Start each day with the Word of the Day in your inbox!

Word of the Day

Word of the day

skylark

[ skahy-lahrk ]

verb

to frolic; sport.

learn about the english language

More about skylark

The verb skylark, “to frolic; sport; have boisterous fun,” dates from about 1771 in Britain. This sense is the same as the verb lark, which comes later, in 1813. How skylark acquired its “fun” sense isn’t clear: some suggest it was a term in sailors’ slang for roughhousing high up in a ship’s rigging, skylarks being known for their singing while hovering high in the air. The earliest occurrences of the verb, however, are from court and police records in London, which seem to indicate that the verb skylark is a city word, not a sailor’s one. Skylark is a favorite word of Mark Twain’s: he used the participle or gerund skylarking four times in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

how is skylark used?

He never backslapped, roughhoused or skylarked with his colleagues, and his statesmanlike calm evoked feelings of awe.

Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., 1998

With all the jocularity of a clambake getting started in bare feet and shallow water, a crew of performers skylarked through a robust performance borrowing impartially from vaudeville, burlesque and backporch conversation last week before a Radio City audience.

R.W. Stewart, "With Bing at Work," New York Times, May 11, 1947

Listen to the podcast

skylark

Play Podcast Stop Podcast
00:00/00:00
quiz icon
WHAT'S YOUR WORD IQ?
Think you're a word wizard? Try our word quiz, and prove it!
TAKE THE QUIZ
arrows pointing up and down
SYNONYM OF THE DAY
Double your word knowledge with the Synonym of the Day!
SEE TODAY'S SYNONYM
Word of the Day Calendar

Word of the day

bovarism

[ boh-vuh-riz-uhm ]

noun

an exaggerated, especially glamorized, estimate of oneself; conceit.

learn about the english language

More about bovarism

Bovarism, “an exaggerated, especially glamorized, estimation of oneself,” also spelled bovarysm and bovarysme (capitalized and uncapitalized), is a borrowing from French bovarysme, a derivative of the family name Bovary, the married surname of Emma Bovary, née Rouault, the eponymous protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1857) who was prone to escapist daydreaming. The French philosopher Jules de Gaultier is credited with coining the term in his 1902 work, La Bovarysme. Bovarism entered English in the first half of the 20th century.

how is bovarism used?

Othello succeeds in turning himself into a pathetic figure, by adopting an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude, dramatising himself against his environment. He takes in the spectator, but the human motive is primarily to take in himself. I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.

T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, 1927

There is a bovarism in the field of hierarchical relationships—the bovarism of the bourgeois snob who imagines himself to be an aristocrat and tries to behave as such.

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun, 1952

Listen to the podcast

bovarism

Play Podcast Stop Podcast
00:00/00:00
Word of the Day Calendar

Word of the day

peradventure

[ pur-uhd-ven-cher, per- ]

adverb

it may be; maybe; possibly; perhaps.

learn about the english language

More about peradventure

As an adverb, peradventure means “maybe, possibly, perhaps”; as a noun, peradventure means “chance, doubt, or uncertainty.” Peradventure comes from Middle English paraventur(e), peradventure (and 20 other spelling variants), from Old French and Anglo-French par aventure, peradventure. Par is an 11th-century development of Latin and Old French per “through, by, by means of.” Adventure comes from Middle English aventure, avento(u)r, adventure, from Old and Middle French aventure “destiny, fate, chance; risk, peril,” from Medieval Latin (rēs) adventūra “(thing) about to come, (thing) going to happen.” Adventūra is the future participle of the Latin verb advenīre “to come to, arrive at, reach; (of conditions) to arise, develop; (of possessions) to come into the hands of.” Peradventure entered English about 1300.

how is peradventure used?

Of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure learn it.

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889

While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
(Peradventure with a pen corroded
Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for … )

Robert Browning, "One Word More," Men and Women, 1855

Listen to the podcast

peradventure

Play Podcast Stop Podcast
00:00/00:00
Word of the Day Calendar
Word of the Day Calendar