Word of the Day

Sciamachy “an act of fighting a shadow” is adapted from Ancient Greek skiamachía, equivalent to skiá “shadow” and máchē “battle.” Skiá is sometimes romanized as scia-, consistent with the Latin trend of changing Greek kappa to Roman c, but other derivatives of skiá in English hew closely to the original spelling and appear as skia-, as in skiagraph “a photographic image produced by the action of x-rays or nuclear radiation.” Máchē is a popular element in technical terms related to fighting or warfare. When combined with taûros “bull,” we get tauromachy “bullfighting,” and when combined with lógos “word,” we get logomachy “a dispute about or concerning words.” Sciamachy was first recorded in English circa 1620.

Enumerate “to ascertain the number of” comes from the Latin verb ēnumerāre “to count up,” equivalent to the element ē- “out of, from” and the noun numerus “number.” Both enumerate and number come from Latin numerus, but how did that stray b appear in number? As Latin evolved into French, the unstressed e in numerus was slowly lost in a process called syncope; to compare, in English, note how we pronounce the adjective every as “ev’ry.” Because the consonant cluster -mr- was a bit awkward to say, though a pattern called excrescence, the consonant b was inserted between the two letters, producing Old French nombre—much like how hamster and something in English are often pronounced as “hampster” and “sump-thing.” While number passed into English by way of French and therefore featured these two sound shifts, enumerate was borrowed directly from Latin with minimal changes. Enumerate was first recorded in English in the 1640s.

Pindan “semiarid country” is an adaptation of the word bindan in the Bardi language. Bardi is an endangered language spoken in Western Australia’s northern Kimberley region, which borders the Indian Ocean and the Timor Sea. Unlike most aboriginal languages of Australia, which belong to the Pama-Nyungan family (as we learned in the Word of the Day podcast about yakka), Bardi belongs to the Nyulnyulan family, all languages of which are spoken in the same area of what is now Western Australia. In North America, the Pacific coast hosts the most linguistic diversity, with over 20 unrelated Indigenous language families and language isolates spoken from Juneau to San Diego; in Australia, a similar phenomenon exists on the continent’s northern shore, which more than a dozen discrete language families call home. Pindan was first recorded in English in the early 1930s.

Sylvan “consisting of or abounding in woods or trees” derives from Latin sylvānus, a variant of silvānus “of or relating to the forest,” from silva “forest” and the adjectival suffix -ānus. Though silva is spelled with an i, sylvan and its relatives, such as the place names Pennsylvania and Transylvania as well as the given names Sylvester and Sylvia, contain the letter y. There are two reasons for this shift: Ancient Greek influence and the lack of spelling consistency during the Medieval Latin period. Ancient Greek contains two words for “wood”—hȳ́lē and xýlon—that bear a passing resemblance to Latin silva, and as the letters i and y became interchangeable in Latin during the Middle Ages, it was rather easy for the variant spelling sylva to emerge. Sylvan was first recorded in English circa 1560.

Bibliophile “a person who loves or collects books” is a compound of the combining forms biblio- “book” and -phile “lover.” The form biblio- is adapted from Ancient Greek biblíon “papyrus roll, strip of papyrus,” which is the namesake of Býblos, the Greek name for the Phoenician seaport of Gebal (or Gubal), where papyrus was once manufactured and exported. Byblos still exists today in modern Lebanon, albeit with the name Jbeil (standard Arabic Jubayl). One theory about the origin of the name Býblos is that it resulted from Ancient Greek traders’ misinterpretation of the name Gebal, but some linguists argue that these two names are unrelated and that Býblos is of pre-Greek origin. Though books have long been a primary mode for recording and transmitting information, the origin of the Ancient Greek word for “book” is uncertain—how ironic! Bibliophile was first recorded in English circa 1820.