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.
Check out the Word of the Yearinvested with or possessing full power.
The adjective plenipotent,“invested with or possessing full power,” comes from Late Latin plēnipotent- (stem of plēnipotēns), which is composed of plēni-, the combining form of plēnus “full” and potent-, the combining form of potēns, the present participle of posse “to be able, have power.” Plenipotent is not as common in English as its close relative, the adjective and noun plenipotentiary (as a noun, plenipotentiary usually refers to a diplomat with full power to conduct business or negotiations.) Plenipotent entered English in 1639; plenipotentiary in 1646.
a word or phrase that appears only once in a manuscript, document, or particular area of literature.
The phrase hapax legomenon, “a word or phrase appearing only once in literature,” comes from Greek hápax legomenon, composed of the adverb hápax “once, one time” and the neuter singular present passive participle legómenon “(being) said,” from the verb légein “to say.” (Hapax is also used by itself in English as a noun; the plural of hapax legomenon is hapax legomena.) One famous hapax—as far as these things go—is the adjective epioúsion in the phrase árton… epioúsion in the clause “(Give us this day our) daily bread,” in the Lord’s Prayer in the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. The Greek noun ártos means “wheat bread, bread (in general)” and presents no problem. Epioúsion may mean “(enough) for today, today's, next day’s, necessary, sufficient.” Epioúsion is variously translated in Latin: one of them, quotīdiānum “daily,” is an inadequate, even wrong translation of epioúsion, but it was used in Tyndale’s translation of the Bible (1534) and the King James Bible (1611), and it is used today in most modern English translations. Hapax legomenon entered English in the late 17th century.
a very challenging and innovative project or undertaking.
Moonshot, “a launching of a spacecraft to the moon,” a transparent compound of moon and shot, entered English in 1949, near the beginning of large-scale rocket development in the U.S. Moonshot in its extended sense “a challenging and innovative project” first appears in 1967.
to vibrate violently.
Judder as a verb means “to vibrate or shake violently,” and as a noun, “violent shaking.” It is first recorded in 1926 and refers to the shaking of automobiles (or their parts); it was later applied to aircraft. Judder has no precise etymology: it may be a combination of jolt or jerk and shudder, or it may be a variant pronunciation of shudder.
of or relating to money.
Pecuniary, “relating to money,” comes from the Latin adjective pecūniārius, a derivative of pecūnia “property, possessions, wealth, money,” itself a derivative of pecū “flock, herd, farm animals,” livestock being a very important source of wealth in early farming societies. Pecū and its related nouns are derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European noun peku- “sheep,” from the root pek-, pok- “to pluck, fleece, card (wool, flax).” Peku- is the source of Umbrian pequo “cattle” (Umbrian was an Italic language spoken in Umbria, north of Rome), Greek pókos and pékos “sheep’s wool, fleece,” and Lithuanian pekus “cattle.” By regular phonetic change peku- becomes fehu- in Proto-Germanic, becoming Gothic faihu “possessions, property,” German Vieh “cattle, beast, brute,” Old English feoh, fioh, feh “cattle, property (in cattle),” Middle English fe, feo, feh “livestock, herd of livestock, movable property, wealth, money.” Modern English fee “charge, payment, sum paid, “ but also “landed estate, inherited estate,” comes partly from the Middle English and Old English nouns, but fee in the sense “inherited estate, feudal estate” also comes from Old French fieu, fief “estate in land” and Anglo-French fe, fee, fie, from Germanic fehu. Pecuniary entered English in the early 16th century.
