Word of the Day

The story of harlequin “fancifully varied in color and decoration” is chock full of semantic twists and turns—creating a devilishly good time the further back in time we peer. Harlequin is borrowed by way of Middle French from Italian arlecchino, and before that, the term originated in Old French variously as halequin, hellequin, and herlekin, the name of or a term for a malevolent spirit. Despite the resemblance to English hell, these Old French words may in fact derive from an Old English name, Herla cyning “King Herle.” Herle may have been a legendary or mythological figure similar to Woden (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Odin), or the term Herla cyning could be related to the recent Word of the Day erlking “elf king,” though there are issues with the phonology in the latter hypothesis. An alternative origin of Herla is a Germanic root meaning “army” that is also found in the names Harold, Herbert, Herman, Walter, Warner, and even Oliver. Harlequin was first recorded in English in the 1580s.

Ineluctable “incapable of being evaded” derives from Latin inēluctābilis, equivalent to the prefix in- “not” and the verb ēluctārī “to force a way out or over, surmount.” The latter is a compound of ē-, the prefix version of ex “out of, from,” and the verb luctārī “to struggle, wrestle.” Another English derivative of luctārī is the noun reluctance, which literally means “the state of struggling against,” and if you’re a fan of wrestling, you may have already connected Spanish lucha—as in the phrase lucha libre (literally “free wrestling”)—to luctārī. The evolution of Latin luctārī to Spanish lucha demonstrates a common sound correspondence, namely, that Latin -ct- often (though not always) becomes -ch- in Spanish. Also compare Latin nox (stem noct-) with Spanish noche “night,” Latin octõ with Spanish ocho “eight,” and Latin ​​prōfectus with Spanish provecho “profit.” Ineluctable was first recorded in English circa 1620.

Paschal “of or relating to Easter or to Passover” derives from Late Latin paschālis, of the same meaning, which is the adjectival form of Pascha “Easter, Passover.” Pascha, as with many words in Latin that contain the telltale ch, is adapted from Ancient Greek Páscha, which is itself borrowed from Aramaic pasḥā. The ultimate source is Hebrew pesaḥ “Passover,” derived from the verb pāsaḥ “to pass over.” In this way, Passover is a calque of the original Hebrew term; to learn more about calques, compare the recent Word of the Day inveigle. Unlike the majority of European languages, which use derivatives of Latin Pascha for both Passover and Easter, most Germanic languages derive their term for Easter from the same source as the word east—not, per popular misconception, from a Middle Eastern goddess such as Astara or Ishtar. Paschal was first recorded in English in the early 15th century.

Indite “to compose or write, as a poem” sounds identical to the verb indict, and there’s a good reason for that: both indite and indict were originally the same word, and while indite more directly preserves the Old French spelling of enditer, indict preserves the earlier Latin spelling of indictus “having been announced.” Indictus is the perfect participle of indīcere “to announce, proclaim,” which is based on dīcere “to say, tell.” Dīcere (stem dict-) is the source of speech-related terms such as contradict, valedictorian, and (of course) dictionary, and it comes from the same ultimate source as the recent Word of the Day vendetta. Indite was first recorded in English in the mid-14th century.

Almsgiving “the act of donating to needy people” is a compound of alms “donations to needy people” and giving. The seemingly simple word alms has a complicated history; it is a contraction of Old English ælmesse, which was borrowed from Late Latin eleēmosyna, source of Word of the Day eleemosynary. While most words of Latin origin passed into Middle English by way of Old French, a minority of terms were borrowed into Old English directly from later versions of the Latin language. Other examples of early borrowings include chalk, cheese, cook, street, wall, and wine. Turning back to Late Latin, eleēmosyna derives from Ancient Greek eleēmosýnē “compassion,” from éleos “pity.” Almsgiving was first recorded in English long before the year 1000 AD.