Word of the Day
cachinnate
verb (used without object)
to laugh loudly or immoderately.
More about cachinnate
Cachinnate, “to laugh loudly or immoderately,” comes straight from Latin cachinnātus, the past participle of the verb cachinnāre “to laugh boisterously, guffaw.” Cachinnāre is a verb of imitative origin that even has its own Proto-Indo-European root: khakha– (who knew that primitive Indo-Europeans laughed?). The root khakha– yields Greek kakházein, kakkházein, and kankházein, Old Church Slavonic xoxotati, Old High German kachazzwen, and Sanskrit kákhati “he laughs.” Cachinnate entered English in the first half of the 19th century.
how is cachinnate used?
She does not laugh so much as cachinnate, finding at least one thing hysterical in every episode.
Just don’t expect to guffaw or cachinnate, and forget all about busting a gut. It’s not that kind of comedy.
butyraceous
adjective
of the nature of, resembling, or containing butter.
More about butyraceous
The adjective butyraceous is an expensive word for buttery. Butyraceous comes from Latin butyrum (both the first u and the y may be long or short), from Greek boútȳron “butter,” literally “cow cheese,” according to the traditional (and ancient) etymology, from Greek boûs (inflectional stem boo-, bou-) “cow” and tȳrós “cheese.” Both boûs and tȳrós are very ancient: both occur on Late Bronze Age Linear B clay tablets from Pylos (in the southwest Peloponnesus), and both words are of Proto-Indo-European origin. The closest non-Greek relative to tȳrós is in the ancient Iranian languages: in Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian scriptures), tūiri– means “whey, cheeselike milk” and tūiriia– means “curdled (milk).” Herodotus states that butter was used by the Scythians, ancient Iranian nomads of the Russian steppes. Latin butyrum (with its variant būtūrum) becomes burre in Old French (beurre in French) and burro in Italian. Latin butyrum was borrowed by the West Germanic languages (as usual, the details and date of the borrowing are disputed): Old English has butere (English butter); German has Butter, Dutch boter. Butyraceous entered English in the 17th century.
how is butyraceous used?
All good butter seems to have disappeared as if by magic, and there remains only a butyraceous compound of hair, butter, chips and rock salt, which is as striped as a zebra and smells as rancid as a goat or a bundle of foul linens.
fine food, lots of the best wine, had given his jowls a butyraceous sheen.
caducous
adjective
dropping off very early, as leaves.
More about caducous
The adjective caducous “(of leaves) falling early or too early” comes straight from Latin cadūcus “tending to fall, tottery, unsteady; transitory,” a derivative of the verb cadere “to fall, fall over, collapse.” Cadere is also the source of the Latin compound verb dēcidere “to fall down, fall over,” which forms the derivative adjective dēciduus “falling, tending to fall or be dropped” (English deciduous). The botanical difference between caducous and deciduous is that caducous leaves fall too easily or too early, and deciduous leaves fall at the end of the growing season. Caducous entered English in the 18th century.
how is caducous used?
After the flowering period, the ground under the oak, poplar, and other trees, is strewn with their male catkins; these are caducous, falling off soon after they have shed their pollen …
So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: something which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous.