Wherefore

 WORD OF THE DAY

wherefore / adverb / WAIR-for

Definition
1a: for what reason or purpose
1b: why
2 : therefore

Examples
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1594-95

"According to The Blast, the legal filing said 'Wherefore, Petitioner requests an order of this court that the conservatorship of the person of Britney Jean Spears, the conservatee, be terminated.'"
— Justin Enriquez, ­The Daily Mail (US), 18 June 2021

Did You Know?
In early English, a number of new words were formed by combining where with a preposition.
In such words, where had the meaning of "what" or "which"—hence, wherein ("in what"), whereon ("on what"), and wherefore ("for what").
Although wherefore as an adverb is rarely used today, the noun form, meaning "an answer or statement giving an explanation," survives in the phrase "the whys and wherefores."

Palaver

WORD OF THE DAY

palaver / noun / puh-LAV-er

Definition
1a: a long discussion or meeting parley usually between persons of different cultures or levels of sophistication
1b: conference, discussion
2a: idle talk
2b: misleading or beguiling speech

Examples
Enough of this palaver. We have a lot to discuss.

"[Adrian Daub] brings the same sharp eye for sophistry to other forms of palaver that move capital in Silicon Valley. He revisits the actual thinkers appropriated by TED bloviators, from the philosopher Marshall McLuhan to the French historian René Girard to the novelist Ayn Rand."
— Virginia Heffernan, The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2020

Did You Know?
During the 18th century, Portuguese and English sailors often met during trading trips along the West African coast.
This contact prompted the English to borrow the Portuguese palavra, which usually means "speech" or "word" but was used by Portuguese traders with the specific meaning "discussions with natives."
The Portuguese word traces back to the Late Latin parabola, a noun meaning "speech" or "parable."

Bivouac

 WORD OF THE DAY

bivouac / verb / BIV-uh-wak

Definition
1: to make a temporary encampment under little or no shelter
2: to take shelter often temporarily
3: to provide temporary quarters for

Examples
The climbers bivouacked under the cliff's ledge.

"Bivouacked in the middle of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—a five-hour flight from the nearest Antarctic station—nothing comes easy. Even though it was the southern summer, geologist James Smith of the British Antarctic Survey endured nearly three months of freezing temperatures, sleeping in a tent, and eating dehydrated food."
— Matt Simon, Wired, 15 Feb. 2021

Did You Know?
In his 1841 dictionary, Noah Webster observed bivouac to be a French borrowing having military origins.
He defined the noun bivouac as "the guard or watch of a whole army, as in cases of great danger of surprise or attack" and the verb as "to watch or be on guard, as a whole army."
The French word is derived from the Low German word biwacht, which translates to "by guard."
Germans used the word specifically for a patrol of citizens who assisted the town watch at night.
Today, bivouac has less to do with guarding and patrolling than it does with taking shelter.

Jeremiad

 WORD OF THE DAY

jeremiad / noun / jair-uh-MYE-udPrevNext

Definition
1: a prolonged lamentation or complaint
2: a cautionary or angry harangue

Examples
The news story was a scathing jeremiad against the invasion of privacy on celebrities.

"We can expect a volley of jeremiads against wind power, as perhaps half that fleet stopped spinning. But with perhaps more than 30 gigawatts of thermal generating capacity tripping offline, and wind power producing about five gigawatts less than planned, this disaster clearly stretches, as Texas' grid operator said, 'across fuel types.'"
— Liam Denning, The St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press, 18 Feb. 2021

Did You Know?
Jeremiah was a Jewish prophet, who lived from about 650 to 570 B.C. and spent his days lambasting the Hebrews for their false worship and social injustice and denouncing the king for his selfishness, materialism, and inequities.
When not calling on his people to quit their wicked ways, he was lamenting his own lot; a portion of the biblical Book of Jeremiah is devoted to his "confessions," a series of lamentations on the hardships endured by a prophet with an unpopular message.
Nowadays, English speakers use Jeremiah for a pessimistic person and jeremiad for the way these Jeremiahs carry on.
The word jeremiad was borrowed from the French, who coined it as jérémiade.

 

Urbane

 WORD OF THE DAY

urbane / adjective / er-BAYN

Definition
: notably polite or polished in manner

Examples
"When had my willful and boorish cousin turned into this urbane young artist greeting the guests at her opening reception?" wondered James.

"Offstage, he could be sensitive or surly, charming or sometimes combative, an unabashed hedonist or an urbane aficionado of film, literature and theater."
— George Varga, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 Jun. 2021

Did You Know?
City slickers and country folk have long debated whether life is better in town or in the wide-open spaces, and urbane is a term that springs from the throes of that debate.
In its earliest English uses, urbane was synonymous with its close relative urban ("of, relating to, characteristic of, or constituting a city").
Both words come from the Latin adjective urbanus ("urban, urbane"), which in turn is derived from urbs, meaning "city."
Urbane developed its modern sense denoting savoir faire from the belief (no doubt fostered by city dwellers) that living in the city made one more suave and polished than did leading a rural life.

Exopropriate

 WORD OF THE DAY

expropriate / verb / ek-SPROH-pree-ayt

Definition
1: to deprive of possession or proprietary rights
2: to transfer (the property of another) to one's own possession

Examples
The city council rejected a proposal to expropriate private property for the highway expansion.

"Newspapers, in particular, have had their content unfairly expropriated by the lords of the internet, even as the advertising that once sustained the news business has been snatched away by the same online behemoths."
— David Horsey, The Seattle Times,18 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
If you guessed that expropriate has something in common with the verb appropriate, you're right. Both words ultimately derive from the Latin adjective proprius, meaning "own."
Expropriate came to English by way of the Medieval Latin verb expropriare, itself from Latin ex- ("out of" or "from") and proprius.
Appropriate descends from Late Latin appropriare, which joins proprius and Latin ad- ("to" or "toward").
Both the verb appropriate ("to take possession of" or "to set aside for a particular use") and the adjective appropriate ("fitting" or "suitable") have been with us since the 15th century, and expropriate was officially appropriated in the 17th century.
Other proprius descendants in English include proper and property.

Gutteral

 WORD OF THE DAY

guttural / adjective / GUTT-uh-rul

Definition
1: articulated in the throat
2: velar
3: being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable

Examples
We asked the bouncer for directions, but he only responded with an inarticulate guttural grunt.

"And when you hear the strange guttural call of the Red Bellied Woodpecker, you wonder, who would respond to that weird sound?"
— Joseph Palmer, The Brooklyn (New York) Eagle, 14 June 2021

Did You Know?
Though it is now used to describe many sounds or utterances which strike the listener as harsh or disagreeable, the adjective guttural was originally applied only to sounds and utterances produced in the throat.
This is reflected in the word's Latin root—guttur, meaning "throat."
Despite the similarity in sound, guttural is not related to the English word gutter, which comes (by way of Anglo-French) from Latin gutta, meaning "drop."

Receipt

 WORD OF THE DAY

receipt / noun / rih-SEET

Definition
1a: a writing acknowledging the receiving of goods or money
1b receipts, plural, informal : proof, evidence
2: the act or process of receiving
3: something received — usually used in plural
4: recipe

Examples
If you find that the item has been damaged during shipping, please contact us upon receipt to request a return shipping label.

"A perplexed correspondent asked Emily Post why it was that she used the word 'receipt' instead of 'recipe' in discussing cookery. Mrs. Post replied that 'receipt' is a word of fashionable descent, used in this sense, so she preferred it to the more commercial 'recipe.'"
— J. N. Cornelius, The Birmingham (Alabama) News, 30 July 1937

Did You Know?
These days it may seem odd to speak of "grandma's cookie receipt," but in the past, receipt was a synonym of recipe. Early use of receipt refers to medicinal preparations.
Recipe didn't arrive until the 1500s, and it too was first used to describe a formula for medicine.
In time, both words gained use in cookery, after which recipe slowly became the preferred word.
Receipt later acquired its more familiar sense of "a writing acknowledging the receiving of goods or money."
Both words, receipt and recipe, ultimately derive from Latin recipere ("to receive").

Attenuate

 WORD OF THE DAY

attenuate / verb / uh-TEN-yuh-wayt

Definition
1a: to lessen the amount, force, magnitude, or value of
1b: weaken
2: to reduce the severity, virulence, or vitality of
3: to make thin or slender
4a: to make thin in consistency
4b: rarefy
5a: to become thin, fine, or less

Examples
The use of computers, with their quiet keyboards, in place of typewriters greatly attenuated the noise level of the office.

"Fans who attend Double-A games this year will see a couple of new rules…. During the first half of the season, all infielders must have their feet on the dirt when a pitch is thrown, attenuating the major defensive shifts that have become prevalent in baseball in recent years, and in the season's second half, no shifting will be permitted at all."
— Ryan Anderson, The Daily Citizen-News (Dalton, Georgia), 15 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
Attenuate ultimately comes from a combining of the Latin prefix ad-, meaning "to" or "toward," and tenuis, meaning "thin," a pedigree that is in keeping with the English word's current meanings, which all have to do with literal or metaphorical thinning.
The word is most common in technical contexts, where it often implies the reduction or weakening of something by physical or chemical means.
You can attenuate wire by drawing it through successively smaller holes, for example, or attenuate gold by hammering it into thin sheets.
Current evidence dates the term to the 16th century, in which we find many references to bodily humors in need of being attenuated; modern medicine prefers to use the word in reference to procedures that weaken a pathogen or reduce the severity of a disease.

 

Capricious

 WORD OF THE DAY

capricious / adjective / kuh-PRISH-us

Definition
1: governed or characterized by caprice
2: impulsive, unpredictable

Examples
"Like all great children's writers, [Jacqueline] Wilson and [E.] Nesbit understood how strange and capricious children could be…."
— Guy Lodge, Variety, 4 Apr. 2020

"[The television show] Succession doesn't just get the details right; mirroring the capricious world of media and its greedy overlords, it also makes sweeping plot turns that build to climaxes as bloody as Macbeth."
— Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club, 11 Nov. 2019

Did You Know?
The adjective capricious and its close relation, the noun caprice (a synonym of whim), both derive via French from the Italian capriccio, which originally referred not to a sudden desire but to a sudden shudder of fear.
Capriccio, in turn, likely derives from the Italian capo, meaning "head," and riccio, the word for "hedgehog."
The implication was that someone who shuddered in fear was said to have a "hedgehog head," meaning that the person's hair stood on end like the spines of a hedgehog.

Omniscient

 WORD OF THE DAY

omniscient / adjective / ahm-NISH-unt

Definition
1: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2: possessed of universal or complete knowledge

Examples
"You'll need to tell me when you don't understand something I've said," Maria said. "I'm not omniscient, you know."

"I suppose I had boxed myself into a corner by making the story first person, present tense, and thus not allowing for an omniscient narrator who could act as the Greek chorus for the reader, explaining as needed."
— Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, quoted in The New Yorker, 24 May 2021

Did You Know?
One who is omniscient literally knows all.
The word omniscient, which has been part of English since at least the beginning of the 17th century, brings together two Latin roots: the combining form omni-, meaning "all" or "universally," and the verb scire, meaning "to know."
You will recognize omni- as the prefix that tells all in such words as omnivorous ("eating all" or, in actual use, "eating both plants and animals") and omnipotent ("all-powerful").
Scire likewise has a number of other knowledge-related descendants in English, including conscience, science, and prescience (meaning "foreknowledge").

Nonplus

 WORD OF THE DAY

nonplus / verb / nahn-PLUS

Definition

1: to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do 

2: perplex

Examples

The student's unexpected about-face during the class discussion nonplussed the teacher.

"Lattimer and Warnick are suitably nonplussed when the Coveys' nemesis arrives in the form of a rather robotic 19-year-old, dressed like an exorcist in his long overcoat and wide-brimmed hat, clearly unpracticed in social customs." — Melinda Miller, The Buffalo (New York) News, 16 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?

Does nonplus perplex you? You aren't alone. Some people believe the non in nonplus means "not," and assume that to be nonplussed is to be calm and poised, but in fact the opposite is true. If you are among the baffled, the word's history may clarify things. In Latin, non plus means "no more." When nonplus debuted in English in the 16th century, it was used as a noun synonymous with quandary. Someone brought to a nonplus had reached an impasse in an argument and could say no more. In short time, people began applying nonplus as a verb, and today it is often used in participial form with the meaning "perplexed" (as in "Joellen's strange remark left us utterly nonplussed").

Shibboleth

 WORD OF THE DAY

shibboleth / noun / SHIB-uh-luth

Definition
1a: a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning
1b: a widely held belief
1c: truism, platitude
2a: a use of language regarded as distinctive of a particular group
2b : a custom or usage regarded as distinguishing one group from others

Examples
"… in Britain, whether a person pronounces hs is still a significant shibboleth."
— Henry Hitchings, The Language Wars, 2011

"Even sillier was the old shibboleth that China's embrace of capitalist reforms … would lead to constitutional government. But the ability to buy a new cellphone never ensures the right to vote for a candidate of one's choice."
— Victor Davis Hanson, The Chicago Tribune, 3 Oct. 2019

Did You Know?
The Bible's Book of Judges (12:4-6) tells the story of the Ephraimites, who, after they were routed by the Gileadite army, tried to retreat by sneaking across a ford of the Jordan River that was held by their enemy.
The Gileadites, wary of the ploy, asked every soldier who tried to cross if he was an Ephraimite. When the soldier said "no," he was asked to say shibbōleth (which means "stream" in Hebrew).
Gileadites pronounced the word "shibboleth," but Ephramites said "sibboleth." Anyone who didn't pronounce the initial sh was killed on the spot.
When English speakers first borrowed shibboleth, they used it to mean "test phrase," but it has acquired additional meanings since that time.

Ruthless

 WORD OF THE DAY

ruthless / adjective / ROOTH-lus

Definition
1: having no pity
2: merciless, cruel

Examples
"This process taught me the importance of being a ruthless editor; I learnt that if a piece of information can be deleted without impacting the narrative flow, then it didn't belong there."
— Saurja DasGupta, Nature, 8 Jan. 2021

"Through a twist of fate, Estella lands a job working for a legendary designer known as the Baroness, who is played with horrible delight by Emma Thompson. The two characters clash, leading Estella to … transition into a ruthless competitor to the Baroness."
— Sarah Whitten, CNBC.com, 27 May 2021

Did You Know?
Ruthless can be defined as "without ruth" or "having no ruth." So what, then, is ruth?
The noun ruth, which is now considerably less common than ruthless, means "compassion for the misery of another," "sorrow for one's own faults," or "remorse."
And, just as it is possible for one to be without ruth, it is also possible to be full of ruth. The antonym of ruthless is ruthful, meaning "full of ruth" or "tender."
Ruthful can also mean "full of sorrow" or "causing sorrow."
Ruth can be traced back to the Middle English noun ruthe, itself from ruen, meaning "to rue" or "to feel regret, remorse, or sorrow."

Emprise

WORD OF THE DAY

emprise / noun / em-PRYZE

Definition
: an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise

Examples
"But perhaps he was the only one courageous enough to voice an opinion that others might have shared, but were afraid to say, that this whole quixotic emprise had been a bad idea, that they had been fools to attempt an escape."
— John D. Lukacs, Escape From Davao, 2010

"Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary."
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Did You Know?
Someone who engages in emprises undertakes much, so it's no surprise that emprise descends from the Anglo-French word emprendre, meaning "to undertake."
It's also no surprise that emprise became established in English during the 13th century, a time when brave knights engaged in many a chivalrous undertaking. Fourteenth-century author Geoffrey Chaucer used emprise to describe one such knight in "The Franklin's Tale" (one of the stories in The Canterbury Tales):

"Ther was a knyght that loved and dide his payne
To serve a lady in his beste wise;
And many labour, many a greet emprise,
He for his lady wroghte er she were wonne."

Aleatory

 WORD OF THE DAY

aleatory / adjective / AY-lee-uh-tor-ee

Definition
1: depending on an uncertain event or contingency as to both profit and loss
2: relating to luck and especially to bad luck
3a: characterized by chance or indeterminate elements
3b: aleatoric

Examples
"Steir paints using a carefully choreographed aleatory process...informed by her interest in Zen meditation and Japanese and Chinese art-making traditions. Standing on a cherry picker to reach the top of her canvas…, Steir pours, flings or swabs a line of paint, then patiently waits for it to trickle down in rivulets."
— Julia Felsenthal, The New York Times, 21 July 2020

"We got very, very lucky. Because the University might as well have rolled a die and hoped for the best…. I'm not trying to undermine the administration's tireless efforts to maintain safety, but I'm entirely willing to call the success of GoForward what it is: aleatory."
— Ketan Sengupta, The Chicago Maroon (The University of Chicago), 19 Jan. 2021

Did You Know?
If you're the gambling type, then chances are good you've come across aleatory in your travels. Deriving from the Latin noun alea, which refers to a kind of dice game, aleatory was first used in English in the late 17th century to describe things that are dependent on uncertain odds, much like a roll of the dice.
The term now describes things that occur by sheer chance or accident, such as the unlucky bounce of a golf shot or the unusual shape of an ink blot.
Going a bit further, the term "aleatory music" (also called "aleatoric music" or "chance music") describes a musical composition in which certain parts are left for the performer to concoct through improvisation.

Mulct

 WORD OF THE DAY

mulct / verb / MULKT

Definition

1: to punish by a fine

2a: to defraud especially of money 

2b: swindle

2c: to obtain by fraud, duress, or theft

Examples

Francis was barred from the securities industry when it was discovered he had been mulcting investors for years.

"Second, the book peels back, like the skins of an onion, layer after layer of the elaborate series of disguises, aliases and outright false identities by which the subject neatly mulcted sizable fortunes from hundreds of gullible investors in her schemes." — Richard Raymond III, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times, 19 Feb. 2017

Did You Know?

A fine assessed as a penalty for an infraction is generally considered justifiable. 

Fraud, on the other hand, is wrong—it's just the sort of thing that deserves a fine. So in mulct we have a unique word, one that means both "to fine" and "to defraud." The "fine" sense came first. 

Mulct was borrowed from the Latin word for a fine, which is multa or mulcta. 

The "fine" sense is still in use, mostly in legal contexts ("the court mulcted the defendant for punitive damages"), but these days mulct is more often used for an illegal act. It has been speculated that the "defraud" use may have developed from an association with the verb milk, in its "to exploit, to coerce profit from" meaning (as in "she was milked by the lawyers for everything she had"), but that speculation has never been proven.

Incumbent

 WORD OF THE DAY

incumbent / noun / in-KUM-bunt

Definition
1: the holder of an office or ecclesiastical benefice
2: one that occupies a particular position or place

Examples
"She also acknowledged a likelihood of having two relatively underfunded challengers take on the incumbent in a compressed election season with limited venues for campaigning."
— Jeffrey S. Solochek, The Tampa Bay (Florida) Times, 12 June 2020

"The incumbents for the Fayetteville and Rogers school boards all secured their seats for another term, while another incumbent in Fort Smith was defeated, according to final, unofficial results from Tuesday's school election."
— Mary Jordan and Thomas Saccente, The (Little Rock) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 19 May 2021

Did You Know?
When incumbent was first used in English in the 15th century, it referred to someone who occupied a benefice—a paid position in a church.
This was often a lifetime appointment; the person could only be forced to leave the office in the case of certain specific legal conflicts. In the mid-17th century, incumbent came to refer to anyone holding any office, including elected positions.
In the modern American political system, incumbent typically refers to someone who is the current holder of a position during an election for that position.
The word also functions as an adjective with its most common meanings being "occupying a specified office" ("the incumbent mayor") and "obligatory" ("it is incumbent upon us to help").
Incumbent came to English through Anglo-French and derives from the Latin incumbere, meaning "to lie down on."

Quondam

 WORD OF THE DAY

quondam / adjective / KWAHN-dum

Definition
: former, sometime

Examples
Many people were surprised to learn that the quondam poet and professor had since become an accountant.

"It was in that spirit that Vladimir Putin, the quondam KGB man who rules Russia, addressed his nation and the world Tuesday on the annexation of Crimea."
— Charles Lane, The Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2014

Did You Know?
Looking for an unusual and creative way to say "former"?
Quondam (which came to English in the 16th century from Latin quondam, meaning "at one time" or "formerly") certainly fits the bill.
Or maybe you'd prefer one of its synonyms: whilom, ci-devant, or preterit. Or you could really go crazy with umquhile, a word that is extremely rare even in its more natural Scots English setting.
Quondam itself isn't exactly ubiquitous, but it's used more than any of the other words above. If you're looking for something a bit more pedestrian, you might try yet another synonym: erstwhile.
Despite its wonderfully archaic flavor, erstwhile is a highly favored alternative.

Deter

 WORD OF THE DAY

deter / verb / dih-TER

Definition
1: to turn aside, discourage, or prevent from acting
2: inhibit

Examples
"'Criminals are looking for easy targets,' Const. Chris Lesage said in a statement. 'Removing valuables from plain sight and making sure to lock your vehicle can be enough to deter a would-be thief.'"
— Chris Simon, The Barrie (Ontario) Advance Online, 24 May 2021

"Fake owls are usually the most effective way to deter large birds of prey like hawks and, of course, owls. For those who have smaller pets or backyard chickens, a fake owl may be the best bird deterrent."
— Rebecca Wolken, BobVila.com

Did You Know?
The word deter is rooted in fear. It was borrowed into English around the mid-16th century from the Latin verb deterrēre, which in turn was formed by combining de-, meaning "from" or "away," with terrēre, meaning "to frighten."
Terrēre is also the source of terror, terrible, and even terrific, which originally meant "very bad" or "frightful."
These days, you may be deterred by something that frightens you or by something that simply causes you to think about the difficult or unpleasant consequences of continuing.
The word can also mean "to inhibit," as in "painting to deter rust."

Gormandize

 WORD OF THE DAY

gormandize / verb / GOR-mun-dyze

Definition|
1: to eat greedily, gluttonously, or ravenously
2: devour

Examples
Lady Baleforth watched in horror as Lord Hoggwood gormandized the hors d'oeuvres, polishing off the entire lot before any of the other guests even arrived.

"That's because—unless you live in the Sistine Chapel—there are very few other things to focus on while staring at the ceiling from the couch after gormandizing the Thanksgiving feast."
— John O. Marlowe, The Paper of Montgomery County (Indiana), 30 Nov. 2017

Did You Know?
Gormandize entered English in the mid-1500s as a modification of gourmand, a term borrowed from the French that served as a synonym for glutton.
The meanings of both gourmand and gormandize were clearly disparaging until the 19th century, when gourmet came into use to refer to a connoisseur of food and drink.
Since then, the meaning of gourmand has softened, so that it now simply suggests someone who likes good food in large quantities.
Gormandize still carries negative connotations of gluttony, but it can also imply that a big eater has a discriminating palate as well as a generous appetite.

Bijou

 WORD OF THE DAY

bijou / noun / BEE-zhoo

Definition
1a: a small dainty usually ornamental piece of delicate workmanship
1b: jewel
2: something delicate, elegant, or highly prized

Examples
"To celebrate her latest collection … jeweler Jesse Marlo Lazowski hosted an intimate dinner in New York City.… In a Putnam & Putnam–designed vitrine filled with layers of sand in desert-sunset hues, the bijoux were on full display and guests … took their turns trying on the fine jewelry baubles."
— Lilah Ramzi, Vogue, 2 Feb. 2018

"Reese Witherspoon fired up her scarlet and vermilion Christian Dior gown with Bulgari's high jewelry. Her colorful bijoux included a Magnifica ring holding a 10-carat ruby and diamonds and a one-of-a-kind Barocko onyx, diamond and pearl bracelet."
— Alev Aktar, The New York Post, 6 May 2021

Did You Know?
Bijou (which can be pluralized as either bijoux or bijous) has adorned English since the late 17th century.
We borrowed it from French, but the word ultimately traces to Breton, a Celtic language closely related to Cornish and Welsh and spoken by inhabitants of the Brittany region of northwest France.
Our modern English word derives from Breton bizou, which means "ring."
That history makes bijou a rare gem in English because, although the Breton people occupied part of England for many years before they were pushed into France by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, very few Breton-derived words remain in our language.
Another Breton descendant is menhir, a term for a kind of monolith.