Word Of The Day

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VULNERARY adjective (vuhl-nuh-rer-ee)

adjective

1. used to promote the healing of wounds, as herbs or other remedies.

noun

1. a remedy for wounds.


Quotes

She was now in an apartment of the castle, anxiously superintending the preparation of vulnerary herbs, to be applied to the wounded ...
--*Sir Walter Scott,*A Legend of Montrose, 1819


Formerly country people cultivated Comfrey in their gardens for its virtue in wound healing, and the many local names of the plant testify to its long reputation as a vulnerary herb ...
--*Maud Grieve,*A Modern Herbal, 1931



Origin

The Latin adjective and noun vulnerārius first appears in the writings of the Roman polymath Pliny the Elder (23–79 a.d.), who perished in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 a.d. while trying to observe the eruption). As an adjective, vulnerārius means “(bandage) for dressing wounds"; as a noun, it means “surgeon.” Vulnerary entered English at the end of the 16th century.

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FEATLY adverb (feet-lee)

adverb

1. neatly; elegantly.
2. suitably; appropriately.
3. skillfully.

adjective
1. graceful; elegant.


Quotes

Foot it featly here and there ...
--*William Shakespeare,*The Tempest, 1623


For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of Spring herself ... that the ranchmen were bewitched and dazed, and knew no more of good common-sense.
--*Mary Noailles Murfree,*The Frontiersmen, 1904



Origin

Featly is an archaic word, used mostly as an adverb and occasionally, since the 19th century, as an adjective. The word derives from the Middle English adverb feetly, fetly “properly, suitably,” from the Old French adjective fait, fet “made (for something),” from the Latin adjective factus “made.” The English suffix -ly is the usual suffix for forming adjectives and adverbs of manner. Featly entered English at the beginning of the 15th century.

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MALADROIT adjective (mal-uh-droit)

adjective

1. unskillful; awkward; bungling; tactless; lacking in adroitness: to handle a diplomatic crisis in a very maladroit way.


Quotes

He asked a thousand pardons of Madame la Duchesse for being so maladroit.
--*William Makepeace Thackeray,*The Newcomes, 1855


Nixon’s maladroit attempt to be one of the boys indicates an important advance that shows up in the taping.
--*Clive Irving,*"Watergate Didn't Reveal Nixon's Demons—David Frost Did," Daily Beast, May 27, 2017



Origin

English maladroit is a direct borrowing from French. The first element, mal-, is from the French adverb and combining form mal- “badly, ill,” from the Latin adverb male with the same meaning. The second element is the French adjective adroit “skillful, deft,” in origin a prepositional phrase à droit (also à dreit) “by or according to right; correctly.” The element à is from Latin ad “to, up to, towards.” Dreit (droit) is the French development of Vulgar Latin drēctum, drictum “straightened, straight,” from Latin dīrectum, dērectum “straight, right.” Maladroit entered English in the 17th century.

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QUODLIBET noun (kwod-luh-bet)

noun

1. a subtle or elaborate argument or point of debate, usually on a theological or scholastic subject.
2. Music. a humorous composition consisting of two or more independent and harmonically complementary melodies, usually quotations of well-known tunes, played or sung together, usually to different texts, in a polyphonic arrangement.


Quotes

And his majesty drove off, very much delighted with his last quodlibet upon the duke, whom he really hated.
--*Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870),*The Memoirs of a Physician, translated 1910


The hexahemera of the fathers and the works of Albertus Magnus would be the text-books in natural science, while theology and philosophy would be nothing but a rehash of the quiddities and quodlibets of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
--*E. P. Evans,*"Recent Recrudescence of Superstition," The Popular Science Monthly, October 1895



Origin

The Latin indefinite pronoun and adjective quodlibet is the neuter singular of quīlibet (also quīlubet) “who(m)/what it pleases, who(m)/what you like, whoever, whatever.” Latin libēre, lubēre “to be dear, be pleasing” is related to English love and to Slavic (Polish) lubić “to like, enjoy." By the 14th century, medieval scholars used the noun quodlibētum “whatever (subject or topic) you like,” as in disputātiō dē quodlibētō “a debate on any topic one likes.” Quodlibet entered English in the 14th century.

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REVERIE noun (rev-uh-ree)

noun

1. a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing: lost in reverie.
2. a daydream.
3. a fantastic, visionary, or impractical idea: reveries that will never come to fruition.
4. Music. an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.


Quotes

Sometimes I'd lie quite still with my eyes closed for as much as half an hour, letting myself sink slowly into a state of reverie that was almost a trance.
--*Christopher Isherwood,*The World in the Evening, 1954


As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him.
--*Edgar Allan Poe,*"The Gold Bug," The Dollar Newspaper, June 21, 1843



Origin

Reverie has calmed down from its original meaning of wild emotion, wild behavior, anger, fury (the 14th and 15th centuries). The Middle French nouns reverie and resverie derive from Middle French verbs resver, raver, rever “to be insane, behave deliriously” (in modern French rȇver means only “to dream”). The current English meaning of daydreaming dates from the 15th century.

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SISYPHEAN adjective (sis-uh-fee-uh n)

adjective

1. endless and unavailing, as labor or a task.
2. of or relating to Sisyphus.


Quotes

Making himself useful as always, he took upon himself the Sisyphean task of keeping all those Modernist surfaces sparkling.
--*Jeffrey Eugenides,*Middle***, 2002


We are shown two inmates toiling at senseless, Sisyphean labors, nursing each other's sores, commiserating and bickering with each other.
--*John Simon,*"Mad, Bad, Sad, and Glad," New York, December 16, 1974



Origin

Many Greek proper names, e.g., Sisyphus, Ephyra, Corinth, and Athens, have no discernible etymology in Greek. In Greek mythology Sísyphos was king over Ephýra, the old name for Corinth (the port city on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth), about 50 miles west of Athens. The only mention of Sisyphus in the Iliad (book 6:154-55) is that he lived in Ephyra. In the Odyssey (book 11:593-600), Odysseus saw Sisyphus rolling his huge stone but gave no reason for Sisyphus’s punishment. Later writers state that Sisyphus had offended Zeus by telling the river god Asopus where Zeus had taken his (Asopus’s) daughter Aegina. Zeus had abducted Aegina, and Asopus was in vengeful pursuit against Zeus. Sisyphean entered English in the 17th century.

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FLAKELET noun (fleyk-lit)

noun

1. a small flake, as of snow.


Quotes

I am amazed before a little flakelet of snow, at its loveliness, at the strangeness of its geometry, its combination of angles, at the marvellous chemistry which brought these curious atoms together.
--*Theodore Parker,*Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Man, 1865


The first flake or flakelet that reached me was a mere white speck that came idly circling and eddying to the ground.
--*John Burroughs,*"A Snow-Storm," Signs and Seasons, 1886



Origin

Flakelet was first recorded in the 1880s.

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EARWORM noun (eer-wurm)

noun

1. Informal. a tune or part of a song that repeats in one’s mind.

verb

1. Informal. to work (itself or its way) into a person’s mind: The Pepsi jingles have earwormed their way into my head.


Quotes

Despite the annoying times we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things, ever.
--*Blake Rodgers,*"Weekend Earworms: Good Gracious, the Great Grammys of 1983!" Nerdist, February 12, 2017


The earworm made it all the way to No. 4 on the Hot 100, stalling just shy of breaking through and becoming the extremely rare alternative track to own that all-genre chart.
--*Hugh McIntyre,*"This Hit Single Is Now The Longest-Running No. 1 On The Alternative Songs Chart," Forbes, November 30, 2017



Origin

The English noun earworm is a calque or loan translation of the German compound Ohrwurm “earwig (the insect), catchy tune” (the all but identical Dutch oorworm means only earwig). Earworm entered English in the late 16th century in the sense earwig; its current sense dates from the late 20th century.

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AD ABSURDUM adverb (ad ab-sur-duh m)

adverb

1. to the point of absurdity.


Quotes

"Oh, if any argument's pushed ad absurdum ..." Fido controls her temper.
--*Emma Donoghue,*The Sealed Letter, 2008


André was allergic to the very idea of "matéreal" and smelled one of Theo's attempts to critique "bourgeois morality" by taking it ad absurdum.
--*Peter Schneider,*Couplings, translated by Philip Boehm, 1996



Origin

In Latin ad absurdum is a prepositional phrase composed of the preposition ad “to” and the neuter singular adjective absurdum “out of tune, harsh, rough; senseless, silly.” In English the phrase is used as an adverb and is still unnaturalized. Ad absurdum entered English in the mid-17th century.

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OBSEQUIOUS adjective (uh b-see-kwee-uh s)

adjective

1. characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.
2. servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.
3. obedient; dutiful.


Quotes

At such a moment, the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of her husband.
--*Jane Austen,*Pride and Prejudice, 1813


He was garrulous and obsequious, sprinkling “yes, sir”s around as though casting handfuls of seed on new-raked soil.
--*Annie Proulx,*"A Resolute Man," The New Yorker, March 21, 2016



Origin

The English adjective obsequious, a direct borrowing from Latin obsequiōsus, has undergone pejoration (change in meaning for the worse) from its Latin original. The Latin word means “obedient, compliant,” which is the original English meaning of the word in the 15th century. By the end of the 16th century, in Shakespeare’s time, obsequious developed the meaning "dutiful in showing one’s respect for the dead." Its current sense, "fawning, servile," dates from the early 17th century.