Author: Lexico

Word of the Day: EXHEREDATE

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin exheredat- participial stem of exheredare (to disinherit), from ex- + heredem (heir)

EXAMPLE
“…’Tis fit indeed, fortitude should be encouraged, all ages and Nations have need of it, and are made happy by it, therefore ought to reward it, and so have done, and so (for example sake) will do; but other vertues of equal merit, must not be exhaeredated, or become spurious, to advance its legitimation…”

From: A discourse and defence of arms and armory,
shewing the nature and rises of arms and honour in England, from the camp, the court, the city
By Edward Waterhouse, 1660

Word of the Day: IDIOGLOTTIC

ETYMOLOGY
from idio- (own, personal, private, peculiar, separate, distinct) + glottic (pertaining to language)

EXAMPLE
“…This impression he uttered with the word “pupu,” meaning a very big papa. The boy soon gave up his idioglottic endeavors, learning German before his next-born sister had reached the age of beginning speech. So that language could have no further grammatical development…”

From: Proceedings of the Royal Canadian Institute
Being a Continuation of the “Canadian Journal” of Science, Literature, and History
October, 1888, Vol. XXIV
The Development of Language, by Horatio Hale

Word of the Day: RUGGY-DUGGY

ETYMOLOGY
from ruggy (Sc. – rough, hard, difficult) + duggy (Sc. – ? diminutive of dog)

EXAMPLE
“…Noo loudly swell’d, wi’ cheery soun’
Ye banks an’ braes o’ bonnie Doon,
When Watty, daiz’d, said, lookin’ roun’,
We’re a’ as fou as puggies!
Syne Jamie Gould, an Embro’ chiel’,
Grew fidgin’ fain at ilka heel –
Up wi’ a a dance! – a reel! – A reel!
A reel, ye ruggy-duggies!…”

From: The Merry Bridal O’ Firthmains
And Other Poems and Songs
By James Smith, 1866

Word of the Day: SLIP-SKIN

ETYMOLOGY
from slip + skin

EXAMPLE
“…A pretty slip-skin conveyance to sift Masse into no Masse, and Popish into not Popish; yet saving this passing fine sophistical boulting hatch, so long as she symbolises in form, and pranks herself in the weeds of Popish Mass…”

From: Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus
by John Milton, 1641

Word of the Day: OBSERATE

ETYMOLOGY
from. Latin obserat-, past participial stem of obserare (to bolt),
from ob- + sera (bolt)

EXAMPLE
“…he commenced to supparasite the juratory bevy relative to their noetical habilitation to sarse Fritz’s maleficence, and adjudicate to ablegate him to a lobspound, and have him there immured and securely obserated…”

From: Frontier Experience
Or Epistolary Sesquipedalian Lexiphanicism from the Occident
by J.E.L. Seneker, 1906

Word of the Day: CREBROUS

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin crēbrum (frequent) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Now at the lengthe not onlie harde necessitie, but also most principallie the crebrous phame of your clemencie, and the right worshipfull and Godlie reporte of your bountefull humanitie and gentlenes vnto all men…”

From: Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries
– J. Leach. c1600
Edited by Henry Ellis

Word of the Day: TWITTERLIGHT

ETYMOLOGY
? alteration of twilight after twitter (vb. to move tremulously, shake, quiver) + light

EXAMPLE
“…You can steale secretly hether, you misticall queane you, at twylight, twitterlights,
You haue a priuiledge from your hat forsooth,
To walke without a man, and suspition,”
But we poore gentlewomen that goe in Tires
Haue no such liberty, we cannot do thus…”

From: Your fiue gallants
As it hath beene often in action at the Black-friers
By Thomas Middleton, 1608

Word of the Day: STIRIOUS

ETYMOLOGY
from stiria (an icicle) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…The ground of this opinion might be, first the conclusions of some men from experience, for as much as Crystall is found sometimes in rockes, and in some places not much unlike the stirious or stillicidious dependencies of Ice; which notwithstanding may happen either in places which havee been forsaken or left bare by the earth, or may be petrifications, or Minerall indurations, like other gemmes proceeding from percolations of the earth disposed unto such concretions…”

From: Pseudodoxia Epidemica,
or, Enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths
By Thomas Browne

Word of the Day: PROSPICIENT

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin prōspicient-, prōspiciēns (provident, cautious),
present participle of prōspicĕre (to look forward)

EXAMPLE
“…But for­tune prospicient to the Original of Rome, did provide a Woolf to give suck to the children, who having lost her whelps, and de­siring to emptie her teats, did offer her self as a Nurse to the Infants, and returning often to the children, as to her own young ones…”

From: The History of Ivstine:
taken out of the four and forty books of Trogus Pompeius… together with the Epitomie of the lives and manners of the Roman Emperors 
– Marcus Junianus Justinus
– translated by Robert Codrington, 1654