Word of the Day

Teocalli “a ceremonial structure comprising a pyramid and temple” derives by way of Spanish from Nahuatl teōtl “god” and calli “house.” In this context, when we say “Nahuatl,” we are referring to classical Nahuatl, a language once spoken in the Aztec Empire that has since evolved into a group of dialects with 1.7 million speakers in modern Mexico. Nahuatl is a member of the Uto-Aztecan family, which has daughter languages spoken throughout the western regions of both the United States and Mexico, plus in portions of Central America. This means that, although teōtl bears a passing resemblance to Indo-European “god” words such as Latin deus (compare Spanish dios) and Ancient Greek theos, the resemblance is merely a coincidence. Other members of the Uto-Aztecan family include the Comanche, Hopi, Northern and Southern Paiute, and Shoshone. Teocalli was first recorded in English circa 1610.

Polychromatic “exhibiting a variety of colors” is a compound of two Ancient Greek elements: the combining form poly- “many” and the adjective chromatic “pertaining to color.” Poly- comes from Ancient Greek polýs “many,” which is not to be confused with the similar-sounding word pólis “city.” Instead, the plural of polýs, polloí, is the source of the expression hoi polloi “the masses,” and polýs is a cognate of Latin plūs (stem plūr-) “more,” the source of plural and surplus. Chromatic derives from Ancient Greek chrôma “color” and also appears in compound terms isochromatic “having the same color” and monochromatic “having tones of one color.” Polychromatic was first recorded in English in the 1840s.

Felicitous “well-suited for the occasion,” based on the noun felicity “happiness; skillful faculty,” derives from Latin fēlīcitās “good luck, happiness.” Fēlīcitās comes from the adjective fēlīx (stem fēlīci-) “lucky, happy,” plus the noun-forming suffix -tās “-ness.” Fēlīx and its descendants in modern Romance languages show a common pattern, namely, that a word for “lucky” in a mother language eventually gains the additional sense of “happy,” and either the “happy” sense alone or, less often, both senses are preserved in a daughter language. We can see this tendency when we compare Latin fēlīx “lucky, happy” with Spanish feliz “happy” and Italian felice “happy, lucky” (though the “lucky” sense in Italian is only in certain contexts). A stronger example lies in the English language itself, in which happy derives from the noun hap “luck,” which is also the source of the verb happen. Felicitous was first recorded in English circa 1730.

Bucchero “an Etruscan black ceramic ware” is a borrowing from Italian, though its roots trace back much further. Prior to Italian, bucchero was adapted from Spanish búcaro and, earlier, Portuguese púcaro “clay vessel.” Before Portuguese, púcaro ultimately derives from Latin pōculum “goblet,” but between these two points, the word may have passed through Mozarabic, a variety of Romance once spoken in the south of Spain. Mozarabic was not a language but rather a continuum of dialects descended from Vulgar Latin that developed in the regions of Spain under Moorish control and that Arabic heavily influenced. In this way, Mozarabic was for centuries an intermediary that allowed for numerous terms of Arabic and Latin origin to enter (or, in the case of Latin, to reenter) the Spanish language. Bucchero was first recorded in the late 1880s.

Quagmire “an area of miry or boggy ground” is a compound of the nouns quag and mire, both of which are synonyms of quagmire itself. Mire has a clear and well-studied history; it derives from Old Norse mȳrr “bog” and is a doublet, one of a pair of words derived from the same source but through different routes, of moss (from Old English mēos)—much like fjord and the recent Word of the Day firth. The story of quag, though, is far more muddled. Quag appears to be related to its dialectal English synonyms quab and quaw, and all three may be of imitative origin or come from an uncertain Old English source meaning “to shake, tremble.” For the latter hypothesis, the most popular proposal is a connection between quag and the verb quake, as in earthquake and Quaker. Quagmire was first recorded in English in the 1570s.