Word of the Day
Learn a new word every day! The Dictionary.com team of language experts carefully selects each Word of the Day to add some panache to your vocabulary.
warm, welcoming, and hospitable.
Xenial “welcoming and hospitable” comes from the Ancient Greek noun xenía “hospitality.” Xenía, the element xenon, the name of the warrior princess Xena, and the recent Word of the Day euxinia all come from Ancient Greek xénos “stranger, guest.” Xénos may be a distant relative of English guest (from Old Norse gestr), hospitable and hostel (from Latin hospes “guest, visitor, host”), and hostile (from Latin hostis “stranger, enemy”). Note that xenial is not to be confused with the unrelated term xennial, which denotes people born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, on the cusp of Generations X and Y. Xenial was first recorded in English in the 1790s.
a very large, thin traditional Scandinavian cookie prepared by pouring batter into an appliance much like a waffle iron and then rolling the warm cookie around a cone form.
Krumkake “a Scandinavian cookie” is a borrowing from Norwegian, in which it is a compound of krum “curved, crooked” and kake “cake.” Krum is a close relative of Old English crumb (also crump), of the same meaning, which appears in modern English names such as Cromwell “crooked spring” but is not related to modern English crumb “a small particle broken off bread.” Kake and English cake together derive from Old Norse kaka, of the same meaning, which may also be the source of English cookie (by way of Dutch). Krumkake was first recorded in English in the early 1920s.
to pave by laying and compacting successive layers of broken stone, often with asphalt or hot tar.
Macadamize “to pave by compacting successive layers of broken stone” is a verb based on the noun macadam, the word for a road paved in this way. Macadam is the namesake of John Loudon McAdam, the inventor of this technique, and the surname McAdam “son of Adam” is a compound of the Scottish patronymic element Mc- (also Mac-) and the Hebrew-origin name Adam. Mc- is anglicized from Scottish Gaelic mac “son,” while Adam comes from Hebrew ādhām “man,” which may be related to any or all of the Hebrew words ādhom “red,” adhāmāh “earth,” or dam “blood”; for a similar pattern, compare Latin hūmānus “human” and humus “earth.” Macadamize was first recorded in English circa 1820.
the thunderbolt of Indra, the Hindu god of rain and thunder.
Vajra “the thunderbolt of Indra” is a borrowing from Sanskrit vájra- “thunderbolt.” The literal sense of vájra is anything hard or indestructible, which is why the term also means “diamond.” Vájra comes from a root roughly meaning “strong, lively” that also appears in the Latin-origin terms vegetation, vigilant, and vigor. Because Sanskrit v often corresponds to w in English, this same root is visible in English waft, wait, wake, watch, and perhaps even wicked and witch. Vajra was first recorded in English in the 1780s.
to change into or pronounce as one unsegmentable, gliding speech sound, as the oi sound of toy and boil.
Diphthongize “to change into one gliding speech sound” is a verb based on diphthong, a sound that comprises two vowels merged into one. A sound containing one vowel is a monophthong, containing two is a diphthong, and containing three is a triphthong. Diphthong is equivalent to Ancient Greek di- “two” and phthóngos “voice, sound.” The prefix di-, from dís “twice, double,” is a distant relative of English two as well as Latin duo “two” and bis (earlier duis) “twice,” as in dual and bi-, respectively. Phthóngos may come from a long-lost language that was spoken in Greece long before the Greek language swept in; the consonant cluster phth- is rare (yet not impossible) according to the sound laws of the Indo-European language family. Diphthongize was first recorded in English in the late 1860s.
