Pronounced: pa-skwuh-NADE, noun [note: The ‘pa’ in NOT pronounced like the shortcut word for father (that would be ‘pah’ – the ‘a’ is short as in ‘mat’]
Notes: This sounds like something I ought to recognize, but I didn’t
Yesterday’s word
The word arrant means “complete; thorough”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1300s
Background / Comments
I was a little misleading yesterday — the reason that our word sounds like ‘errant’ is that it came from errant (with both spelling and meaning changes). Although I’m used to ‘errant’ meaning “straying from the right course”, the root meaning is “wandering” and was used that way: an “arrant thief” or “arrant knave” would wander about. Over time, our word was used as an intensifier, so an “arrant fool” is not so much “wandering” as a thorough-going fool. Our word came into English from French, which came from the Latin word iterare (to journey).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 