Word of the Day
dolma
noun
a dish of tomatoes, green peppers, vine leaves, or eggplants stuffed with a mixture of meat, rice, and spices.
More about dolma
Dolma, “a dish of stuffed vegetables,” is a loanword from Turkish, in which dolma means “something filled, filling.” Turkish dolma, in turn, comes from the verb dolmak, “to stuff, fill, be full.” Though it is spoken in Europe, Turkish belongs not to the Indo-European language family (along with English, Greek, and Hindi) but rather to the Turkic family, along with Azerbaijani, Kazakh, and Yakut. For more on the Turkic language family, check out our recent Words of the Day barchan and yurt. Dolma was first recorded in English in the late 1880s.
EXAMPLE OF DOLMA USED IN A SENTENCE
If stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey is too much work, dolma’s use of hollow vegetables and grape leaves makes it an enticing alternative.
swizzle
verb (used with object)
to agitate a beverage with a rod for stirring highballs and cocktails.
More about swizzle
Swizzle, “to agitate a beverage with a rod,” is of uncertain origin, but not because there are multiple competing theories. Instead, the mystery behind swizzle is the same as that behind many slang terms: linguists have no idea what the origin of swizzle could possibly be! Swizzle is first and foremost a noun referring to a type of alcoholic drink from the Caribbean, and in an example of metonymy, the name came to refer as well to the stick served with the drink. A similarly named drink is the switchel, which is found in some varieties of US and Canadian English, but just as with swizzle, switchel is also of uncertain origin. Swizzle was first recorded in English circa 1810.
EXAMPLE OF SWIZZLE USED IN A SENTENCE
As happy hour started, the bar filled with the sounds of patrons swizzling their drinks and clinking their glasses together in toasts.
malic
adjective
pertaining to or derived from apples.
More about malic
Malic “pertaining to apples” comes by way of French from Latin mālum “apple.” Mālum, in turn, is an adaptation of Ancient Greek mêlon, which refers specifically to apples or generally to any tree fruit and is also the source of English melon. Similarly, though mālum survives today as Italian mela “apple,” while the French word for “apple,” pomme, comes from Latin pōmum “fruit.” Portuguese maçã and Spanish manzana derive instead from the Latin term Mattiāna (mala) “(apples) of Matius,” which refers to Gaius Matius, a Roman botanist and friend of Julius Caesar. Though the words are almost identical, Latin mālum is not related to Latin malus “bad,” meaning that the use of apples to represent forbidden fruit is a clever pun. Malic was first recorded in English in the 1790s.
EXAMPLE OF MALIC USED IN A SENTENCE
The Evil Queen’s temptation of Snow White with a poisoned apple is a perfect example of malic malice.