Word of the Day

Andante “moderately slow and even” is a loanword from Italian, in which it literally means “walking” and is the present participle of the verb andare “to walk, go.” From here, the history becomes somewhat murky. Romance languages merged several roots in a process called suppletion to create their verbs meaning “to go”—similar to English with be (and am, are, was)—but what roots were merged remains a matter of debate. With andante, there are two proposals: a derivation from a lost Vulgar Latin verb such as ambitare “to go in circular motion” or an origin in the Gaulish root andā-, the latter of which is related to Latin passus “step.” Andante was first recorded in English circa 1740.

Don’t be fooled! Menology is not a half-Greek term meaning “the study of men.” Instead, menology “a record or account arranged in the order of a calendar” comes from Late Greek mēnológion, from Ancient Greek ​​mḗn “month” and -lógion, a derivative of lógos “a word, saying, speech.” The word ​​mḗn is a distant relative of Latin mensis and English month, and all three come from the same root as English moon (and Monday) and menstrual “monthly.” Menology was first recorded in English circa 1605.

Juku “a school where students prepare for college entrance examinations” is a borrowing from Japanese. In its native language, juku means “private tutoring school” or “cram school” and is a term borrowed from Middle Chinese, in which it once meant “gate room.” Because juku is of Chinese origin, we can see the clear resemblance today between juku and Mandarin shú or Cantonese suk. Juku was first recorded in English in the early 1980s.

Cognoscenti “persons who have superior knowledge of a particular field” is the plural of cognoscente, which refers to an individual person with such knowledge. Unlike English, French, and Spanish, which usually add -s or -es to indicate a plural noun, Italian typically changes the final vowel of a word; singular -a often becomes plural -e, while singular -e and -o often become plural -i. The Italian verb meaning “to know” is conoscere, with the present participle conoscente, which lacks the g of cognoscente; the reason for the g is the influence of Latin cognōscere “to know.” Cognoscenti was first recorded in English in the 1770s.

Intramundane “existing within the material world” is based on intra- “within” and mundane “common, ordinary, of the earth.” Intra- comes from Latin intrā “within, inside” and is related to interior, internal, intestine, intimate, intrinsic, and introduce, all of which come from Latin terms involving movement toward or existence inside something. Mundane ultimately comes from Latin mundus; as we learned from the recent Word of the Day gens du monde, mundus originally meant “clean” before expanding to mean “elegant,” then “ornament,” and finally “the world.” A similar shift in meaning happened with the unrelated Ancient Greek word kósmos “order, government, universe,” as in cosmic and cosmopolitan. Intramundane was first recorded in English in the 1830s.