Word of the Day

Cenote “a deep natural well or sinkhole” is a loanword from Mexican Spanish and derives from the word tz’onot in the Yucatec Mayan language. A common misconception is that Mayan is a single language, but it is in fact a language family comprising at least 20 languages that are spoken primarily in Belize, Guatemala, and southeastern Mexico. Yucatec Mayan is one of the best-known Mayan languages and has hundreds of thousands of speakers today in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, while Quiché (also K’iche’) is the most spoken Mayan tongue, with more than 1 million speakers in Guatemala. Though the Mayan languages share numerous grammatical features with other language families found in Mesoamerica, these similarities are most likely the result of language contact rather than a shared origin. Cenote was first recorded in English circa 1840.

Démodé “no longer in fashion” is a borrowing of the past participle of the French verb démoder “to put out of fashion.” Démoder is based on the noun mode “fashion,” which also appears in the expression à la mode, which in English often means “served with a scoop of ice cream” but literally translates as “in the fashion.” French mode derives from Latin modus, a word with a wide range of meanings, such as “manner,” “measure,” “limit,” and even “rhythm.” To see the “manner” sense in action, compare the Latin-origin phrases modus operandi (or M.O.) “one’s usual way of doing something” and modus vivendi “lifestyle.” Démodé was first recorded in the late 19th century.

Tour de force “a feat requiring unusual strength, skill, or ingenuity” is a borrowing from French, in which the phrase literally means “turn of strength.” French tour has two separate derivations: the noun tour “a turn” in tour de force is related to the verb tourner “to turn” (from Latin tornāre), and this tour is not to be confused with tour “tower” (from Latin turris). This distinction is why the Tour de France refers to a long, winding bicycle race while the tour Eiffel is the original French name for the Eiffel Tower. Other derivatives of Latin tornāre “to turn” include return, tourniquet, tourist, and tornado. Tour de force was first recorded in English circa the year 1800.

Azimuth “the arc of the horizon measured clockwise” derives by way of Middle French azimut from Arabic as-sumūt “the ways,” an assimilated plural form of al-samt “the way.” As we learned from the recent Word of the Day acequia, the prefix al- “the” assimilates to match the first sound in the word that follows—but only when that sound is pronounced with the tip of the tongue. Azimuth shares an origin with zenith “the point on the celestial sphere vertically above a given position,” but while azimuth closely resembles its Arabic source, zenith arose when Arabic samt was borrowed into Old Spanish as zemt and was subsequently misread as zenit. We never know when a small scribal error can end up creating a new word! Azimuth was first recorded in English in the late 14th century.

Sciamachy “an act of fighting a shadow” is adapted from Ancient Greek skiamachía, equivalent to skiá “shadow” and máchē “battle.” Skiá is sometimes romanized as scia-, consistent with the Latin trend of changing Greek kappa to Roman c, but other derivatives of skiá in English hew closely to the original spelling and appear as skia-, as in skiagraph “a photographic image produced by the action of x-rays or nuclear radiation.” Máchē is a popular element in technical terms related to fighting or warfare. When combined with taûros “bull,” we get tauromachy “bullfighting,” and when combined with lógos “word,” we get logomachy “a dispute about or concerning words.” Sciamachy was first recorded in English circa 1620.