Word of the Day
Learn a new word every day! The Dictionary.com team of language experts carefully selects each Word of the Day to add some panache to your vocabulary.
a bookseller, especially a dealer in rare or used books.
Bibliopole is not a misspelling of bibliophile: It is a legitimate word meaning “bookseller (especially of used or rare books),” from Latin bibliopōla from Greek bibliopṓlēs, a compound of biblio-, the combining form of biblíon “book,” and naturalized in English in Bible, bibliography, bibliophile, etc. The Greek combining form -pṓlēs “seller,” occurs only in compound nouns and is a derivative of the verb pōleîn “to offer for sale, sell.” Bibliopole entered English in the early 18th century.
universal or whole.
The adjective versal, “universal; whole,” is a colloquial shortening of universal. But versal achieved respectability because of its first appearance, in Romeo and Juliet (written about 1591–96), when the Nurse tells Romeo that whenever she tells Juliet that Count Paris wants to marry Juliet, Juliet “lookes as pale as any clout [rag, dishrag] in the versall world.”
the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.
Sustainability, now most commonly meaning “the quality of not depleting natural resources," is a transparent compound of the adjective sustainable “able to be supported or maintained,” and the common noun suffix -ity. The oldest usage of sustainability was as a legal term “the capacity of being sustained as true, or upheld as valid by legal argument” (1835). The current environmental sense, specifically mentioning wildlife and ecosystems, arose about 1980.
pertaining to poetry.
The adjective Parnassian originally meant “pertaining to Mount Parnassus,” a mountain in central Greece on which Delphi is located. Delphi was sacred to Apollo as the god of prophecy and the god of music, which he shared with the Muses, the goddesses of music, poetry, drama, history, and dancing. Parnassian comes via the Latin adjective Parnassius (also Parnāsius) from Greek Parnā́sios, the adjective derivative of Parnās(s)ós. Sixty percent of Greek words have no reliable etymology: Parnās(s)ós is one of them. Parnassian entered English in the second half of the 16th century.
out-of-doors; in the open air.
Very many people became used to dining alfresco in 2020. In Italian al fresco means “in the fresh air, in the cool air,” and is composed of the prepositional phrase al “to the” (from the preposition a “to, on,” and the masculine singular article il, lo, and the adjective fresco “cool, fresh”). Italian fresco comes from Old High German frisc (English fresh and modern German frisch). The Italian noun fresco “painting or a painting on a fresh, moist, plaster surface with colors ground up in water,” entered English at the end of the 16th century. In contemporary Italian slang, al fresco means "in prison" (prisons formerly being cold, dark, dank). Alfresco entered English in the first half of the 18th century.
