Word of the Day

Schwa, the neutral vowel sound like the a in sofa, comes via German Schwa from Hebrew shəwā, a variant of shāw’, literally “nothingness, emptiness, vanity.” Jewish grammarians used the word to mean “a diacritic mark that shows a neutral vowel quality or no vowel at all.” Schwa entered English toward the end of the 19th century.

There has always been more than a hint of snobbery about banausic, “serving utilitarian purposes only; mechanical; practical.” The word comes from the Greek adjective banausikós, “pertaining to or for artisans,” which is related to the noun bausanía “handicraft; the habits of a mere artisan, bad taste, vulgarity.” Banausikós and bausanía are derivatives of baûnos (also baunós), “furnace, forge,” a pre-Greek word with no known etymology. In modern German Banause “uncouth person” is the exact equivalent of English Philistine. Banausic entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

Amphibious and amphibian have several overlapping meanings in zoology and botany, but in the sense “relating to combined military operations by land and naval forces against a common target,” only amphibious is used. In the mid-1930s, at a time when air power was rapidly developing, the neologisms triphibian and triphibious were coined very useful for describing combined land, sea, and air operations, but an abomination—two abominations, even, for purists. Amphibious ultimately comes from Greek amphíbios “having a double life,” used by science writers about frogs and plants. In later Greek the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus used amphíbios metaphorically to describe the human soul as an inhabitant of two worlds. Amphíbios is composed of two very common Proto-Indo-European roots, ambhi- “on both sides, around” and gweiə-, gwey-, gwī-, gwi- (with many other variants) “to live.” Ambhi- becomes amphí in Greek, as in amphithéātron “amphitheater,” literally, “a place for watching from both sides.” Ambhi- becomes amb(i)- in Latin, a prefix meaning “around, both..,” as in ambiguus “unsettled, undecided.” \ The Greek combining form bio- comes from bíos “life,” from Proto-Indo-European gwios (gw- becomes b- in Greek under certain conditions). The root variant gwī- is the source of Latin vīta “life." Amphibious entered English in the 17th century.

The English noun agglomeration, “a jumbled cluster or mass of varied parts,” comes from Latin agglomerātus, the past participle of agglomerāre “to mass together, pile up, join forces,” a derivative of glomerāre “to roll into a ball, collect into a dense mass.” Glomerāre in turn is a derivative of the noun glomus (inflectional stem glomer-) “a ball, a skein or ball of yarn.” Glomus is related to the Latin nouns globus “round body, round cake, sphere” (English globe) and glēba (also glaeba) “lump or clod of earth” (English glebe “soil, field”). Agglomeration entered English in the second half of the 17th century.

Deliquesce, “to melt away; become liquid,” comes straight from Latin dēliquēscere “to become liquid, dissipate one’s energy,” a compound of the preposition and prefix dē, dē-, here indicating removal, and the verb liquēscere “to melt, decompose, putrefy.” Liquēscere is an inchoative verb (also called an inceptive verb), meaning that the verb indicates the beginning, the inception of an action. In Latin (and in Greek) the suffix -sc- (Latin) and -sk- (Greek) changes a verb of state, such as liquēre “to be liquid, be clear,” to an inceptive verb. Derivatives of liquēre include liquidus “clear, fluid” (English liquid) and liquor “fluidity, liquid character” (English liquor). Deliquesce entered English in the mid-18th century.