Peach

 WORD OF THE DAY

peach / verb / PEECH

Definition
1a:  to inform against
1b: betray
2a:  to turn informer
2b: blab

Examples
"They'll think his lordship, or perhaps his brother, peached on them."
— Grace Burrowes, Gabriel: Lord of Regrets, 2013

"Peter cocked his head. 'What are the chances of him finding out who peached him?' 'He will certainly never hear it from me.' She slid her gaze to her coachman. 'Or Gary. As long as you don't say anything, there is no chance.'"
— Michelle Diener, The Emperor's Conspiracy, 2012

Did You Know?
If you guessed that the origin of this verb peach has something to do with a slightly fuzzy fruit, you are unfortunately incorrect.
The fruit peach is an unrelated word that traces back to the Latin phrase malum persicum, literally meaning "Persian fruit."
The verb blossomed from Middle English apechen ("to accuse"), itself an offspring of the Anglo-French verbs apecher and empecher, both meaning "to ensnare."
Empecher is also an ancestor of the English verb impeach, meaning "to bring an accusation against."
 Both of these English verbs can be traced back to Latin impedicare, meaning "to shackle the feet," and that word is itself rooted in ped-, pes, meaning "foot."

Colleague

WORD OF THE DAY

colleague / noun / KAH-leeg

Definition
: an associate or coworker typically in a profession or in a civil or ecclesiastical office and often of similar rank or status : a fellow worker or professional

Examples
Rochelle's creativity, professional demeanor, and ability to get things done soon earned her the respect of her colleagues.

"Without an option to drop by a colleague's desk to ask a casual question, teams felt there should be more process conversations, but also that these chats could be exhausting. Some teams moved away from using video meetings to less-demanding communication tools like Slack."
— The New York Times, 24 Apr. 2021

Did You Know?
Which of the following words come from the same source as colleague: college, legacy, collaborate, allegation, collar, relegate, delegate?
It might be easier to guess if you know that the ancestor in question is legare, a Latin verb meaning "to choose or send as a deputy or emissary" or "to bequeath."
All of the words in the list above except collaborate (which comes from the Latin collaborare, meaning "to labor together") and collar (from collum, collus, Latin for "neck") are descendants of legare.

Anfractuous

 WORD OF THE DAY

anfractuous / adjective / an-FRAK-chuh-wus

Definition
1: full of windings and intricate turnings
2: tortuous

Examples
"Then, as the road resumed its anfractuous course, clinging to the extreme margin of this tumbled and chaotic coast, the fun began. It was impossible to count the roller-coaster climbs and downward swoops; ravines skirted; rivers ingeniously bridged; bends tight as the loops in a thumbprint; naked rockfaces; cliff-edge encounters, hundreds of feet above the ocean, each of which induced a sickly pang of vertigo."
— Jonathan Raban, The New York Times, 10 June 2011

"Readers who require a single conflict or steady linear progression may find Lurkers' anfractuous structure unwieldy, but there's something cinematic about how Lurkers works. The novel recalls the winding yet interconnected narratives of Robert Altman films like Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993)."
— John A. Riley, PopMatters, 1 Mar. 2021

Did You Know?
Plots and paths can be anfractuous. They twist and turn but do not break. Never mind that the English word comes ultimately from the Latin verb frangere, meaning "to break."
(Frangere is also the source of fracture, fraction, fragment, and frail.) But one of the steps between frangere and anfractuous is Latin anfractus, meaning "coil, bend."
The prefix an- here means "around." At first, anfractuous was all about ears and the auditory canal's anfractuosity, that is, its being curved rather than straight.
Anfractuous has been around for centuries, without a break, giving it plenty of time to wind its way into other applications; e.g., there can be an anfractuous thought process or an anfractuous shoreline.