Word of the Day
cacimbo
noun
a heavy mist or drizzle that occurs in the Congo Basin, located in Central Africa, often accompanied by onshore winds.
More about cacimbo
Cacimbo “a heavy mist that occurs in the Congo Basin” is a borrowing from Portuguese, which in turn likely adapted the term from the word for “well (for water)” in Kimbundu, a Bantu language of northern Angola. Because the former Portuguese Empire maintained a presence in several parts of western and southern Africa, numerous terms originating in African languages (particularly the Niger-Congo family) passed into Portuguese, which is still an official language in six African countries. With Portuguese as an intermediary, English has inherited batuque, samba, and the recent Word of the Day capoeira, all probably from West African languages. Cacimbo was first recorded in English in the early 1860s.
how is cacimbo used?
The wind can really get strong here, very powerful, you know. It’s so sweet in the cacimbo, when you’re inside with something warm to drink and you can hear it rushing through the trees outside. It’s beautiful, really beautiful…
For a long time there was no rain. Ludo watered the flowerbeds with the water that had accumulated in the swimming pool. Finally there was a rip in the cold curtain of low-hanging clouds, which in Luanda they call cacimbo, and the rain came down again.
segue
verb (used without object)
to make a transition from one thing to another smoothly and without interruption.
More about segue
Segue “to transition without interruption” is a loanword from Italian, in which it is the third-person singular form of seguire “to follow” in the present tense. In this way, “I follow” is seguo, “you follow” is segui, and “he follows” or “she follows” is segue. The infinitive seguire comes from Latin sequī “to follow.” What eventually happened in Vulgar Latin is that sequī became regularized as something like sequere before becoming French suivre, Italian seguire, and Spanish seguir. Note that Segway, the name of the personal vehicle, is based on a common misspelling of segue. Segue was first recorded in English in the early 1850s.
how is segue used?
Unlike many operas, this is one in which the libretto came first, and Sankaram tailors the music to fit the text, one mood segueing smoothly into another.
Insomniacs, fishers and other pre-dawn perambulators may want to turn their eyes skyward as Veterans Day proper segues into the holiday Monday, checking for fireballs from the Taurid meteor shower.
ratoon
noun
a sprout or shoot from the root of a plant, especially a sugarcane, after it has been cropped.
More about ratoon
Ratoon “a sprout from the root of a plant” is likely anglicized from Spanish retoño “sprout,” which is based on the verb retoñar “to sprout again in the fall,” from re- “again” and otoño “fall, autumn.” Spanish otoño and English autumn together come from Latin autumnus, which is of uncertain origin, even stumping expert linguists! Among the few proposals are connections to the Etruscan language, to Latin augēre (stem auct-) “to increase,” or distantly to English sere “dry, withered” (compare archaic English sere month “August”). Old English hærfest “autumn” is the source of modern English harvest. Ratoon was first recorded in English circa 1630.
how is ratoon used?
Sugarcane is one of the few crops that has seen an increase in planting area. But across Maharashtra, large fields of sugarcane ratoons—the new cane that grows from the stubble left behind from the previous year—are drying up instead of being nurtured to maturity.
Giant banana leaves, ratoons of sugar cane and bright orange guavas—set amid a jumble of sheds, trellises, fences and retaining walls—give the hill the look of a rural village carved from jungle.