Word of the Day

Flokati “a thick, woolen rug with a shaggy pile” is a loanword from modern Greek and is also transliterated more traditionally as phlokátē. The differences in transliteration reflect two sound changes between Ancient Greek and modern Greek: ancient ph (“puh” with a puff of air) became modern f, and ancient ē (long “eh”) became modern i (“ee”). Flokati comes—by way of Balkan Romani, dialectal Italian, or Vulgar Latin—from Latin floccus “tuft of wool.” English inherits flock in the sense “a lock or tuft of wool, hair, or cotton” from Latin floccus, while flock in the sense “a number of animals herded together” is of Old English origin. Flokati was first recorded in English in the late 1960s.

Ogham “an alphabetic script used for inscriptions in archaic Irish” is a loanword from Irish Gaelic, but the history of this word becomes murkier and murkier the farther back in time we go. A popular hypothesis is that ogham comes from Ogma, the name of a Celtic god who created the alphabet—that is, according to some legends. An alternative is that ogham derives from an ancient Irish word meaning “point,” as in the tip of a weapon, in reference to how ogham letters were inscribed on stone. The Irish Gaelic language today, as it has since the demise of ogham 1000 years ago, uses the Roman alphabet. Ogham was first recorded in English in the 1620s.

Phantasmagoric “having a fantastic appearance” is a compound of two elements. The first is phantasm “apparition, fantasy,” from Ancient Greek phántasma “image, vision.” This, in turn, comes from the verb phaínein “to bring to light, cause to appear,” which is the source of many fant- and phant- words in English, from fantastic and fantasy to hierophant and phantom. The second element in phantasmagoric is likely to be either from Ancient Greek agorá “assembly, gathering” (as in agoraphobia) or its derivative allēgoría “figurative language” (as in allegory). Phantasmagoric was first recorded in English in the early 1810s.

Archetypal “having the nature of an original model,” the adjective form of the noun archetype, comes from Ancient Greek archétypon “a model, pattern.” The first element in archétypon is based on one of three related words—archḗ “beginning,” árchos “leader,” árchein “to be the first, command”—all of uncertain ultimate origin. The second element is týpos “mold, type” (earlier “blow, impression”), which may be distantly related to a variety of English st- words once connected to pushing, knocking together, cutting off, or sticking out, including steep, steeple, stepchild, stint, stock, stoop, stub, stunt, and stutter. Archetypal was first recorded in English in the 1640s.

Intercalate “to insert an extra day in the calendar” is based on the Latin verb intercalāre, of the same meaning, which is a compound of the preposition inter “between, among” and the verb calāre “to proclaim.” Though calāre looks and sounds quite a bit like English call, the two are not related; Grimm’s law shows that Latin c tends to correspond to Old English h, while Old English c is equivalent to Latin g. In this way, Latin calāre is related to Old English hlōwan “to roar,” becoming English low “to moo.” Meanwhile, English call may be related to Latin gallus “rooster.” Intercalate was first recorded in English circa 1610.