Pronounced: SITS-kreeg, noun
Notes: Your guess at the meaning may be correct
Yesterday’s word
The word parietal means
- of or relating to the walls of a part of cavity
- of or relating to college living or its regulation
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1500s
Background / Comments
The second definition above is the one that was utterly unknown to me. As for the first definition, my understanding of the word was that it referred to certain bones of the skull (probably from reading Sherlock Holmes; possibly Agatha Christie or some other mystery writer). It turns out that when the word first came into being, it referred to these bones, but was then used for structures found in the same general area. In the mid-1800s, Harvward College establish a Parietal Committee which was in charge of “all offences against good order and decorum with in the walls”. Our word traces back o the Latin word paries (wall of a cavity or hollow organ).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 