Word of the Day

Swain “a male admirer” comes by way of Middle English swein “servant” from Old Norse sveinn “boy, servant.” Linguists consider the earliest sense of sveinn and its relatives in other Germanic languages to have been “one’s own (man)”; a similar shift in meaning appears with swami, from Sanskrit svāmī “master, owner,” which may have originally meant “one’s own (master).” Both swain and swami come from a root meaning “one’s, oneself” that also appears in self and sibling. Today, swain can be found in the nautical-themed compounds boatswain and coxswain (pronounced a little counterintuitively as “boh-suhn” and “kok-suhn”). Swain was first recorded in English before 1150. For more love-related terms, check out past Words of the Day inamorata, turtledove, and jo!

Chaise longue “a chair with a lengthened seat for reclining” is a loanword from French, in which it means “long chair.” A common practice among English speakers is to say “chaise lounge,” which is the result of confusing French longue “long” with English lounge “to rest lazily.” While chaise longue and lounge chair are both considered standard, “chaise lounge” is gaining in popularity. French chaise is a Paris-area dialectal variant of the original chaire (adapted into English as chair); unlike rhotacism, which changes s (or z) to r, Parisian French frequently used to change r to s. The ultimate origin of French chaise is Ancient Greek kathédra “seat, chair,” which is also the source of English cathedral. Chaise longue was first recorded in English in the 1790s.

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.