Word of the Day

Wampum is a shortened form of wampumpeag, also spelled variously as wampampeak and wampompeage, and was borrowed from the Massachusett language, in which it roughly meant “white strings.” Massachusett was one of the original Indigenous languages of New England, along with Narragansett, Mohegan, Mahican, Maliseet, and Abenaki, among others; of all these, only Abenaki and Maliseet survive today. However, a dialect of Massachusett, Wampanoag (also known as Wôpanâak), is currently undergoing revitalization. These languages belong to the greater Algonquian family, which includes Cree and Ojibwe in Canada, Arapaho and Cheyenne in the Plains, and even Delaware and Powhatan along the East Coast. Wampum entered English in the early 1600s.

Azure derives via Old French from Arabic al-lāzuward, with the initial l- in lāzuward disappearing because of confusion between Arabic and French grammar: a widespread assumption arose that this initial l- was part of the Arabic definite article al- “the” or that it was a Romance definite article such as le in French, il in Italian, or el in Spanish. Either way, Romance language speakers chopped that l- off accordingly, and the new spelling stuck. This process is called metanalysis in linguistics, and a similar misdivision happened in English; because of confusion with the definite articles a and an, words such as apron and umpire lost their initial n-, while words such as newt and nickname gained an initial n- when they originally had none. Lāzuward is a borrowing of Persian lāzhuward “lapis lazuli,” a dark blue stone, after the area in Central Asia where it was mined, perhaps corresponding to a location in Badakhshan, a region split among modern-day Afghanistan, China, and Tajikistan. Azure entered English in the late 1200s or early 1300s.

Repentance ultimately derives via Old French from Latin paenitēre “to regret, be sorry.” Other derivatives of paenitēre include penance, penitence, and penitentiary. Although paenitēre is of uncertain origin, it was frequently confused with the similar-sounding noun poena “punishment, penalty,” a borrowing from Ancient Greek poinḗ. Poena is the source of numerous words related to crime and its consequences, such as subpoena, penalty, punish, punitive, and even pain; while these words are likely unrelated to repentance, they all share a p-vowel-n root and refer to the aftermath of a mistake or unfortunate choice. Repentance first appeared in English in the early 1300s.

Camion is a borrowing from French, but its ultimate origin is obscure. Hypotheses include a connection to Late Latin chamulcus “chariot, cart, machine” (from Ancient Greek) or to French chemin “way” (via Vulgar Latin cammīnus from Gaulish). While we normally associate Celtic languages with the British Isles, Gaulish is a long-extinct Celtic language once spoken in what is now France that proved heavily influential to Late Latin and Vulgar Latin, the ancestor of all Romance languages. Camion entered English in the late 1800s.

Testudinate derives from the Latin adjective testūdinātus, of the same meaning, from the noun testūdō “tortoise.” Testūdō, in turn, derives from testa “earthenware vessel; shard of baked clay; shell of a crustacean.” It is possible that testa comes from the Proto-Indo-European root ters- “dry,” which would make testa cognate to the words thirst (from Old English thurst “dryness”), terrain and terrestrial (from Latin terra “(dry) land”), and toast and torrid (from Latin torrēre “to burn”). In Late Latin, testa gained the additional sense of “skull” and developed into the word for “head” in several Romance languages (such as French tête and Italian testa). Testudinate entered English in the early 1700s.