Word of the Day

Saponify, “to become converted into soap,” is based on Latin sāpō (stem sāpōn-) “soap” and the combining form -ify, from Latin facere (stems fac-, fact-, -fect, and -fic-) “to do, make.” Sāpō is the source of the word for “soap” in many Romance languages, from French savon and Italian sapone to Portuguese sabão and Spanish jabón. Latin sāpō is an early borrowing from Frankish, a Germanic language once spoken in what is now France, which makes sāpō a close relative of English soap and a distant relative of Latin sēbum “tallow, grease” (as in sebaceous). Saponify was first recorded in English circa 1820.

Radiant, “bright with joy and hope,” is based on Latin radiāns “shining,” the present participle of the verb radiāre “to radiate light, shine,” which is based on the noun radius “beam, ray.” Radius is also the source of radian, radio, radium, and ray. While English uses -ing to mark its present participles (seeing, going), as we learned from the recent Word of the Day gallantly, Latin uses -āns, -ēns, or -iēns—depending on the type of verb—for the same purpose. For phonetic reasons, the stems of these three Latin endings swap the s for t, which is how Latin radiāns becomes English radiant, pungēns “piercing” becomes pungent, and conveniēns “coming together” becomes convenient. Radiant was first recorded in English in the late 15th century.

Prevaricate, “to deliberately speak falsely,” comes from the Latin verb praevāricārī “to straddle something,” based on prae “before” and vārus “bent outwards, bow-legged.” Potential relatives of vārus include varius “speckled, diverse” (as in variety, various, and vary) and varix “dilated vein” (as in varicose). However, because of the simple difference in vowel length between the long ā in vārus and the short a in varius and varix, the linguistic community largely isn’t convinced that all three are related. Prevaricate was first recorded in English circa 1580.

Geitonogamy “self-pollination of a flower” is a compound based on Ancient Greek geítōn “neighbor” and the combining form -gamy “marriage, union, fertilization.” The form -gamy, in turn, is based on Ancient Greek -gamía “act of marrying” (from gámos “marriage”) and appears in terms such as allogamy (literally “self-marriage”), bigamy (“marriage twice”), endogamy (“marriage within”), exogamy (“marriage outside”), monogamy (“alone marriage”), and polygamy (“many marriage”). Using Latin instead, the Latin equivalent of geitonogamy would be the rather lengthy “vicinimatrimony” or “vicininuptials.” Geitonogamy was first recorded in English in the late 1870s.

De novo “anew, from the beginning” is a loan from Latin that comprises dē “from, of, about” and novō, a form of novus “new.” In English, only pronouns change in form to indicate case, such as subject (I, we), possessive (my, our), and object (me, us) pronouns. In Latin, however, nouns and adjectives also change their endings according to case. In this way, novus is the subject, novī is the possessive, novum is the direct object, and novō is both the indirect and prepositional object. All these are only the masculine singular forms, however; almost two dozen other forms exist in the plural number and the feminine and neuter genders. No wonder that modern Romance languages decided to simplify things a bit! De novo was first recorded in English in the 1620s.