Pronounced: LITH-uh-phone, noun
Notes: If you guess at the meaning, you may be right
Yesterday’s word
The word extremophile is “an organism that lives under extreme environmental conditions (such as in a hot spring or ice cap)”
First usage
Our word came into English in the 1980s
Background / Comments
If you parsed the word, you would see extreme and -phile (lover), and you would be correct. You would then guess that our word means loving extremes, which is pretty close to the correct meaning. However, our word is not a lover of extreme sports; it is used for microbes that living in extreme places, such as those that are highly toxic or radioactive or (as noted above) very hot or very cold.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 