Word of the Day

Gul, “a rose-shaped design,” is a short word with a long history. The term is a loanword from classical Persian gul, “rose.” Thanks to a series of sound changes, gul comes from an ancient Iranian root, warda-, that may have been borrowed into Ancient Greek as wrodon, later rhódon, “rose,” and then into Latin as rosa. This flowery root appears in English rose, rhododendron, and even julep, but be careful—despite the resemblance, it is not the source of the Word of the Day rosolio. Gul was first recorded in English in the 1810s. EXAMPLE OF GUL USED IN A SENTENCE The carpet’s ornate central gul caught the interior designer’s eye.

Eruct comes from the Latin verb ērūgere, “to belch out, discharge noisily.” Not surprisingly, the -ruct part of eruct is distantly related to English reek, “to smell bad.” While reek is of Old English origin (and therefore more than 1000 years old), eruct was first recorded in English in the 1660s. Read more about this medical term. EXAMPLE OF ERUCT USED IN A SENTENCE The unlucky photographer missed the perfect shot when he eructed and bumped the camera out of focus.

Repristinate, “to restore to the first or original state or condition,” is formed from the adjective pristine, with the prefix re-, “back, again,” and the suffix -ate. Pristine comes from Latin pristinus, “early,” which belongs to a small family of Latin words relating to coming before something. Words in this family include prae (“before”), prior and prius (“former,” literally “more before”), and prīmus (“first,” literally “most before”). To see these Latin roots in action today, check out the Words of the Day prefatory, preternatural, and primaveral. Repristinate was first recorded in English in the 1650s. EXAMPLE OF REPRISTINATE USED IN A SENTENCE In an effort to attract wildlife, the environmentalists began repristinating the park, bulldozing buildings and planting trees to remove the impact of humans.

Tenacious, “not easily pulled asunder; tough,” is based on the noun tenacity and the suffix -ous, “full of.” Tenacity comes from Latin tenāx (stem tenāc-), “holding fast,” from the verb tenēre, “to hold.” Tenēre has three common stems in English: ten- (as in lieutenant, tenable, and tenor) and -tin- (as in continue and retinue) as well as -tain (as in abstain, attain, and maintain) by way of French. Tenacious was first recorded in English circa 1605. EXAMPLE OF TENACIOUS USED IN A SENTENCE The team remained tenacious even as their rivals came closer and closer to winning the game.

Peri, “a fairylike being of Persian mythology,” comes from Persian parī, “fairy,” which evolved from pairikā, “witch,” in Avestan, a long-extinct language of southwestern Asia. Though p in most Indo-European languages tends to correspond to English f, peri is not related to fairy, which derives by way of Old French from Latin. However, it is interesting to note that, just as peri evolved in sense from “witch” to “fairy,” an earlier sense of fairy in Old French was “enchantment, witchcraft.” Peri was first recorded in English in the 1770s. EXAMPLE OF PERI USED IN A SENTENCE It caught his breath to see the peri slowly descending from the air, floating on its feathered wings.