bivouac

Pronounced: BI-vuh-ack (alt: BIV-wak, BIV-oo-ack), noun/verb

Notes: I was a little off on the meaning

---

Yesterday’s word

The word quash means “to nullify, especially by judicial action”

First usage

Our word came into English in the early 1300s

Background / Comments

I had thought that word meant something like “squash”. In doing research, I found that I wasn’t quite as off as I thought: there are two verbs quash with different backgrounds. The one defined here is a legal term that came from the Anglo-French word casser (to annul), which traces back to the Latin word cassus (void). The other quash, which I thought of, means “to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely” and came from the Middle English word quashen (to smash). It traces back to the Latin word quatere (to shake).