Pronounced: TOO-myuh-luhs (alt: TYOO-myuh-luhs), noun
Notes: I’ve never heard this word, but I do know a synonym
Yesterday’s word
The word phatic means “of, relating to, or being speech used for social or emotive purposes rather than for communicating information”
First usage
Our word came into English in the 1920s
Background / Comments
If you saw “emphatic” in our word, well-spotted, but incorrect. The word “emphatic”, while it looks and even seems to be related, isn’t related at all. Even after reading the definition, I didn’t correctly understand our word — I thought is meant using emotionally-laden words, as in rabble-rousing speech, but it refers to things like “How are you?”, which is just a social greeting, and not a request for information. Our word came from the Greek word phatos, which is a form of the verb phanai (to speak).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 