Pronounced: rue-AYE (long a), noun
Notes: This is a word that most everybody has heard, but may not realize that they have heard it, or even what it means.
Yesterday’s word
The word chiaroscuro is “the distribution of light and shade in a picture or sketch”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1600s
Background / Comments
I don’t think I’ve run across this word; it seems somewhat technical to me. However, I don’t know much about art, so maybe people who are familiar with art will recognize it. Our word comes from the Italian word chiaroscuro, which is composed of chiaro (bright), which comes from the Latin word clārus and+ oscuro (dark), which comes from the Latin word obscūrus.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 