Word of the Day

Saccade “the series of small movements of the eyes when changing focus” is a borrowing of French saccade “a jerking movement, movement of a horseman who abruptly pulls the reins,” which derives from Middle French saquer “to pull violently,” a variant of Old French sachier. Though the connection is not certain, the prevailing theory is that sachier comes from the noun sac “bag, sack,” perhaps reflecting an early sense of sachier such as “to withdraw from a sack.” French sac derives via Latin saccus from Ancient Greek sákkos “bag made from goat hair,” which is likely borrowed from a Semitic source. It is rather common to find loanwords from Semitic languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Phoenician) in Ancient Greek as the result of centuries of trade; whenever you read the words arsenic, crocus, cumin, lotus, myrrh, and sapphire, you’re looking at the remnants of Semitic influence on Ancient Greek. Saccade was first recorded in English in the 1720s.

Iftar “the meal that Muslims eat after sunset during Ramadan to break the day’s fast” is a borrowing of Arabic ʾifṭār “the breaking of the fast,” a verbal form of the noun ʾafṭara “to have breakfast, break a fast,” which is based on the same Arabic stem, fṭr, found in the holiday name Eid al-Fitr (from Arabic ʿīd al-fiṭr “festival of the breaking of the fast”). Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew base much of their vocabulary on three-consonant stems, and the Arabic stem fṭr (spelled fā, ṭā, rā) is cognate to the Hebrew stem pṭr (spelled pe, teth, resh), which is also found in Hebrew words relating to breaking, ending, or splitting. One example of this Hebrew stem is found in the word Haftarah, which is a portion of a text that was once recited at the conclusion of a Jewish liturgical service. Iftar was first recorded in the early 1830s.

Raillery “good-humored ridicule” is an adaptation of French raillerie, equivalent to the Middle French verb railler “to mock, deride” and the suffix -erie, which is used to indicate qualities, properties, or actions collectively. Railler derives by way of Occitan ralhar “to babble, chatter” from Late Latin ragere “to bray, bellow, roar.” The verb ragere is an example of Word of the Day hapax legomenon, which means “a word that only appears once in a particular work or area of literature”; in this case, ragere is included just one time in a Latin text that dates to the 10th century and is absent from all other texts in the Latin language. Ragere is likely of imitative origin, and although classical Latin had a similar-sounding synonym, rugīre “to roar” (compare French, Portuguese, and Spanish rugir), there is no connection between rugīre and ragere. Raillery was first recorded in English circa 1650.

Septentrion “the north” derives from Latin septentriōnēs, which refers to the seven stars of the asterism Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major (the “Greater Bear”). These seven stars, because of their location in the northern sky near the North Star, have long had an association with the north in various cultures; we only need to look at the state flag of Alaska to see this association alive and well today! Latin septentriōnēs is equivalent to septem “seven” and triō (stem triōn-) “plowing ox.” Another Latin word for “the north” is the noun boreās, the source of aurora borealis (literally, the “northern dawn”), which is a borrowing of Ancient Greek Boréās, the personification of the north wind. In modern Romance languages, instead of deriving from Latin septentriōnēs or boreās, the words for “north” (such as French nord and Spanish norte) are adapted from Old English north. Septentrion was first recorded in English in the late 14th century.

Abient “tending to move away from a stimulus or situation” comes from the Latin term abiēns (stem abient-) “going away,” the present participle of the verb abīre “to go away, exit, depart.” Abīre is formed from the preposition ab “from, away” and the verb īre “to go,” which has two stems: -ient and -it. The verb īre also gives rise to ambīre “to go around,” inīre “to go into, begin,” and trānsīre “to go across, cross,” and to see evidence of all these Latin verbs in English today, compare ambient and ambition, initial and initiate, and transient and transit. The -it stem also pops up in circuit (from Latin circumīre “to go round, circle”), exit (from exīre “to go out”), and even obituary (from obīre “to go toward,” often used euphemistically in the sense “to meet one’s death”). Abient was first recorded in English in the early 1930s.