Word of the Day

Hoary “tedious from familiarity” is an adjective based on the noun hoar “frost, a grayish-white,” which is of Germanic origin. Because English and German are both Germanic languages, hoary has two cognates in German—hehr “sublime, noble” and Herr “gentleman, sir, mister”—that show a shift in definition from gray hair alone to words of respect for gray-haired individuals. From there, there are at least three possibilities for the ultimate origin of hoary: one hypothesis connects hoary to the same root for color-related words that gives rise to hue, a second option links hoary to an ancient root meaning “to shine,” and a third proposes that hoary shares a source with obscure (via Latin), shadow (via Old English), and the recent Word of the Day sciamachy (via Ancient Greek). Hoary was first recorded in English in the 1520s.

The story of chagrin “a feeling of vexation” is a rather mysterious one, and the linguistic community is at odds over the word’s origin. One proposal is that chagrin comes from obsolete dialectal French chagraigner or chagreiner “to distress, sadden,” perhaps from Old French graim “sorrowful,” which is related to German Gram “sadness,” combined with Old French chat “cat,” a common metaphorical element in terms related to distress. The other major hypothesis is that chagrin is the same as the French homonym chagrin “rough skin, shagreen,” a variant of sagrin, from Turkish sağrι “rump of a horse.” Chagrin was first recorded in English in the 1650s.

Litigate “to carry on a lawsuit” is based on Latin lītigātus “having gone to law,” the past participle of lītigāre “to go to law.” The verb lītigāre is a compound of two other Latin words: līs (stem līt-) “lawsuit” and agere (stem -ig-) “to do, drive, carry on.” As we learned from the recent Words of the Day fustigate and disambiguate, agere is a rather productive verb with several stems: the present stem ag- appears in agenda, agent, and agile; the reduced stem -ig- is also found in castigate and navigate; and the perfect stem act- is found in action, activity, and exact. Litigate was first recorded in English circa 1610.

Prefatory “of or relating to something introductory” is based on the Latin noun praefātiō “a saying beforehand,” plus the adjective-forming suffix -ory. Praefātiō became Medieval Latin prēfātia and then became Middle French preface, which English has borrowed. In this way, prefatory and preface are doublets, two words in a language with the same origin but that took different pathways to get there—in this case, directly from Latin and by way of French, respectively. Latin praefātiō is a compound of prae “before,” which is the source of English pre-, and fārī “to speak,” which is the source of affable, fable, fate, and infant. Prefatory was first recorded in English circa 1670.

Mbira “a musical instrument made from a gourd” is a borrowing from the Shona language. Though Shona mbira is of unclear origin, some linguists hypothesize connections to ambira, kalimba, and marimba, which are all xylophone-like instruments originating in southern Africa. The Shona language is spoken in what is now Zimbabwe, and it belongs to the huge Bantu group of languages, which is found throughout western southern Africa and also includes Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. Mbira was first recorded in English circa 1910.