Pronounced: roz-uh-NAN-tee
Notes: Literary types may know this word (I didn’t)
Yesterday’s word
The word fissile means
- capable of being split or divided in the direction of the grain or along natural planes of cleavage
- capable of undergoing fission
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1600s (but see below)
Background / Comments
The first definition above is the earlier one; in those days, atoms were thought to be the smallest particles of matter – they could not be split. When nuclear fission became a reality in the 1930s, the definition of this word expanded to the second definition. The word goes back to the Latin word findere (to split).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 