Category: Word of the Day – A

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin agilis (agile) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…What is become of all these iugling gambalds, Apish deuises, with all the rest of your squint-eyed trickes? when as through your deepe studies, long practises, & apt bodies, both strong & agilious, you haue attained to the height of all these things. …”

From: Paradoxes of Defence wherein is proued the true grounds of fight to be in the short auncient weapons, and that the short sword hath aduantage of the long sword or long rapier
By George Silver, 1599

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin adulatorius (adulatory) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Histories are full fraught with such relations of adorations, and most adulatorious Epithites giuen to his Holinesse, the proper name and calling now of the Pope, amongst his adorers and followers: and doe you think the Pope knoweth not, or affecteth not this his greatnes: obserue his pride (excuse me Pontifician reader) when he saith not priuate Masse himselfe, but is in his publike Chappel, …”

From: The Motiues of Richard Sheldon pr. for his Lust, Voluntary, and Free Renouncing of Communion with the Bishop of Rome, Paul the 5. and his Church
By Richard Sheldon, 1612

ETYMOLOGY
from Greek ἄγαµ-ος (unmarried) + -ist

EXAMPLE
“…to exhort these spirituall Fathers first to cease from murdering of their owne children to spare the bloud of innocentes, & not to persecute Christ so cruelly in his members, as they do, and furthermore to exhort in like maner these Agamistes, and wilful reiecters of matrimony, to take themselues to lawfull wiues, and not to resist Gods holy ordinaunce, nor encounter his institution with an other contrary institution of theyr own deuising, lest perhappes they preuented by fragilitie, may fall into daunger of suche inconueniences aboue touched …”

From: Actes and Monumentes 
By John Foxe, 1570

ETYMOLOGY
from agnaticus (agnatic – related through the male line) [from Latin agnatus (a relation by the father’s side) + -ic] + ‑al

EXAMPLE
“… There are but two waies by which hereditary or successive Monarchies do descend; the one is Lineal descent, the other Lineal, Agnatical, Cognatical or Collateral; or as we say, the one descends to the heire general, the other to the heire male. This latter by vertue of a Salique law takes place only in France; we will therefore see what may be said and objected against the former, and how the latter hath been observed in France, and of what Authority it is…”

From: Justice vindicated from the false fucus put upon it,
by Thomas White gent. Mr. Thomas Hobbs, and Hugo Grotius:
As also elements of power & subjection; wherein is demonstrated the cause of all humane Christian, and legal society
‘Of Inheritance and Succession’
By Roger Coke, 1660

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin adminut-, past participial stem of adminuere (to lessen, to diminish),
from ad- (to) + minuere (to lessen)

EXAMPLE
“…Bellarmine bewails the business, that ever since we began to count and call the Pope Antichrist, his kingdom hath greatly decreased. And Cotton the Jesuite confesses, that the authority of the Pope is incomparably less then it was; and that now the Christian Church is but adminutive …”

From: A Commentary or Exposition Upon all the Books of the New Testament.
By John Trapp, 1656
‘A Commentary Upon the Revelation’

ETYMOLOGY
from late Latin amaricat- ppl. stem of amaricare (to make bitter, to irrritate, to anger),
from amarus (bitter) + -icare

EXAMPLE
“…But what vertue so cold I pray you is there in Opium, which shall make me sleep though unwilling, and hot enough? If the coldnesse of the vapours, why do wines after dinner provoke to sleep? whether therefore is there one identity of heat and cold to the procuring of sleep? why therefore is cold singularly attributed to Opium? why are not hot things equally reckon’d narcotick and dormitive? how doth opium amaricate? and amaritude in the schools predominating is accounted hot? Therefore it is of unavoidable necessity, that the schools should chuse one of these; to wit, either that the coldnesse of opium is not exceeding, and by consequence that Opium doth not produce sleep by his cold…”

From: Matæotechnia Medicinæ Praxeōs, The vanity of the craft of physick
By Noah Biggs, 1651

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin auri- (gold) + potentem (powerful)

EXAMPLE 1
“…For to descriue thair honest Ornament,
Thair riche array, and thair habillement:
My feble wit standis in extasie,
So bene, so big, and so Auripotent,
So ground michtie it was, and precellent:
It dullis far my small capacitie.
Thairfoir I most at this time let it be.
Bot ʒe sall wit thair was na thing absent
Of gold, nor silk, that ganit sic cumpanie….”

From: Ane treatise callit The Court of Venus deuidit into four buikis,
By John Rolland, 1575

EXAMPLE 2
“…and the vexatious vigilance with which the stern lady-patronesses of the time were wont to sift the merits of candidates, were intended as a protest against the auripotent nabobs and mill-owners who came purse in hand to demand admission…”

From: Belgravia
A London Magazine
Conducted by M.E. Braddon. Vol. IV, May-June, 1871
‘The Season’

ETYMOLOGY
from agelaste (person who never laughs),  from Greek ἀγέλαστος (agelastos – not laughing),
from ἀ- (a– having sense without) + γελασ-, stem of γελᾶν (to laugh) + ‑τος

EXAMPLE
“…But let us beware lest in our laughter we commit the very sin which raised it, for through all laughter, the most benighted, must arise primarily from an, at least, imagined comic perception, in most the maximum is on the wrong side, Over-laughing, the sin of the ‘hypergelast’ as Mr. Meredith terms him, is even less tolerable to the muse than that of the ‘agelast‘ he who
‘Show his teeth in way of smile
Though Nestor swore the jest be laughable,’
and if we are guilty of it, the muse will but send out another laughter upon ours, which in its turn may need chastening…”

From: George Meredith: Some Characteristics.
By Richard Le Gallienne, 1890
‘The Comic Muse’

PRONUNCIATION
AJ-uh-lasst

ETYMOLOGY
from Greek ἀρτοϕάγος (bread-eating) [from ρτο-, combining form of ἄρτος (bread) + ‑ϕάγος (eating)] + -ous

EXAMPLE
“… —give him a loaf, Tom] Again! Our old writers are never weary of this jest. In the ‘Rebellion,’ by Rawlins, allusions to this artophagous propensity of the tailors occur in almost every page…”

From: The Works of Ben Jonson
Edited by W. Gifford, Volume the Fifth, 1816
‘The Staple of News’

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin auricomus, from auri-, comb. form of aurum (gold) + coma (hair) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Mrs. Poignarde, who was walking beside Saltasche, raised her eyelashes, and timidly looked for a recognition. Mrs. Hepenstall, a very frisky matron, and her friend of the auricomous hair, looked blankest forgetfulness…”

From: Hogan, M.P.: A Novel
By May Laffan Hartley, 1881