as a transitive verb meaning "to bring down" or "to overwhelm," but this sense is now obsolete.
The current sense of "to yield" first appeared in print in the early 17th century; the more specific use—yielding to a disease or other destructive force—followed decades later.

Succumb

 WORD OF THE DAY

succumb / verb / suh-KUM

Definition
1: to yield to superior strength or force or overpowering appeal or desire
2: to be brought to an end (such as death) by the effect of destructive or disruptive forces

Examples
"Of all the food experiences I have missed in the last year, one stands out: my regular trip to a falafel stall on the edge of London's Shepherd's Bush Market. It sold the greatest falafels I've ever tasted: crisp and crunchy on the outside, succumbing to a fluffy interior, bright green with parsley and coriander."
— Keith Kendrick, Good Food, March 2021

"Georgia is in possession of the only unfinished manuscript that her deceased relative left behind, and her own mom wants her to sell the rights so they can get some cash. Georgia succumbs to the pressure and enters a deal in which another author will finish the book's second half."
— Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
If the idea of someone succumbing brings to mind the image of a person lying down before more powerful forces, you have an excellent grasp of the Latin that gave English succumb.
Succumb derives from the French word succomber, which is itself from the Latin word succumbere, meaning "to fall down" or "to yield."
Succumbere was formed by combining sub-, meaning "under," with -cumbere, meaning "to lie down." The earliest application of succumb in the late 15th century was as a transitive verb meaning "to bring down" or "to overwhelm," but this sense is now obsolete.
The current sense of "to yield" first appeared in print in the early 17th century; the more specific use—yielding to a disease or other destructive force—followed decades later.

Conciliatory

WORD OF THE DAY

conciliatory / adjective / kun-SILL-yuh-tor-ee 

Definition
1: tending to win over from a state of hostility or distrust
2: intended to gain the goodwill or favor of someone

Examples
As the irate customer yelled, the manager adopted a soothing, conciliatory tone and promised that the situation would be remedied.

"Then you have the situations in Green Bay and Seattle where veterans with Super Bowl wins and Hall of Fame resumes have expressed their feelings about their teams' direction. Green Bay management has been conciliatory towards Aaron Rodgers while Seattle has been rather truculent towards Russell Wilson."
— Jeff Harvey, The Princeton (West Virginia) Times, 19 Feb. 2021

Did You Know?
If you are conciliatory towards someone, you're trying to win that person over to your side.
The verb conciliate was borrowed into English in the mid-16th century and descends from the Latin verb conciliare, meaning "to assemble, unite, or win over." 
Conciliare, in turn, comes from Latin concilium, meaning "assembly" or "council."
Conciliatory, which appeared in English a bit later in the 16th century, also traces back to conciliare. Another word that has conciliare as a root is reconcile, the earliest meaning of which is "to restore to friendship or harmony."