Word of the Day

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.

Rizzar, “to dry meat in the sun,” is of uncertain origin but appears to come from obsolete French ressoré “sun-dried.” From here, the trail grows even colder, though there are two potential routes to the true origin of rizzar. One proposal is that ressoré comes from saurer (earlier sorer) “to smoke, to dry with smoke,” from the adjective saur “salted and smoked, dried,” which appears to be a relative of English sear and sere; see the recent Word of the Day ratoon for more. Another proposal links ressoré to essorer “to dry in the air,” itself ultimately thought to come from Latin ex “out of, from” combined with aura “breath (of air), breeze.” Rizzar was first recorded in English at the turn of the 19th century.