gelid

Pronounced: JEH-luhd, adj

Notes: Not quite what I thought it meant…

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Yesterday’s word

A Cerberus is “a powerful, hostile guard”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1300s

Background / Comments

As I recently noted, when I was young, I had an interest in Greek and Roman mythology. I knew about Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I misread our word when young, and thus mis-pronounced it (I thought it was spelled “Cerebrus” [switching the “b” and “e”] and thus I pronounced it as “suh-REE-bruss”). I thought this was the correct spelling/pronunciation into my adult years. It wasn’t until I ran across someone who pronounced it correctly that I realized I my error from long ago. Even with that background, I only knew of the mythological background; I didn’t realize it was a word in its own right. Our word came from Latin; it came into Latin from the Greek word Kerberos. There is an expression “to give a sop to Cerberus”, which means to give a bribe to keep a troublesome person quiet. It came from the Greek and Roman practice of putting a slice of cake in the hands of the dead to help pacify Cerberus. Our word can also be spelled “Kerberos”, which computer-related people may recognize as an authentication protocol. Finally, one of the Spanish terms for a goalkeeper (in soccer) is “Cancerbero”.