Word Of The Day

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INTERDIGITATE verb (in-ter-dij-i-teyt)

verb

1. to interlock, as or like the fingers of both hands.

Quotes

Linguistic history is so much harder for two primary reasons. First, branches can reconnect, interweave, interdigitate, borrow from and filter through one another.
--*Stephen Jay Gould,*"Talk Gets Around," New York Times, December 11, 1988

... there are times when their feelings become too much for them. Then, if the occasion is too formal for unrestrained shrieks, they silently interdigitate.
--*Ian Hay,*The Right Stuff, 1910



Origin

Interdigitate is a derivative of the Latin noun digitus, most commonly meaning is “finger” and secondarily “toe” and finally, as a measure of length, “the breadth of a finger, inch.” The Latin noun derives from the Proto-Indo-European root (and its variants) deik-, doik-, dik- (also deig-, doig-, dig-) “to point, point out, show.” One of the Germanic derivatives of doik- is taih(wō), which in Old English develops into tahe and then tā, whence Modern English “toe,” except that human beings cannot interdigitate with their toes. Interdigitate entered English in the 19th century.

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OPHIDIAN noun (oh-fid-ee-uh n)

noun

1. a snake.

adjective

1. belonging or pertaining to the suborder Ophidia (Serpentes), comprising the snakes.


Quotes

The head of the ophidian raised from the shoulder of the statue and disappeared, to glide out from beneath the arm in a swift undulation, its jaws open, its tongue vibrating.
--*J. Allan Dunn,*"The Treasure of Atlantis, All Around, December 1916

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped over one ophidian, then actually set her foot in the coil of another's tail before stepping across its body as well.
--*Richard Baker,*Final Gate, 2006



Origin

Ophidian is a derivative of Greek óphis “snake, serpent,” and despite appearances, óphis comes from the same Proto-Indo-European source (angwhi- or ogwhi- “snake, eel” as Latin anguis, Lithuanian angìs, Russian už, and Polish wąż, all meaning “snake”). Ophidian entered English in the 19th century.

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DIVAGATE verb (dahy-vuh-geyt)

verb

1. to wander; stray.
2. to digress in speech.


Quotes

I divagate without discipline--my mind runs all over ...
--*A. S. Byatt,*Possession, 1990

But, vague vagabond, you will seem to divagate, while in reality you will keep both eyes open and your ears pricked.
--*Umberto Eco,*The Island of the Day Before, translated by William Weaver, 1995



Origin

Divagate comes from Latin dīvagātus, the past participle of dīvagārī meaning “to wander off.” It entered English in the late 1500s.

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EXURB noun (ek-serb)

noun

1. a small, usually prosperous, community situated beyond the suburbs of a city.


Quotes

"I grew up in the exurbs of Indianapolis," Elizabeth says.
--*Emily St. John Mandel,*Station Eleven, 2014

When the neighborhood began to change, in the early eighties—when her son could no longer ride his bicycle around the corner without being pushed off it—she moved upstate, to Orange County, a burgeoning exurb.
--*Nick Paumgarten,*"There and Back Again," The New Yorker, April 16, 2007



Origin

Exurb is an Americanism dating back to the 1950s. It’s a portmanteau of the words ex- and suburb.

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SMORGASBORD noun (smawr-guh s-bohrd)

noun

1. an extensive array or variety: The company has a smorgasbord of employee benefits.
2. a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.


Quotes

Inside, the old man held court reclining on a green divan, beside a large table heavily laden with wines and medicines and smokes and an endless untidy smorgasbord of unappetizing snacks.
--*Norman Spinrad,*Songs from the Stars, 1980

I think one always needs the sensory smorgasbord of a firsthand experience in order to truly absorb a place's atmosphere--or, to borrow Gracie's term, to read the sum of its "room-feelings."
--*Reif Larsen,*The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, 2009



Origin

Smorgasbord comes from Swedish smörgåsbord. Smörgås means “a slice of bread and butter,” made up of the nouns smör “butter” (related to English smear) and gås literally “goose” and dialectally “a lump of butter.” Bord means "table" in Swedish and is obviously closely related to English board, both from Germanic. Smorgasbord entered English in the late 19th century.

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SOTTO VOCE adverb (sot-oh- voh-chee)

adverb

1. in a low, soft voice so as not to be overheard.


Quotes

And they are superbly complemented by Claude Pieplu, as the amoral man of concentrated ambition whose utmost cruelties are uttered sotto voce--so as not to trouble a sleeping child.
--*Judith Crist,*"A Repast of Things Remembered," New York, May 27, 1974

The prelude was projected onto a piece of white fabric that looked like a bedsheet, and probably was one--arts budgets being what they were, as Gavin commented to Reynolds, sotto voce.
--*Margaret Atwood,*"Revenant," Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales, 2014



Origin

There is usually a pretty straight line from Latin to Italian. Italian sotto, meaning “under, below,” comes from the Latin adverb subtus “below, beneath.” Italian voce comes from Latin voc-, the stem of the noun vox “voice, sound.” The phrase entered English in the 18th century.

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UNALIENABLE adjective (uhn-eyl-yuh-buh l)

adjective

1. not transferable to another or not capable of being taken away or denied; inalienable: Inherent in the U.S. constitution is the belief that all people are born with an unalienable right to freedom.


Quotes

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
--*Thomas Jefferson, et al.,*United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

But there is one sentiment which runs through all his life--an intense love of freedom for all men; one idea, the idea that each man has Unalienable Rights. These are what may be called the American sentiment, and the American idea ...
--*Theodore Parker,*"John Quincy Adams," The Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Volume I, 1848



Origin

Unalienable was first recorded in the early 1600s. Historians have pointed out that in a draft of the Declaration of Independence, its author Thomas Jefferson wrote “certain inherent and inalienable rights,” choosing to use alliteration. But Jefferson’s wording and spelling were later changed to “certain unalienable Rights.” To add to the apparent mystery, on a wall in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., the phrase appears as “certain inalienable rights,” and inalienable is the spelling found in most modern quotations from the Declaration. In one way, the solution to the puzzle is simple: until sometime in the 1830s, unalienable was the overwhelmingly preferred spelling. But since then, inalienable gradually replaced it. Today, were it not for our annual commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, the spelling unalienable would be all but forgotten. In another way, the answer to the puzzle is less straightforward: it is evidence of the constantly competing and changing word forms found in English. There are many other examples of unruly rivalries involving the prefixes in- (from Latin) and un- (from Old and Middle English), both jostling for dominance in the formation of “not” compounds.

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GOBSMACKED adjective (gob-smakt)

adjective

1. Chiefly British Informal. utterly astounded; astonished.


Quotes

“These candidates are very well prepped,” [Baker] says. “They are two self-possessed people, so the idea that one of them will blurt out some awful indiscretion or appear to be gobsmacked by the other is really unlikely.”
--*Katharine Q. Seelye,*"What to Look for in Tonight's Debate," New York Times, September 26, 2008

We were too young, too gobsmacked by Star Wars and Saturday Night Live and snow forts and thunderstorms to notice the dalliances that led to the rifts.
--*Patton Oswalt,*Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, 2011



Origin

Gobsmacked sounds like a word out of Chaucer or a Shakespearean comedy. It is not: gobsmacked is originally and still chiefly British slang dating only from the mid-20th century.

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INSTANTIATE verb (in-stan-shee-eyt)

verb

1. to provide an instance of or concrete evidence in support of (a theory, concept, claim, or the like).


Quotes

That scheme, much simplified, is this: narratives tend to contain or at least to suggest the possibility of three basic figures (though there may be more or fewer than three characters who instantiate them): an innocent, someone who exploits that innocent, and someone else who seeks to punish the exploiter.
--*William Flesch,*Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction, 2007

Both feelings instantiate my authorial voice in a double role: in its academic aspect, as a cultural analyst; and in terms of location, as an exiled Palestinian belonging to the third generation of post-Nakba Palestinians, born after 1967.
--*Ihab Saloul,*Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination, 2012



Origin

Instantiate, a verb used in philosophy and linguistics, looks like something that scholastic philosophers of the 13th century used or coined. In fact, the verb is a modern formation, but it is based on one of the meanings of the Medieval Latin noun instantia “an objection to a general statement, an example to the contrary.” This particular meaning is a calque or piece-by-piece translation of Greek énstasis, used by Aristotle as a term in logic. The scholastic philosophers developed a further sense “an example supporting a general assertion or an argument,” which is the current meaning of the verb. Instantiate entered English in the mid-20th century.

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PHENOLOGY noun (fi-not-uh-jee)

noun

1. the science dealing with the influence of climate on the recurrence of such annual phenomena of animal and plant life as budding and bird migrations.


Quotes

... he had arranged to have six sycamores, identical to those at observatories in Britain and on the continent, planted on the grounds so that the effects of climate on vegetation might be compared all over Europe. This study was called phenology ...
--*Jane Urquhart,*The Night Stages, 2015

The Meteorological Office has little time for plants, preferring the objectivity of thermometers, barometers and satellite images. But whatever the meteorologists think of phenology, there are some things that plants can do that they can't.
--*Stephanie Pain,*"Flowers that bloom in the winter," New Scientist, March 11, 1989



Origin

Phenology entered English in the 1880s as a contracted variant of phenomenology, with restriction to climatic phenomena.