Word of the Day

While the legends involving manticores were likely tall tales about lions and tigers and similar beasts, manticore is not a compound of English man and tiger, which is a common misconception. Instead, manticore “a legendary monster with a man’s head, a lion’s body, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion” derives via Middle English from Latin mantichōrās, which was a either a variant or a misreading of Ancient Greek martichṓras. This word, in turn, was borrowed from the Old Persian element martiya- “man” and an additional Iranian source akin to Modern Persian -khōr “eat, devour.” The martiya- element descends from a Proto-Indo-European root, mer- “to harm, die”—compare immortal (via Latin) and ambrosia (via Ancient Greek), both literally meaning “not of death”—while the -khōr element is cognate to English swallow and swill. Manticore was first recorded in English in the early 1300s.

Mojo “exceptional ability, good luck, success” in its earliest sense denoted an object that was believed to carry a magic spell. From there, the word expanded to indicate magic itself and personal use of magic, and mojo’s popular use today in reference to seemingly magical influence or ability is informal. Mojo is of uncertain origin but is most likely related to the word moco “witchcraft, magic” in Gullah, a creole language spoken by an African-American population located along the southern Atlantic coast. Though Gullah is based on English, it incorporates ample vocabulary from the Niger–Congo language subfamily, which is spread across much of sub-Saharan Africa and includes languages such as Fulani, Mende, Yoruba, Swahili, and Zulu. Gullah moco may have its origin in one of these languages, as the Fulani word for “medicine man” is moco’o. Mojo was first recorded in the late 1920s.

Colubrine “of or resembling a snake” derives from the Latin adjective colubrīnus, of the same meaning, from coluber “snake.” Despite the similar spelling, coluber is not the source of coil, the circular gathering movement that typifies snakes; coil derives instead from the Latin verb colligere “to gather together,” and coil’s resemblance to colubrine is a happy coincidence. Much as English has multiple names for wolverines, as we learned in yesterday’s Word of the Day podcast about quickhatch, the Romans had several words for snakes. In addition to coluber, two other Latin terms meaning “snake” that have descendants in English were dracō and serpēns, which you may also recognize as constellations. From dracō, originally a borrowing from Ancient Greek, we have dragon as well as draconian and the name of an antagonist in the Harry Potter book series. From serpēns, literally meaning “crawling,” English has serpent and serpentine. Colubrine was first recorded in English in the 1520s.

Quickhatch “wolverine” is a borrowing of East Cree kwi˙hkwaha˙če˙w, with the spelling and pronunciation altered significantly probably because of association with the similar-sounding yet unrelated words quick and hatch. East Cree belongs to the Algonquian family of languages, and the cognate of kwi˙hkwaha˙če˙w in East Cree’s close relative Montagnais was kwa·hkwa·če·w, which was borrowed into French and became carcajou, another name for the wolverine. Wolverines are also known as gluttons, and while glutton is of Latin origin, it is used as a name for wolverines as a translation of German Vielfrass “eating much.” Quickhatch was first recorded in English in the late 1600s.

Penumbral “relating to or being a shadowy area” is the adjectival form of New Latin penumbra, which 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler coined in 1604 as a combination of Latin paene “almost” and umbra “shade.” Umbra is also the source of the English terms somber, umber, umbrage, and umbrella, all of which originally had senses related to shadows or darkness. While penumbra and umbra in the context of astronomy today both refer to the shadow that results when a planetary body cuts off direct light, a penumbra results when the light is only partially cut off, while an umbra results when the light is fully blocked. Penumbral was first recorded in English in the 1660s.