obnubilate

Pronounced: ahb-NEW-buh-late, verb

Notes: I didn’t know this word, but I like it – it’s fun to say and can be used

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Yesterday’s word

The word gunsel is

• a gun-carrying criminal
• a tramp’s young intimate companion

First usage

Our word came into English in the 1910s

Background / Comments

Every time I hear our word, it brings up memories of the classic film The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. When I looked up the film, I discovered that it was the director’s first time to direct a film (how about that?!). Bogart’s character, Sam Spade, uses our word to refer to a gun-toting henchmen, and that was the only usage I knew, so the second was quite a surprise. In doing research on the word, it turns out that the film (and the book it was based on) are, in fact, the reason our word has the first meaning. The second meaning above is very delicately put; a synonym is “catamite”, but I won’t define it here (if you are curious, you can look it up). Our word is essentially an altered spelling of the Yiddish word genzel (gosling).