affectious

Pronounced: uh-FEK-shuhs, adj

Notes: You might be able to guess the meaning of this one… and do you see anything interesting in our word?

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Yesterday’s word

The word cacography means

• bad handwriting
• bad spelling

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1500s

Background / Comments

I should have been able to guess the meaning of our word, as I should have recognized the parts of the word: it comes from the Greek words kakos (bad) and graphein (writing). It is, more or less, the opposite of ‘calligraphy’ (beautiful writing). These days, our word is usually used in the first meaning above; however, back in the early days of our word, it was used to mean the second definition above. At the time our word came into English, spelling was not standardized, and people spelled words as they thought made sense to them. Note that the Authorized Version of the Bible in 1611 greatly helped to stabilize the English language.