Word of the Day

Pinyin “a system for transliterating Chinese into the Latin alphabet” is a borrowing from Mandarin Chinese pīnyīn, a compound of pīn “to arrange, classify” and yīn “sound, pronunciation.” Because Chinese uses a writing system that is logographic (using symbols to indicate words) there are numerous methods that linguists have developed to romanize Chinese, that is, to transliterate the language into the Roman alphabet. While pinyin is the most popular today, the Wade–Giles and Yale systems were widespread in China throughout the 20th century. With place names specifically, the so-called “postal spellings” were used to render names such as Peking and Nanking into English. After pinyin’s adoption as the official standard of romanization in 1979, a wave of transliteration swept through China, and the most recognizable effects were the changes in place names, such as the switch from Peking and Nanking to their pinyin versions Běijīng and Nánjīng. Pinyin was first recorded in English in the mid-20th century.

Telluric “of or relating to the earth” derives from the Latin noun tellūs (stem tellūr-) “earth.” Much as Latin had two words for “star”—sidus and stella, as featured in the etymology for recent Word of the Day circumstellar—Latin had two words as well for “earth”: tellūs and terra. Just as stella became the more productive of the two and is the source of modern Romance words for “star,” so was terra preferred over tellūs. While tellūs is the root of a few technical terms in English, such as the element tellurium, terra can be found today in English terms such as terrain, territory, and extraterrestrial as well as in French terre and Spanish tierra. Telluric was first recorded in English in the 1830s.

Aver “to assert with confidence” derives via Middle English and Middle French from Medieval Latin advērāre, roughly “to make true,” from Latin vērus “true.” The ultimate source of vērus is a Proto-Indo-European root of the same meaning that has an unexpected cognate in English: warlock. The war- part of warlock means “faith” as well as “agreement, covenant” in Old English, and the original meaning of warlock (Old English wǣrloga) was “oathbreaker.” Latin v frequently corresponds to English w, which is evident in other pairs of cognates from the two languages, such as Latin ventus and English wind, Latin via and English way, and Latin verbum and English word. Aver was first recorded in English in the late 14th century. Learn some synonyms for aver by checking out Synonym of the Day.

Yakka “work” is a term in Australian slang that used to be spelled variously as yacker or yakker, among other options. Because Australian English is a variety of English that is non-rhotic, dropping the r sound after a vowel, the original spelling of yakka may have changed to reflect this r-dropping tendency. While the ultimate source of yakka is obscure, the most popular hypothesis is a derivation from yaga “to work,” a word from the Yagara language. Yagara, also known as Turrbal, is a language native to Queensland, the northeasternmost state of Australia, and belongs to the Pama–Nyungan language family, as do three-quarters of all aboriginal languages of Australia. Yakka was first recorded in English in the late 1880s.

Gnomon “the raised part of a sundial that casts the shadow” is a borrowing by way of Latin gnōmōn from Ancient Greek gnṓmōn “interpreter, discerner.” From there, gnṓmōn is derived from the verb gignṓskein (stem gnō-) “to know, perceive, judge,” and the stem gnō- also appears in other Ancient Greek-origin terms such as agnostic (literally “without knowledge”) and diagnosis (literally “means of discernment”). Because Ancient Greek and Latin are distantly related, Latin contains numerous words related to knowledge that also feature the telltale gn- element, including cognitive (“learned”), incognito (“unknown”), ignorant (“not knowing”), and recognize (“know again”). Gnomon was first recorded in English in the 1540s.