Word of the Day

Quagmire “an area of miry or boggy ground” is a compound of the nouns quag and mire, both of which are synonyms of quagmire itself. Mire has a clear and well-studied history; it derives from Old Norse mȳrr “bog” and is a doublet, one of a pair of words derived from the same source but through different routes, of moss (from Old English mēos)—much like fjord and the recent Word of the Day firth. The story of quag, though, is far more muddled. Quag appears to be related to its dialectal English synonyms quab and quaw, and all three may be of imitative origin or come from an uncertain Old English source meaning “to shake, tremble.” For the latter hypothesis, the most popular proposal is a connection between quag and the verb quake, as in earthquake and Quaker. Quagmire was first recorded in English in the 1570s.

Transcendental “abstract or metaphysical” ultimately derives by way of Medieval Latin from the Latin verb trānscendere “to surmount,” a compound of the preposition trāns “across, beyond” and the verb scandere “to climb.” Trāns is a distant cognate of the English terms thorough and through; as we learned from the Word of the Day togated, because of a phenomenon known as Grimm’s law, Latin t often corresponds to English th. The opposite of trāns is cis “on this side.” The verb scandere (with stems including scand-, scans-, scend-, scens-, and scent-) is the source of terms such as ascension, descent, and scansorial “capable of or adapted for climbing.” Transcendental was first recorded in English circa 1620.

Duniewassal “a gentleman among the Highlanders of Scotland” is based on a compound of Scottish Gaelic duine “man, person” and uasal “noble.” Duine is a distant descendant of the same Proto-Indo-European root, dhghem- “earth,” which is the source of two types of words in the Indo-European language family: “earth” words such as the recent Word of the Day chernozem (literally “black earth,” from Russian zemlyá “earth”) and “person” words such as the recent Word of the Day hominid (from Latin homō “man, person,” related to humus “earth”). There are two theories behind the origin of uasal: one connects uasal to the same root as Latin augēre (stem auct-) “to increase” (compare auction and augment), while the other links uasal to the same ultimate source as Ancient Greek hýpsos “height” (compare hypsometer “an instrument for measuring atmospheric pressure and sometimes altitude”). Duniewassal was first recorded in English circa 1560.

Reconnoiter “to inspect to gain information for military purposes” is an adaptation of obsolete French reconnoître “to explore” (compare modern French reconnaître “to recognize”). Reconnoître derives from Latin re- “again” and cognōscere “to know,” and as we learned from the recent Word of the Day gnomon, the gni-/gno- element, meaning “knowledge,” is found in numerous Latin-derived terms, from cognitive and recognize to incognito and ignorant. Reconnoître became reconnaître in modern French because of a spelling reform; by the early 1800s, the digraph oi had developed two different pronunciations—“eh” and “wah”—that caused ambiguity in writing. To rectify this shift, the 1835 edition of the Académie française’s dictionary of the French language changed the spelling of all words that contained the oi pronounced as “eh” from oi to ai. This also explains why the word connoisseur, which was borrowed into English a century before this spelling reform, retains the original French spelling while its modern French counterpart, connaisseur, reflects the reformed spelling. Reconnoiter was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 18th century.

To the casual observer, ferrule “a ring or cap put around the end of something” looks like it is a compound of Latin ferrum “iron” (compare the chemical symbol Fe and Spanish hierro) and the suffix -ule “small, little,” but looks can be deceiving. In fact, ferrule is an alteration of English forms such as verrel or virl, with a spelling change based simply on an association with Latin ferrum. Verrel and virl derive from Latin viriola “small bracelet,” from viria “bracelet,” a word of Gaulish (continental Celtic) origin. As we learned from the recent Word of the Day cathartic, it is rather common to see folk etymology—spelling and pronunciation changes based on associations with unrelated words—at work in many languages. In English, folk etymology explains the spelling changes in words such as ferrule as well as author (by influence of authentic), gridiron (by influence of iron), and rosemary (by influence of rose and the name Mary). Ferrule was first recorded circa 1610.