Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 2, 2017 is: imprecate • \IM-prih-kayt\ • verb : to invoke evil on : curse Examples: "Mallory imprecated the weather when the ink froze in his fountain pen…." — Stanley Snaith, At Grips with Everest, 1938 "The people would pause, look out at the Missouri rolling past and quietly carrying down trees like doomed pinnaces, and the workers' sweating brows wrinkled, but I heard no one imprecate the river; each just went back to passing along stories and sandbags." — William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse, 1999 Did you know? It may surprise you to learn that a word that refers to wishing evil upon someone has its roots in praying, but imprecate ultimately derives from the Latin verb precari, meaning "to pray, ask, or entreat." Precari is also the ancestor of such English words as deprecate (which once meant "to pray against an evil," though that sense is now archaic), precatory ("expressing a wish") and even pray itself (which has deeper roots in the Latin noun for a request or entreaty, prex). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 1, 2017 is: hard-boiled • \HAHRD-BOYLD\ • adjective 1 a : devoid of sentimentality : tough b : of, relating to, or being a detective story featuring a tough unsentimental protagonist and a matter-of-fact attitude towards violence 2 : hardheaded, practical Examples: The young tycoon proved that to be successful in the cutthroat world of business you need to occasionally put aside hard-boiled business practices and go with your gut instincts. "The real attraction, as with previous books in the series, is [Tana] French's complex, deeply flawed detectives and her hard-boiled yet poetic way with words." — David Martindale, The Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, 28 Sep. 2016 Did you know? As a writer of local color, Mark Twain often used colloquialisms and regionalisms that were unfamiliar to many of his readers. When some of these expressions eventually caught on in the language at large, they were traced back to Twain. For example, he is credited with the first printed use of blow up ("to lose self-control") in 1871, of slop ("effusive sentimentality") in 1866, and of the phrase sweat out ("to endure or wait through the course of") in 1876. Hard-boiled is documented as being first used by Twain in 1886 as an adjective meaning "emotionally hardened." Apparently, Twain and others saw the boiling of an egg to harden the white and yolk as a metaphor for other kinds of hardening. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 31, 2017 is: kibitzer • \KIB-it-ser\ • noun : one who looks on and often offers unwanted advice or comment; broadly : one who offers opinions Examples: It wasn't long after they bought their house that Dana and Regan heard from kibitzers in the neighborhood offering tips on design and remodeling. "'Bill [Clinton] can't help himself from giving advice. He loves the game. He's the great kibitzer." — Roger Stone, quoted in The New York Times, 6 Nov. 2016 Did you know? The Yiddish language has given English some particularly piquant terms over the years, and kibitzer (or kibbitzer) is one such term. Kibitzer, from the Yiddish kibitser, came to that language from the German word kiebitzen, meaning "to look on (at cards)." Kiebitzen may or may not be derived from a German word for "lapwing," a type of bird noted for its shrill and raucous cry. (We can speculate that the bird's cry reminded people of the shrill commentary of onlookers at card games.) The word became more popular and widespread after the 1929 play The Kibitzer came out. Although kibitzer usually implies the imparting of unwanted advice, there is a respectable body of evidence for a kibitzer as a person simply making comments. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 30, 2017 is: fastidious • \fass-TID-ee-us\ • adjective 1 a : having high and often capricious standards : difficult to please b : showing or demanding excessive delicacy or care c : reflecting a meticulous, sensitive, or demanding attitude 2 : having complex nutritional requirements Examples: "I may have thrown in a little thing here or there, but I'm pretty fastidious about sticking to the script if I like it…." — Michael Shannon, Screen International, 21 Nov. 2016 "The luckiest house cats reside in homes where they can stalk tiny rodents, but that's not always the case for felines who cohabit with fastidious modern-day humans. The menu is more likely to be a can of Salmon Surprise, and food is always plentiful." — Jessica Firger, Newsweek, 7 Oct. 2016 Did you know? There's nothing offensive about fastidious workmanship, and yet the word fastidious traces to the Latin noun fastidium, meaning "aversion" or "disgust." Fastidium itself is probably a combination of the Latin words fastus, meaning "arrogance," and taedium, meaning "irksomeness" or "disgust." (Taedium also gave us our tedium.) In keeping with its Latin roots, fastidious once meant "haughty," "disgusting," and "disagreeable," although those uses are now archaic or obsolete. Today, the word is most often applied to people who are very meticulous or overly difficult to please, or to work which reflects a demanding or precise attitude. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 29, 2017 is: macerate • \MASS-uh-rayt\ • verb 1 : to cause to waste away by or as if by excessive fasting 2 : to soften by steeping or soaking so as to separate the parts Examples: "Absinthe is made by macerating herbs and spices … with the grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) that gives the drink its name." — Julia Reed, Newsweek, 12 Apr. 2010 "Choose whatever berries you'd like for a topping, and let them macerate in the sugar until they yield a little syrup." — Dorie Greenspan, The Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2016 Did you know? Macerate is derived from the Latin verb macerare, which means "to soften" or "to steep," and, in Late Latin, can also mean "to mortify (the flesh)." Macerate first entered English in the mid-1500s to refer both to the wasting away of flesh especially by fasting and to softening or steeping. A few other manifestations sprouted thereafter from the word's figurative branch (e.g., the 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne once wrote of "a city so macerated with expectation"); however, those extensions wilted in time. Today, the "steeping" and "soaking" senses of macerate saturate culinary articles (as in "macerating fruit in liquor") as well as other writings (scientific ones, for instance: "the food is macerated in the gizzard" or "the wood is macerated in the solution"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 28, 2017 is: dander • \DAN-der\ • noun 1 : dandruff; specifically : minute scales from hair, feathers, or skin that may be allergenic 2 : anger, temper Examples: Farrah liked dogs, but she couldn't own one because she was allergic to pet dander. "If you had to start a new Western state from scratch and you got to choose a natural landmark that would become its symbol—something that could drive tourism and that you might name the capital city after—would you choose the Great Salt Lake? People get their dander up when I ask things like that." — Jay Evensen, The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2016 Did you know? How did dander acquire its "temper" sense? Etymologists have come up with a few possibilities, but nothing is known for sure. Some experts have proposed, tongue-in-cheek, that the meaning stems from the image of an angry person tearing out his or her hair by the fistful, scattering dandruff in the process. Some think it may come from a West Indian word dander, which refers to a kind of ferment and suggests "rising" anger (in English, ferment can mean either "an agent capable of causing fermentation" or "a state of unrest or excitement"). Yet another proposed possibility is that the "anger" sense was imported to America by early Dutch colonists and is from their phrase op donderen, meaning "to burst into a sudden rage." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 27, 2017 is: omnibus • \AHM-nih-bus\ • adjective 1 : of, relating to, or providing for many things at once 2 : containing or including many items Examples: "Michael Counts … invites you on a blind date with 17 playwrights. They have taken over the Lower East Side club Fat Baby for this immersive, omnibus evening, which features an array of [one-act plays] describing contemporary courtship." — The New York Times, 4 July 2014 "For the last several years, Congress has been prone to passing … omnibus spending bills that pack many smaller, regular appropriations bills into one, instead of new, individual bills each fiscal year." — Ariella Phillips, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 21 Dec. 2016 Did you know? The adjective omnibus may not have much to do with public transportation, but the noun omnibus certainly does—it not only means "bus," but it's also the word English speakers shortened to form bus. The noun omnibus originated in the 1820s as a French word for long, horse-drawn vehicles that transported people along the main thoroughfares of Paris. Shortly thereafter, omnibuses—and the noun omnibus—arrived in New York. But in Latin, omnibus simply means "for all." Our adjective omnibus, which arrived in the mid-1800s, seems to hark back to that Latin omnibus, though it may also have been at least partially influenced by the English noun. An "omnibus bill" containing numerous provisions, for example, could be likened to a bus loaded with people. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 26, 2017 is: barbican • \BAR-bih-kun\ • noun : an outer defensive work; especially : a tower at a gate or bridge Examples: "He heard the voices of the sentries in the barbican as they conversed with the newcomers." — Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mad King, 1926 "The result is an honest-to-goodness fairy-tale castle that sits perched on a hilltop, guarding against invaders high above Malibu's coastline. There are turrets, barbicans and winding stone steps that lead to circular rooms." — Ann Brenoff, The Los Angeles Times, 18 Feb. 2007 Did you know? You've heard of moats and drawbridges, but barbicans may be unfamiliar. Those stone outworks stand in front of the gate of a castle or bridge and historically helped prevent invaders from gaining access to the main entryway. Up to a point, the case for the history of the word barbican is well fortified. It is clear that English speakers seized the term from the Anglo-French barbecane, which in turn had been taken from the Medieval Latin barbacana (both of those words had the same meaning as the modern word). The etymological path crumbles from there, however. Some speculate that the ultimate ancestor of barbican might lie in a Persian phrase meaning "house on the wall," but that speculation has never been proven. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 25, 2017 is: ab ovo • \ab-OH-voh\ • adverb : from the beginning Examples: "Given Arthur's fondness for approaching a problem ab ovo, without reference to previous results, and adding to it a certain obscurity of presentation that even I, who knew him well, had found disturbing, it was a wonder that he had done as well as he had." — Charles Sheffield, "A Braver Thing," 1990 "'Peter and the Starcatcher'—a show that exalts that ephemeral space where actor and audience embrace, time out of time—promises to stand for many years as a worthy legacy to Rees: the superb actor, brilliant director, and absolutely marvelous man who was there ab ovo." — Judith Newmark, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Dec. 2015 Did you know? "Ab ovo usque ad mala." That phrase translates as "from the egg to the apples," and it was penned by the Roman poet Horace. He was alluding to the Roman tradition of starting a meal with eggs and finishing it with apples. Horace also applied ab ovo in an account of the Trojan War that begins with the mythical egg of Leda from which Helen (whose beauty sparked the war) was born. In both cases, Horace used ab ovo in its literal sense, "from the egg," but by the late 16th century it had been adapted to its modern English meaning of "from the beginning," perhaps for the first time by Sir Philip Sidney in his An Apology for Poetry: "If [the dramatic poets] wil represent an history, they must not (as Horace saith) beginne Ab ouo: but they must come to the principall poynt of that one action." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 24, 2017 is: uncouth • \un-KOOTH\ • adjective 1 : strange or clumsy in shape or appearance : outlandish 2 : lacking in polish and grace : rugged 3 : awkward and uncultivated in appearance, manner, or behavior : rude Examples: "Increasingly, consumers are turning to mints and breath-freshening strips that don't come with gum's social baggage—namely, how to dispose of it when the flavor's gone as well as the uncouth sight of one's jaws constantly working." — Robert Klara, Adweek.com, 3 Oct. 2016 "No, I'm not some sort of barbarian who would open a bottle of wine to enjoy some before offering it as a gift. That would be uncouth." — Irv Erdos, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Uncouth comes from the Old English word uncūth, which joins the prefix un- with cūth, meaning "familiar" or "known." How did a word that meant "unfamiliar" come to mean "outlandish," "rugged," or "rude"? Some examples from literature illustrate that the transition happened quite naturally. In Captain Singleton, Daniel Defoe refers to "a strange noise more uncouth than any they had ever heard." In William Shakespeare's As You Like It, Orlando tells Adam, "If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee." In Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane fears "to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him!" So, that which is unfamiliar is often perceived as strange, wild, or unpleasant. Meanings such as "outlandish," "rugged," or "rude" naturally follow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 23, 2017 is: sanction • \SANK-shun\ • verb 1 : to make valid or binding usually by a formal procedure (such as ratification) 2 : to give effective or authoritative approval or consent to Examples: Because he was using equipment that was not sanctioned by league officials, Jared was disqualified from the competition. "Villanova University this summer will host a regional conference sanctioned by the Vatican on how sports and faith can promote positive social change." — Robert Moran, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Sanction can be both a verb and a noun meaning "authoritative approval" or "a coercive measure." The noun entered English first, in the 15th century, and originally referred to a formal decree or law, especially an ecclesiastical decree. (The Latin sancire, meaning "to make holy," is an ancestor.) The noun's meaning then extended in different directions. By the end of the 17th century, it could refer to both a means of enforcing a law (a sense that in the 20th century we began using especially for economic penalties against nations violating international law) and the process of formally approving or ratifying a law. When the verb sanction appeared in the 18th century, it had to do with ratifying laws as well. Soon it had also acquired an additional, looser sense: "to approve." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 22, 2017 is: vanguard • \VAN-gahrd\ • noun 1 : the troops moving at the head of an army 2 : the forefront of an action or movement Examples: The general received a report from scouts in the vanguard that the swampy terrain was not passable. "Students have long been at the vanguard of South Korea's robust history of protest, drawing on deep-rooted Confucian traditions that elevated scholars as guardians of morality." — Susan Chira, The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Vanguard and avant-garde both derive from the Anglo-French word avantgarde, itself from avant, meaning "before," and garde, meaning "guard." In medieval times, avantgarde referred to the troops that marched at the head of the army. English speakers retained that meaning when they adopted vanguard in the 15th century. Avant-garde, which is now used in English to refer to a group of people who develop new and often very surprising ideas in art, literature, etc., didn't make its own English debut until almost 400 years later. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 21, 2017 is: xylography • \zye-LAH-gruh-fee\ • noun : the art of making engravings on wood especially for printing Examples: Xylography attracted the attention of early modernists, including Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. "[Angelo] Aversa relished the way that xylography moved from inspiration to wood selection to pencil drawing to ink drawing to carving and cutting to ink and paper selection to hand rubbing the Japanese paper that absorbs the ink." — Ron Fletcher, The Boston Globe, 30 Nov. 2008 Did you know? Current evidence dates the word xylography to 1816, but it is linked to printing practices that are much older. In fact, the oldest known printed works (from Japan and China in the 8th and 9th centuries) were made by xylography, a printing technique that involves carving text in relief upon a wooden block, which is then inked and applied to paper. This method of wood-block printing appeared in Europe in the 14th century, and eventually inspired Johannes Gutenberg to create individual and reusable pieces of type out of metal. These days, xylography can also describe the technique of engraving wood for purely artistic purposes. English speakers picked up the word from French, where it was formed as a combination of xyl-, meaning "wood," and -graphie, which denotes writing in a specified manner. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 20, 2017 is: tenet • \TEN-ut\ • noun : a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true; especially : one held in common by members of an organization, movement, or profession Examples: According to many, the first tenet of real estate is that location is fundamental to determining the value of a property. "A basic tenet of [Frank Lloyd] Wright's designs was that structures should grow out of the features that are already on the land, that land and buildings should seem an integrated whole." — Linda Charlton, The Daily Commercial (Leesburg, Florida), 20 Dec. 2016 Did you know? In Latin, tenet is the third person singular of the verb tenēre ("to hold") and means "he/she/it holds." It is believed to have been borrowed into English around 1600 from Latin writings in which it often introduced the opinions held by a particular church or sect. There are a good many tenēre descendants in English, including some words that end in -tain (abstain, contain, maintain, and sustain, to name a few), and others that begin with ten- (such as tenable, meaning "capable of being held," and tenacious). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 19, 2017 is: whimsical • \WIM-zih-kul\ • adjective 1 : full of, actuated by, or exhibiting capricious or eccentric and often sudden ideas or turns of the mind : relating to whims 2 a : resulting from or characterized by whim or caprice; especially : lightly fanciful b : subject to erratic behavior or unpredictable change Examples: "In 2008, she decided to pursue a Master's in Library Science. The whimsical decision to work part-time at the library had created a love for helping people." — Matthew Crane, Dubois County (Indiana) Free Press, 5 Dec. 2016 "There is an ice bar offering cocktails and champagne, whimsical ice sculptures, and designs from artists in nine countries." — Talia Avakian, Travel + Leisure, 7 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Whimsical and the related nouns whim and whimsy all ultimately derive from whim-wham, a noun from the early 16th century that originally referred to an ornamental object or trinket. Later whim-wham, with its fun sound, came to refer to a fantastic notion or odd fancy. The word's origin isn't clear, but it's worth noting that the similar-sounding flimflam had, in its earliest use, a similar meaning referring to an odd or nonsensical idea or tale. Whim naturally came about as a shortened form of whim-wham, and whimsy and whimsical eventually followed. Whimsical now describes more than just decisions made impulsively, but things resulting from an unrestrained imagination, as in "whimsical children's book characters." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 18, 2017 is: raiment • \RAY-munt\ • noun : clothing, garments Examples: "On their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men, welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of raiment." — Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1895 "A deepest navy cashmere dressing robe with every edge trimmed in the finest white cord…. I wear this raiment while working at my desk." — Tom Wolfe, Esquire, 9 Aug. 2016 Did you know? If you seek a fancy word to describe the clothes on your back, you have no shortage of colorful options. There's apparel and attire, certainly, as well as garments. Habiliments and vestments suggest clothes of a particular profession (as in "a clergyman's vestments"), while garb is effective for describing clothes of a particular style (as in "traditional Scottish garb"). If slang is more your game, try duds, rags, or threads. Raiment tends to appear mostly in classical contexts, though it pops up from time to time in contemporary English from authors looking to add a touch of formality. Raiment derives from Middle English, where it was short for arrayment, from the verb arrayen ("to array"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 17, 2017 is: abstemious • \ab-STEE-mee-us\ • adjective : marked by restraint especially in the consumption of food or alcohol; also : reflecting such restraint Examples: Allie's midlife heart attack opened her eyes to the importance of taking care of her body and turned her to a more abstemious and healthful lifestyle. "He is so abstemious that he once declared that to avoid temptation, he would never appear anywhere alcohol was served unless his wife was with him." — Michael Barbaro and Monica Davey, The New York Times, 16 July 2016 Did you know? Abstemious and abstain look alike, and both have meanings involving self-restraint or self-denial. So they must both come from the same root, right? Yes and no. Both get their start from the Latin prefix abs-, meaning "from" or "away." But abstain traces to the Latin abstinēre, a combination of abs- and the Latin verb tenēre ("to hold"), while abstemious comes from the Latin abstēmius, which combines abs- with tēm- (a stem found in the Latin tēmētum, "intoxicating beverage," and tēmulentus, "drunken") and the adjectival suffix -ius ("full of, abounding in, having, possessing the qualities of"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 16, 2017 is: paladin • \PAL-uh-din\ • noun 1 : a trusted military leader (as for a medieval prince) 2 : a leading champion of a cause Examples: The prince summoned the paladin to commend him for his actions in battle. "This collection of stories by one of England's best novelists is both playful and serious in the manner of Laurence Sterne, the 18th-century author of 'Tristram Shandy'…. Sterne was the master of the marginal, the random, the inconsequential. In our own day, David Foster Wallace, Geoff Dyer and Ali Smith have become the paladins of this goofy manner." — Edmund White, The New York Times, 2 Dec. 2016 Did you know? In ancient Rome, the emperor's palace was located on the Palatine Hill, known as Palatium in Latin. Since the site was the seat of imperial power, the word palatium came to mean "imperial" and later "imperial official." Different forms of the word passed through Latin, Italian, and French, picking up various meanings along the way, and eventually some of those forms made their way into English. Paladin is one of the etymological heirs of palatium; another descendant is the word palace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 15, 2017 is: cantankerous • \kan-TANK-uh-rus\ • adjective : difficult or irritating to deal with Examples: "[Kenneth] Lonergan's brow was furrowed, and he was speaking, as he often does, in a low, growling mumble.… Among his theatre and movie-industry peers, he is famous for being famously cantankerous." — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 7 Nov. 2016 "Far from being cantankerous, she says [Roald] Dahl was endlessly ingenious in his desire to amuse, even when mortally ill, and only grumpy when finishing a book." — Elizabeth Gricehow, The Daily Telegraph (London), 12 Nov. 2016 Did you know? It's irritating, but we're not absolutely sure where cantankerous comes from. Etymologists think it probably derived from the Middle English word contack (or contek), which meant "contention" or "strife." Their idea is that cantankerous may have started out as contackerous but was later modified as a result of association or confusion with rancorous (meaning "spiteful") and cankerous (which describes something that spreads corruption of the mind or spirit). Considering that a cantankerous person generally has the spite associated with contack and rancor, and the noxious and sometimes painful effects of a canker, that theory seems plausible. What we can say with conviction is that cantankerous has been used in English since at least the 1730s. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 14, 2017 is: neologism • \nee-AH-luh-jiz-um\ • noun 1 : a new word, usage, or expression 2 : (psychology) a new word that is coined especially by a person affected with schizophrenia and is meaningless except to the coiner Examples: The novelist's latest book is peppered with numerous slang words and neologisms that might not be familiar to some readers. "Borrowing a friend's neologism, [the British writer Simon] Parkin uses the term 'chronoslip' to describe the way video games affect one's sense of time, numbing one to its passing." — Christopher Byrd, The Washington Post, 31 July 2016 Did you know? The English language is constantly picking up neologisms. In recent decades, for example, computer technology has added a number of new terms to the language. Webinar, malware, netroots, and blogosphere are just a few examples of modern-day neologisms that have been integrated into American English. The word neologism was itself a brand-new coinage in the latter half of the 18th century, when English speakers borrowed the French term néologisme. The word's roots are quite old, ultimately tracing back to ancient Greek neos, meaning "new," and logos, meaning "word." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 13, 2017 is: effrontery • \ih-FRUN-tuh-ree\ • noun : shameless boldness : insolence Examples: Holly could not believe the effrontery of the student who asked that her grade be changed even though she had completed little of the coursework. "'I [Amanda Seyfried] once made a pecan pie for a guy I was dating, and we had a nice meal … with friends, and then that night, when we were alone, he said, "Did you really make that pie?"' She pauses to let the injustice, the sheer effrontery, of the question settle in. 'I mean, who says that?'" — David Denicolo, Allure, November 2016 Did you know? To the Romans, the shameless were "without forehead," at least figuratively. Effrontery derives from Latin effrons, a word that combines the prefix ex- (meaning "out" or "without") and frons (meaning "forehead" or "brow"). The Romans never used effrons literally to mean "without forehead," and theorists aren't in full agreement about the connection between the modern meaning of effrontery and the literal senses of its roots. Some explain that frons can also refer to the capacity for blushing, so a person without frons would be "unblushing" or "shameless." Others theorize that since the Romans believed that the brow was the seat of a person's modesty, being without a brow meant being "immodest" or, again, "shameless." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 12, 2017 is: lachrymose • \LAK-ruh-mohss\ • adjective 1 : given to tears or weeping : tearful 2 : tending to cause tears : mournful Examples: "… [Art] Garfunkel has always been partial to lachrymose sentiment. Listen, for instance, to his 1979 hit Bright Eyes, a song that targets the tear duct … and here summed up the tone of the evening." — Patrick Smith, The Daily Telegraph (London), 24 June 2016 "'Hallelujah' found a natural home in the hospital shows of the late-2000s, and it was frequently called upon to lend extra gravitas to a patient's dramatic death. On a particularly lachrymose episode of 'General Hospital,' the staff sings 'Hallelujah' as they bus into the mountains for a ski trip. The song then returns after their bus crashes in the snow." — Nick Murray, The New York Times, 21 Sept. 2016 Did you know? The adjective lachrymose comes from Latin lacrimosus (from the noun lacrima, meaning "tear"). Lachrymose didn't appear in English until around 1727, but another closely related adjective can be traced back to the 15th century. This earlier cousin, lachrymal (sometimes spelled lacrimal, particularly in its scientific applications), has a scientific flavor and is defined as "of, relating to, or being glands that produce tears" or "of, relating to, or marked by tears." In contrast, lachrymose typically applies to someone who is moved to tears because of strong emotions or to something that stimulates such feelings. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 11, 2017 is: gambol • \GAM-bul\ • verb : to skip about in play : frisk, frolic Examples: From her cabana, Candace watched her three children gambol in the ocean waves. "… Canandaigua has now joined the list of communities … where jittery citizens have reported the appearance of scary clowns. A few instances have involved real people gamboling in public in clown suits for reasons only they understand, though many of the 'sightings' have turned out to be hoaxes or exaggerations…." — Steve Orr, Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, 4 Oct. 2016 Did you know? In Middle French, the noun gambade referred to the frisky spring of a jumping horse. In the early 1500s, English speakers adopted the word as gambol as both a verb and a noun. (The noun means "a skipping or leaping about in play.") The English word is not restricted to horses, but rather can be used of any frolicsome creature. It is a word that suggests levity and spontaneity, and it tends to be used especially of the lively activity of children or animals engaged in active play. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 10, 2017 is: jitney • \JIT-nee\ • noun 1 : a small bus that carries passengers over a regular route on a flexible schedule 2 : an unlicensed taxicab Examples: After doing some shopping along the boardwalk, we boarded a jitney whose route took us back to our hotel. "Another option, especially if you're staying along Cable Beach or areas west, is to hop a ride on the jitneys into and out of Downtown Nassau, a great way to chat with locals who are doing the same thing (each ride is about $1.50)." — Kaeli Conforti, BudgetTravel.com, 14 Nov. 2016 Did you know? Jitneys weren't worth a dime—just a nickel. In the early 1900s, jitney was slang for "nickel," but it wasn't long before the term was applied to a new mode of public transportation that only cost a nickel. When they were introduced in American cities at the beginning of the century, vehicular jitneys could be any automobiles that carried passengers over a set route for a cheap fare, but eventually the term was applied specifically to small buses—and, nowadays, to the motor shuttles used by airlines and hotels). In the mid-1900s, the word jitney was combined with jeep to create a new coinage: jeepney, meaning "a Philippine jitney bus converted from a jeep." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 9, 2017 is: immutable • \ih-MYOO-tuh-bul\ • adjective : not capable of or susceptible to change Examples: "There's an immutable attraction between fingers and potato chips, making resistance, as the saying goes, futile." — Michele Henry, The Toronto Star, 30 Nov. 2016 "Like much of the American heartland, the summertime landscape in Iowa's Webster County is dominated by several immutable features: hot sun and lots of it; a ruler-straight grid of byways …; shining grain silos towering above the plains; and farmhouses…." — Michelle Donahue, PCMag.com, 8 Nov. 2016 Did you know? Immutable comes to us through Middle English from Latin immutabilis, meaning "unable to change." Immutabilis was formed by combining the negative prefix in- with mutabilis, which comes from the Latin verb mutare and means "to change." Some other English words that can be traced back to mutare are commute (the earliest sense of which is simply "to change or alter"), mutate ("to undergo significant and basic alteration"), permute ("to change the order or arrangement of"), and transmute ("to change or alter in form, appearance, or nature"). There's also the antonym of immutable—mutable—which of course can mean "prone to change" and "capable of change or of being changed." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 8, 2017 is: haberdasher • \HAB-er-dash-er\ • noun 1 : (British) a dealer in notions (such as needles, thread, buttons, etc.) 2 : a dealer in men's clothing and accessories Examples: Mr. Watson planned to visit the haberdasher during the week to buy some new shirts for his wardrobe. "There was a time when downtown St. Louis was known for its clothing and shoe companies, haberdashers and other apparel businesses." — Julia M. Johnson, St. Louis Business Journal, 27 Oct. 2016 Did you know? At various times throughout its history, the term haberdasher has referred to a dealer of hats or caps, a seller of notions (sewing supplies, such as needles and thimbles), and apparently (perhaps somewhat coyly) to a person who sells liquor. Nowadays, with hats not being as fashionable as they once were, the word mostly is applied generally as a clothing outfitter for men, with haberdashery referring to the establishment or the goods sold there. Haberdasher derives via Middle English from hapertas, an Anglo-French word for a kind of cloth, as does the obsolete noun haberdash, which once meant petty merchandise or small wares. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 7, 2017 is: beguile • \bih-GHYLE\ • verb 1 : to lead by deception 2 : to deceive by cunning means 3 : to draw notice or interest by wiles or charm 4 : to cause (as time) to pass in a pleasant manner Examples: The carnival barker beguiled Ricky into buying a chance at the target-shooting game, even though it was all but impossible to win. "The elusive and suddenly quite prolific Terrence Malick is fascinated, and beguiled, by nothing less than the legacy of all existence in his long-gestating, avant-nature doc Voyage of Time…." — Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine, 21 Nov. 2016 Did you know? Deceive, mislead, delude, and beguile all mean "to lead astray" or "to frustrate," usually by underhandedness. Deceive implies imposing a false idea or belief that causes ignorance, bewilderment, or helplessness (as in "they tried to deceive me about the cost"). Mislead implies a leading astray that may or may not be intentional (as in "I was misled by the confusing sign"). Delude implies deceiving so thoroughly as to obscure the truth (as in "we were deluded into thinking we were safe"). Beguile stresses the use of charm and persuasion in deceiving (as in "they were beguiled by false promises"), and more generally describes the use of that charm to capture another's attention. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 6, 2017 is: factitious • \fak-TISH-us\ • adjective 1 : produced by humans rather than by natural forces 2 a : formed by or adapted to an artificial or conventional standard b : produced by special effort : sham Examples: "For all the factitious factoids about state education spending, the reality from the federal government and even the nation's largest teachers union is that Pennsylvania far outspends most states—and by a comfortable margin." — The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 24 June 2016 "Brucie's worsening situation, like many events in Sweat's early scenes, is a harbinger of bad economic times that ultimately afflict all the characters. Nottage takes her time, piling up the details carefully and compassionately; Kate Whoriskey's direction keeps the action taut without any factitious pressuring." — Michael Feingold, The Village Voice, 9 Nov. 2016 Did you know? Like the common words fact and factual, factitious ultimately comes from the Latin verb facere, meaning "to do" or "to make." But in current use, factitious has little to do with things factual and true—in fact, factitious often implies the opposite. The most immediate ancestor of factitious is the Latin adjective facticius, meaning "made by art" or "artificial." When English speakers first adopted the word as factitious in the 17th century, it meant "produced by human effort or skill" (rather than arising from nature). This meaning gave rise to such meanings as "artificial" and "false" or "feigned." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 5, 2017 is: maelstrom • \MAIL-strum\ • noun 1 : a powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius 2 : something resembling a maelstrom in turbulence Examples: The mayor has been swept up in the media maelstrom surrounding the laundering of thousands of dollars in state funds by city officials. "The dark eye of Saturn's northern polar storm dominates the top left portion of the image, while smaller storms can be seen embedded in the surrounding maelstrom of the hexagon-shaped jet stream." — Anthony Wood, New Atlas (newatlas.com), 7 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Maelstrom comes from an early Dutch proper noun that is a combination of the verb malen ("to grind") and the noun stroom ("stream"). The original Maelstrom, now known as the Moskstraumen, is a channel located off the northwest coast of Norway that has dangerous tidal currents and has been popularized among English speakers by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne (whose writing was widely translated from French) in stories exaggerating the Maelstrom's tempestuousness and transforming it into a whirling vortex. Maelstrom entered English in the 16th century and was soon applied more generally in reference to any powerful whirlpool. By the mid-19th century, it was being applied figuratively to things or situations resembling such maelstroms in turbulence or confusion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 4, 2017 is: deem • \DEEM\ • verb 1 : to come to think or judge : consider 2 : to have an opinion : believe Examples: The covered bridge was closed to automobile traffic for the winter because town officials deemed it a hazard to motorists. "Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I've been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature … have always made a deep impression." — Bob Dylan, speech, 10 Dec. 2016 Did you know? In the Middle Ages, demen was a fateful word. Closely related to doom, this precursor of deem meant "to act as a judge" or "to sentence, condemn, or decree." These meanings passed to deem itself, but we haven't used deem to mean "to legally condemn" since the early 17th century. Though deem is still frequently used in contexts pertaining to the law, today it means "to judge" only in a broader sense of "to decide (something specified) after inquiry and deliberation," as in "the act was deemed unlawful" or "the defendant is deemed to have agreed to the contract." Outside of the law, deem usually means simply "to consider." Some usage commentators consider deem pretentious, but its use is well established in both literary and journalistic contexts. We deem it perfectly acceptable. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 3, 2017 is: oligopsony • \ah-luh-GAHP-suh-nee\ • noun : a market situation in which each of a few buyers exerts a disproportionate influence on the market Examples: The small number of supermarkets in the region has created an oligopsony in which the stores can dictate the price they pay to farmers for meat and fresh produce. "Under the crude oil export ban, domestic refineries were granted an oligopsony. Now oil companies will have more pricing power, which stands to boost their profits even if it doesn't lead to one extra drop of oil coming out of the ground." — Ben Adler, Grist, 31 Dec. 2015 Did you know? You're probably familiar with the word monopoly, but you may not recognize its conceptual and linguistic relative, the much rarer oligopsony. Both monopoly and oligopsony are ultimately from Greek, although monopoly passed through Latin before being adopted into English. Monopoly comes from the Greek prefix mono-, which means "one," and pōlein, "to sell." Oligopsony derives from the combining form olig-, meaning "few," and the Greek noun opsōnia—"the purchase of victuals"—which is ultimately from the combination of opson, "food," and ōneisthai, "to buy." It makes sense, then, that oligopsony refers to a buyer's market in which the seller is subjected to the potential demands of a limited pool of buyers. Another related word is monopsony, used for a more extreme oligopsony in which there is only a single buyer. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 2, 2017 is: baleful • \BAIL-ful\ • adjective 1 : deadly or pernicious in influence 2 : foreboding or threatening evil Examples: "His face might have been chiselled out of marble, so hard and set was its expression, while its eyes glowed with a baleful light." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887 "Out of nowhere, a huge fad sweeps the country. It dominates social media and leads to a blizzard of think pieces, which are followed almost immediately by a backlash, as critics warn of the fad’s baleful consequences." — James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, July 25, 2016 Did you know? The bale of baleful comes from Old English bealu ("evil"), and the bane of the similar-looking baneful comes from Old English bana ("slayer" or "murderer"). Baleful and baneful are alike in meaning as well as appearance, and they are sometimes used in quite similar contexts—but they usually differ in emphasis. Baleful typically describes what threatens or portends evil (e.g., "a baleful look," "baleful predictions"). Baneful applies typically to what causes evil or destruction (e.g., "a baneful secret," "the baneful bite of the serpent"). Both words are used to modify terms like influence, effect, and result, and in such uses there is little that distinguishes them. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 1, 2017 is: rejuvenate • \rih-JOO-vuh-nayt\ • verb 1 : to make young or youthful again : give new vigor to 2 : to restore to an original or new state Examples: The new arts complex and adjacent businesses have rejuvenated the city and turned downtown into a destination for visitors. "I was drained. When I started thinking about doing another album, I had all this self-doubt. I didn't think the songs would be any good. But I pushed through, and when 'Slipstream' was so well-received, it rejuvenated me." — Bonnie Raitt, quoted in The Chicago Tribune, 18 Mar. 2016 Did you know? Rejuvenate originated as a combination of the prefix re-, which means "again," with a Latin term that also gave us the words juvenile and junior—juvenis, meaning "young." Rejuvenate literally means "to make young again" and can imply a restoration of physical or mental strength or a return to a more youthful, healthy condition, as when you try to rejuvenate your skin with moisturizer. You can also rejuvenate things that are timeworn. For instance, a lackluster brand can be rejuvenated by a new marketing campaign. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 31, 2016 is: zeitgeist • \TSYTE-gyste\ • noun : (often capitalized Zeitgeist) the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era Examples: The movie does an excellent job of capturing the zeitgeist of the dot-com boom. "The people making the product are the same demographic as the people using the product. They don't have to rely on research and data to inform product decisions—they're just making things that they themselves want to use based on the zeitgeist of their generation." — Rachel Pasqua, quoted in Adweek, 3 Nov. 2016 Did you know? Scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. In German, such a spirit is known as Zeitgeist, from the German words Zeit, meaning "time," and Geist, meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Some writers and artists assert that the true zeitgeist of an era cannot be known until it is over, and several have declared that only artists or philosophers can adequately explain it. We don't know if that's true, but we do know that zeitgeist has been a useful addition to the English language since at least 1835. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 30, 2016 is: solicitous • \suh-LIS-uh-tus\ • adjective 1 : showing attentive care or protectiveness : manifesting or expressing solicitude 2 : full of concern or fears : apprehensive 3 : meticulously careful 4 : full of desire : eager Examples: Lyle has developed a reputation as one of the best tailors in the area because he is solicitous of his customers and their needs. "Any given meal included a plethora of delectable choices, including barbecued ribs, schnitzel, ice cream and German chocolate cake, served up by solicitous staff." — Erica Rosenberg, The Chicago Tribune, 2 Oct. 2016 Did you know? If you're solicitous about learning the connections between words, you'll surely want to know about the relationship between solicitous and another word you've probably heard before—solicit. Solicitous doesn't come from solicit, but the two words are related. They both have their roots in the Latin word sollicitus, meaning "anxious." Solicitous itself came directly from this Latin word, whereas solicit made its way to English with a few more steps. From sollicitus came the Latin verb sollicitare, meaning "to disturb, agitate, move, or entreat." Forms of this verb were borrowed into Anglo-French, and then Middle English, and have survived in Modern English as solicit. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 29, 2016 is: beleaguer • \bih-LEE-gur\ • verb 1 : to cause distress to : besiege 2 : trouble, harass Examples: Despite being beleaguered by injuries, the scrappy football team fought hard and managed to make the playoffs. "We must work to implement reforms like the Baltimore Metropolitan Council's Plan for Sustainable Development that offer practical remedies for the extensive pockets of generational poverty that beleaguer our region." — Elijah E. Cummings, The Baltimore Sun, 22 Apr. 2016 Did you know? English speakers created beleaguer from the Dutch word belegeren in the 16th century. "[Military men] will not vouchsafe … to use our ancient terms belonging to matters of war, but do call a camp by the Dutch name," commented the English soldier and diplomat Sir John Smyth in 1590. The word for "camp" that he was referring to is leaguer. That term in turn comes from Dutch leger, which is one of the building blocks of belegeren (literally, "to camp around"). But neither leaguer nor beleaguer were in fact utterly foreign. Old English leger, the source of our modern lair, is related to the Dutch word. And Old English be- ("about, around"), as seen in besiege and beset, is related to the Dutch prefix be- in belegeren. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 28, 2016 is: ultima • \UL-tuh-muh\ • noun : the last syllable of a word Examples: For the last line of her poem, Sheila needed a word with an ultima that rhymed with "green," so she tried "magazine." "A grave accent can occur only on the ultima." — Rodney J. Decker, Reading Koine Greek, 2015 Did you know? In Latin, ultima is the feminine form of the adjective ultimus ("farthest or last"), the superlative form of ulter, meaning "situated beyond." The ultima is the last syllable of a word; the second-to-last syllable in a word is called the penult or penultima (literally, "that which is almost last"); and the third-to-last syllable is called the antepenult or antepenultima ("that which comes before what is almost last"). The related word ultimate, while known to most people as meaning "the best or most extreme of its kind" (as in "surfers finding the ultimate wave"), has an original meaning referring to the last of something in a series. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 27, 2016 is: veridical • \vuh-RID-ih-kul\ • adjective 1 : truthful, veracious 2 : not illusory : genuine Examples: "All psychotherapies are based on the fact that memory is not veridical, that unconscious desires and fantasies exert their force on us all.…" — Henry Kaminer, The Weekly Standard, 31 July 2000 "In this book, therefore, 'perception' is used to cover all sensory experience, whether veridical or not." — Jeffrey Gray, Consciousness: Creeping Up on the Hard Problem, 2004 Did you know? We'll tell only the truth here: veridical comes from the Latin word veridicus, which itself is from two other Latin words: verus, meaning "true," and dicere, meaning "to say." Verus is an ancestor of several English words, among them verity, verify, and very (which originally meant "true"). The word verdict is related to veridical on both sides of the family: it also traces back to verus and dicere. Veridical itself is the least common of the verus words. You're most likely to encounter it in contexts dealing with psychology and philosophy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 26, 2016 is: Kwanzaa • \KWAHN-zuh\ • noun : an African-American cultural festival held from December 26 to January 1 Examples: A joyous family spirit pervaded the Allen family's Kwanzaa celebration as three generations came together for a delightful meal and a beautiful candle-lighting ceremony. "The dynamic, multicultural Forces of Nature Dance Company celebrates Kwanzaa with dance, music, drumming and audience-engaging activities." — Jill Schensul, NorthJersey.com, 21 Nov. 2016 Did you know? In 1966, Maulana Karenga, a Black Studies professor at California State University at Long Beach, created a new holiday patterned after traditional African harvest festivals. He called it Kwanzaa, a name he took from a Swahili term that means "first fruits." The holiday, which takes place from December 26th to January 1st, was originally intended as a nonreligious celebration of family and social values. Each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 25, 2016 is: wassail • \WAH-sul\ • verb 1 : to indulge in riotous drinking : carouse 2 : (dialectal, England) to sing carols from house to house at Christmas 3 : to drink to the health or thriving of Examples: Every year at Christmastime the magazine publishes a recipe for a traditional drink that can be used to wassail one's friends, neighbors, and family members. "In the middle of January we come into the orchards to wassail these trees, singing their praises, and driving evil spirits from their branches with screaming and gunshots." — Pete Brown, The Apple Orchard, 2016 Did you know? The salutation wassail, from the Old Norse toast ves heill ("be well"), has accompanied English toast-making since the 12th century. By the 14th century, wassail was being used for the drink itself, and it eventually came to be used especially of a hot drink (of wine, beer, or cider with spices, sugar, and usually baked apples) drunk around Christmastime. This beverage warmed the stomachs and hearts of many Christmas revelers and was often shared with Christmas carolers. In the 14th century the verb wassail also came to describe the carousing associated with indulgence in the drink; later, it was used of other activities associated with wassail and the holiday season, like caroling. 17th-century farmers added cattle and trees to the wassail tradition by drinking to their health or vitality during wintertime festivities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 24, 2016 is: dreidel • \DRAY-dul\ • noun 1 : a 4-sided toy marked with Hebrew letters and spun like a top in a game of chance 2 : a children's game of chance played especially at Hanukkah with a dreidel Examples: The adults chatted in the living room while the children amused themselves by playing dreidel. "He has bought a range of items, including a book on the mystical Jewish practice kabbalah and a glass dreidel." — Zoe Greenberg, The New York Times, 2 Oct. 2016 Did you know? On each of the dreidel's four sides is inscribed a Hebrew letter—nun, gimel, he, and shin—which together stands for "Nes gadol haya sham," meaning "A great miracle happened there" (in Israel, the letter pe, short for po, "here," is often used instead of shin). This phrase refers to the miracle of the small amount of oil—enough for one day—which burned for eight days in the Temple of Jerusalem. But when playing dreidel, the letters have a more utilitarian significance. The dreidel is spun and depending on which letter is on top when it lands, the player's currency—be it pennies or candy—is added to or taken from the pot. (Nun means the player does nothing; gimel means the player gets everything; he means the player gets half; and shin means the player adds to the pot.) The word dreidel was borrowed into English early in the 20th century from the Yiddish dreydl (itself from the word dreyen, which means "to turn"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 23, 2016 is: ruminate • \ROO-muh-nayt\ • verb 1 : to engage in contemplation : meditate 2 : to chew again what has been chewed slightly and swallowed : chew the cud Examples: For her final column of the year, Francine ruminated on the subject of new beginnings. "The presence of large forage particles or undigested grains may indicate that cows are not ruminating properly or that rumen passage rate is accelerated." — Paul Kononoff, Dairy Herd Management, 6 Apr. 2016 Did you know? When you ruminate, you chew something over, either literally or figuratively. Literal rumination may seem a little gross to humans, but to cows, chewing your cud (that's partially digested food brought up from the stomach for another chew) is just a natural part of life. Figurative ruminating is much more palatable to humans; that kind of deep, meditative thought is often deemed quite a worthy activity. The verb ruminate has described metaphorical chewing over since the early 1500s and actual chewing since later that same century. Our English word derives from and shares the meanings of the Latin ruminari, which in turn derives from rumen, the Latin name for the first stomach compartment of ruminant animals (that is, creatures like cows that chew their cud). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 22, 2016 is: crepuscular • \krih-PUHSS-kyuh-ler\ • adjective 1 : of, relating to, or resembling twilight : dim 2 : occurring or active during the twilight Examples: "After dinner they went out on the terrace for a look at the moon-misted park. Through the crepuscular whiteness the trees hung in blotted masses." — Edith Wharton, The Reef, 1912 "Rabbits are crepuscular feeders, which means they tend to leave their burrows in the twilight hours around sunset and sunrise to eat." — Joan Morris, The Mercury News (California), 24 Aug. 2016 Did you know? The early Romans had two words for the twilight. Crepusculum was favored by Roman writers for the half-light of evening, just after the sun sets; it is a diminutive formation based on their word for "dusky," which is creper. Diluculum was reserved for morning twilight, just before the sun rises—it is related to lucidus, meaning "bright." We didn't embrace either of these Latin nouns as substitutes for our Middle English twilight, but we did form the adjective crepuscular in the 17th century. At first, it only meant "dim" or "indistinct," often used in a figurative sense. In the 1820s, we added its special zoological sense, describing animals that are most active at twilight. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 21, 2016 is: purlieu • \PERL-yoo\ • noun 1 a : an outlying or adjacent district b : (plural) environs, neighborhood 2 a : a frequently visited place : haunt b : (plural) confines, bounds Examples: "The boy, desperately nervous, continued to descend the zig-zag paths that would take him into the very purlieus of his father's house." — Ford Madox Ford, Last Post, 1928 "This is the biggest casino in the world…. It's open day and night, and entry is free, so there's no reason (assuming you're over 21) not to take a stroll through its gilded purlieus." — Ed Peters, The Telegraph (London), 13 Sept. 2016 Did you know? In medieval England, if you wished to assert the extent of your land, you might hold a ceremony called a perambulation, in which you would walk around and record your property's boundaries in the presence of witnesses. If your land bordered a royal forest, there could be some confusion about where your land started and the royal forest ended. By performing a perambulation, you could gain some degree of ownership over disputed forest tracts, although your use of them would be restricted by forest laws. Such regained forest property was called a purlewe (or as it was later spelled, purlieu), which derives from the Anglo-French word for "perambulation." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 20, 2016 is: eternize • \ih-TER-nyze\ • verb 1 a : to make eternal b : to prolong indefinitely 2 : immortalize Examples: The photograph eternizes the joy that Colin felt when he held his daughter in his arms for the first time. "Sometimes it seems that Hopper (1882-1967) could have eternized almost any undistinguished moment of introspection or inaction in anyone's life. That's why his paintings can make us wonder about the opportunities for consciousness and revelation we have been blind to in ourselves." — Roberta Smith, The New York Times, 6 June 2013 Did you know? Eternize shows up in the works of literary greats, such as John Milton, Edmund Spenser, and Herman Melville, and it sees occasional use in modern-day sources, but it is far from common. The same can be said of its slightly longer and related synonym eternalize. Eternize is the older of the two; our earliest evidence of the word dates to 1566, while evidence of eternalize dates to 1620. But there's a third relative that predates them both, and it's far more common than either of them. That would be eternal, which has been with us since the 14th century. All three words are ultimately rooted in Latin aevum, meaning "age" or "eternity." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 19, 2016 is: nosocomial • \nah-suh-KOH-mee-ul\ • adjective : acquired or occurring in a hospital Examples: A minor nosocomial outbreak of the disease occurred when doctors failed to diagnose the infected patient's illness in time. "… there are things we handle a lot and never really clean. One study, for instance, found that about 95 percent of mobile phones carried by health care workers were contaminated with nosocomial bacteria." — Aaron E. Carroll, The New York Times, 18 Oct. 2016 Did you know? Nosocomial is a word that usually occurs in formal medical contexts—specifically, in reference to hospital-acquired sickness. We hope you never encounter nosocomial as part of your own medical diagnosis, but if you do, you might want to remember that the term descends from nosocomium, the Late Latin word for "hospital." Nosocomium in turn traces to the Greek nosos, meaning "disease." That root has given English other words as well, including zoonosis ("a disease communicable from animals to humans under natural conditions") and nosology ("a classification or list of diseases" or "a branch of medical science that deals with classification of diseases"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 18, 2016 is: gallimaufry • \gal-uh-MAW-free\ • noun : a heterogeneous mixture : jumble Examples: The essay collection covers a gallimaufry of subjects, from stamp collecting to Portuguese cooking. "Upon entering the gallery, one of the first things that catches my eye is a gallimaufry of vibrant, oversized collages." — Rosalie Spear, The Las Vegas Weekly, 29 Mar. 2016 Did you know? If the word gallimaufry doesn't make your mouth water, it may be because you don't know its history. In the 16th century, Middle-French speaking cooks made a meat stew called galimafree. It must have been a varied dish because English speakers chose its name for any mix or jumble of things. If gallimaufry isn't to your taste, season your speech with one of its synonyms: hash (which can be a muddle of chopped meat and potatoes), hotchpotch (a stew or a hodgepodge), or potpourri (another stew turned medley). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 17, 2016 is: lave • \LAYV\ • verb 1 a : wash, bathe b : to flow along or against 2 : pour Examples: "The captain walked up past the horses holding his arm and he knelt and drank and laved water over the back of his neck with his good hand." — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, 1992 "On that first day she rode out to the beach on the ocean side of the island, dismounted to walk along the sand and watch the breakers lave the shore, and felt, for a moment, wholly content." — Sara Taylor, The Shore, 2015 Did you know? Lave is a simple, monosyllabic word that magically makes the mundane act of washing poetic. Shakespeare used it in The Taming of the Shrew when Gremio assured the father of his beloved Bianca that she would have "basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands." And in Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, Nell "laved her hands and face, and cooled her feet before setting forth to walk again." The poetry of lave is also heard when describing water washing against the shore, or even the pouring of water. Before washing our hands of lave, we'll tell you that it comes from the same root as our word lavatory: the Latin verb lavare, meaning "to wash." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 16, 2016 is: impetuous • \im-PECH-uh-wus\ • adjective 1 : marked by impulsive vehemence or passion 2 : marked by force and violence of movement or action Examples: The impetuous winds forced the hikers to postpone their expedition to the mountain's peak. "… you care so much that you want to get it right and you're not going to indulge in either impetuous or, in some cases, manufactured responses that make good sound bites but don't produce results. The stakes are too high to play those games." — Barack Obama, quoted in The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2016 Did you know? When we borrowed impetuous in the late 14th century, we used it of people and their actions. About a hundred years later, we added another sense to describe physical things like wind or storms or seas—this second sense we don't use much anymore. The word comes via Anglo-French from Late Latin impetuosus, which is from impetus. Latin impetus (which of course gave us our own impetus, meaning "driving force") essentially means "assault," but it also has figurative senses ranging from "violence" to "ardor." Our impetuous has a similar range of meaning, from "violent" to "passionate." It also carries the suggestion of impulsiveness. Often, we put a light touch on the word, as when we refer—somewhat longingly, perhaps—to our "impetuous youth." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 15, 2016 is: jubilee • \JOO-buh-lee\ • noun 1 : (often capitalized Jubilee) a year of emancipation and restoration provided by ancient Hebrew law to be kept every 50 years by the emancipation of Hebrew slaves, restoration of alienated lands to their former owners, and omission of all cultivation of the land 2 : a special anniversary; especially : a 50th anniversary 3 : a period of time proclaimed by the Roman Catholic pope ordinarily every 25 years as a time of special solemnity 4 : a state of joy or rejoicing : jubilation 5 : a religious song of black Americans usually referring to a time of future happiness Examples: My grandparents will be celebrating their golden jubilee this year—as Grandpa puts it, "50 years of wedded bliss and occasional blisters." "Thousands gathered around Buckingham Palace Monday night to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee with a gala concert that featured international superstars Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Stevie Wonder, offering music from every decade of the queen's 60-year reign." — Mackenzie Carpenter, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Jun. 2012 Did you know? According to Leviticus, every 50th year was to be a time when Hebrew slaves were set free, lands were given back to their former owners, and the fields were not harvested. This year of liberty was announced when a ram's horn was blown. In Hebrew, that ceremonial horn was called a yōbhēl, and the celebratory year took its name from that of the horn. As the Bible was translated into other languages, the concept of the yōbhēl spread around the world, as did its name (albeit with spelling modifications). In Latin, yōbhēl was transcribed as jubilaeus (influenced by Latin jubilare, meaning "to let out joyful shouts"). French-speakers adopted the word as jubilé, and English-speakers created jubilee from the French and Latin forms. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.