Word of the Day - pitapat | Dictionary. com The intense heat began to vitrify the sand at the meteor’s impact site Fluctuating temperatures in the kiln failed to fully vitrify the glaze on the bowl Load More Jun 11 galactoid Jun 13 vitrify Word of the Day Calendar
Word of the Day - horripilation | Dictionary. com More about horripilation Horripilation “bristling of the hair on the skin from cold or fear,” is a three-dollar word for goose bumps Horripilation comes from the Late Latin noun horripilātiō (inflectional stem horripilation -), a derivative of the verb horripilāre “to become bristly or hairy ” Horripilātiō first appears in the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible, prepared
Word of the Day - wintle | Dictionary. com More about wintle Wintle “to tumble over; capsize” is a Scottish English verb derived from early Dutch Flemish windtelen “to revolve” (compare modern Dutch wentelen, of the same meaning) The verb windtelen is a frequentative of winden “to wind,” which makes wintle a close relative of the recent Word of the Day selection wynd; both wintle and wynd come from a Germanic source
Word of the Day - modus ponens | Dictionary. com More about modus ponens Modus ponens is borrowed from Latin and literally means “affirming mode ” Modus, which means “manner, kind, tone, way” in Classical Latin, also appears in the terms modus operandi (literally “way of working”) and modus vivendi (“way of living”) Ponens comes from Latin pōnere, “to place, put,” which is also the source of opponent, position, and
Word of the Day - appassionato | Dictionary. com More about appassionato Appassionato is based on the Italian verb appassionare, “to impassion, excite, thrill ” The ultimate source of appassionare is Latin patī, “to suffer,” which has two stems in English: pass-, as in passion, and pat-, as in patient Appassionato was first recorded in English in the 1830s
Word of the Day - vicissitude | Dictionary. com More about vicissitude Often used in the plural, vicissitude was first recorded in 1560-70 Vicissitude comes via Middle French from Latin vicissitūdō, “in turn ” The first part of vicissitude is from the same root as vice, “in the place of,” as in vice president The middle part comes from the Latin word cessim, “giving way,” and the last part from – tūdō, which indicates
Word of the Day - tessellate | Dictionary. com More about tessellate Tessellate “to form of small squares” comes from Latin tessellātus “mosaic,” based on tessella “small square stone or cube ” The Latin noun tessella is a diminutive of tessera, a small piece used in mosaic work that often has four sides, which comes from Ionic Greek tésseres “four ” Ionic is one of several dialects of Ancient Greek, and the word for
Word of the Day - excogitate | Dictionary. com More about excogitate Excogitate comes from Latin excōgitātus, the past participle of excōgitāre meaning “to devise, invent, think out ” It entered English in the 1520s
Word of the Day - quincunx | Dictionary. com More about quincunx Quincunx literally means “five-twelfths” in Latin and is formed from quīnque, “five,” and uncia, “twelfth ” Quīnque is the source of numerous modern Romance words for “five,” such as French cinq and Spanish cinco Uncia, meanwhile, is the source of both inch and ounce Quincunx was first recorded in English in the 1640s
Word of the Day - infinitesimal | Dictionary. com More about infinitesimal Infinitesimal comes from New Latin infīnītēsimālis, infīnītēsimus, a compound of Latin infīnītus “unspecified, indefinite, unrestricted, unlimited, infinite” and the adjective suffix – ēsimus, which was extracted from vīcēsimus “twentieth” (where the suffix is original) and applied to form ordinal numbers from 20 to 1,000; thus infinitesimal