tellurian

Pronounced: teh-LOOR-ee-uhn, adj/noun

Notes: When I first saw this word, I didn’t know it

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Yesterday’s word

The word whipsaw means “to beset with two or more adverse conditions or situations at once”

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1800s

Background / Comments

I thought our word meant something like “to pull in two directions at once”. A whipsaw is a two-man tool (one man stands on or above the log being sawed, and the other below it) that dates back to the 1400s; but in the mid- to late 1800s, it started to be used in a figurative sense to refer to someone or something that is doubly hurt (“cut”). These days, the word is usually used to refer to financial crises or losses.