Pronounced: THAH-nik, adj
Notes: I don’t think I’ve ever run across this word
Yesterday’s word
The word Anthropocene is “the geological period marked by a significant human impact on climate and the environment”
First usage
Our word came into English around 2000
Background / Comments
Our word came from the Greek word anthropo- (human) and -cene (denoting a geological period). Given the wording of the definition — specifically the word ‘significant’ — our word could mean almost anything. Although it is trendy to claim that we are in an Anthropocene era currently, it seems very much open to question: there is pretty solid agreement that the climate is changing, but there is a lot of disagreement as to how much of the change is cyclical; how much is caused by humans, and how dangerous the changes are.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 