refluent

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 31, 2015 is: refluent • \REH-floo-unt\  • adjective : flowing back Examples: "And in haste the refluent ocean / Fled away from the shore and left the line of the sand-beach / Covered with waifs of the tide…." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, 1847 "… and I could imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean." - Frank Norris, A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West, 1903 Did you know? Refluent was first documented in English during the 15th century, and it can be traced back to the Latin verb refluere, meaning "to flow back." Refluere, in turn, was formed from the prefix re- and the verb fluere ("to flow"). Other fluere descendants in English include confluent ("flowing together"), fluent and fluid (both of which share the earliest sense of "flowing easily"), circumfluent ("flowing around"), and even affluent (which first meant "flowing abundantly"). Refluent even has an antonym derived from fluere-effluent, meaning "flowing out." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.