Word of the Day
kaput
adjective
ruined; done for; demolished.
More about kaput
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.
how is kaput used?
“Is it as bad as that?” He shook his head. “It’s worse. If we get caught, all this is kaput. Kaput, you hear? Gone. Lost. Forever.”
The business of a woman I know has gone kaput and 15 employees are facing the sack.
posterity
noun
succeeding or future generations collectively: Judgment of this age must be left to posterity.
More about posterity
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.
how is posterity used?
Climate change is a tragedy, but Rich makes clear that it is also a crime—a thing that bad people knowingly made worse, for their personal gain. That, I suspect, is one of the many aspects to the climate change battle that posterity will find it hard to believe, and impossible to forgive.
The act of 1866 gave the Freedmen’s Bureau its final form, the form by which it will be known to posterity and judged of men.
bailiwick
noun
a person's area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one's own bailiwick.
More about bailiwick
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.
how is bailiwick used?
He was spooning up gelato but talking about music, which is his bailiwick, if it’s anybody’s.
I wasn’t surprised to see him there because this was an action venue that was right in his political bailiwick.