Word of the Day
deracinate
verb
to isolate or alienate (a person) from a native or customary culture or environment.
More about deracinate
The root of deracinate “to uproot” is the Late Latin noun rādīcīna “root,” from Latin rādīx (stem rādīc-), from which English derives radical and eradicate. Latin rādīx comes from the Proto-Indo-European root wrād- (and its variants) “branch, root.” The noun wrādios becomes Latin rādius “staff, rod, beam, radius (of a circle), ray (of light),” from which, via French, English has ray (of light or energy). The suffixed form wrād-mo- becomes Latin rāmus “branch, twig,” from which English derives ramify and ramification. Proto-Indo-European wrād- becomes wrōt- in Germanic, from which Old Norse derives rōt, which becomes root in English. Deracinate entered English in the late 16th century.
how is deracinate used?
Our parents sent us to those schools to deracinate us, to obliterate our class markings.
In little more than a century, millions of human beings in Europe and America … have undertaken to deracinate themselves from the natural continuum and all that it has to teach us of Man’s relationship to the nonhuman more completely than ever before in the human past.
solitudinarian
noun
a person who seeks solitude; recluse.
More about solitudinarian
Solitudinarian was first recorded in 1685–95.
how is solitudinarian used?
She was such a warm, beautiful woman, so popular, so very full of love and verve and yet you, her only son, are an anthropofugal solitudinarian.
… Charron says that no one with a capacity for public good and usefulness ought to neglect that capacity. Thus, the able solitudinarian is to be severely censured.
More about disjune
The rare word disjune is formed from the Old French prefix des-, dis-, which comes from the Latin prefix dis- “apart, asunder, in two, in different directions” (the prefix dis- is related to the Latin numeral duo “two”). The Latin prefix may also be used like the English prefix un- to express the reverse or negative of the positive, e.g., untie, undo. Old French desjeün is thus an “unfast.” The Old French element -jun, -jeün comes from the Latin adjective jējūnus “hungry, fasting” and by extension “poor, barren.” In Medieval Latin the noun jējūnum (the neuter singular of the Latin adjective jējūnus) means “middle part of the small intestine,” so called because the jejunum was often found empty after death. The etymology of Latin jējūnus is unknown. The noun disjune entered English in the late 15th century; its use as a verb dates from the late 16th century.
how is disjune used?
Take a disjune of muscadel and eggs!
And when the two comrades were in the midst of their disjune the knight began to ask the monk (who knew everybody) about the barge he had seen the day before.