Word of the Day

Cryosphere “the part of the earth’s surface where the water is frozen solid” is a compound of the combining form cryo-, which describes cold and ice, and sphere. Cryo- derives from Ancient Greek krýos “icy cold,” which comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root that gives us crystal (from Ancient Greek krýstallos “clear ice”) and both crouton and crustacean (from Latin crusta “crust”). Sphere comes from Ancient Greek sphaîra “ball,” and outside the realm of geometry, the combining form -sphere is often used in English to describe geographic or ecological regions (such as biosphere and noosphere) and air layers (such as atmosphere and stratosphere). Cryosphere was first recorded in English in the late 1930s.

Shivaree “a mock serenade with noisemakers” is of obscure origin, though there is a general prevailing theory. Much like recent Word of the Day shivoo, which we learned about in June, shivaree is likely a corruption of the French term charivari. Charivari is also of obscure origin but may derive, via Late Latin carībaria “headache,” from Ancient Greek karēbaría, equivalent to kárā or kárē “head,” barýs “heavy,” and the abstract noun suffix -ía. The logic is that a noisy, boisterous celebration would cause quite the headache! An alternative theory is that shivaree, again like shivoo, derives instead from the French phrase chez vous “at your home.” Shivaree was first recorded in English in the early 1800s.

Burgeon “to grow or develop quickly” derives via Middle English and Anglo-French from the Old French noun burjon “shoot, bud,” and though the word’s history becomes murky from that point, the prevailing theory is that burjon is ultimately from Late Latin burra “wool, fluff,” in reference to the fine hairs that cover certain types of buds. An alternative theory connects burjon instead to a Proto-Germanic verb meaning “to raise; to emerge, occur”; compare Dutch gebeuren “to happen” and Swedish börja “to start.” If the latter theory is correct, burgeon derives from the Proto-Indo-European root bher- “to carry” and is therefore distantly related to burden (from Old English), transfer (literally “to carry across,” from Latin ferre “to bear”), and phosphorus (literally “light-bearing,” from Ancient Greek ​​phérein “to carry”). Burgeon was first recorded in English around the turn of the 14th century.

While the legends involving manticores were likely tall tales about lions and tigers and similar beasts, manticore is not a compound of English man and tiger, which is a common misconception. Instead, manticore “a legendary monster with a man’s head, a lion’s body, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion” derives via Middle English from Latin mantichōrās, which was a either a variant or a misreading of Ancient Greek martichṓras. This word, in turn, was borrowed from the Old Persian element martiya- “man” and an additional Iranian source akin to Modern Persian -khōr “eat, devour.” The martiya- element descends from a Proto-Indo-European root, mer- “to harm, die”—compare immortal (via Latin) and ambrosia (via Ancient Greek), both literally meaning “not of death”—while the -khōr element is cognate to English swallow and swill. Manticore was first recorded in English in the early 1300s.

Mojo “exceptional ability, good luck, success” in its earliest sense denoted an object that was believed to carry a magic spell. From there, the word expanded to indicate magic itself and personal use of magic, and mojo’s popular use today in reference to seemingly magical influence or ability is informal. Mojo is of uncertain origin but is most likely related to the word moco “witchcraft, magic” in Gullah, a creole language spoken by an African-American population located along the southern Atlantic coast. Though Gullah is based on English, it incorporates ample vocabulary from the Niger–Congo language subfamily, which is spread across much of sub-Saharan Africa and includes languages such as Fulani, Mende, Yoruba, Swahili, and Zulu. Gullah moco may have its origin in one of these languages, as the Fulani word for “medicine man” is moco’o. Mojo was first recorded in the late 1920s.