Word of the Day

Segue “to transition without interruption” is a loanword from Italian, in which it is the third-person singular form of seguire “to follow” in the present tense. In this way, “I follow” is seguo, “you follow” is segui, and “he follows” or “she follows” is segue. The infinitive seguire comes from Latin sequī “to follow.” What eventually happened in Vulgar Latin is that sequī became regularized as something like sequere before becoming French suivre, Italian seguire, and Spanish seguir. Note that Segway, the name of the personal vehicle, is based on a common misspelling of segue. Segue was first recorded in English in the early 1850s.

Ratoon “a sprout from the root of a plant” is likely anglicized from Spanish retoño “sprout,” which is based on the verb retoñar “to sprout again in the fall,” from re- “again” and otoño “fall, autumn.” Spanish otoño and English autumn together come from Latin autumnus, which is of uncertain origin, even stumping expert linguists! Among the few proposals are connections to the Etruscan language, to Latin augēre (stem auct-) “to increase,” or distantly to English sere “dry, withered” (compare archaic English sere month “August”). Old English ​​hærfest “autumn” is the source of modern English harvest. Ratoon was first recorded in English circa 1630.

Pax vobiscum “peace be with you” is a loan from Latin that comprises pax “peace” and vōbīscum “with you.” Pax is the source of appease, pacify, pay, and peace; the noticeable variation in spelling stems from natural sound changes that occurred as Latin pax (stem pac-) evolved into Old French pais (and modern French paix). Vōbīscum is a compound of vōbīs, the prepositional object form of vōs “you,” and cum “with.” Similar constructions survive today in modern Romance languages, such as Spanish conmigo “with me” and Portuguese convosco “with you.” The singular equivalent of pax vōbīscum, said to one person, is pax tēcum, while “peace be with us” is pax nōbīscum. Pax vobiscum was first recorded in English in the 1810s.

Torrid “oppressively hot” comes from Latin torridus “dried up, parched,” from the verb torrēre “to parch, burn.” This Latin verb has two stems: torr-, as in torrent, and tost-, which is the source of toast. A popular hypothesis is that torrēre is related to Latin terra “earth,” perhaps originally in the sense “dry land,” which is the source of the recent Word of the Day terrene. Because of Grimm’s law, Latin t tends to correspond to English th, and this is how Latin torrēre is a distant relative of English thirst (from Old English thrust “dryness”). For more on terra, check out the recent Words of the Day testudinate and telluric, and to see Grimm’s law in action, compare togated and transcendental. Torrid was first recorded in English in the 1580s.

Corsair “a pirate” is the product of a long chain of borrowings from one Romance language to the next on its way to English. The term comes via Middle French corsaire from Provençal corsar, and before that, the word traveled by way of Italian corsaro from Medieval Latin cursārius “plunderer,” equivalent to Latin cursus “a running, course” plus -ārius, an agent noun-forming suffix. Cursus comes from the verb currere “to run,” which has four common descendant forms in English: corr- via Italian and Spanish (as in corral and corridor), cour- via French (as in courier and discourse), cur(r)- (as in current and occur), and curs- (as in cursor and excursion). Corsair was first recorded in English in the 1540s.