Word of the Day

Refractory, “stubborn, obstinate,” is a respelling (or even a misspelling) of earlier refractary, which comes straight from Latin refractārius, with the same senses. Refractārius is a derivative of refractus, the past participle of the verb refringere “to break, break back, break open,” a compound of the prefix re- “again, back again, back” and the simple verb frangere “to break, shatter, smash.” Refractary entered English in the second half of the 16th century; the spelling refractory first occurs in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602).

Mammock, a noun and verb meaning “a fragment; to break,” has several spellings, including mommick, mommock, mammick. Unfortunately, the word has no reliable etymology: the only thing scholars agree on is the suffix -ock, used to form diminutive nouns such as hillock (“a small hill”). The noun sense of mammock entered English in the first half of the 16th century; the verb sense first appears in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1623).

Exonumia, a relatively new noun meaning “items such as subway tokens or bus tokens that resemble money but do not circulate as money,” is formed from the originally Greek adverb and combining form éxō “out, outside, without” and the first syllable of numismatics “the study or collecting of coins, medals, or paper money.” Numismatics in turn is a derivative of the Late Latin noun numisma (stem numismat-) from Latin nomisma “coin, medal, token,” from Greek nómisma “established usage, custom, current coin.” The final element -ia is the noun suffix (-ia in Latin, -ía in Greek), familiar in learned English words like agoraphobia and anesthesia. Exonumia entered English in the early 1960s.

The odd noun sumpsimus, “adherence to a correct word or practice while rejecting an erroneous but more common one; a person who stubbornly adheres to such correctness,” has an equally odd history. Sumpsimus is actually a Latin verb form “we have taken,” the first person plural perfect indicative of sūmere “to take, take up.” Sumpsimus is part of the priest’s postcommunion prayer in the old Latin liturgy before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and the entire sentence reads Quod ōre sūmpsimus, Domine, pūrā mente capiāmus “What we have taken by mouth, O Lord, may we keep with a pure mind.” The traditional story behind sumpsimus is that Erasmus, the Dutch humanist and scholar, wrote a letter in 1516 about an English priest who, when he was corrected about his use of incorrect mumpsimus for the correct sūmpsimus, said he would not change his old mumpsimus for the new sumpsimus. Thus mumpsimus, the opposite of sumpsimus, means “adherence to an incorrect word or practice while rejecting the correct one, or a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.” Sumpsimus (and mumpsimus) entered English in the first half of the 16th century.

The primary meaning nowadays of the adjective celluloid is “pertaining to the movies.” The noun celluloid refers to the hard, explosively flammable plastic that formerly was used to make movies until about 1950 (it was discontinued because of its flammability and tendency to decompose). Celluloid was originally a trademark (1869), a word composed of cellulose and the familiar suffix -oid “resembling, like”: Celluloid is something that resembles cellulose. Some people may remember from literature or the movies (or from Looney Tunes) the celluloid dickeys (pieces of clothing made to look like the front or collar of a shirt) that would pop out of a man’s waistcoat or cummerbund and roll up to his throat. Krusty the Klown of The Simpsons wore a dickey in an act of his that bombed badly (The Last Temptation of Krust, February 22, 1998). Celluloid entered English in the second half of the 19th century.