Word of the Day

Stevedore “an individual who loads and unloads a vessel” is an Americanism adapted from Spanish estibador “dock worker, longshoreman,” which is based on the Spanish verb estibar “to pack, stow, cram.” Estibar, from Latin stīpāre “to stuff, pack tightly,” reflects a common sound change between Latin and some modern Romance languages: voiceless consonants (p, t, c) that are intervocalic, or appear between vowels, often become voiced, or pronounced with vibrations in the vocal chords (b, d, g). One of the best examples of this is Latin apothēca “shop, storehouse,” which voiced its voiceless consonants—and eventually dropped the initial a—to become Spanish bodega “wine cellar.” Stevedore was first recorded in English in the 1780s.

Kaomoji “a Japanese-style emoticon” is a loanword from Japanese that is a compound of kao “face” and moji “(written) character.” Moji is an example of Sino-Xenic vocabulary, which refers to the hundreds of words that originated in Middle Chinese (compare Sino-) and were exported to foreign languages (compare xeno-) such as Japanese, as we can also see in the recent Words of the Day matcha, waka, and keiretsu. The moji element in kaomoji (as well as emoji) is therefore related to Mandarin wénzì and Cantonese manzi “writing, language.” A common misconception is that emoji and emoticon are related, but the resemblance is a coincidence; emoji is a compound of Japanese e “picture” and moji, while emoticon is a portmanteau of emotion and icon. Kaomoji was first recorded in English in the late 1980s.

Trinary “consisting of three parts” is equivalent to Latin trīnī “by threes” plus the suffix -ārius “-ary,” on the pattern of binary. Trīnī is an example of a distributive number; while cardinal numbers such as three express amounts and ordinal numbers such as third express place in a series (and, in English, often fractions), distributive numbers such as triply express a quantity at one time. Other types of numbers include adverbial numbers such as thrice, which express a number of times, and multipliers such as triple, which express how many times something is multiplied. Trinary was first recorded in English in the mid-15th century.

Hobbledehoy “an awkward, ungainly youth,” a variant of hoberdyboy (among other spellings), is of unclear origin, and theories abound. The first part of hobbledehoy may stem from hob or hoberd, which are forms of Robert. The change from Robert to hob or hoberd is typical of rhyming in English name formation; just as Robert has the nickname Bob and is the source of surnames such as Dobbs and Hopkins, William has the nickname Bill and is the source of the surname Gilliam. Similar to the term hobgoblin, the hob element in hobbledehoy is a dialectal English term for “elf” that may be a variant of Robin (a diminutive of Robert), as in Robin Goodfellow, a folkloric fairy also known as Puck. Hobbledehoy was first recorded in English in the 1530s.

Inspirit “to infuse life into” is a compound of the prefix in- and the noun spirit, the latter of which comes from Latin spīritus, which originally meant “a breathing.” Spīritus is based on the Latin verb spīrāre “to breathe,” much like how Ancient Greek psȳ́chein “to breathe, blow” is the source of psȳchḗ “a breath” and, from there, English psyche “the human soul, spirit, or mind.” Spīrāre (stem spīr-) gives rise to the English terms perspire, respiration, and even expire, and the verb can be found in the motto of the state of South Carolina: dum spīrō, spērō “while I breathe, I hope.” Inspirit was first recorded in English circa 1605.