Word of the Day
Learn a new word every day! The Dictionary.com team of language experts carefully selects each Word of the Day to add some panache to your vocabulary.
an irrational dislike; loathing.
Those who are addicted to the late, great, dearly missed Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series of novels (41 of them!), particularly The Wee Free Men (2003) and its sequels, will be familiar with the Wee Free Men’s constant use of scunner, a term hard to define past “dislike, aversion, or a source of dislike or aversion” (as indefinable as Huck Finn’s fantods). The Wee Free Men are not talking gibberish or nonsense; they are speaking Scots. The verb scunner (also scurnen, skurne) “to shrink back in disgust or fear, quail, hesitate” is first recorded about 1425. Its further history is unknown, but some authorities think it is related to scornen “to despise, be contemptuous, hold in disdain.” Scunner entered English in the 14th century.
relating to or being a people who are the original, earliest known inhabitants of a region, or are their descendants.
When used in reference to people (the sense we are highlighting today), Indigenous may be capitalized as a sign of respect. A quick glance at indigenous and endogenous shows close relationship in their formation and meaning. Both adjectives mean something like “internally produced, developing from within.” The first element, Latin indi- and Greek endo-, comes from Proto-Indo-European endo, endon “inside, indoors,” perhaps originally “in the house” (Greek éndon, Hittite anda, andan “within”). In Latin, endo, later indu, is an archaic preposition equivalent to the preposition and adverb in, in- “in, into, inside.” The Latin adjectival suffix -genus “born of” is a derivative of the verb gignere “to beget, bring into being, create” (indigena means “a native inhabitant”). Latin -genus is close kin to the Greek suffix -genḗs “born,” from the verb gígnesthai “to become, be born” (endogenḗs means “born in the house”).
to act in a swaggering, boisterous, or uproarious manner.
The English verb roister, “to act boisterously; to revel without restraint,” started life as a noun meaning “noisy bully” (now roisterer), from Middle French rustre, ru(i)stre “ruffian, boor, lout,” from the adjective ruste “rude, rough,” from the Latin adjective rusticus “rural, rustic.” Roister entered English in the 16th century.
of a new kind or fashion.
Newfangled comes from Middle English new- “new,” -fangel, -fangol, an otherwise unrecorded adjective suffix meaning “taken, inclined to take,” and the adjective suffix -ed, the entire adjective meaning “taken by the new, inclined to the new.” The element -fangel, -fangol most likely is from the same root as the British dialect verb fang “to seize, grab” and the standard English noun fang “canine tooth” (that is, “the seizer"), all from fang-, the stem of the Old English verb fōn “to take.” Newfangled entered English at the end of the 15th century.
to cause inconvenience to; disturb, trouble, or bother.
Discommode, “to cause inconvenience or trouble to,” comes from Middle French discommoder, a compound formed from the Latin prefix dis- “apart, away,” here with a privative or negative force, and the French adjective commode “convenient, easy,” from Latin commodus “of standard size or weight, suitable, convenient.” Commodus is a compound of the Latin prefix com-, here with the intensive force “completely,” and the noun modus, “measured amount, size, or quantity.” Discommode entered English in the second half of the 17th century.
