Word of the Day

Volant “engaged in or having the power of flight” is a borrowing from French, in which it means “flying” and is the present participle of the verb voler “to fly, steal.” Voler derives from Latin volāre “to fly,” which is of mysterious and uncertain origin. Some linguists derive volāre from a Proto-Indo-European root, gwel- “to raise the arm, throw, reach,” under the assumption that the definition could have shifted from “to raise the arm” to “to spread one’s wings,” but this hypothesis is not universally accepted. If volāre does come from this root, it is a cognate of Ancient Greek ballein “to throw” (as in ballistic, parabola, problem, and symbol). Volant was first recorded in English in the first decade of the 1500s.

Angst “a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish” is a borrowing from German, in which the noun is capitalized, from Old High German angust. If you are wondering whether angst is related to anxiety and anguish, your suspicion is correct; all three words ultimately derive from a Proto-Indo-European root, angh- “tight, painful,” which is the source of numerous pain-related terms beginning with ag-, ang-, or anx-. From Old English, derivatives include hangnail (originally agnail, but altered by association with hang). Via Old Norse angr “sorrow, grief,” English has borrowed anger. Through Latin angere “to strangle” (stem anx-) and angustus “narrow,” we have anxiety and anguish. Last, from Ancient Greek anchónē “strangling,” English has inherited angina “an attack of painful spasms.” Angst was first recorded in English in the 1840s.

Atoll “a ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a shallow lagoon” is an adaptation by way of French from Divehi atoḷu. Divehi is the official language of the Maldives, an archipelago country in the northern Indian Ocean comprising more than two dozen atolls, and belongs to the Indic group of Indo-European languages. Atoḷu may derive from Sanskrit ántara “within,” a distant cognate of interior (via Latin) and entero- “inside” (via Ancient Greek). An alternative theory is that atoḷu derives from aḍal “a sinking reef,” which is a term from Malayalam, a Dravidian language unrelated to the Indo-European language family. Atoll was first recorded in English circa 1620.

Neurodiversity “the variation in neurological structure and function among human beings” is a recent coinage based on the combining form neuro- and the noun diversity. Neuro- “nerve” derives from Ancient Greek neûron “tendon, nerve,” which is distantly related to Latin nervus “tendon” and may be related to English sinew. Diversity comes from Latin dīversitās “difference,” from the verb dīvertere “to divert.” The ultimate source of dīvertere is the same as that for the recent Word of the Day selection verst: the Proto-Indo-European root wert- “to turn.” Neurodiversity was first recorded in English in the late 1990s.

Evanesce “to disappear gradually” comes from the Latin verb ēvānēscere “to disappear,” from the prefix ex- (also ē-) “out of, from” and the verb vānēscere “to fade away.” We already learned about the prefix ex- as part of the recent Word of the Day selection eradicate, while vānēscere derives from the adjective vānus “empty, vain” and the inchoative suffix -ēscere. Vānus is also the source of words such as vanity and vanish, and -ēscere roughly means “to become, start to be,” as we learned from recent Word of the Day selections deliquesce and iridescent, both of which are based on this suffix. Evanesce was first recorded in English circa 1820.