Word of the Day

Oeillade “an amorous glance” has been in English for more than 400 years, but it remains completely unnaturalized. The word is obviously French, its pronunciation not obvious. Oeillade in French means a glance that is furtive, conspiratorial, or secret, or a glance that is flirting and amorous: “significant glance” or “meaningful glance” conveys the English meaning but not its esprit. The first half of oeillade, oeil, means “eye” in French and is a regular development from Latin oculus, source of English oculist and binocular “(with) both eyes.” The noun suffix -ade is the French variant of the common Romance suffix that appears as -ado in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Occitan, but as -ato in Italian. The suffix comes from the Latin past participle suffix -ātus. The English noun ogle "an amorous, flirtatious glance," a synonym of oeillade, ultimately comes from Dutch or Low German oeglen, oghelen “to make eyes at,” a derivative of the noun oog “eye”; but ogle, too, fails the amour test. Oeillade entered English in the late 16th century.

Camaraderie, “a spirit of trust and goodwill among people closely associated in an activity or endeavor,” is a French word, a derivative of French camerade, camarade “roommate.” The French noun comes from Spanish camarada “chamberful,” later “chambermate.” Spanish camarada is a derivative of cámara “chamber, room,” from Latin camara, camera “arched roof, vaulted roof or ceiling," a borrowing of Greek kamára (with the same meanings). Camaraderie entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

Lunisolar, meaning “pertaining to or based upon the relations or joint action of the moon and the sun,” is used exclusively in astronomy, as in lunisolar calendar or lunisolar precession. The word comes straight from the Latin nouns lūna “moon” and sōl “sun” (the -i- is a Latin connecting vowel). It is no accident that lūna looks so much like Russian luná: They both come from the same Proto-Indo-European noun louksnā, from the root leuk-, louk-, luk- “to shine, be bright.” Louksnā becomes raokhshnā “shining, brilliant, radiant” in Avestan (the Old Iranian language of the Zoroastrian scriptures); as a proper name, Raokhshnā is transliterated in Greek as Rhōxánē Roxanne (the English spelling was affected by the name Anne). Raokhshnā was an Iranian princess who become Alexander the Great’s wife (she bore Alexander a posthumous son). Latin sōl comes from Proto-Indo-European sāwel (from sāwel to sāwol to sāol to sōl). The derivative noun sāwelios “sun” becomes hḗlios in (Classical Attic) Greek. Greek dialects have the forms ēélios (Homeric), hā́lios and āélios (Doric), and awelios (Cretan). Lunisolar entered English in the second half of the 17th century.

Galimatias, “confused or unintelligible talk,” is a masculine singular noun in French. It first appears in 1580 in an essay of Montaigne’s; it first appears in English in 1653 in a translation of Rabelais. Galimatias has no reliable etymology: scholars suggest a connection with gallimaufry “a hodgepodge, a jumble,” but these are just guesses.

Parlous and its variant perlous, meaning “dangerous,” are contractions of perilous, which dates from the end of the 13th century. Perilous comes from Old French perillus, perilous, perilleus (with many more spelling variants) “dangerous, hazardous,” from Latin perīculōsus. Parlous and perlous both entered English at about the same time, toward the end of the 14th century.