Word of the Day

The Yiddish adjective haimish (also spelled heimish) means “cozy, comfortable, unpretentious,” pretty much the same as English homey. Heimish comes from the Middle High German adjective heimisch (German heimisch), a compound of the Middle High German noun heim “home,” from Proto-Germanic haimaz, the same source as Old English hām (English home). The adjective suffix -ish comes from Proto-Germanic -iska-, source of English -ish. The Proto-Germanic suffix is related to the Greek suffix -iskos, used to form diminutive nouns such as neanískos “youth,” a diminutive of neanías “young man.” Heimish entered English in the mid-1950s.

The adverb lickety-split, “at great speed; rapidly,” was originally and remains mostly a colloquialism. The origin of lickety is fanciful—an extension of lick “to move quickly, run at full speed.” And split means “fraction,” as in split second. Lickety-split entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

Flummoxed, “utterly bewildered or confused,” ought to leave you flummoxed. The word is a colloquialism, the past participle or adjective of the verb flummox, where the trail turns cold. Flummox has no firm etymology, but it may come from or be akin to British dialect (Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Cheshire, all of which border on Wales) flummox, flummocks “to hack, to mangle,” or the noun flummock “a sloven,” or the verb flummock “to confuse, bewilder.” The verb, spelled flummux’d, first appears in 1833 in England with the meaning “backed down, backed out of a promise, disappointed.”

Foible, “a minor weakness of character, a slight flaw or defect,” comes from the noun use of the obsolete French adjective foible “the weak point of the blade of a sword” (the strong point of a sword blade is the forte). Foible is first recorded in Old French about 1175; it derives from Vulgar Latin febilis, from Latin flēbilis “lamentable, worthy of tears, causing tears,” a derivative of the verb flēre “to weep, cry, lament.” In French, foible was replaced by faible, another derivative of febilis, and the source of English feeble. Foible, in the sense “the weak point of the blade of a sword,” entered English in the first half of the 17th century; the sense “defect in character” arose in the second half of the 17th century.

Avant-garde originally meant the “advance guard” of an army or other major military force in the field (that sense is now replaced by vanguard, a shortened form of avant-garde). Avant-garde used in its military sense died out a little after 1800. Its current sense “the advance group in any field, especially in the visual, literary, or musical arts,” first appears in 1910. Avant-garde, spelled aduant garde, entered English in the second half of the 15th century.