Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day
Words that I do not know
Pronounced: sven-GAH-lee, noun
Notes: I thought this was a country (it’s not)
The word inspissate means “to thicken or condense”
Our word came into English in the early 1600s
Our word came from the Latin word inspissare (to thicken), which came from spissus (thick). I assume one could use this of soup or perhaps paint. But it is new to me.
Pronounced: in-SPIS-ate, verb
Notes: I did not know this word (making it fit for these posts)
The word gloss means
Our word came into English in the mid-to-late 1200s
As I noted, I know the noun gloss, which means “shine”; I also know the phrase “gloss over”, which means ‘to treat or describe something as if it were not important’. Our word came from the Middle English noun glose/glose, which came from the Old French word glose, which came from the Medieval Latin word glōsa/glōza, which came from the Greek word glôssa (a word that needs an explanation; an obscure word – literally ‘language’ or ‘tongue’).
Pronounced: glahs, verb
Notes: I know the phrase “gloss over” and the noun “gloss”, but not the verb
The word prow means, as a noun
As an adjective, it means “valiant”
The noun came into English in the mid-1500s; the adjective came into English in the mid-1300s
The adjectival meaning was completely new to me; as noted above, it is older – it came from the Middle French word prou, which came from the Old English prud. The noun form came from the Middle French word proue, which came from the Old Italian dialect prua, which came from the Latin word prora.
Pronounced: prow, noun/adj
Notes: Another word that I know one of the meanings – but do you know the meaning when used as an adjective?
The word phreaker is “one who gains illegal access to a telephone system” (note that some references claim that this word is slang)
Our word came into English in the 1980s
Our word is considered to be a combination of phone and freak – the action is called “phreaking”. As I noted yesterday, I just happen to know this word from the pre-Internet days. I have a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) account on several local boards, and I ran across the phrase there. I gathered that the idea was to use special combination of tones to allow one to make long distance calls for free. With mobile phones replacing land lines, and so many plans allowing free long-distance calls, I suspect that phreakers and phreaking are getting obsolete — but one reference says that the word now describes people who break into phone company computers.
Pronunciation: FREE-kuhr, noun
Notes: A word I happen to know (probably getting obsolete)
The word rote means
The first and third definitions came into English in the mid-1300s; the middle definition came into English in the early 1600s
I mostly know our word in the phrase “learn by rote”, so I knew the first definition. I have never heard of the other two. It turns out that each definition has a different origin: the first one is obscure; the second one is thought to have come from Scandinavia; and the third one came from the Middle French word rote.
Pronounced: rote, noun
Notes: I know only one of the definitions – how many do you know?
The word peregrination is “an excursion especially on foot or to a foreign county; journey”
Our word came into English in the mid-1400s
Our word goes back to the Latin word peregrinus (foreign; foreigner). We get the word pilgrim from the same Latin word: it originally meant “alien” — today, it means “tending to wander”. The Latin word is also the source of “peregrine”, a type of falcon: legend has it that it is captured during its first flight (pilgrimage) from the nest. Getting back to our word, the idea of “foreign” has more or less faded away so that it can mean any kind of long, wandering journey.
Pronounced: per-uh-gruh-NAY-shun, noun
Notes: Another word I think I’ve run across, but I didn’t quite know the meaning
The word levee (are you ready?) means
The last definition above is the earliest, coming into English around 1700; the other meanings came into English in the early 1700s (see the Background below)
The only definition I knew for certain was the first one; the second one, however, makes sense and is a kind of natural progression from the first. Both the third and fourth definitions were completely unknown to me. The last definition, however, has an excuse – it comes from a somewhat different path: It came from the French word levé, a variant of lever (rising from bed) – a noun use of the infinitive, which traces to the verb lever (to rise). From this sense, levee originally referred to a meeting held when a royal arose from bed. The other definitions from the French word levée, which is the past participle of the same verb lever (to raise).
Pronounced: LEV-ee
Notes: I only knew one of the definitions, and one was surprising
The word thimblerig means “to cheat by trickery”
Our word came into English in the early 1800s
I suspect most of us have heard of “the shell game” — in which a seed is placed under a nutshell and an unsuspecting player is asked to bet on where the seed is. Well, our word is the same game, but played with thimbles instead of nutshells. There is a similar game played with cards that is called “three-card monte”. We still use the -rig part of the word in the sense of deception or dishonesty when we say, for example, “that game is rigged”. Thus, from the name of the game came the more generalized usage that we see in our word. As I noted yesterday, I have a recollection of running across the word somewhere, but I don’t remember where. There was a Nero Wolfe story (Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout) in which Archie Goodwin (Nero’s assistant) was thrown in jail with a guy who tried to get Archie involved in the shell game, but I don’t recall our word being used there.
Pronounced: THIM-bull-rig, verb
Notes: I’ve run across this word somewhere, but wasn’t sure of the meaning
The word prorogue means
Our word came into English in the early 1400s
Our word came from the French word proroger (to adjourn), which came from the Latin word prorogare (to prolong; to defer), which is made up of pro- (before) and rogare (to ask).
Pronounced: pro-ROHG, verb
Notes: Looks like being for a thief
The phrase tabula rasa means
Our phrase came into English in the mid-1500s
There is an ancient idea that babies are born with completely blank minds – that state has been known as tabula rasa, which came from a Latin phrase meaning “smooth or erased tablet”. Over time, a more figurative meaning (the second one) came into usage.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day