Word of the Day

Fauna “the animals of a given region as a whole” is an example of a collective noun, a noun that typically appears as singular but refers to a group of persons or objects. Common collective nouns in English also include couple, government, jury, population, and team, all of which refer to groups of people even when the nouns themselves are singular. Unlike mass nouns such as electricity, furniture, and sadness, collective nouns can use the indefinite article a (or an) and numbers; we may say a team or two couples but not an electricity or two furnitures. Fauna is the namesake of the rural Roman goddess Fauna, the feminine counterpart of the forest god Faunus. These two Latin names may come from the verb favēre “to favor,” which would make them potential relatives of the recent Words of the Day Faustian and foehn. Fauna was first recorded in English circa 1770.

Andante “moderately slow and even” is a loanword from Italian, in which it literally means “walking” and is the present participle of the verb andare “to walk, go.” From here, the history becomes somewhat murky. Romance languages merged several roots in a process called suppletion to create their verbs meaning “to go”—similar to English with be (and am, are, was)—but what roots were merged remains a matter of debate. With andante, there are two proposals: a derivation from a lost Vulgar Latin verb such as ambitare “to go in circular motion” or an origin in the Gaulish root andā-, the latter of which is related to Latin passus “step.” Andante was first recorded in English circa 1740.

Don’t be fooled! Menology is not a half-Greek term meaning “the study of men.” Instead, menology “a record or account arranged in the order of a calendar” comes from Late Greek mēnológion, from Ancient Greek ​​mḗn “month” and -lógion, a derivative of lógos “a word, saying, speech.” The word ​​mḗn is a distant relative of Latin mensis and English month, and all three come from the same root as English moon (and Monday) and menstrual “monthly.” Menology was first recorded in English circa 1605.

Juku “a school where students prepare for college entrance examinations” is a borrowing from Japanese. In its native language, juku means “private tutoring school” or “cram school” and is a term borrowed from Middle Chinese, in which it once meant “gate room.” Because juku is of Chinese origin, we can see the clear resemblance today between juku and Mandarin shú or Cantonese suk. Juku was first recorded in English in the early 1980s.

Cognoscenti “persons who have superior knowledge of a particular field” is the plural of cognoscente, which refers to an individual person with such knowledge. Unlike English, French, and Spanish, which usually add -s or -es to indicate a plural noun, Italian typically changes the final vowel of a word; singular -a often becomes plural -e, while singular -e and -o often become plural -i. The Italian verb meaning “to know” is conoscere, with the present participle conoscente, which lacks the g of cognoscente; the reason for the g is the influence of Latin cognōscere “to know.” Cognoscenti was first recorded in English in the 1770s.