benthos

Pronounced: BEN-thoss, noun

Notes: Not a word I know, or could even guess at

---

Yesterday’s word

The word moue is “a little grimace; pout”

First usage

This word came into English in the mid-1800s

Background / Comments

Our word comes from the Anglo-French word mouwe and has a distant relationship to a Middle Dutch word for a protruding lip. (It is not related to the word mouth, which comes from the Old English word mūth.) However, there is another word for pout (mow, pronounced to rhyme with “no” or “now”) that comes from the same source as our word. The word mow is much older, going back to the 1300s.