Dictionary.com Words Of The Day

Front 1

Hitherto

Back 1

up to this time; until now: a fact hitherto unknown.

Hint 1

The adverb hitherto, “up to this time or place,” comes from Middle English hiderto; the modern spelling with th replacing d first appears in Wycliffe’s Bible (1382). Hitherto seems to have completely replaced hiderto by the time of Tyndale’s translation of the Bible in 1526. Hiderto first appears in English in the first half of the 13th century.

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Slugbed

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a person who lazily stays in bed long after the usual time for arising.

Hint 2

Slugabed is a relatively uncommon noun meaning “a person who lazily stays in bed long after the usual time for arising.” The noun slug, "a snaillike animal; a lazy person, sluggard," developed from Middle English slugge “a lazy person; slothfulness, the sin of sloth.” Slugge probably comes from Old Icelandic slōkr “clumsy person,” Swedish and Norwegian dialect slok “lazy person,” Danish slog “rascal, rogue.” The element -a- is simply a reduced form of the Old English preposition on “on, in, into”; bed comes from Old English bedd, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root bhedh-, bhodh- “to dig, bury,” from which Latin derives fodere “to dig” and fossa “a ditch, trench, groove”; the Celtic languages have Welsh bedd, Cornish bedh, and Breton béz, all three meaning “a grave.” Slugabed entered English in the late 16th century.

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Discomfiture

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the state of being disconcerted; confusion; embarrassment

Hint 3

Discomfiture comes from Middle English desconfiture, discomfitoure, discomfiture (and many other spelling variants) “the fact of being defeated in battle; the act of defeating in battle.” One of the first occurrences of the word is in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (after 1387). The Middle English word comes from Old French desconfiture “a defeat, a rout.” The English sense “frustration of hopes or plans,” weakened to “confusion” or “embarrassment,” occurs at the beginning of the 15th century.

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Bailiwick

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a person's area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one's own bailiwick.

Hint 4

Bailiwick nowadays means “one’s area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work,” and less commonly, its original sense “the district within which a bailiff has jurisdiction.” Bailiwick comes from Middle English baillifwik (bailliwik, bailewik), a compound noun formed from bailliff “an officer of the court; an official with minor local authority” and wick (wic, wike, wicke) “dwelling, home, village, town, city,” from Old English wīc "dwelling place, abode,” from Latin vīcus “village; a block (in a town or city often forming an administrative unit),” which appears in placenames such as Sandwich (on the coast of Kent), Old English Sandwic, Sondwic “market town on sandy soil, or Warwick “village by the weir (low dam).” Bailiwick entered English in the mid-15th century.

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Kaput

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ruined; done for; demolished

Hint 5

The adjective kaput “ruined, done for; out of order,” is used only in predicate position, not in attributive position; that is, you can only say “My car is kaput,” but not “I’ve got a kaput car.” Kaput comes from the German colloquial adjective kaputt “broken, done for, out of order, (of food) spoiled,” which was taken from the German idiom capot machen, a partial translation of the French idioms faire capot and être capot, “to win (or lose) all the tricks (in the card game piquet).” Faire capot literally means “to make a bonnet or hood,” and its usage in piquet may be from an image of throwing a hood over, or hoodwinking one’s opponent. Unsurprisingly, kaput became widely used in English early in World War I.

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Posterity

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succeeding or future generations collectively: Judgment of this age must be left to posterity.

Hint 6

Posterity “future generations” is a straightforward word. It comes from Middle English posterite, posteriti “a person’s offspring, a family’s successive generations,” partly from Old French posterite, and partly from Latin posteritās (stem posteritāt-), which has the same meanings as in Old French and Middle English. Posteritās is a derivative of the adjective posterus “future, later”; its plural, posterī, means “one’s descendants; future generations.” Latin posterior “later, later of two, younger” is the comparative of posterus, and is familiar enough in English (the humorous, colloquial noun posterior or posteriors in the sense “buttocks” originated within English in the early 17th century; the sense does not exist in Latin). Posterity entered English in the 14th century.

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Egalitarian

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asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life.

Hint 7

The English adjective and noun egalitarian “asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life,“ comes from the French adjective and noun égalitaire of the same meaning. Égalitaire is a derivative of the noun égalité “equality,” but in English égalité is usually used in allusion to the French Revolutionary motto liberté, égalité, fraternité “liberty, equality, fraternity.” (Égalité first appears in English in 1794 in a letter written by vice president John Adams to his wife Abigail: “I hope my old Friend, will never meet the Fate of another Preacher of Égalité, who was I fear almost as sincere as himself.”) Égalité is a derivative of the adjective égal, from the Latin adjective aequālis “equal (in amount, size, duration, etc.), symmetrical, uniform, contemporary” (as a noun, aequālis means “a person of the same age as another, a contemporary, a person of equal rank or ability.” Egalitarian entered English in the late 19th century.

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Repudiate

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to reject with disapproval or condemnation: to repudiate a new doctrine.Examples:

Hint 8

Repudiate comes straight from Latin repudiāt-, the past participle stem of repudiāre “to reject formally (as a prospective husband or wife), divorce, reject,” a derivative of the noun repudium. Repudium is derived from the prefix re-, completely naturalized in English, indicating repetition or withdrawal, and the verb pudēre “to fill with shame, make ashamed.” From pudēre Latin derives the adjectives impudēns (inflectional stem impudent-) “shameless,” English impudent, and pudendus “of what one ought to be ashamed, disgraceful." Repudiate entered English in the 16th century.

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Staycation

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a vacation spent at home or near home, doing enjoyable activities or visiting local attractions.

Hint 9

Staycation, a portmanteau word, as Lewis Carroll would call it, formed from stay and vacation, is associated with the Great Recession of 2007–09. Actually, staycation is considerably older: It was originally an Americanism, and it first appeared in print in 1944, in the middle of World War II, when gasoline and automobile tires (among much else) were strictly rationed.

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Bolide

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a large, brilliant meteor, especially one that explodes; fireball.

Hint 10

A bolide is a large, brilliant meteor that explodes before hitting the earth. The term comes from French, from Latin bolis (inflectional stem bolid-) “meteor,” from Greek bolís (stem bolíd-) “missile, javelin, flash of lightning, throw of a pair of dice.” The Latin sense “meteor” is first recorded by the Roman naturalist and encyclopedist Pliny the Elder in the first century a.d., perhaps from a resemblance between a fireball in the sky and a flash of lightning. Bolide entered English in the mid-19th century.