Word of the Day
propinquity
noun
nearness in place; proximity.
More about propinquity
Propinquity, “closeness in space, time, kinship,” comes via Middle English propinquite from Old French propinquite, from Latin propinquitāt-, the inflectional stem of the noun propinquitās. The English, Middle English, Old French, and Latin nouns even share the same meanings. Propinquitās is a derivative of the adjective propinquus, itself a derivative of the preposition and adverb prope “near, nearby, close.” The suffix –inquus is very rare in Latin, but it also occurs in the adjective longinquus “far, far off, remote,” the opposite of propinquus. Prope and propinquus are the positive degree whose comparative degree is the regularly formed propinquior “closer, nearer”; the superlative degree is the irregular proximus “next, next to, nearest, adjacent,” from which English derives proximate. Propinquity entered English in the first half of the 15th century.
how is propinquity used?
when he was called to New York, to become a partner in his father’s banking-house, I realized that our interests had already diverged, and that only propinquity had served to hold us together. For poor George had already allowed himself to be mastered by a fatal vice—the passion for money-making …
In the case of the pictures in “#nyc,” closeness involves not just a physical propinquity but also a kind of psychic insight into others’ hearts and minds.
vibrissa
noun
one of the stiff, bristly hairs growing about the mouth of certain animals, as a whisker of a cat.
More about vibrissa
Vibrissa, “one of the stiff hairs growing about the mouth of an animal, such as a cat’s whisker,” is restricted pretty much to (human) anatomy, ornithology, and zoology. Vibrissa is the singular of the Late Latin plural noun vibrissae, a word that occurs only once, in a work by Sextus Pompeius Festus, a Roman grammarian and lexicographer who flourished in the late 2nd century a.d. Festus defines vibrissae as “the nose hairs of a human being, so called because when they are pulled out, the head shakes (caput vibrātur)” (vibrissae does in fact derive from the Latin verb vibrāre “to shake”). This “human” sense is the original meaning in English in the late 17th century, but it is no longer common; the more general zoological and ornithological meaning arose in the first half of the 19th century. The singular form vibrissa first appears in English in the first quarter of the 19th century.
how is vibrissa used?
I stroked his splendid vibrissae, the stiff, sensitive whiskers that a walrus uses to search for bivalves through the seabed’s dark murk, and that feel like slender tubes of bamboo.
Whiskers – technically called vibrissae in mammals – are an important part of my cats’ sensory arrays. When Margarita abruptly tears across the apartment for reasons I can only speculate about, her whiskers can tell her if she’s cutting to[o] close to a wall so that she doesn’t run headlong into the doorway.
putative
adjective
commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed.
More about putative
Putative, “supposed, so called, commonly regarded,” ultimately comes from Late Latin putātīvus “considered, reckoned, presumptive,” a derivative of the Latin verb putāre “to think, consider,” originally a farming or country word meaning “to trim, prune (trees), scour or clean (wool); purify, refine (gold).” In Latin putāre is not much used in its original senses, but it is very common in its developed senses, “to go over in the mind, ponder; to go over in words, discuss; estimate, deem, consider.” Putative entered English in the 15th century.
how is putative used?
The putative black hole would have to be feeding at one-millionth of its potential rate if it were there at all, Dr. Gultekin said.
Jules had to remember: Oh right, Ibsen, the putative reason Ash had gone to Oslo. Isben’s Ghosts.