Word of the Day

Circumstellar “surrounding a star” is a compound of the element circum- “around” and the adjective stellar “of or relating to the stars.” Circum- comes from Latin circus “circle,” which is the source of English terms such as circa, circle, circular, circumference, circus, and the recent Word of the Day circadian. Latin has two words meaning “star”—sīdus (stem sīder-) and stella. Sīdus largely died out except in technical terms such as sidereal “determined by the stars,” while stella is the source of stellar, constellation, interstellar, and modern Romance words for “star,” such as French étoile and Spanish estrella. Circumstellar was first recorded in English in the early 1950s.

Violescent “tending to a violet color” derives from the Latin noun viola “violet” and the inchoative suffix -escent “becoming, starting to be,” as we learned about from the recent Word of the Day evanesce. Viola is of uncertain origin but appears to have a cognate in Ancient Greek: íon “violet.” Ancient Greek once had a letter called wau or digamma, which made the “w” sound and looked like the Roman letter F, but eventually lost the letter entirely; this is how earlier wíon became íon while the “w” was preserved as “v” in Latin viola. A similar phenomenon happened with Ancient Greek oînos (earlier woînos) and Latin vīnum “wine” as well as Ancient Greek elaíā (earlier elaíwā) and Latin olīva “olive.” Violescent was first recorded in English in the 1840s.

Trailblaze “​​to be a pioneer in something” is a back formation from the noun trailblazer. Back formations are words formed from other, slightly longer words by dropping what appears to be a suffix; in English, this frequently results in verbs formed from nouns, such as edit from editor, or—as we learned from the recent Word of the Day fomites—singular nouns formed from plurals. Trailblazer is a compound of trail “path across a wild region” and blaze “a mark made on a tree.” An earlier meaning of blaze, however, was “a white area on an animal’s face,” and the definition has since expanded to refer to similarly noticeable spots elsewhere. Blaze in the sense of “fire, torch” is related to blaze in the sense “white area,” albeit more distantly; in the Indo-European language family, words for both light and dark colors often derive from roots meaning “fire,” “shine,” or “burn.” Trailblaze was first recorded in English in the early 1900s.

Will-o’-the-wisp “a flitting phosphorescent light seen at night” is an abbreviated form of the term Will with the wisp. In this term, Will is the common nickname for William, while wisp refers to a small bundle of straw or hay that is lit for use as a torch. The name William derives from a Germanic name roughly meaning “desired helmet”; compare English will “the power of control the mind has over its own actions” and helm “a medieval helmet completely enclosing the head.” The inclusion of the nickname Will in will-o’-the-wisp is for the same reason why the nickname Jack appears in jack-o’-lantern, which used to be a synonym of will-o’-the-wisp: both Will and Jack were common names in England at the time, and they were used as stock names for the mythical figure who carried a light in marshland at night. Will-o’-the-wisp was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 1600s.

Corvine “of or relating to crows” derives from the Latin adjective corvīnus, from the noun corvus “raven” and the adjectival suffix -īnus. A common misconception is that corvus shares an origin with the similar-sounding English word crow, but in fact—as we learned from the recent Word of the Day ravenous—corvus shares an origin instead with English raven. Latin c- frequently corresponds to Old English h-, and Latin corvus is therefore related to Old English hrǣfn, which became raven in modern English. This pattern also explains how Latin caput connects to English head (Old English hēafod) and how Latin cor (stem cord-) is cognate to English heart (Old English heorte). Corvine was first recorded in the 1650s.