Word of the Day

White hole is named by analogy after black hole. White is related to German weiß and Swedish vit, while the words for “white” in many Romance languages (including French blanc, Italian bianco, Portuguese branco, and Spanish blanco) are related to English blank. Russian astrophysicist Igor Novikov first presented his theory about white holes in the mid-1960s. EXAMPLE OF WHITE HOLE USED IN A SENTENCE While black holes are known for swallowing all energy and matter nearby, white holes are essentially their Bizarro World counterparts and do the opposite. FUN FACT ABOUT WHITE HOLE White holes are theorized to be the exit point of a wormhole—matter would enter a black hole at one point in the universe, move through a tunnel, and exit at a completely different point in the universe through a white hole. Learn more fun facts at the Museum of Science.

Pharyngeal, “articulated with the tongue root and the pharynx,” ultimately comes from Ancient Greek phárynx (stem pháryng-), “throat.” Easily confused with pharyngeal is laryngeal, “articulated in the larynx,” which comes from Ancient Greek lárynx (stem láryng-), “upper windpipe.” Though the pharynx and the larynx are nearly adjacent parts of the esophagus and bear names that have rhymed since Ancient Greek was a living language, it is unclear whether they share any deeper connection. One faction of the linguistic community believes that the -ynx portion of both words suggests that they are of a pre-Greek origin (see obelize earlier this week for more), while another links phárynx to Latin frūmen, “gruel; throat.” Pharyngeal was first recorded in English in the 1820s.

Umpteenth, “of an indefinitely large number,” is the ordinal form of the cardinal number umpteen, which itself is based on umpty, a term for an indeterminate number, and the combining form -teen, a variant of ten. Umpty originated as a slang word to refer to the dash (—) in Morse code, with the ump- part a fanciful designation and the -ty part inspired by numbers such as twenty and thirty. Because the elements -ty and -teen are both related to ten, the change from umpty to umpteen essentially swaps one “ten” for another. Umpteenth was first recorded in English in the late 1910s.

Obelize, “to mark with a symbol to point out concerning text,” comes from Ancient Greek obelízein, which is equivalent to obelós plus the verb-forming suffix -izein, “-ize.” Obelós means “spit, pointed pillar,” and the latter definition might ring a bell because it is this sense that appears in English obelisk. The term obelós is, unfortunately, of uncertain origin, but despite the common association between obelisks and ancient Egypt, obelós does not appear to be of Egyptian origin. Instead, the substantial variation in the spelling of obelós across multiple dialects of Ancient Greek suggests that the word is of mysterious pre-Greek origin, similar to the recent Words of the Day bibliophile, feijoada, and porphyry. Obelize was first recorded in English circa 1610.

Diglot “containing similar information in two different languages” comes from Ancient Greek díglōttos, which is equivalent to di- “twice, double” and -glōttos, a derivative of glôssa (also glôtta) “tongue.” In this way, diglot is the Ancient Greek-origin equivalent of bilingual, from Latin bi- “twice” and lingua “tongue.” While di- and bi- are distantly related, as we learned from the Word of the Day diphthongize, glôssa is not related to lingua. Instead, glôssa is the source of glossary, glottal, and the Word of the Day polyglot, and its resemblance to gloss “a superficial luster or shine” is merely coincidental. Diglot was first recorded in English in the early 1860s.