yclept

Pronounced: ih-KLEPT

Notes: I ran across this word in one of my sources and didn’t know it… I remembered it because of the unusual spelling. A few months later, I ran across this word in my reading.

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Yesterday’s word

The word eclogue is “a poem in which shepherds converse”

Background

The word comes from Latin ecloga, which came from Greek eklogḗ (selection). The Idylls of the Greek poet Theocritus was the first eclogue, but the word was first used by the Roman poet Virgil in his ten Eclogues. The eclogue was popular in the Renaissance up through the 1600s; however, the poets of the Romantic period didn’t care for the eclogue and it fell out of favor. In modern times, eclogue still means a pastor poem, but the conversations may be of people other than shepherds — and often, there is heavy irony involved

First usage

The word showed up in the mid-1400s

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Rejected word

chimera: I happen to know the definition, but I’m not sure when I first ran across this word. What I didn’t know was the pronunciation: I thought it was “SHIH-muh-ruh”, but it is actually “kigh-MIR-uh”.