lazaretto

Pronounced: laz-uh-RET-oh, noun

Notes: Not a word I’ve ever run across

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Yesterday’s word

The word hypocorism is

• a pet name
• the use of pet names

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1800s

Background / Comments

Before I started this blog, I did a year of vocabulary entries on Facebook, but I found a blog like this to be better. Before I started vocabulary words on Facebook, I posted vocabulary words at work on the instant messaging system. I said all of this to note that I’m pretty certain that I’ve used our word before. I checked this blog, and I’ve not used it here, so it was either a FB post, or one from work. Since those don’t count, I’m posting it here. Our word came into English from Late Latin word hypocorisma (a pet name), which came from the Greek word hypokorisma (a pet name), which came from the Greek verb hypokorizesthai (to call by pet names), which came from korizesthai (to caress). There was a brief time when our word referred to adult baby talk – the speech adults use when (supposedly) imitating babies.