Word of the Day

Matcha “a finely ground powder made from small green tea leaves” is a borrowing from Japanese and can also be transliterated as maccha and mattya. The term is a compound of the Japanese verb matsu “to rub, grind” and the noun cha “tea.” Cha is a distant relative of tea; the Japanese and English words both derive from Middle Chinese and have a long and complicated history. As a Wanderwort, a word that has spread as a loanword across a long chain of unrelated languages, tea derives by way of Dutch and Malay from dialectal Chinese (Xiamen) t’e; compare Mandarin chá, which was borrowed via Russian and Turkish into English as chai. From there, te likely derives from a word for “leaf” in Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the reconstructed language ancestral to Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan. Matcha was first recorded in English in the 15th century.

Somersault derives from Middle French sombresaut, a nasalized variant of sobresault, which is a borrowing from Old Provençal. Provençal is both a dialect of and another name for Occitan, a Romance language that is still spoken today in the south of France. Sobresault is a compound of sobre “over” and saut “a leap,” from Latin super and saltus, of the same meanings. Super is also the source of sovereign, superior, and supreme and is distantly related to English over, German über, and Ancient Greek hypér. Saltus, from the verb salīre “to leap,” is also the source of assault, result, salacious, salient, and recent Word of the Day selection saltigrade. Somersault was first recorded in English in the 1520s.

Volant “engaged in or having the power of flight” is a borrowing from French, in which it means “flying” and is the present participle of the verb voler “to fly, steal.” Voler derives from Latin volāre “to fly,” which is of mysterious and uncertain origin. Some linguists derive volāre from a Proto-Indo-European root, gwel- “to raise the arm, throw, reach,” under the assumption that the definition could have shifted from “to raise the arm” to “to spread one’s wings,” but this hypothesis is not universally accepted. If volāre does come from this root, it is a cognate of Ancient Greek ballein “to throw” (as in ballistic, parabola, problem, and symbol). Volant was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 1500s.

Angst “a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish” is a borrowing from German, in which the noun is capitalized, from Old High German angust. If you are wondering whether angst is related to anxiety and anguish, your suspicion is correct; all three words ultimately derive from a Proto-Indo-European root, angh- “tight, painful,” which is the source of numerous pain-related terms beginning with ag-, ang-, or anx-. From Old English, derivatives include hangnail (originally agnail, but altered by association with hang). Via Old Norse angr “sorrow, grief,” English has borrowed anger. Through Latin angere “to strangle” (stem anx-) and angustus “narrow,” we have anxiety and anguish. Last, from Ancient Greek anchónē “strangling,” English has inherited angina “an attack of painful spasms.” Angst was first recorded in English in the 1840s.

Atoll “a ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a shallow lagoon” is an adaptation by way of French from Divehi atoḷu. Divehi is the official language of the Maldives, an archipelago country in the northern Indian Ocean comprising more than two dozen atolls, and belongs to the Indic group of Indo-European languages. Atoḷu may derive from Sanskrit ántara “within,” a distant cognate of interior (via Latin) and entero- “inside” (via Ancient Greek). An alternative theory is that atoḷu derives from aḍal “a sinking reef,” which is a term from Malayalam, a Dravidian language unrelated to the Indo-European language family. Atoll was first recorded in English circa 1620.