Pronounced: FRANG-kuhn-food, noun
Notes: You may know this word, or be able to guess it
Yesterday’s word
The word viridity means
- the quality or state of being green
- the color of grass or foliage
- naive innocence
First usage
Our word came into English in the first half of the 1400s
Background / Comment
If I had thought of “verdigris”, I would have had the definition correct, but I thought of “virture” and “virility” and didn’t know what to make of our word. Our word (which, by the way, only has the vowel ‘i’) came from the Middle French word viridité, which came from the Latin word viriditas (greenness), which came from viridis (green). This same root is the source of the word “verdant”, which I do know.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 