Word of the Day

Armscye “the armhole opening in a garment” is a compound of arm and the Scots term scye “armhole.” Because scye is a borrowing from another dialect and of unknown origin, a common misinterpretation is that armscye derives from a phrase such as “arm’s eye.” This mistake is known as an eggcorn, which is a type of folk etymology that refers to the alteration of a word or phrase that has been misheard or misinterpreted. The word eggcorn itself comes from a mistaken belief that acorn, which is of Old English origin, is a recent compound of Modern English egg and corn. Other eggcorns that may ring a bell include free reign instead of the correct free rein and for all intensive purposes instead of the correct for all intents and purposes. Armscye was first recorded in English in the 1920s.

Vespertine “of, relating to, or occurring in the evening” derives from Latin vesper “evening,” which comes from a Proto-Indo-European root with the same sense. Through this root, vesper is a cognate of the English term west, with a shift in definition because of the direction of the sunset. As we learned with the recent Word of the Day aureate, which may be related to east and Latin aurōra “dawn,” there is often an overlap between the cardinal directions and the location of the sun. Another distant relative of vesper is Ancient Greek hésperos “evening,” and its derivative Hesperus “evening star” is a nickname for the planet Venus. Vespertine was first recorded in English at the turn of the 16th century.

Pariah “a social outcast” is at its core a term for a member of a low caste in the traditional cultures of the southern Indian subcontinent. The word was adapted from Tamil paṟaiyan, literally meaning “drummer” because of that low caste’s hereditary duty. Paṟaiyan, in turn, derives from paṟai “drum.” While the majority of people from India speak an Indo-European language, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian family is predominant in southern India. Dravidian languages include Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada—each spoken by tens of millions of people. Pariah was first recorded in English in the early 1600s.

Gramarye “occult learning” is a doublet of grammar, and both derive via Old French gramaire and Latin gramatica from Ancient Greek grammatikḕ (téchnē) “grammatical (art),” from grammatikós “knowing one’s letters” and earlier grámma “letter, something drawn; small weight.” The story of how an ancient word for “letter” evolved into gramarye, grammar, and even glamour (via Scots) is full of semantic twists and turns. The sense “knowledge of letters” shifted to the broader definition of “the study of how a language’s sentences are constructed,” and this is the definition of grammar today. In the Middle Ages, because grammar was taught only among the upper classes, grammar became a symbol of general “higher” learning, which also included subjects such as astrology, magic, and the occult at the time. Glamour and gramarye are simply variants of grammar that kept this connection to magic, though glamour later shifted again to refer to enchantingly good looks. Gramarye was first recorded in English in the early 1300s.

Inculcate “to implant by repeated statement or admonition” derives from the Latin verb inculcāre “to trample, impress, stuff in,” a combination of the preposition in “in” and the noun calx (stem calc-) “heel,” which is also the source of calcaneus, the bone found in the heel. Calx is easily confused with its unrelated homonym calx “limestone,” though descendants of both words are often found today in educational settings: while inculcate, from calx “heel,” can refer to a teaching style, derivatives of calx “limestone” include chalk and, through a diminutive form meaning “small stone,” calculus. Inculcate was first recorded in English in the mid-1500s.