Word of the Day

Camaraderie, “a spirit of trust and goodwill among people closely associated in an activity or endeavor,” is a French word, a derivative of French camerade, camarade “roommate.” The French noun comes from Spanish camarada “chamberful,” later “chambermate.” Spanish camarada is a derivative of cámara “chamber, room,” from Latin camara, camera “arched roof, vaulted roof or ceiling," a borrowing of Greek kamára (with the same meanings). Camaraderie entered English in the first half of the 19th century.

Lunisolar, meaning “pertaining to or based upon the relations or joint action of the moon and the sun,” is used exclusively in astronomy, as in lunisolar calendar or lunisolar precession. The word comes straight from the Latin nouns lūna “moon” and sōl “sun” (the -i- is a Latin connecting vowel). It is no accident that lūna looks so much like Russian luná: They both come from the same Proto-Indo-European noun louksnā, from the root leuk-, louk-, luk- “to shine, be bright.” Louksnā becomes raokhshnā “shining, brilliant, radiant” in Avestan (the Old Iranian language of the Zoroastrian scriptures); as a proper name, Raokhshnā is transliterated in Greek as Rhōxánē Roxanne (the English spelling was affected by the name Anne). Raokhshnā was an Iranian princess who become Alexander the Great’s wife (she bore Alexander a posthumous son). Latin sōl comes from Proto-Indo-European sāwel (from sāwel to sāwol to sāol to sōl). The derivative noun sāwelios “sun” becomes hḗlios in (Classical Attic) Greek. Greek dialects have the forms ēélios (Homeric), hā́lios and āélios (Doric), and awelios (Cretan). Lunisolar entered English in the second half of the 17th century.

Galimatias, “confused or unintelligible talk,” is a masculine singular noun in French. It first appears in 1580 in an essay of Montaigne’s; it first appears in English in 1653 in a translation of Rabelais. Galimatias has no reliable etymology: scholars suggest a connection with gallimaufry “a hodgepodge, a jumble,” but these are just guesses.

Parlous and its variant perlous, meaning “dangerous,” are contractions of perilous, which dates from the end of the 13th century. Perilous comes from Old French perillus, perilous, perilleus (with many more spelling variants) “dangerous, hazardous,” from Latin perīculōsus. Parlous and perlous both entered English at about the same time, toward the end of the 14th century.

Meritocracy, “a system in which a person's progress is based on ability and talent rather than class privilege and wealth,” is a relatively recent word, dating from the mid-1950s; it’s a transparent combination of the noun merit and the common suffix -cracy “rule, government.” The term was coined by the British sociologist Michael Young in his satirical work The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), which took aim at the British educational system. Much to Young's dismay, meritocracy was adopted into widespread use without a hint of irony. In 2001, Young wrote in The Guardian: "The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033."