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.
impassioned; with passion or strong feeling.
Appassionato is based on the Italian verb appassionare, “to impassion, excite, thrill.” The ultimate source of appassionare is Latin patī, “to suffer,” which has two stems in English: pass-, as in passion, and pat-, as in patient. Appassionato was first recorded in English in the 1830s. EXAMPLE OF APPASSIONATO USED IN A SENTENCE The film’s score turned bombastic and appassionato as the two villains battled for victory.
a fine-grained volcanic rock consisting mainly of welded shards of feldspar and quartz.
Ignimbrite is a compound of two Latin words: ignis, meaning “fire,” and imber, meaning “rain, shower.” Ignis is the source of igneous, ignition, and the Word of the Day ignescent, all of which involve fire and heat. Geologist Patrick Marshall coined ignimbrite in 1932. EXAMPLE OF IGNIMBRITE USED IN A SENTENCE The geologists chiseled out a block of ignimbrite to study an ancient volcanic eruption.
a Hungarian national dance in two movements, one slow and the other fast.
Czardas is a slight alteration of Hungarian csárdás, from csárda “wayside tavern, inn.” Csárdás comes from Persian chārtāk, “four-cornered room,” in which the chār- element, meaning “four,” is a distant relative of English four, Latin quattuor, and Ancient Greek tésseres, as in the Word of the Day tessellate. Czardas was first recorded in English in the late 1850s. EXAMPLE OF CZARDAS USED IN A SENTENCE Dresses swirled and feathered hats spun as the czardas picked up in tempo.
a fool.
Nincompoop has a history as unusual as its meaning. One hypothesis includes connections to the Latin phrase non compos (mentis), meaning “not of sound (mind).” Alternatively, nincompoop could simply be an elaboration based on ninny, which may come from innocent. Nincompoop was first recorded in English in the 1670s. EXAMPLE OF NINCOMPOOP USED IN A SENTENCE The emperor certainly came across as a nincompoop as he paraded around in his “new clothes.”
of or relating to the semiconscious state prior to complete wakefulness.
Hypnopompic comes from two Ancient Greek terms: hýpnos, meaning “sleep,” and pompḗ, meaning “a sending away.” Hýpnos is the name of the Greek god of sleep and is the source of the Word of the Day hypnopedia, while pompḗ is the source of pompous. Hypnopompic was first recorded in English at the turn of the 20th century. EXAMPLE OF HYPNOPOMPIC USED IN A SENTENCE In her hypnopompic state, all but the final moments of her dream quickly faded from memory.
