Word of the Day

Foozle “to bungle; play clumsily; bungle a stroke at golf,” perhaps comes from German dialect fuseln “to work badly, clumsily, hurriedly.” The verb foozle is somehow connected with the noun foozle “an old fogey; a bungled stroke at golf.” The verb and noun both entered English in the late 1850s.

Vernal “relating to the season of spring” comes from the pretty rare Latin adjective vernālis, a derivative of the far more common adjective vernus. Vernus is a derivative of the noun vēr “the season of spring,” from Proto-Indo-European wesṛ-, which becomes vār in Old Norse, éar (and wéar) in Greek, vasarà in Lithuanian, and vesna in Old Church Slavonic. Vernal entered English in the first half of the 16th century.

Gasconade “extravagant boasting; boastful talk” comes straight from French gasconnade “bragging, boasting, a boastful story,” from the noun Gascon, denoting an inhabitant of Gascony in southwest France. Gascon ultimately comes from Latin Vasco, Vascō (inflectional stem Vascon-, Vascōn-), originally denoting the inhabitants of Vasconia, the territory on either side of the Pyrenees. Vascones becomes Guascones in Medieval Latin: Vasco is the source of Basque, and Guascon the source of Gascon. Gasconade entered English in the mid-17th century.

Nescience, “lack of knowledge, ignorance,” comes straight from Late Latin nescientia, a noun formed from nescient-, the stem of nesciēns, the present participle of nescīre “to be ignorant, not to know,” and the Latin (and Greek) noun suffix -ia. In Latin (and other archaic Indo-European languages, with the exception of Greek), ne- was the original negative for sentences: thus the pair sciō “I know,” and nesciō “I don’t know.” The usual sentence negative in Classical Latin is nōn, probably from earlier noenum "not one (thing)," itself a strengthening of ne with oenum (Classical Latin ūnum). Something similar happened in English, the adverb not being a reduced form of nought (also naught), a compound of the negative adverb ne and the noun wiht “thing, wight.” Nescience entered English in the first half of the 17th century.

Macushla is a phonetic English spelling of the Erse (Irish Gaelic) mo chuisle, literally “my pulse,” or translated more romantically, “my heartbeat, my sweetheart, darling.” The mo-, ma- in macushla, mo chuisle means “my”; cushla, chuisle “pulse, heartbeat, vein,” comes from an earlier Erse cuisle, of uncertain etymology, but most likely a borrowing of Latin pulsus “striking, beating, pulse.” Cuisle appears in another Irish idiom: a chuisle “my dear, darling,” in full, a chuisle mo chroí, literally, “pulse of my heart.” (The phrase Mother Machree “Mother dear” entered English in the first half of the 19th century.) The a is the Gaelic vocative particle, a particle used in direct address, and equivalent to English exclamation O. Chroí “heart” comes from Old Irish crid-, which closely resembles Welsh craidd, Latin cord-, Greek kard-, and Hittite karts, all meaning “heart.” Macushla entered English in the first half of the 19th century.