Word of the Day

Septentrion “the north” derives from Latin septentriōnēs, which refers to the seven stars of the asterism Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major (the “Greater Bear”). These seven stars, because of their location in the northern sky near the North Star, have long had an association with the north in various cultures; we only need to look at the state flag of Alaska to see this association alive and well today! Latin septentriōnēs is equivalent to septem “seven” and triō (stem triōn-) “plowing ox.” Another Latin word for “the north” is the noun boreās, the source of aurora borealis (literally, the “northern dawn”), which is a borrowing of Ancient Greek Boréās, the personification of the north wind. In modern Romance languages, instead of deriving from Latin septentriōnēs or boreās, the words for “north” (such as French nord and Spanish norte) are adapted from Old English north. Septentrion was first recorded in English in the late 14th century.

Abient “tending to move away from a stimulus or situation” comes from the Latin term abiēns (stem abient-) “going away,” the present participle of the verb abīre “to go away, exit, depart.” Abīre is formed from the preposition ab “from, away” and the verb īre “to go,” which has two stems: -ient and -it. The verb īre also gives rise to ambīre “to go around,” inīre “to go into, begin,” and trānsīre “to go across, cross,” and to see evidence of all these Latin verbs in English today, compare ambient and ambition, initial and initiate, and transient and transit. The -it stem also pops up in circuit (from Latin circumīre “to go round, circle”), exit (from exīre “to go out”), and even obituary (from obīre “to go toward,” often used euphemistically in the sense “to meet one’s death”). Abient was first recorded in English in the early 1930s.

Jornada “a full day's travel across a desert” is a loanword from Spanish, and prior to Spanish, the term derived via Occitan, a language once widely spoken in southern France, from a Vulgar Latin word akin to diurnāta “a day's time, day's work,” from Latin diurnus “daily.” Though some modern Romance languages derive their words for “day” from the Latin noun diēs “day” (compare Portuguese dia, Romanian zi, and Spanish día), others base their words for “day” on the adjective diurnus (compare French jour, Italian giorno, and Occitan jorn). Both diēs and diurnus come from the Proto-Indo-European root dyeu- “to shine; sky, heaven,” which is also the ultimate source of the recent Words of the Day toujours perdrix, circadian, and jovial. Jornada was first recorded in English in the 1650s.

Ballyhoo “blatant advertising or publicity” is a word with an unclear etymology. The word is an Americanism, meaning that it originated in the collection of dialects of English spoken in the United States, and along with fellow Americanisms such as hobo, jazz, and jitney, ballyhoo’s origins are obscure—though, of course, there abound several theories with varying degrees of probability. One proposal relates to ballyhoo’s earlier, now obsolete sense of “speech by a show presenter that boastfully advertises a performance,” which connects ballyhoo to carnival and circus lingo. From here, if this hypothesis holds weight, ballyhoo could be a shortened form of ballyhooly “Hell,” perhaps named rather unaffectionately after a village in northern County Cork, Ireland: the logic here is that, following the pattern of the phrase to raise hell, ballyhooly was clipped at the end and narrowed in definition from “Hell” to “clamor, outcry” and then again to “showman’s speech.” Other hypotheses about the origins of ballyhoo include an inversion of the elements that form hullabaloo “uproar.” Ballyhoo was first recorded in English in the 1830s.

Rosolio “a cordial flavored with rose petals or spices” is a borrowing from Italian, and though a rosolio can include rose petals among its ingredients, the drink is not related to the word rose. Rosolio is a variant, likely because of the influence of Italian rosa “rose” and olio “oil,” of rosoli, from Medieval Latin rōs sōlis “dew of the sun.” The term rosemary has a similar origin, deriving not from rose and Mary but rather from rōs maris “dew of the sea.” Latin rōs “dew” has relatively few descendants in English, other than obscure, obsolete terms such as rorid and rory, both meaning “dewy,” but Latin sōl “sun” is the source of solar, solarium “sunroom,” parasol, and solstice. Rosolio was first recorded in English in the 1810s.