Word of the Day
posole
noun
a thick, stewlike soup of pork or chicken, hominy, mild chile peppers, and cilantro.
More about posole
Posole, “a soup of meat, hominy, mild chile peppers, and cilantro,” is a loanword from Mexican Spanish, in which it is also spelled pozole. Because of a phonological phenomenon called seseo, while c and z are pronounced in most dialects of European Spanish as “thuh,” they have merged with s in Latin American Spanish and become “suh.” Pozole comes from pozolli “hominy, maize-based stew” in Nahuatl, which only uses c and z, not s, to indicate the “suh” sound. Posole was first recorded in English in the 1690s. Learn more words of Nahuatl origin in English.
EXAMPLE OF POSOLE USED IN A SENTENCE
He prepared a large pot of posole, which he knew would help cure the post-holiday hangover.
niveous
adjective
resembling snow; snowy.
Why the Museum of Science chose niveous
Snow, or things that are niveous, appear white because they reflect back the entire color spectrum. To learn more about what niveous means, watch this video from award-winning science communicator Maynard Okereke, better known as the Hip Hop M.D.
Learn more fun facts at the Museum of Science.
More about niveous
Niveous comes from the Latin stem niv-, “snow,” which combines with the suffix -eous to form an adjective. Today, niv- survives as French neige, Italian and Portuguese neve, Romanian nea, and Spanish nieve, all meaning “snow.” Niv- is a distant relative of English snow, which has the s- that Latin lost thousands of years ago. Other examples include the English/Latin pairs slack and laxus (“loose”) as well as steer and taurus (“bull”). Niveous was first recorded in English around 1620.
EXAMPLE OF NIVEOUS USED IN A SENTENCE
With the previous day’s blizzard finally past, the children headed outside for an afternoon of frivolous play in their now niveous neighborhood.
bobèche
noun
a slightly cupped ring placed over the socket of a candleholder to catch the drippings of a candle.
More about bobèche
Bobèche, “a cupped ring that catches a candle’s drippings,” comes from French but is of uncertain origin. With that said, linguists have one prevailing hypothesis. The bob- part may be the same as the first element in Middle French bobine, “skein of thread,” which is the source of English bobbin. The -èche element could be based on an analogy with flammèche, “spark,” which comes from Old High German falawiska, “hot ashes.” Bobèche was first recorded in English in the late 1890s.
EXAMPLE OF BOBÈCHE USED IN A SENTENCE
Without a bobèche available, they carried the lit candles very carefully, dodging scalding drips of hot wax.