We’re back celebrating our Word of the Day! Because there’s plenty left to reminisce about from the last 10 years.
In Part II of our lexical stroll down memory lane (see Part I, 1999–2008, here), we will be examining word selections from 2009–2018, unearthing serendipitous synchronicities and offering perspicacious perspectives into notable events and trends of the last decade.
Oops, just kidding, because our first call out is actually from last year. In tribute to all you bibliophages, we asked some of our favorite authors to select words throughout our birthday month in 2019. Like host of CNN’s The Lead and author of The Outpost and The Hellfire Club Jake Tapper, who chose the first birthday-month word, guddle.
I picked the word of the day! Thanks, @Dictionarycom! https://t.co/iwOy67rWGi
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 1, 2019
And then came bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger Roxane Gay, who chose the seasonally appropriate word blossom the following week. Award-winning author of Speak and Shout (to name a few) Laurie Halse Anderson chose next, picking the word consent on the third Wednesday of the month to raise awareness around consent-based sexual relations.
Check out more author picks as the logophilic festivities continued. Now, on to those serendipitous words!
cormorant
“a greedy person.”
– March 16, 2009
A cormorant is a type of water bird. But, thanks to its perceived voraciousness, the cormorant can represent gluttony and greed in literature, figured as Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost and maligned in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.
We featured this word on March 16, 2009, the date when President Obama expressed outrage at the insurance company AIG giving bonuses to its top executives from taxpayer bailout money, and said he would do everything in his power to stop it. “This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed,” he said.
suspire
“to sigh; utter with long, sighing breaths.”
– May 22, 2010
We’re pretty sure nobody has this date marked on their calendar as one to remember from the last decade. But, May 22, 2010 was the day Nicolaus Copernicus—the 16th century Polish astronomer who proposed the heliocentric theory of our planetary system, which the Catholic Church came to condemn—was reburied as a hero. Ah, sweet vindication.
We imagine Copernicus somewhere in the great beyond suspiring with an eye-roll … “Finally.”
scurrilous
“grossly or obscenely abusive.”
– April 17, 2011
The word scurrilous is most often used to describe remarks that are vulgar and injurious, as in “He was the victim of scurrilous attacks.” It ultimately comes from Latin scurra meaning “buffoon.” Eighteenth-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson made the connection plain in his definition: “using such language as only the licence [sic] of a buffoon can warrant.”
The word is also used to describe demeanor, as in “the scurrilous imposter.” We wonder if Word of the Day fans found it useful back in April 2011 for talking about a certain, shall we say, graphic new series called Game of Thrones, which premiered the day this word was featured. Winter is coming.
terpsichorean
“pertaining to dancing.”
– November 18, 2012
The year 2012 does not have a monopoly on dancing (you can dance if you want to), but the timing of this word selection brings a smile as it was featured right around the time the South Korean superstar Psy had transfixed viewers with his so-called invisible-horse dance in the megahit “Gangnam Style.”
By November of 2012, “Gangnam Style” was well on its way to a billion views on YouTube (a milestone that was hit a month later). Today “Gangnam Style” has more than 3.3 billion views and counting, and we’re still trying to master his equestrian terpsichorean style.
logomachy
“a dispute about or concerning words.”
– May 7, 2013
Although it may feel like heated disputes about words and their meanings are a new phenomenon (hi, Twitter), we assure you, lexical quibbles are as old as English itself, or at least as old as Early Modern English, when this word choice entered the lexicon (first attested in 1569).
2013 was the year that the word twerk bounced into the spotlight—with a little “help” from Miley Cyrus—and sparked many a debate about its origins and staying power. And, of course, that meant twerk was added to Dictionary.com in 2013 as well (along with a few others that tend to spark logomachies, including selfie, mansplain, and cronut).
meliorism
“the doctrine that the world tends to become better or may be made better by human effort.”
– May 28, 2014
Rooted in the Latin melior, meaning “better,” meliorism came in the middle of a year defined by Black Lives Matter and its campaign for the equality of black people and against the violence they face.
The movement might be considered a powerful example of meliorism. Whether in protests on the streets or through hashtags on social media, its activism seeks to make the world a better place for the marginalized.
e pluribus unum
“out of many, one.”
– July 4, 2015
This unofficial motto of the US, meaning “out of many, one” in Latin and featured on our Great Seal and currency, dates back to the early days of the country, when the original 13 colonies united into a single nation.
Since then, e pluribus unum has evolved to express an idea of American unity in diversity. That belief rang a lot truer for many people when we featured this expression on Independence Day 2015. Just over a week before, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that same-sex marriage is a legal right from sea to shining sea.
suffrage
“the right to vote, especially in a political election.”
– November 8, 2016
Perhaps you’ve noticed a theme as we’ve moved into the mid-2010s. Politics, identity, and language. Increasingly in the news, culture, and social media environment of the 2010s, Word of the Day has become a lens for many users, a way of looking at or reflecting on the affairs of the day. Like suffrage, which we featured on Election Day 2016, marked by the election of Donald Trump to the White House. What did y’all see in this word choice? Is it any different now?
multitudinous
“existing, occurring, or present in great numbers; very numerous.”
– January 21, 2017
The day after the inauguration of Donald Trump met the Women’s March, where over 200,000 people gathered in the nation’s capital—and many millions more across the US and world—in protests for the rights of women and other oppressed groups.
Considered the largest single-day protest in the US, the Women’s March can truly be described as multitudinous, or “very numerous,” the adjective form of multitude.
Minerva
“a woman of great wisdom.”
– March 8, 2018
Speaking of women’s rights, March 8 is International Women’s Day, an apt occasion for Minerva. This word for a wise woman takes up the mantle of the Roman goddess of wisdom and the arts, Minerva, an analog to Athena of ancient Greece. Minerva is also the namesake of Minerva McGonagall, who became Headmistress of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter universe.
Minerva = A woman of great wisdom.
Also Minerva = Headmistress of Hogwarts. #InternationalWomensDay #WordOfTheDayhttps://t.co/NEInx3fBqp pic.twitter.com/0USjYOrXei
— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) March 8, 2018
No matter how far the technology has come since the antediluvian dial-up days of 1999, the appetite—the appetence, edacity, the maw—for Word of the Day remains Brobdingnagian.
Plus, there’s all of you. The real birthday present has been hearing from our readers, who are sharing your favorite Word of the Day selections with us on social media. Your reactions to Word of the Day make it truly great.
Thanks for 20 years, and we look forward to many more. We certainly think they’ve made us … all the wiser.
This list features our Word of the Day selections from the past year that have received the most Facebook «Likes.»
Definition:
common sense, horse sense; enterprise, initiative
Example:
«Plans for the relocation and expansion of Vacaville’s homeless shelter have hit a snag, but it looks like a little gumption and the city’s support could keep the project from derailing.» — Kimberly K. Fu, Contra Costa (California) Times, July 10, 2011
About the Word:
English speakers have had gumption (the word, that is) since the early 1700s. The term’s exact origins aren’t known, but its earliest known uses are found in British and especially Scottish dialects (which also include the forms rumblegumption and rumgumption).
In its earliest uses, gumption referred to intelligence or common sense, especially when those qualities were combined with high levels of energy. By the 1860s, American English speakers were also using gumption to imply ambition or tenacity, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that gumption began to appear in English texts as a direct synonym of courage or get-up-and-go.
American showman P.T. Barnum also claimed that gumption named a particular kind of hard cider, but that sense is far from common today.
Definition:
to confuse
Example:
«Several traffic signals around the county seem to be less intuitive than others, judging by some of the mail the Doc receives. One that regularly flummoxes drivers is on northbound Seminole Boulevard at the intersection of Ulmerton Road.» — Lorrie Lykins, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), November 14, 2010
About the Word:
No one is completely sure where the word flummox comes from, but we do know that its first known use is found in Charles Dickens’ 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers and that it had become quite common in both British and American English by the end of the 19th century.
One theory expressed by some etymologists is that it was influenced by flummock, a word of English dialectical origin used to refer to a clumsy person. This flummock may also be the source of the word lummox, which also means «a clumsy person.»
Definition:
to engage in amorous embracing, caressing, and kissing
Example:
«The honeymooners are ubiquitous. They cuddle on the beaches, and they maneuver kayaks across the clear, turquoise waterways. They hold hands and canoodle at dinner in dimly lit restaurants.» — Ron Donoho, San Diego Magazine, January 2009
About the Word:
The origins of canoodle are obscure. Our best guess is that it may come from an English dialect noun of the same spelling meaning «donkey, fool, or foolish lover,» which itself may be an alteration of the word noodle, meaning «a foolish person.»
That noodle in turn may come from noddle, a word for the head. The guess seems reasonable given that, since its appearance in the language around the mid-19th century, canoodle has been most often used jocularly for playful public displays of affection by couples who are head over heels in love.
Definition:
of keen and farsighted penetration and judgment; discerning
Example:
«However, the new learning from Arab and ancient Greek sources recovered in the twelfth century showed that even the most sagacious ancient authors, including the likes of Ptolemy himself, believed in astrology.» — James Hannam, The Genesis of Science, 2011
About the Word:
You might expect the root of sagacious to be sage, which means «wise» or «wise man,» but actually the two words are not all that closely related. Sagacious traces back to sagire, a Latin verb meaning «to perceive keenly.»
It’s also related to the Latin adjective sagus («prophetic»), which is the ancestor of our verb seek. Etymologists believe that sage comes from a different Latin verb, sapere, which means «to taste,» «to have good taste,» or «to be wise.»
Definition:
having a mysterious, holy, or spiritual quality
Example:
«The Flinders [Australia] is an astonishingly evocative, numinous place: a landscape where the centuries, the millennia, the aeons all whisper to you.» — Matthew Engel, Financial Times, September 2, 2011
About the Word:
Numinous is from the Latin word numen, meaning «divine will» or «nod» (it suggests a figurative nodding, of assent or of command, of the divine head).
English speakers have been using numen for centuries with the meaning «a spiritual force or influence.» We began using numinous in the mid-1600s, subsequently endowing it with several senses: «supernatural» or «mysterious» (as in «possessed of a numinous energy force»), «holy» (as in «the numinous atmosphere of the catacombs»), and «appealing to the aesthetic sense» (as in «the numinous nuances of her art»). We also created the nouns numinousness and numinosity, although these are rare.
Definition:
marked by intemperance especially in eating or drinking; sick from excessive indulgence in liquor
Example:
«They were crapulous and carrying blue cans of beer, one of them with a can in each hand.» — Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, 2008
About the Word:
Crapulous may sound like a word that you shouldn’t use in polite company, but it actually has a long and perfectly respectable history (although it’s not a particularly kind way to describe someone).
It is derived from the Late Latin adjective crapulosus, which in turn traces back to the Latin word crapula, meaning «intoxication.» Crapula itself comes from a much older Greek word for the headache one gets from drinking.
Crapulous first appeared in print in 1536. Approximately 200 years later, its close cousin crapulence arrived on the scene as a word for sickness caused by drinking. Crapulence later acquired the meaning «great intemperance especially in drinking,» but it is not an especially common word.
Definition:
characterized by triteness or sentimentalism
Example:
«Ironically this bloated historical drama about Hungary’s failed democratic revolution of 1956 evokes nothing less than a Stalinist pageant: everyone on the right side of history is depicted as a morally enlightened superhuman, and a wash of bathetic music every few minutes is supposed to remind you how monumental the situation is.» — Ben Sachs, ChicagoReader.com, September 8, 2011
About the Word:
When English speakers turned apathy into apathetic in the 1700s, using the suffix -etic to turn the noun into the adjective, they were inspired by pathetic, the adjectival form of pathos, from Greek pathētikos.
People also applied that bit of linguistic transformation to coin bathetic. In the 19th century, English speakers added the suffix -etic to bathos, the Greek word for «depth,» which in English has come to mean «triteness» or «excessive sentimentalism.» The result: the ideal adjective for the incredibly commonplace or the overly sentimental.
Definition:
fate
Example:
«Call it kismet or chemistry, but when hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons met yoga instructor Porschla Coleman 10 months ago at a party in Atlanta, they instantly hit it off.» — Lynette Holloway, Ebony, February 2008
About the Word:
Is it your fate to tie macrame while drinking coffee and eating sherbet in a minaret? That would be an unusual destiny, but if it turns out to be your kismet, you will owe much to Turkish and Arabic.
We borrowed kismet from Turkish in the 1800s, but it ultimately derives from the Arabic qisma, meaning «portion» or «lot.»
Several other terms in our bizarre opening question (namely, macrame, coffee, sherbet, and minaret) have roots in those languages too. In the case of macrame and minaret, there is a little French influence as well. Coffee and macrame also have Italian relations, and sherbet has an ancestor in a Persian name for a type of cold drink.
Definition:
an unexpected change or fluctuation; a difficulty or hardship usually beyond one’s control
Example:
«Ten years is a lifetime in the art world, where the vicissitudes of trends and tastes can befuddle the most experienced.» — Scarlet Cheng, Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2011
About the Word:
«Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better,» wrote British theologian Richard Hooker in the 16th century.
That observation may shed some light on vicissitude, a word that can refer simply to the fact of change, or to an instance of it, but that often refers specifically to hardship or difficulty brought about by change. To survive «the vicissitudes of life» is thus to survive life’s ups and downs, with special emphasis on the downs.
Vicissitude is a descendant of the Latin noun vicis, meaning «change» or «alternation,» and it has been a part of the English language since the 16th century. In contemporary usage, it most often occurs in the plural.
Definition:
to depart quickly
Example:
«He raised his handgun and tried to line Reilly down its sight, but there was too much commotion around the agent and Zahed couldn’t get a clean shot. Time to vamoose. With his weapon still in his grip, he leapt behind the wheel of the van, slammed it into drive, and floored it.» — Raymond Khoury, The Templar Salvation, 2010
About the Word:
In the 1820s and ’30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble territory — the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable.
One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was vamos, which means «let’s go.»
Cowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was vamoose.
Check here every day for new ESL content.
Word of the Day
wailful |
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| Definition: | Vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression. |
| Synonyms: | lamenting |
Idiom of the Day
shotgun house
(chiefly Southern United States slang) A one-story house in which each room is in a straight alignment with the others, connected by a continuous hallway running from the front to the back of the residence.
Today’s Holiday
Paul Bunyan Show
Paul Bunyan is the mythical hero of lumberjacks in the United States. Since 1952, the Paul Bunyan Festival, sponsored by the Ohio Forestry Association and Hocking College in Nelsonville, has focused on wood products and forestry conservation and is an opportunity for lumberjacks to test their skills. Teams of draft horses compete in a log-skidding contest—an operation that is performed today by heavy machines—and turn-of-the-century steam logging equipment is on display. The show gives visitors an opportunity to see both traditional and modern logging techniques in action.
More…
Quote of the Day
Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain
(1835-1910)
Word Trivia
Today’s topic: terrier
whippet — A cross between a greyhound and a terrier. More…
terrier — A dog that «takes the earth» or unearths its prey, from Latin terra, «earth.» More…
Dobermann, pinscher — Dobermanns are named for German dog breeder Ludwig Dobermann; pinscher means «terrier» in German. More…
Jack Russell — A type of terrier—not recognized as a distinct breed— named for the Rev. John Russell (1795-1883) of Devonshire. More…