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.
any organic body or cell capable of spontaneous movement and of an existence more or less apart from or independent of the parent organism.
Zooid “any organic body capable of independent existence” is a compound of two combining forms: zo- and -oid. While -oid comes from the Ancient Greek element -oeidēs, meaning “having the form of,” the stem zo- (also zoo-) comes from Ancient Greek zôion “animal.” Other common words containing this stem are zodiac (literally meaning “animal sign”), Protozoa (“first animals”), and zoology (“animal study”)—and, of course, zoo. A related word in Ancient Greek is zōḗ “life,” which is the source of the name Zoe. Zooid was first recorded in English in the early 1850s.
meat cooked over an open fire.
Churrasco “meat cooked over an open fire” is a loanword from Brazilian Portuguese and, beforehand, from the varieties of Latin American Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. The term appears to be related to or even derived from Spanish chamuscar “to scorch, singe,” churruscar “to begin to burn,” and/or socarrar “to scorch, singe,” but the connections are unclear. Chamuscar is a borrowing from Portuguese and may be distantly related to Latin flamma “flame” (compare Portuguese chama) or ustus “burnt” (compare English combustion). Churruscar and socarrar may be of pre-Roman origin, but alternative theories claim that churruscar is simply an imitation of the sound of grilling or roasting, while socarrar is connected to Basque (Euskera) words related to fire, such as su “fire” and gar (or karra) “flame.” Churrasco was first recorded in English in the late 1910s.
a young swan.
Cygnet “a young swan” was spelled during the Middle English period as signet but is based on Latin cygnus “swan,” plus the French suffix -et “little, small” (as in owlet “little owl” and tablet “little table”). This habit of changing the spelling of words to reflect their origins, also called restored spelling, is hardly limited to cygnet; take a gander at arctic, asthma, debt, homily, horizon, receipt, and symptom, which were respectively spelled in Middle or Early Modern English as artik, asma, dette, omelie, orizonte, receite, and sinthoma but changed to reflect their earlier forms in Latin or Ancient Greek. Despite the spelling of cygnet as signet in Middle English, cygnet is not related to the modern English word signet “a small seal, as on a finger ring,” which is a compound of sign and the suffix -et. Cygnet was first recorded in English in the early 15th century.
out-and-out nonsense; bunkum.
Hokum “out-and-out nonsense” is an Americanism, a word first recorded in American English, and as with many Americanisms, hokum has quite the peculiar backstory. Though its origins are disputed, many linguists consider hokum to be a combination of hocus-pocus and prior Word of the Day bunkum “insincere talk.” Hocus-pocus is a fake Latin term used by magicians and jugglers that may have been based on the real Latin phrase hoc est (enim) corpus (meum) “(for) this is (my) body,” but that is a fringe theory. Bunkum is a namesake of Buncombe County, North Carolina (county seat Asheville), which Felix Walker represented in the House of Representatives from 1817 to 1823. During a debate over what eventually became the Missouri Compromise, Walker attempted to deliver a speech, speaking “to Buncombe” rather than to the House, that was so lengthy and irritating that his colleagues shouted at him until he stopped talking. The name Buncombe (respelled phonetically as bunkum) soon developed the meaning of “insincere speechmaking by a politician intended merely to please local constituents.” Hokum was first recorded in English in the late 1910s.
a restaurant patterned on the cellar of a German town hall, usually located below street level.
Rathskeller “a restaurant patterned on the cellar of a German town hall,” which is spelled Ratskeller in modern German, is not related to rats. Instead, Rathskeller is based on Rathaus “town hall” (with the -aus cropped off) and Keller “cellar.” In Rathaus, the Rat- element means “advice, counsel” or “council” and is related to the names Conrad (literally meaning “brave advice”) and Ralph (earlier Radulf, literally “wolf advice”). The -haus part of Rathaus is a cognate of English house and is used much like how English features house in terms such as bathhouse, clubhouse, and coffeehouse simply to mean “building.” German Keller and English cellar both come from Latin cellārium “storeroom,” which is related to English cell (from Latin cella “room”). Rathskeller was first recorded in English in the early 1860s.
