Word of the Day

Musaceous “of or relating to the fruit of the banana family” comes from New Latin Musa, the name of the genus to which bananas belong, plus the suffixes -aceae “made of, resembling” and -ous “full of.” Musa is adapted from Arabic mawzah “banana” and, before that, perhaps Sanskrit mocaḥ. One interesting proposal is that Musa ultimately comes from an unidentified language once spoken in what is now Indonesia. In contrast, the English word banana comes via Portuguese or Spanish likely from a Niger-Congo language, much like the recent Words of the Day capoeira and mbira, though the specific origin is still uncertain. Musaceous was first recorded in English in the early 1850s.

Amendatory “serving to alter” is an Americanism based on Late Latin ēmendātōrius, with the ē- swapped out with the a- from amend. The source of all these words is the Latin verb ēmendāre “to correct,” equivalent to ē (or ex) “out of, from” plus menda “blemish, fault, mistake.” Latin menda is also the source of three English words with a broad range of senses: mend “to make usable by repairing,” mendacious “telling lies” (via Latin mendāx “lying”), and mendicant “begging” (via Latin mendīcus “needy”). Amendatory was first recorded in English in the 1780s.

Xenial “welcoming and hospitable” comes from the Ancient Greek noun xenía “hospitality.” Xenía, the element xenon, the name of the warrior princess Xena, and the recent Word of the Day euxinia all come from Ancient Greek xénos “stranger, guest.” Xénos may be a distant relative of English guest (from Old Norse gestr), hospitable and hostel (from Latin hospes “guest, visitor, host”), and hostile (from Latin hostis “stranger, enemy”). Note that xenial is not to be confused with the unrelated term xennial, which denotes people born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, on the cusp of Generations X and Y. Xenial was first recorded in English in the 1790s.

Krumkake “a Scandinavian cookie” is a borrowing from Norwegian, in which it is a compound of krum “curved, crooked” and kake “cake.” Krum is a close relative of Old English crumb (also crump), of the same meaning, which appears in modern English names such as Cromwell “crooked spring” but is not related to modern English crumb “a small particle broken off bread.” Kake and English cake together derive from Old Norse kaka, of the same meaning, which may also be the source of English cookie (by way of Dutch). Krumkake was first recorded in English in the early 1920s.

Macadamize “to pave by compacting successive layers of broken stone” is a verb based on the noun macadam, the word for a road paved in this way. Macadam is the namesake of John Loudon McAdam, the inventor of this technique, and the surname McAdam “son of Adam” is a compound of the Scottish patronymic element Mc- (also Mac-) and the Hebrew-origin name Adam. Mc- is anglicized from Scottish Gaelic mac “son,” while Adam comes from Hebrew ādhām “man,” which may be related to any or all of the Hebrew words ādhom “red,” adhāmāh “earth,” or dam “blood”; for a similar pattern, compare Latin hūmānus “human” and humus “earth.” Macadamize was first recorded in English circa 1820.