basilic

Pronounced: buh-SIL-ick (alt: buh-ZIL-ick), adj

Notes: I didn’t know the word, but I mostly know a root

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Yesterday’s word

The word abyssal means

• unfathomable
• of or relating to the bottom waters of the ocean depths

First usage

Our word came into English in the early 1600s

Background / Comments

There is some strange things about our word: the noun form of our word (“abyss”) is much better known than our adjective form. A synonym of the noun form is “abysm”, which is not well known, but the adjective form (“abysmal”) is well known. All of these words came from the Late Latin word abyssus, which came from the Greek word abyssos (“bottomless”). However, even though the nouns are synonyms, the adjectives are not. The first definition of our word is not a sense of the word “abysmal”; the second meaning is the more commonly used one for abyssal, and “abysmal” can mean this, but the more common usage of “abysmal” is “immeasurably deep” or “absolutely wretched”.