Word of the Day

Descant “to comment at great length” comes via Anglo-French and Medieval Latin from Latin dis- “apart; utterly” and cantus “song.” Modern Romance languages base their words for “song” (such as French chanson, Italian canzone, and Spanish canción) on Latin cantiō, a derivative of cantus of the same meaning. Cantus is a noun based on the verb canere “to sing,” and as we learned from the related Word of the Day cantillate, the verbal stem cant- is found today in music- and lyric-related terms such as canticle, cantor, and incantation. Through a process called dissimilation, which we learned about from the recent Word of the Day porphyry, when can(ere) is joined with the noun-forming suffix -men, the expected result “canmen” instead becomes carmen “song, magical formula,” which is the source of charm. Descant was first recorded in English in the late 14th century.

Kowtow “to act in a manner showing excessive eagerness to please” is an adaptation of Mandarin Chinese kòutóu, which literally means “to knock (one’s) head.” In contrast to the negative sense that kowtow has acquired in English, the original purpose of kowtowing, which involves bowing and kneeling so that the forehead touches the ground, is to demonstrate respect. Mandarin kòutóu (cognate to Cantonese kautau) comprises two written characters: the first means “to knock,” while the second means “head”—or, by extension and depending on context, “hair,” “top,” “end, tip,” “first,” or “chief, leader.” Kowtow was first recorded in English circa 1800.

Fichu “a triangular shawl worn draped over the shoulders” is a borrowing from French, in which it is the past participle of the verb ficher “to do, give; kick out, fall apart.” Though the term fichu in French is often translated today as “screwed up,” a more traditional translation would be “thrown hastily,” much as the fichu garment is loosely attached as though it were hastily tossed over the shoulders. French has two verbs spelled ficher—the one discussed above, with the participle fichu, and another meaning “to drive or plug in by its point,” with the participle fiché—and both derive from Latin fīgere “to fasten, pierce.” Fīgere, through its stem fīx-, is the source of English fix, fixation, fixture, and suffix, all of which have to do with repairing or attaching something. Fichu was first recorded in English circa 1800.

Macramé “a lacelike webbing made of hand-knotted cord” comes by way of French from Italian macramè, referring to a kind of fringe on hand towels. Note that both the French and Italian terms here stress the final syllable, while English stresses the first. Prior to Italian, macramè was borrowed from Turkish makrama “napkin, face towel,” which derives in turn from Arabic miqrama “embroidered coverlet, veil, bedspread.” Because of their location in the eastern Mediterranean, languages such as Turkish and Ancient Greek often served as channels for words from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Sanskrit (or Hindi) to pass into the rest of Europe. Arabic-origin words such as coffee, kismet, sherbet, sofa, sorbet, and vizier passed through Turkish first on their way to English. Macramé was first recorded in English in the late 1860s.

Meunière “dipped in flour, sautéed in butter, and sprinkled with lemon juice” is short for French à la meunière “in the manner of a miller’s wife.” The à la construction in French literally translates as “to the” or “in the,” as in past Word of the Day à la mode “in the fashion,” but is also often used more figuratively to mean “in the manner of.” Meunière, the feminine form of meunier “miller,” comes from Vulgar Latin molīnārius, an agent noun form of Late Latin molīna “mill,” a variant of molīnum. Molīnum is the ultimate source of English mill as well as French moulin, which you may recognize as the name of the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris, easily recognized for the gigantic red windmill on its roof. Meunière was first recorded in English in the 1840s.