Word of the Day

The adjective lackadaisical, “lacking interest or determination; listless; lazy; indolent,” comes from the interjection, adjective, and noun lackadaisy. Lackadaisy as an interjection expresses dismay, sorrow or disapproval; as an adjective it means “given to crying lackadaisy; and as a noun, “a person given to crying lackadaisy.” Lackadaisy is a variant of the archaic interjection lackaday, a shortened variant of alack the day. Middle English has the interjection alacke (also alagge), possibly related to the noun lak, lack(e) “a lack, fault, shortcoming,” and alack the day may have originally meant “shame on the day (for turning out like this),” like alas the day. Lackadaisical weakened in meaning from a person who cried lackadaisy to someone who complained about trivialities, then still further to someone who was sentimental, and finally to someone who was just lazy. Lackadaisical entered English in the second half of the 18th century.

The English verb machinate comes from Latin māchinātus, the past participle of the verb māchinārī “to invent, contrive, devise artfully, plot.” Māchinārī has both neutral and pejorative senses, but English machinate has mostly pejorative or hostile senses. Māchinārī is a derivative of the noun māchina “apparatus, mechanism, machine,” a borrowing from Doric Greek māchanā́ “contrivance, machine, crane.” Machinate entered English in the first half of the 16th century.

Hardscrabble, “yielding a meager return for much effort,” is an Americanism that originally began as two separate words: the adjective hard “difficult, arduous” and the noun scrabble “scratching, clawing, scramble”; the phrase meant “painful effort under hard conditions,” later applied particularly to farmland that required much work for little reward. By the first half of the 19th century, Hard-Scrabble (variously spelled) was used as a placename for a remote town or region where life was difficult. The current sense “yielding meager results” dates from the second half of the 19th century. Hardscrabble entered English in the second half of the 18th century.

Scots and Northern Irish thrawn, “contrary; peevish; stubborn,” in origin is the past participle of the verb thraw “to twist, wrench, distort,” the Scots form of throw. The sense “to twist, wrench” is one of the senses of Middle English throuen and Old English thrāwan in addition to the more common sense “to hurl, cast, throw.” Throw and thraw are related to Dutch draaien “to turn, rotate” and German drehen “to twist, turn.” Readers familiar with the "Star Wars" extended universe may recognize thrawn for a different reason: Grand Admiral Thrawn is a character introduced by author Timothy Zahn in the 1991 novel Heir to the Empire. In the "Star Wars" novels, however, the name Thrawn is short for Mitth’raw’nuruodo. While we can’t say whether the name was inspired by the Scots term, it seems fair to classify the character Thrawn as a rather peevish or stubborn fellow. Thrawn entered English in the late 15th century.

Equanimity, “mental or emotional stability or composure,” ultimately comes from Latin aequanimitās (inflectional stem aequanimitāt-), originally “goodwill, favor,” and later “calmness of mind, tranquillity.” Aequanimitās is a derivative of the rare adjective aequanimis, also aequanimus “calm, composed.” The adjectives are compounds of aequus “even, plain, equal” and the noun animus “mind, spirit, feelings.” The last element of equanimity, -ity, comes via the Old French suffix -ite from the Latin abstract noun suffix -itās, which expresses a state, condition, or quality. Equanimity entered English in the early 17th century.