guttural

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 26, 2016 is: guttural • \GUTT-uh-rul\  • adjective 1 : articulated in the throat 2 : velar 3 : being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable Examples: The only response we could get from him was an inarticulate guttural grunt. "The guttural yells echoing off New Jersey's Lake Mercer conveyed the gravity of college rowing's biggest day Sunday: the Intercollegiate Rowing Championship." — Brian Towey, The Seattle Times, 6 June 2016 Did you know? Though it is now used to describe many sounds or utterances which strike the listener as harsh or disagreeable, the adjective guttural was originally applied only to sounds and utterances produced in the throat. This is reflected in the word's Latin root—guttur, meaning "throat." Despite the similarity in sound, guttural is not related to the English word gutter, which comes (by way of Anglo-French) from Latin gutta, meaning "drop." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.