Filial

 WORD OF THE DAY

filial / adjective / FIL-ee-ul

Definition
1: of, relating to, or befitting a son or daughter
2: having or assuming the relation of a child or offspring

Examples
"The text purports to be Geppetto's captivity journal…. He recounts the story of Pinocchio's creation and truancy; he records [that] he continues to make art, painting portraits of lost loves and fashioning filial surrogates—lifeless, alas—out of old hard tack and shards of crockery."
— Bruce Handy, The New York Times, 14 Feb. 2021

To ensure that Dickie and Tony’s filial bond seemed authentic on-screen, Nivola and Gandolfini spent hours talking and getting to know each other at Junior’s coffee shop before cameras ever started rolling.
— Brent Lang, Variety, 8 Sep. 2021

Did You Know?
Filial comes from Latin filius, meaning "son," and filia, "daughter"; in English, it applies to any gender.
The word has long carried the dutiful sense "owed to a parent by a child," as found in such phrases as "filial respect" and "filial piety."
 These days it can also be used more generally for any emotion or behavior of a child to a parent.

Zest

 WORD OF THE DAY

zest / noun / ZEST

Definition

1: a piece of the peel of a citrus fruit (such as an orange or lemon) used as flavoring

2a: an enjoyably exciting quality 

2b: PIQUANCY

3a: keen enjoyment 

3b: RELISH, GUSTO

Examples

"It has always seemed bizarre to me to start talking about the coming winter in August. But this is Jackson Hole, and the zest for snow never seems to end." — Jim Woodmencey, The Jackson Hole (Wyoming) News and Guide, 25 Aug. 2021

His humor added a certain zest to the performance.

Did You Know?

Zest can spice up your life—fitting for a word that we learned from the world of cooking. 

We borrowed the term from a source that has given English speakers many culinary delights: French cuisine. 

The French used the form zest (nowadays they spell it zeste) to refer to orange or lemon peel used to flavor food or drinks. 

English speakers developed a taste for the fruit flavoring and adopted the term zest in the late 1600s. 

By the early 1700s, they had started using the word to refer to any quality that adds enjoyment to something in the same way that the zest of an orange or lemon adds flavor to food.

Parlay

 WORD OF THE DAY

parlay / verb /PAHR-lay

Definition
1: to bet in a parlay
2a: to exploit successfully
2b: to increase or otherwise transform into something of much greater value
3a: a series of two or more bets so set up in advance that the original stake plus its winnings are risked on the successive wagers
3b (broadly): the fresh risking of an original stake together with its winnings

Examples
"Since his pro debut in 1995, [Manny Pacquiao] has won world titles in a record eight weight classes and parlayed boxing fame into political clout."
— Morgan Campbell, The New York Times, 22 Aug. 2021

Post-Paramount, Gianopulos will surely figure out a way to parlay his savvy, decades of experience and strong ties in Hollywood into an innovative new endeavor.
— Claudia Eller, Variety, 16 Sep. 2021

Did You Know?
If you're the gambling type, you may already know that parlay can also be used as a noun describing a series of bets in which a person places a bet, then puts the original stake of money and all of its winnings on new wagers. 

But you might not know that parlay represents a modified spelling of the French name for such bets: paroli.
You might also be unaware that the original French word is still occasionally used in English with the same meaning as the noun parlay.
Be careful not to mix up parlay with the similar word parley, meaning "to discuss terms with an enemy."
Although the spellings are very close, parley comes from the Latin word for "speech."

Misbegotten

 WORD OF THE DAY

misbegotten / adjective / miss-bih-GAH-tun

Definition
1a (dated): unlawfully conceived
1b: born to parents not married to each other
2a: having a disreputable or improper origin
2b: ill-conceived
2c: contemptible
2d: deformed 

Examples
"… one of those misbegotten oddities that cheats you out of the film you imagine you'll be getting from its opening 10 minutes...." — Robbie Collin, The Daily Telegraph (London), 6 Aug. 2021

While the Bush administration was engaged in its misbegotten wars, North Korea obtained nuclear weapons.

— Michael Krepon, Forbes, 30 Aug. 2021

Did You Know?

In the beginning, there was bigietan, and bigietan begot beyeten; then in the days of Middle English beyeten begot begeten, and from thence sprung misbegotten. That description may be a bit flowery, but it accurately traces the path that led to misbegotten. All of the Old English and Middle English ancestors listed above basically meant the same thing as the modern beget-that is, "to father" or "to produce as an effect or outgrowth." That linguistic line brought forth misbegotten by adding the prefix mis- (meaning "wrong," "bad," or "not") in the mid-1500s.

Inchoate

 WORD OF THE DAY

inchoate / adjective / in-KOH-ut

Definition
1a: being only partly in existence or operation
1b: incipient
2a: imperfectly formed or formulated
2b: formless, incoherent

Examples

"Petrifying sights and sounds haunt her nights and inchoate shadows hover around her."
— Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times, 19 Aug. 2021

Prepper Camp was a castle built on emotion: fear of the inchoate other was so great that the survivalists felt justified in being prepared to kill other humans to protect their material goods.
— Krista Stevens, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020

Did You Know?
Inchoate comes from inchoare, which means "to start work on" in Latin but translates literally as "to hitch up" (inchoare combines the prefix in- with the Latin noun cohum, which refers to the strap that secures a plow beam to a draft animal's yoke).
The concept of this initial step toward the larger task of plowing a field explains how inchoate came to describe something (as a plan or idea) in its early, not fully formed, stages of development.

Chastise

 WORD OF THE DAY

chastise / verb / chass-TYZE

Definition
1a: to censure severely
1b: castigate
2: to inflict punishment on (as by whipping)
3 (archaic): chasten

Examples
"I used to chastise people for not working as efficiently as the WWE. … I was judgmental and I was apprehensive and I wanted to be back in the ring because I loved that immediate gratification."
— John Cena, quoted in USA Today, 5 Aug. 2021

The coach chastised the players for their mistakes.

Did You Know?
There are many words to express the infliction of a penalty in return for wrongdoing—for example, chastise, castigate, chasten, correct, discipline, and punish. Of these, chastise, chasten, and castigate share similar origins as well as similar meanings.
Chastise developed as an altered form of chasten, which comes from the Anglo-French chastier, which has its roots in the Latin verb castigare, which also gave English the word castigate.

Flehmen

 WORD OF THE DAY

flehmen / noun / FLAY-mun

Definition
1: a mammalian behavior (as of horses or cats) in which the animal inhales with the mouth open and upper lip curled to facilitate exposure of the vomeronasal organ to a scent or pheromone

Examples
"Flehmen, sometimes also called the Flehmen response or the Flehmen reaction, is actually a way of smelling or scenting the air. It's not peculiar to horses: other ungulates exhibit the response, as well as cats, elephants, and bats. Lifting the upper lip gives them access to the vomeronasal organ on the roof of their mouth, which contains chemoreceptors that help them find mates and investigate other smells in their environment."
 — The McClusky (North Dakota) Gazette, 10 Sept. 2020

 Did You Know?
Flehmen comes from German, in which the word applies to animals and means "to curl the upper lip."
The German source of the English word is a verb, and it is used, infrequently, as such, as in "the horse flehmened."
More often, the English verb form is a gerund: "the horse's flehmening."
Flehmen is sometimes capitalized in English because German nouns are capitalized; however, the English word tends to be lowercase.

Lucid

 WORD OF THE DAY

lucid / adjective / LOO-sid

Definition
1a: suffused with light
1b: luminous
1c: translucent
2a: having full use of one's faculties
2b: sane
3a: clear to the understanding
3b: intelligible

Examples
"Kynpham's prose is lucid and engaging and often lyrical and poetic…."
— Kanchan Verma, Wired, 13 Aug. 2021

What one does hear is an all-important midrange that is lucid and lifelike, with the effortless transition to high frequencies and bass that provides an eerie simulacrum of real low-frequency energy, albeit within the volume of a nutshell.
— Robert Ross, Robb Report, 17 Aug. 2021

Did You Know?
It's easy enough to shed some light on the origins of lucid: it derives—via the Latin adjective lucidus, meaning "shining"—from the Latin verb lucēre, meaning "to shine."
Lucid has been used by English speakers since at least the late 16th century.
Originally, it meant merely "filled with light" or "shining," but it has since developed extended senses describing someone whose mind is clear or something with a clear meaning.
Other shining examples of lucēre descendants include translucent, lucent ("glowing"), and the somewhat rarer relucent ("reflecting light" or "shining").
Even the word light itself derives from the same ancient word that led to lucēre.

Collude

 WORD OF THE DAY

collude / verb / kuh-LOOD

Definition
1: to work together secretly especially in order to do something illegal or dishonest
2: conspire, plot

Examples
"Seven … maintenance managers were federally charged … with bilking the transit agency out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by colluding with vendors to charge for goods that were never provided and pocketing the proceeds."
 — Thomas Fitzgerald and Jeremy Roebuck, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 Aug. 2021

Decades ago, the Federal Trade Commission doubled down on the absurdity by suing Westinghouse and GE for offering large turbine generators at matching prices, even though the government conceded that the two firms did not collude to fix prices.
— WSJ, 31 Aug. 2021

Did You Know?
Our English "lude" words (allude, collude, delude, elude, and prelude) are based on the Latin verb ludere, meaning "to play."
Collude dates back to 1525 and combines ludere and the prefix col-, meaning "with" or "together." The verb is younger than the related noun collusion, which appeared sometime in the 14th century with the specific meaning "secret agreement or cooperation."
Despite their playful history, collude and collusion have always suggested deceit or trickery rather than good-natured fun.

Precarious

 WORD OF THE DAY

precarious / adjective / prih-KAIR-ee-us

Definition
1a: dependent on chance circumstances, unknown conditions, or uncertain developments
1b: characterized by a lack of security or stability that threatens with danger
2a: dependent on uncertain premises
2b: dubious
3 (archaic): depending on the will or pleasure of another

Examples
"Staff may be anxious about returning to the office and want to be assured of their safety while leaders are in the precarious position of having to make what they think is the right call."
— Bernard Coleman, Inc., 18 Aug. 2021

These states are corrupt and brutal. They are theocracies, or precarious autocracies, or secular totalitarian states: tyrannies all, deniers of freedom, republics of fear, enemies of civility and human flourishing.
— Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review, 15 Oct. 2001

Did You Know?

"This little happiness is so very precarious, that it wholly depends on the will of others."
Joseph Addison, in a 1711 issue of Spectator magazine, couldn't have described the oldest sense of precarious more precisely—the original meaning of the word was "depending on the will or pleasure of another."
Precarious comes from a Latin word meaning "obtained by entreaty," which itself is from the word for prayer, prex.

Exonerate

 WORD OF THE DAY

exonerate / verb / ig-ZAH-nuh-rayt

Definition
1: to relieve of a responsibility, obligation, or hardship
2: to clear from accusation or blame

Examples
"The actor met with Sooner State oil rig workers who helped him prepare for his role in 'Stillwater' as a father desperate to exonerate his jailed daughter of a murder conviction in France."
— Peter Sblendorio, The Buffalo (New York) News, 1 Aug. 2021

Cooper has maintained his innocence throughout and has accused law enforcement of planting evidence and ignoring statements by witnesses that could have helped exonerate him.
— Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2021

Did You Know?
Exonerate derives via Middle English from the past participle of the Latin verb exonerare, meaning "to unburden," formed by combining the prefix ex- with onus, meaning "load" or "burden" (onus itself lives on with that meaning in English).
In its earliest uses, dating from the 16th century, exonerate was used in the context of physical burdens—a ship, for example, could be exonerated of its cargo when it was unloaded.
Later it was used in reference to any kind of burden, until a more specific sense developed, meaning "to relieve (someone) of blame."

Tribulation

 WORD OF THE DAY

tribulation / noun / trib-yuh-LAY-shun

Definition
1: distress or suffering resulting from oppression or persecution
2: a trying experience

Examples
"On the road to meet his destiny, Gawain must face a series of fearsome trials, tribulations and temptations as he gradually learns the true nature of chivalry."
— Susan Granger, The Westport (Connecticut) News, 13 Aug.2021

 Garry Kasparov has a pithy way of summing up the past 18 months of tribulation.
— Bret Stephens New York Times, Star Tribune, 6 July 2021

Did You Know?

The writer and Christian scholar Thomas More, in his 1534 work, "A dialoge of comforte against tribulation", defined the title word as "euery such thing as troubleth and greueth [grieveth] a man either in bodye or mynde."
These days, however, the word tribulation is commonly used as a plural noun, paired with trials, and relates less to oppression and more to any kind of uphill struggle.
Tribulation comes from Middle English tribulacion, from the Anglo-French which, in turn, comes from the Latin tribulatio, tribulare to press, oppress.

Responsive

 Responsive

responsive / adjective / rih-SPAHN-siv

Definition
1a: giving response
1b: constituting a response
1c: answering
2a: quick to respond or react appropriately or sympathetically
2b: sensitive
3: using responses

Examples
"A mobile responsive website is one that adapts to fit different screens, most notably mobile phones. It can do this in a number of ways that improve visibility and usability. For example, a mobile responsive site will have pictures that change to fit the screen size. Buttons and text will do the same, so they can all be viewed properly on a phone screen."
— June Potter, The Times Union (Albany, New York), 17 June 2021

The portal could help small business owners deal with a non-responsive lender, said Erik Asgeirsson, president and CEO of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants in an online Town Hall on July 8.
— cleveland, 12 July 2021

Did You Know?
Responsive comes from the joining of Latin responsus with the suffix -ivus, which gave English -ive.
That suffix changes verbs into adjectives, as in suggestive or corrosive.
Responsus is a form of respondēre, which means "to answer" and is the source of English's respond.
Responsive enters the language with the meaning "giving response" or "answering."
Examples are "a responsive letter" or "a responsive glance."
Nowadays, it variously describes people or things that immediately respond or react to something, such as "a responsive audience" or "a car with responsive steering."

Inflammable

 WORD OF THE DAY

inflammable / adjective / in-FLAM-uh-bul

Definition
1: flammable
2: easily inflamed, excited, or angered
3: irascible 

Examples
"First, butane is inflammable (or flammable—whichever way you like to say it)."
— Rhett Allain, Wired, 31 Mar. 2016

"'Don't trouble about it, Clym. They may get to be friends.' He shook his head. 'Not two people with inflammable natures like theirs.'"
 — Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, 1878

Did You Know?
Combustible and incombustible are opposites but flammable and inflammable are synonyms.
Why? The in- of incombustible is a common prefix meaning "not," but the in- of inflammable is a different prefix.
Inflammable comes from Latin inflammare ("to inflame"), itself from in- (here meaning "in" or "into") plus flammare ("to flame").
Flammable also comes from flammare. In the early 20th century, firefighters worried that people might think inflammable meant "not able to catch fire," so they adopted flammable and nonflammable as official safety labels and encouraged their use to prevent confusion.
In general use, flammable is now the preferred term for describing things that can catch fire, but inflammable is still occasionally used with that meaning as well.

Fulminate

 WORD OF THE DAY

fulminate / verb / FULL-muh-nayt

Definition
1: to utter or send out with denunciation
2: to send forth censures or invectives
3: an often explosive salt (such as mercury fulminate) containing the group −CNO

Examples
"Talking heads on both the right and the left now are fulminating about the labor shortage."
— John Krull, The Republic (Columbus, Indiana), 28 July 2021

Like the town of Simons, Dolgeville also fielded an amateur baseball team, and had an official post office, a bank, and a firehouse, where locals met in 1906 to fulminate about the brothels and saloons thriving outside of the town limits.
— Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2021

Did You Know?
Lightning strikes more than once in the history of fulminate.
That word comes from the Latin fulminare, meaning "to strike," a verb usually used to refer to lightning strikes—it is struck from fulmen, Latin for "lightning."
When fulminate was taken up by English speakers in the 15th century, it lost much of its ancestral thunder and was used largely as a technical term for the issuing of formal denunciations by ecclesiastical authorities.
In time, its original lightning spark returned, describing intense strikes of a tirade.

Brogue

 WORD OF THE DAY

brogue / noun / BROHG

Definition

1: a stout coarse shoe worn formerly in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands

2a: a heavy shoe often with a hobnailed sole 

2b: brogan

3: a stout oxford shoe with perforations and usually a wing tip

4: a dialect or regional pronunciation, especially an Irish accent

Examples

"I've recently returned from my annual trip to the UK and, as usual on returning, my accent (apparently) is a little more clipped than when I left, and I'm wearing brogues and—most startling of all—socks, despite the unseasonable Aussie heat." 

— Neale Whitaker, The Advertiser (Australia), 20 Jan. 2019

 Even though his brogues are scuffed and old, Dad prefers them to his new loafers.

Did You Know?

Did you expect brogue to be defined as "an Irish accent"? 

You're probably not alone; however, brogue has two homographs (words that are spelled—and, in this case, pronounced—the same but have different origins or parts of speech). 

Today we're featuring brogue, the shoe, which comes from the Irish word bróg and probably derives from an Old Norse term meaning "leg covering." 

Brogue, the accent, comes from a different Irish word, barróg, which means "accent" or "speech impediment."

Egregious

 WORD OF THE DAY

egregious / adjective / ih-GREE-juss

Definition
1: Conspicuous
2: Flagrant
3 (archaic): Distinguished

Examples
"He made egregious hiring decisions. He oversaw contracts handed out to friends and family."
— editorial, The Forest Park Review (Oak Park, Illinois), 11 Aug. 2021

History cannot be rewritten, but some of its more egregious errors can be corrected—at least in part, at least symbolically.  … Or so assume a growing number of human-rights advocates.
— Ellis Cose, Newsweek, 27 Aug. 2001

Did You Know?
Egregious comes from a Latin word meaning "distinguished" or "eminent."
It was once a compliment to someone who had a remarkably good quality that placed him or her above others.
Today, the meaning of the word is noticeably less complimentary, possibly as a result of ironic use of its original sense.

Suborn

 WORD OF THE DAY

suborn / verb / suh-BORN

Definition
1: to induce secretly to do an unlawful thing
2: to induce to commit perjury
3: to obtain (perjured testimony) from a witness

Examples
"Because suborning perjury is not a mistake, nor is suppressing evidence. These acts are intentional."
— Melinda Henneberger, The Kansas City Star, 13 Nov. 2020

Combined with countries that have only limited enforcement, 51.9% of global exports come from countries that allow their companies to suborn foreign officials.
— Tom Saler, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 14 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?
Suborn is from Latin subornare, which translates literally as "to secretly furnish or equip."
The sub- that brings the "secretly" meaning to subornare more commonly means "under" or "below," but it has its stealthy meaning in the etymologies of several other English words, including surreptitious (from sub- and rapere, meaning "to seize") and the verb suspect (from sub- or sus- and specere, meaning "to look at").
The ornare (meaning "to furnish") of subornare is also at work in the words ornate, adorn, and ornament.

Adamantine

 WORD OF THE DAY

adamantine / adjective / ad-uh-MAN-teen

Definitions

1: made of or having the quality of adamant
2a: rigidly firm
2b: unyielding
3: resembling the diamond in hardness or luster

Examples
"The black-and-white illustrations … conjure up wind-borne snows, cliffs that rear up like waves, and waves that look as adamantine as rock."
— Susannah Clapp, The Observer (London), 5 June 2021

Davosites are defined by their adamantine belief in economic and social liberalism and their position at the top of various global organisations.
— The Economist, 16 Nov. 2019

Did You Know?
The Greek and Latin word for the hardest imaginable substance, whether applied to a legendary stone or an actual substance, such as diamond, was adamas.
Latin poets used the term figuratively for things lasting, firm, or unbending, and the adjective adamantinus was applied in similar contexts.
The English noun adamant (meaning "an unbreakable or extremely hard substance") as well as the adjective adamant ("inflexible" or "unyielding") came from adamas.
Adamantine, however—which has such figurative uses as "rigid," "firm," and "unyielding"—came from adamantinus.
Adamas is also the source of diamond. Diamas, the Latin term for diamond, is an alteration of adamas.

Gasconade

 WORD OF THE DAY

gasconade / noun / gas-kuh-NAYD

Definition
1a: bravado
1b: boasting

Examples
"His malevolence was only equalled by his audacity,—and this was, if possible, surpassed by his gasconade."
— Nathaniel Pitt Langford, Vigilante Days and Ways, 1996

His early career was marked by the sort of gasconade many fans of the NFL had come to adore and many MLB executives and players had come to loathe.
— Robert Klemko, The MMQB, 13 July 2017

Did You Know?
The citizens of Gascony in southwestern France have proverbially been regarded as prone to bragging.
Their reputation has been immortalized in such swashbuckling literary works as Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers" and Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac".
Linguistically, the legend survives in the word gascon, meaning "a swaggering person" or "braggart," as well as in gasconade itself.

Doff

WORD OF THE DAY

doff / verb / DAHF

Definition
1a: to remove (an article of wear) from the body
1b: to take off (the hat) in greeting or as a sign of respect
2a: to rid oneself of 
2b: put aside
2c: to show respect to 
2d: salute

Examples
"The public address announcer asked fans to salute the field of 33 cars as they zipped around the illustrious track on the warm-up lap. Thousands and thousands of fans doffed their caps and roared in approval of the drivers."
— Dan Gelston, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 May 2021

Did You Know?
Time was, people talked about doffing and donning articles of clothing with about the same frequency.
But in the mid-19th century the verb don became significantly more popular and left doff to flounder a bit in linguistic semi-obscurity.
Doff and don have been a pair from the start: both date to the 14th century, with doff arising as a Middle English contraction of the phrase "to do off" and don as a contraction of "to do on."
Shakespeare was among the first, as far as we know, to use the word as it's defined in the more general sense of "to rid oneself of" or "put aside."
He has Juliet give voice to this sense when she says, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet. / … Romeo, doff thy name; / And for that name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself."

Regnant

 WORD OF THE DAY

regnant / adjective / REG-nunt

Definition:
1a: exercising rule
1b: reigning
2a: having the chief power
2b: dominant
2c: of common or widespread occurrence

Examples
The trope tends to elegize artists who are perceived to be ahead of their time or otherwise inimical to regnant conventions.
— Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 19 July 2021

Their leaders speak with a regnant air, hammering the notion that their return to power is all but inevitable.
— Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2021

Did You Know?
The origin of regnant is straightforward: it comes from the Latin verb regnare, meaning "to reign."
Regnare, in turn, traces back to the noun regnum, meaning "reign."
(Regnum was bestowed with the meaning "kingdom" in English.)
These words ultimately descend from rex, the Latin for "king" and a word familiar to those who have read or seen the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex.