Pronounced: dak-tuh-LOS-kuh-pee, noun
Notes: This is a fancy word for something else we knew
Yesterday’s word
The word élan means “vigorous spirit or enthusiasm”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1800s
Background / Comments
As I noted yesterday, I’ve run across this word in reading, but I could not recall the definition. Our word came (as you might expect) from the Middle French word eslan (dash; rush), which came from s’eslancer (“to hurl oneself forth” -that is, to rush or dash). When the word was adopted into English, we dropped the literal idea of “rush” or “dash” but used the word for the enthusiasm of such things.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 