Category: Word of the Day – R

ETYMOLOGY
from respect (n.) + -uous, 
originally after French respectueux (showing respect, respectful)

EXAMPLE
“… Howbeit, they are themselves partly the cause that they doe incurre this obscuritie and igno­rance: who being of divers and contrarie natures, yet fall into one and the selfesame inconveni­ence. For some upon a certaine respectuous reverence which they bare unto their Reader and Doctour, or because they would seeme to spare him, are afraid to aske questions, and to be con­firmed and resolved in doubts arising from the doctrine which he delivereth: and so give signes by nodding their heads that they approove all, as if they understood everie thing verie well. …”

From: The Philosophie, commonlie called, The Morals
By Plutarch of Chæronea
Translated out of Greeke into English, and conferred with the Latine translations and the French, by Philemon Holland, 1603

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rident-, ridens, present participle of ridere (to laugh), of uncertain origin

EXAMPLE
“…Bo. Hold up; so, sir, now away. Oh Mistris, your scantling, most sweete mistriss, most derydent starre.

Acut. Then most rydent starre, faire fall ye.

Grac. Nay tis the Moone her self, for there’s her man and her Dogge before. …”

From: Everie Woman in her Humor
‘Printed by E.A. for Thomas Archer, and are to be solde at his shop in the Popes-head-Pallace, neere the Royall Exchange’ ,1609

ETYMOLOGY
from Middle French ravisable, ravissable (greedy, rapacious, predatory)

EXAMPLE
“…Outward, lambren semen we,
Fulle of goodnesse and of pitee,
And inward we, withouten fable,
Ben gredy wolves ravysable. …”

From: The Romaunt of the Rose
By Geoffrey Chaucer, a1425

ETYMOLOGY
from river + -ling

EXAMPLE
“… Of him she also holds her silver Springs.
And all her hidden Crystall Riverlings:
And after (greatly) in two sorts repayes
Th humour she borrows by two sundry wayes. …”

From: Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes
By Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas
Translated by Joshua Sylvester, 1605
The third Day of the first Week.

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rabiosus (rabid, mad, frenzied, furious), from rabies (rabies) + –osus (-ous)

EXAMPLE
“… Ethelred, languishing in minde and body, Edmond his sonne, surnamed Ironside (to oppose youth to youth) was imployed against this rabious inuador. A Prince worthy of a better time, and had he found faith, had made it so, and deliuered his country at that turne, from the worst of miseries, the conquest by strangers. …”

From: The First Part of the Historie of England
By Samuel Daniel, 1612

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rigent-, rigens (stiff, rigid), present participle of rigere (to be stiff)

EXAMPLE
“… An hous [y]maad of aller is but shent; 
Yet ther the ground is myre, weet, vnsure,
Pile in aller as for the fundament.
Ek elm & asshe ydried beth rigent,
And while they beth vndried, so curuable,
ffor shippis that they beth right profitable. …”

From: Middle-English translation of Palladius De Re Rustica. ?1440
Edited by Mark Liddell, 1896

ETYMOLOGY
from Anglo-French repruce, variant of reproche (reproach)

EXAMPLE
“… Þou settest us repruse [MS depruse.] to our neȝburs, vndernimyng [Here an e follows, but is dotted out.] and scorne to hem þat ben in our cumpas. …”

From: The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter, c1350
Preface, introduction, notes, and glossary, by Karl D. Bülbring, 1891

ETYMOLOGY
from obsolete French repentin, -ine, or from Latin repentinus, 
from repent-, repens (sudden) + ‑inus (‑ine)

EXAMPLE
“… Whan thou shalte ought do, of vnexpert or newe
Fyrste ponder in thy mynde, reuoluynge busely
What maner, and how great thynge, may therof ensue
Attempt nothynge weyghty, in haste nor sodaynly
If thynges may byde, tary, begyn thou nat rasshely
For enterpryses rasshe, hasty and repentyne
Ar chefe thynges bryngynge, great warkes to ruyne …”

From: Here begynneth a ryght frutefull treatyse, intituled The Myrrour of Good Maners,
By Dominicus Mancinus
Translated by Alexander Barclay, ?1518

PRONUNCIATION
ruh-PEN-tighn

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin repandus (bent backwards, turned up), from re- + pandus (bent)

EXAMPLE
“… And as indeed is deducible from pictures themselves; for though they be drawn repandous, or convexedly crooked in one piece, yet the Dolphin that carrieth Arion is concavously inverted, and hath its spine depressed in another. …”

From: Pseudodoxia Epidemica: 
Or Enquiries Into Very Many Received Tenents and Commonly Presumed Truths
By Thomas Browne, 1646

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rixabundus 

‘EXAMPLE
She is a very moody and rixabund woman.