Pronounced: ESS-tuh-vate, verb
Notes: I didn’t originally know this word, but I think I’ve run across it multiple times, so it was marginal, but I added it
Yesterday’s word
The word Struwwelpeter is “a personStruwwelpeter with long, think, disheveled hair” (think of the famous picture of Einstein with his hair all wild)
First usage
Our word came into English in the first decade of the 1900s
Background / Comments
You may have noticed that the word is capitalized; that should have been a clue that our word in German in origin (it’s my understanding that in German, nouns are always capitalized). It is named after a fictional person in the book Der Struwwelpeter (Shockheaded Peter), written by Heinrich Hoffman and published in 1845.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 