Lycanthropy

 WORD OF THE DAY

lycanthropy /noun / lye-KAN-thruh-pee

Definition
1: : a delusion that one has become a wolf
2: the assumption of the form and characteristics of a wolf held to be possible by witchcraft or magic

Examples
“In Marvel comics lore, Jack Russell on his 18th birthday learned of his family’s lycanthropy curse, which... every full moon transforms Jack into a powerful man-wolf hybrid possessing enhanced strength, speed, stamina, agility and reflexes.”
— Matt Webb Mitovich, TVLine.com, 12 Sept. 2022

The fantasies depicted were encyclopedic in their macabre scope, including murder, séances, ghost hunts, telekinesis, black magic, Nazis, lycanthropy and a visit by Jack the Ripper.
— Erik Piepenburg, New York Times, 14 Feb. 2020

Did You Know?
Whether about Zeus punishing King Lycaon for trickery or a perfectly coiffed werewolf drinking a piña colada in a London bar, tales of lycanthropy—the transformation of a person into a wolf or wolf-like creature—have captivated imaginations for millennia.
The word lycanthropy comes from the Greek words lykos, meaning “wolf,” and anthrōpos, meaning “human being.”
Halloween, the time of year when you’re most likely to encounter a lycanthropic individual (or several), also happens to be the perfect occasion to drop such etymological knowledge on their tufted little ears. You know, as a treat.

Scour

WORD OF THE DAY

scour / verb / SKOW-er

Definition
1a: to rub hard especially with a rough material for cleansing
1b: to remove by rubbing hard and washing
2 (archaic): to clear (a region) of enemies or outlaws
3a: to clean by purging
3b: purge
4: to remove dirt and debris from (something, such as a pipe or ditch)
5: to free from foreign matter or impurities by or as if by washing
6: to clear, dig, or remove by or as if by a powerful current of water
7: to perform a process of scouring
8: to suffer from diarrhea or dysentery
9: to become clean and bright by rubbing
10: a place scoured by running water
11: scouring action (as of a glacier)
12: diarrhea, dysentery
13: damage done by scouring action
14: to move about quickly especially in search
15: to go through or range over in or as if in a search

Example
“Many business owners don’t realize that they need to check if their brand name is available before setting it in stone. There are plenty of online tools that will scour the web to find websites and social media profiles that match a brand name you're thinking about.”
— Syed Balkhi, Forbes, 22 July 2022

Did You Know?
It doesn’t require much scouring of our website to see that there are two distinct scour verbs in English.
One has meanings relating to cleaning and washing away; that scour, which dates back to at least the early 14th century, probably comes from the Late Latin excurare, meaning “to clean off.”
A related noun scour refers to the action of this type of scouring, or to places that have been scoured, as by running water.
The other verb scour appeared a century earlier, and may come from the Old Norse skūr, meaning “shower.” 
Skūr is also distantly related to the Old English scūr, the ancestor of our English word shower.
Many different things can be scoured, such as an area (as in “scoured the woods in search of the lost dog”) or publications (as in “scouring magazine and newspaper articles”)

Notorious

WORD OF THE DAY

notorious / adjective / noh-TOR-ee-us

Definition
1: generally known and talked of
2: widely and unfavorably known

Example
“Like airlines, hotels are notorious for attaching additional charges to the bill at the end of a stay: resort fees, self-parking fees and fees for checking in early."
— Jacob Passy, The Wall Street Journal, 27 Aug. 2022

Cars are notorious for getting dirty quickly and being a total pain to clean.
— Annie Burdick, Peoplemag, 29 Oct. 2022

Did You Know?
For those who don’t give a hang about a bad reputation, being notorious for unpopular behavior is no biggie. (Being notorious for topping the Billboard charts? Now that's a Biggie.)
Although notorious (which comes from Latin noscere, "to come to know") can be a synonym of famous, it's more often a synonym of infamous, having long ago developed the additional implication of someone or something disreputable.
The Book of Common Prayer of 1549 includes one of the first known uses of the unfavorable meaning in print, referring to "notorious synners." You know what they say: more notorious synners, more problems.

Utopia

WORD OF THE DAY

utopia / noun / yoo-TOH-pee-uh

Definition
1 (often capitalized): a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
2: an impractical scheme for social improvement
3: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

Example
“This year’s Essence Festival activation plans to be bigger, more immersive, and further integrated than ever before. Centered around the idea of a Black utopia, Afrotropolis 3.0 will be an innovative 360-degree wonderland curated to intersect Black culture, creativity, artistry and technology with exciting opportunities for festival attendees to discover, explore, and further build their network.”
— Black Enterprise, 5 July 2022

Though surveys show that a majority of women will jump at a flexible work schedule if offered, home is not a utopia.
— Ellen Mcgirt, Fortune, 19 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?
There’s quite literally no place like utopia. In 1516, English humanist Sir Thomas More published a book titled Utopia, which compared social and economic conditions in Europe with those of an ideal society on an imaginary island located off the coast of the Americas.
More wanted to imply that the perfect conditions on his fictional island could never really exist, so he called it “Utopia,” a name he created by combining the Greek words ou (“not, no”) and topos (“place”).
The earliest generic use of utopia was for an imaginary and indefinitely remote place. The current use of utopia, referring to an ideal place or society, was inspired by More’s description of Utopia’s perfection.

Defile

 WORD OF THE DAY

defile / verb / dih-FYLE

Definition
1a: make unclean or impure
1b: to corrupt the purity or perfection of
1c: debase
1d: to violate the chastity or virginity of
1e: deflower
1d: to make physically unclean especially with something unpleasant or contaminating
1e: to violate the sanctity of
1f: desecrate
1g: sully, dishonor
2a: a narrow passage (as between hills, rocks, or cliffs)
2b: gorge
3: to march off in a line

Example
“Now, in an about-face, the agency is preparing to rework those regulations, potentially allowing state officials to take a broader array of environmental concerns ... into account when deciding whether to approve major construction that could defile bodies of water.”
— Dino Grandoni, The Washington Post, 27 May 2021

Police charged Brevard with abduction with intent to defile in the Homewood Suites attack.
— Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2022

Did You Know?
The verb defile (unrelated to this verb defile or its related noun) has a number of uses that are all variations on the idea of making something unclean or impure.
These meanings echo the word’s Middle English and Anglo-French ancestry, where defilement is connected to figurative and literal trampling.
The ultimate Anglo-French root is fuller, or foller, which means “to trample under foot,” “to oppress”—or literally, “to full.”
Full in this case is a technical term: when you full woolen cloth you shrink and thicken it by moistening, heating, and pressing it. Originally, the pressing part was done by trampling it with the feet.

Peculiar

 WORD OF THE DAY

peculiar / adjective / pih-KYOOL-yer

Definition
1a: characteristic of only one person, group, or thing
1b: distinctive
2: different from the usual or normal
2a: special, particular
2c: odd, curious
2d: eccentric, unusual
3: something exempt from ordinary jurisdiction

Example
"'Troll: A Love Story,' by Johanna Sinisalo, is a celebration of the imagination—a quirky and peculiar read for those who love something out of the ordinary. The protagonist, a young photographer in his 30s, finds a wounded troll (from the Scandinavian mythology) outside his apartment building, and decides to give it shelter."
— Pajtim Statovci, The New York Times, 14 Sept. 2022

As military coups go, this was a most peculiar one, bloodless, and in Bangkok at least quite popular.
— Ian Buruma, New York Review, 1 Mar. 2007

Did You Know?
It might strike you as odd that the origins of peculiar are livestock-related, so let us explain. The word's Latin ancestor, peculiaris, means "privately owned, extraordinary"; it traces back to pecu, meaning "cattle," by way of peculium, meaning "private property"—cattle of course being a particular kind of private property.
Given the monetary value historically placed in cattle, it makes sense that pecu has given us several money-related words, including pecuniary ("of or relating to money"), peculate ("to embezzle"), and impecunious ("having very little or no money").
Peculiar honed in on the "extraordinary" meaning of peculiaris, applying to what is characteristic of only one individual, group, or thing.
In modern use that sense is commonly followed by the preposition to, as in "a tradition peculiar to their family."
The "odd" and "eccentric" meanings of peculiar are extensions of that sense, and are now the word's most common applications

Sepulchre

 WORD OF THE DAY

sepulchre / noun / SEP-ul-ker

Definition
1a: a place of burial
1b: tomb
2: a receptacle for religious relics especially in an altar
3a (archaic): to place in or as if in a sepulchre
3b (archaic): bury
4 archaic : to serve as a sepulchre for

Example
“Unlike the Romans, though, for some 3,000 years of their history what the Egyptians mostly left behind was tombs. A pyramid is a sepulchre for the rich and powerful, but they liked to be buried with their possessions—so it’s also a gigantic ‘X marks the spot.’ The sands and cities of Egypt are riddled with three millennia of buried treasure...”
— Christopher Hart, The Daily Mail (London), 1 Sept. 2022

The Garden Tomb, is believed by many to be the garden and sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea, and therefore a possible site of the resurrection of Jesus.
— Joe Yudin, Town & Country, 5 Oct. 2016

Did You Know?
The history of sepulchre is a grave tale.
The earliest evidence in our files traces sepulchre (also spelled sepulcher) back to Middle English around the beginning of the 13th century.
It was originally spelled sepulcre, as it was in Anglo-French.
Like many words borrowed into English from French, sepulchre has roots buried in Latin; in this case the root is sepelire, a verb meaning “to bury.”
Sepultus, the past participle of sepelire, gave us—also by way of Anglo-French—the related noun sepulture, a synonym of burial and sepulchre, but one whose contemporary use is much rarer

Genteel

WORD OF THE DAY

genteel / adjective / jen-TEEL

Definition
1a: having an aristocratic quality or flavor
1b: stylish
1c: of or relating to the gentry or upper class
1d: elegant or graceful in manner, appearance, or shape
1e: free from vulgarity or rudeness
1f: polite
2a: maintaining or striving to maintain the appearance of superior or middle-class social status or respectability
2b: marked by false delicacy, prudery, or affectation
2c: conventionally or insipidly pretty

Example
“On a technical level, [Roger] Federer reconciled the power of the modern game with the finesse of the wooden-racket era, creating an elegant style that was excitingly contemporary yet still felt like a loving homage to the sport’s past. ... That Federer’s aesthetically inventive style bolstered his reputation is clear from the reams of essays and books that laud him as the Platonic ideal of a genteel racket-sport champion.”
— Kevin Craft, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2022

That Federer’s aesthetically inventive style bolstered his reputation is clear from the reams of essays and books that laud him as the Platonic ideal of a genteel racket-sport champion.
— Kevin Craft, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
The word genteel has some familiar English relatives, including gentle, gentrify, and gentility. All come from the Latin noun gens, used to refer to a group of related people.
That word's plural, gentes, was used in Roman times to classify the people of the world, particularly non-Romans.
Similarly, the English gentile refers to people who are not Jewish, or who don’t follow other specific religions.
Many non-English words come from gens as well, including the Spanish gente, meaning “people.” To say gens has made its mark would be putting it gently.

Volition

WORD OF THE DAY

volition / noun / voh-LISH-un

Definition
1a: the power of choosing or determining
1b: will
2a: an act of making a choice or decision
2b: a choice or decision made

Example
“A year ago, Naomi Osaka left the French Open of her own volition, never beaten on the court but determining that she needed to pull out before the second round to stand up for herself and protect her mind more than she needed to do whatever she could to win matches.”
— Howard Fendrich, The Associated Press, 23 May 2022

And the records show that the informant traveled to Washington at his own volition, not at the request of the F.B.I.
— New York Times, 25 Sep. 2021

Did You Know?
When you do something of your own volition, you do it voluntarily, which makes sense—both volition and voluntary ultimately come from the Latin velle, meaning “to wish” or “to will.”
English speakers borrowed volition from French in the 17th century, using it at first to mean “an act of choosing,” a meaning Herman Melville employed in Moby-Dick (1851): “Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea.”
By then, however, the word had also developed an additional meaning, “the power to choose,” which is now more common.

Abide

WORD OF THE DAY

abide / verb / uh-BYDE

Definition
1a: to bear patiently
1b: tolerate
1c: to endure without yielding
1d: withstand
2a: to wait for
2b: await
3: to accept without objection
4: to remain stable or fixed in a state
5a: to continue in a place
5b: sojourn
6: to conform to
7a: to accept without objection
7b: to acquiesce in

Example
"When it comes to the quality of recording, mixing and mastering, the industry standard is quite flexible. ‘Mostly it comes down to taste and finding someone with the skill set to achieve a desired outcome,’ says Adam McDaniel, co-owner of Drop of Sun Studios in West Asheville. ... ‘But the subjective qualities of tone and fidelity are dictated by the songs and the artists' preference. Personally, I can't abide an attitude of ‘that's good enough.’ If something can be better, then let's go further.’”
— Edwin Arnaudin, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, North Carolina), 10 Aug. 2022

If it is signed within 90 days, the ordinance will officially be implemented, and any developer must abide by it as written.
— Drew Dawson, Journal Sentinel, 13 Oct. 2022

Did You Know?
Abide has abided in the English language since before the 12th century, picking up along the way several meanings and inflections that are now rare or no longer in use.
For instance, one of abide’s former meanings was “to stop” and its former past participle was abidden (whereas we now use abided or abode).
Today, abide often turns up in the phrase “can't abide” to say that someone cannot tolerate or accept something.
The expression abide by, which means “to accept and be guided by (something),” is also common.
Related terms include abiding, meaning “continuing for a long time” or “not changing” (as in “an abiding friendship”), abidance (“continuance” or “the act or process of doing what you have been asked or ordered to do”), and abode (“the place where someone lives”).

Cloying

 WORD OF THE DAY

cloying / adjective / KLOY-ing

Definition
1: disgusting or distasteful by reason of excess
2: excessively sweet or sentimental

Example
“The series is also a showcase for the affect that [comedian Sam] Richardson has become known for, an extra-beatific quality that verges on pathological but is never pathetic or cloying, even when the goofiness runs sweet.”
— Lauren Michel Jackson, The New Yorker, 29 May 2022

The result is miraculously neither pompous nor cloying.
— Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 14 July 2022

Did You Know?
Cloying comes from the verb cloy, which had among its earliest uses the meaning (to quote the Oxford English Dictionary) “to render [a gun] useless by driving a spike or plug into the touch-hole.”
This ultra-specific sense of clogging and stuffing arose alongside both broader and figurative ones, including “to fill or choke up,” and cloy has since come to mean “to supply or indulge to excess.”
Accordingly, cloying implies a nauseating amount of something that might be pleasing in smaller doses, especially both literal and metaphorical sweetness.

Interlocutor

WORD OF THE DAY

interlocutor / noun / in-ter-LAH-kyuh-ter

Definition
1: one who takes part in dialogue or conversation
2: a man in the middle of the line in a minstrel show who questions the end men and acts as leader

Example
“The Turing Test is a test of intelligence, sentience, consciousness and self-awareness. A machine passes the Turing Test if it can convince a human interlocutor that it is sentient.”
— Leon Gordon, Forbes, 11 July 2022

Most days, Milley would also call the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who was hardly a usual interlocutor for a chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
— Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?
It may not necessarily be grandiloquence to use the word interlocutor in casual speech, but if your interlocutors—that is, the people with whom you are speaking—are using it, your conversation is likely a formal one.
Interlocutor is one of many English words that comes from the Latin verb loqui, “to speak,” including loquacious (“talkative”), eloquent (“capable of fluent or vivid speech”), and grandiloquence (“extravagant or pompous speech”).
In interlocutor, loqui was joined to inter- forming a Latin word meaning “to speak between” or “to issue an interlocutory decree.”
An interlocutory decree is a judicial decision that isn’t final, or that deals with a point other than the principal subject matter of the dispute.

Avuncular

WORD OF THE DAY

avuncular / adjective / uh-VUNK-yuh-ler

Definition
1: suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality
2: of or relating to an uncle

Example
"From East L.A. to Pasadena, from Koreatown to Riverside, and from the San Gabriel Valley to Orange County, millions of baseball fans welcomed [Vin] Scully into their homes. And that created a connection not just between individual households to the voice of the Dodgers but also among each other. He was the avuncular storyteller of Southern California, around which a unified community gathered to listen and to learn."
 — Ryan Carter and Chris Haire, The Orange County (California) Register, 4 Aug. 2022

Now 70 years old, with an avuncular twinkle, Shadinov is one of the dwindling number of Moynaq residents who lived through this transformation.
— Henry Wismayer, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?
Not all uncles are likeable fellows (Hamlet's villainous Uncle Claudius, for example, isn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy in Shakespeare's tragedy), but avuncular reveals that, as a group, uncles are often seen as friendly and kindhearted.
Avuncular comes from the Latin noun avunculus, which means "maternal uncle," but since at least the 19th century English speakers have used avuncular to describe uncles from either side of the family, or people who are uncle-like in character or behavior.
Avunculus is also an ancestor of the word uncle itself.

Bombinate

WORD OF THE DAY

bombinate / verb / BAHM-buh-nayt

Definition
: buzz, drone

Example
“Though no longer pristine wetlands, 90% of which have been lost in California, the rice fields enticed enough migratory birds to once again darken the sky, their honks and quacks bombinating across the valley.”
— Daniel Trotta and Nathan Frandino, Reuters, 9 Feb. 2022

Did You Know?
Bombinate sounds like it should be the province of bombastic blowhards who bound up and bombard you with droning blather at parties—and it is.
The word traces back to the Greek word bómbos, a term that probably originated as an imitation of a deep, hollow sound (the kind we would likely refer to as “booming” nowadays).
Latin speakers rendered the original Greek form as bombus, which led not only to bombinate, but also to bomb, bombard, and bound (“to move by leaping”).

Spiel

WORD OF THE DAY

spiel / noun / SPEEL

Definition
1: to play music
2: to talk volubly or extravagantly
3: to utter, express, or describe volubly or extravagantly

Examples
“In the blue room, Third Man’s concert venue, [Bob] Weir and his band Wolf Bros preached between songs. The bassist, Don Was, who is also the head of the legendary jazz label Blue Note Records, gave a spiel about the glory of ‘authentic,’ Auto-Tune-free music.”
— Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 9 June 2022

George had spieled a third version of that boss blonde in the picture.
— James Ellroy, Vanities, 7 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?
Here’s our spiel on spiel: it’s well-known as a noun, and you may also be aware that spiel can be used as a verb meaning “to talk extravagantly,” but did you know that the verb can also mean “to play music”?
That, in fact, is the word’s original meaning, and one it shares with its German root, spielen. (Spiel is also found in glockenspiel, the name of a musical instrument similar to the xylophone.)
In Scottish English, spiel is also sometimes used as a shortened form of bonspiel, which refers to a match or tournament of the icy game of curling.

Mnemonic

WORD OF THE DAY

mnemonic / adjective / nih-MAH-nik

Definition
1a: assisting or intended to assist memory
1b: of or relating to mnemonics
2: of or relating to memory

Examples
“Restoring Indigenous place names restores mnemonic and spiritual connections among place, culture and ancestral knowledge.”
 — Bonnie McGill, Scientific American, 22 Apr. 2022

An easy way to remember migraine prevention techniques is through the mnemonic device SEEDS.
— Carly Vandergriendt, SELF, 19 May 2022

Did You Know?
Need a mnemonic device to remember how to spell mnemonic? Although the word’s pronunciation begins with an n sound, the spelling begins with an m, as in memory.
There are very few English words that start this way (mnestic and mnioid are two others), and as with similar Latin and Greek borrowings such as pneumonia, we retained the double initial consonant but not the pronunciation.
In addition to its adjectival use, mnemonic is also a noun used to refer to a mnemonic device, such as the famous—or infamous—spelling dictum “I before E, except after C,” which isn't consistently helpful (just ask your neighbor to weigh in on it).

Decorous

WORD OF THE DAY

decorous / adjective / DECK-er-us

Definition
1: marked by propriety and good taste
2: correct

Examples
“Ruth Orkin's most famous picture was staged in Florence. Learning from a young American student how Italian men ogled and catcalled women, Orkin posed her in a picturesque but slightly seedy setting, looking straight ahead with an uncomfortable expression as she passed a gantlet of male bystanders. Taken in 1951, the picture offers a feminist rejoinder to a celebrated Richard Avedon image made four years earlier, of a Dior fashion model standing in Paris's decorous Place de la Concorde, as three appreciative but respectful young men stride by.”
— The New York Times, 19 Nov. 2021

The expression on the face of the resident first cellist, who had every right to expect the gig, is a study in decorous disappointment.
— Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
One of the earliest recorded uses of decorous appears in the mid-17th century in a book titled The Rules of Civility (1673): “It is not decorous to look in the Glass, to comb, brush, or do any thing of that nature to ourselves, whilst the said person be in the Room.”
This rule of thumb may be a bit outdated; like many behaviors once deemed unbecoming, public primping is unlikely to offend in modern times. Though mores shift, decorous lives on to describe timeless courtesies like polite speech, proper attire, and (ahem) covering one’s cough.
Decorous for a time had another meaning as well—"fitting or appropriate"—but that now-obsolete sense seems to have existed for only a few decades in the 17th century.
Decorous derives from the Latin word decorus, an adjective created from the noun decor, meaning "beauty" or "grace."
Decor is akin to the Latin verb decēre ("to be fitting"), which is the source of our adjective decent. It is only fitting, then, that decent can be a synonym of decorous.

Gargantuan

 WORD OF THE DAY

gargantuan / adjective / gahr-GAN-chuh-wuhn

Definition
1: tremendous in size, volume, or degree
2: gigantic, colossal

Examples
"We rode a horse-drawn carriage up to the gargantuan Grand Hotel, still embracing its luxury 1887 roots. After a tour of the quirkily colored suites, we settled in for a lunch of local smoked whitefish in the airy restaurant."
— Simon Peter Groebner, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 14 Aug. 2022

The Space Launch System rocket is the most powerful ever built for NASA, a gargantuan booster that will generate 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, enough to propel Orion crew ships into lunar orbit.
— William Harwood, CBS News, 24 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel.
All of the details of Gargantua's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans.
He has an enormous appetite, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.

Atone

WORD OF THE DAY

atone / verb / uh-TOHN

Definition
1a: to make amends
1b: to provide or serve as reparation or compensation for something bad or unwelcome —usually used with for
2a: to make reparation or supply satisfaction for
2b: expiate —used in the passive voice with for
2c (obsolete): reconcile

Examples
“After a childhood act of cowardice, Amir spends most of the play reflecting on and trying to atone for his failure to come to the aid of his best friend.”
— Laura Zornosa, The New York Times, 1 July 2022

A year after America’s shambolic withdrawal, Washington should do more to atone for its mistakes.
— Jonathan Schanzer, WSJ, 15 Aug. 2022

Did You Know?
Atone has its roots in the idea of reconciliation and harmony. It grew out of the Middle English phrase at on meaning “in harmony,” a phrase echoed in current expressions like “feeling at one with nature.”
When atone joined modern English in the 16th century, it meant “to reconcile,” and suggested the restoration of a peaceful and harmonious state between people or groups.
Today, atone specifically implies addressing the damage—or disharmony—caused by one’s own behavior.

Onus

 WORD OF THE DAY

onus / noun / OH-nuss

Definition
1a: burden
1b: a disagreeable necessity
1c: obligation
1d: blame
1e: stigma
2: burden of proof

Examples
“So many of us are solopreneurs, which means we make all of the decisions and the onus is on us to actually follow through on our plans.”
— Susan Guillory, Forbes, 18 Aug. 2022

It is not the scions of Yale and Harvard who apply to become FBI agents and construction workers and civil servants and cops who bear the onus of this reverse discrimination.
— Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, 9-15 Mar. 1992

Did You Know?
Understanding the etymology of onus shouldn’t be a burden; it’s as simple as knowing that English borrowed the word—spelling, meaning, and all—from Latin in the 17th century.
Onus is also a distant relative of the Sanskrit word anas, meaning cart (as in, a wheeled wagon or vehicle that carries a burden).
English isn’t exactly loaded with words that come from Latin onus, but onerous (“difficult and unpleasant to do or deal with”) is one, which is fitting since in addition to being synonymous with “burden,” onus has also long been used to refer to obligations and responsibilities that one may find annoying, taxing, disagreeable, or distasteful.

Languid

 WORD OF THE DAY

languid / adjective / LANG-gwid

Definition
1a: drooping or flagging from or as if from exhaustion
1b: weak
2a: sluggish in character or disposition
2b: listless
3a: lacking force or quickness of movement
3b: slow

Examples
“Wölffer’s rosés—the company now has eight varieties—have become a fixture at backyard parties and beach picnics, a symbol of languid days on Long Island’s South Fork.”
— Alex Williams, The New York Times, 27 June 2022

Few things are more comforting than watching languid actor Jeff Goldblum (best known for playing Dr. Malcolm in the Jurassic Park movies) shrug his way through a series of short documentaries about different subcultures and industries.
— WIRED, 23 Sep. 2022

Did You Know?
Lack, lack, lack. Languid is all about lack.
Depending on its context, the word can suggest a lack of strength, lack of energy, or lack of activity.
The lack-of-strength sense of languid describes the kind of sluggishness that often results from fatigue or weakness, as in “the illness left her feeling languid.”
The lack-of-energy sense is synonymous with listless, and often describes someone’s character or disposition as a result of dissatisfaction or sadness.
Lastly, there’s the lack-of-activity sense of languid, as in “investors are worried about the languid stock market.” So languid is a total bummer, right?
Not so (ahem) fast! Sometimes it’s a good thing to dillydally, and languid has also long been used to describe stretches of time—think afternoons, days, summers, etc.—that are relatively and perhaps pleasantly chill.