Word of the Day

Remembrancer, “a reminder; memento; souvenir,” comes from Middle English remembrauncer, the title of one of the royal officers responsible for recording and collecting debts owed to the crown, one of the current senses of the word, used in British royal finances. In Middle English remembrauncer also referred to death, the one who enforces our obligation to die on the due date. Remembrancer entered English in the 14th century.

Acme, “the highest point; summit; peak,” comes straight from Greek akmḗ “point, highest point, extremity.” Akmḗ is one of many Greek words derived from the widespread Proto-Indo-European root ak-, ok- “sharp, pointed, angular.” Other Greek derivatives include ákros “topmost, outermost,” as in akrópolis “upper city, citadel” (English acropolis), akrobátēs (English acrobat), literally “height walker,” and akís “point.” Latin derives from the same root ācer (stem ācr-) “sharp, stinging,” aciēs “point,” acidus “sour, acid," and acūtus “sharp, sharpened” (English acute). The Proto-Germanic root from ak-, ok- is ag-. The Proto-Germanic noun agyō becomes ecg “sharpness, sharp side, blade, sword” in Old English (and edge in modern English); the Proto-Germanic verb agyan becomes eggja “to goad, incite” in Old Norse, the source of English egg (on). Acme entered English in the second half of the 16th century.

Pièce de résistance, “the principal dish of a meal; the most noteworthy item of a group,” entered English from French in 1789—a fateful year. In French pièce de résistance appears at least by 1732 and refers to the main course of a meal. By 1789 the phrase was used in English to describe a person. The phrase literally means “piece of resistance,” but scholars disagree on how the phrase acquired its senses.

The verb skylark, “to frolic; sport; have boisterous fun,” dates from about 1771 in Britain. This sense is the same as the verb lark, which comes later, in 1813. How skylark acquired its “fun” sense isn’t clear: some suggest it was a term in sailors’ slang for roughhousing high up in a ship’s rigging, skylarks being known for their singing while hovering high in the air. The earliest occurrences of the verb, however, are from court and police records in London, which seem to indicate that the verb skylark is a city word, not a sailor’s one. Skylark is a favorite word of Mark Twain’s: he used the participle or gerund skylarking four times in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

Bovarism, “an exaggerated, especially glamorized, estimation of oneself,” also spelled bovarysm and bovarysme (capitalized and uncapitalized), is a borrowing from French bovarysme, a derivative of the family name Bovary, the married surname of Emma Bovary, née Rouault, the eponymous protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1857) who was prone to escapist daydreaming. The French philosopher Jules de Gaultier is credited with coining the term in his 1902 work, La Bovarysme. Bovarism entered English in the first half of the 20th century.