Category: Word of the Day – R

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin ruricola (a person who tills the land, husbandman, country dweller, rustic)
(from ruri-, combining form of rur-, rus (country) + -cola) + -ist

EXAMPLE
“…His hood was half blue and half green, and, over his left ear, was set off with an artificial rose. His appearance did not bespeak the ruricolist, and Dick, who at once detected this, set him down for a burgess of London…”

From: The Life and Times of Dick Whittington
An Historical Romance.
By Richard Whittington, 1841

ETYMOLOGY
variant of rampageous, after adjectives ending in -acious

EXAMPLE
“…In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door…”

From: The Pickwick Papers
By Charles Dickens, 1836

ETYMOLOGY
formed by compounding, from ring

EXAMPLE
He was a ring-pigger and a debauchee, and his family were divided in opinion as to whether he died from the effects of drink or from licentious living.

ETYMOLOGY
a humorous use of Latin recumbentibus, ablative plural of recumbens, present participle of recumbere (recumb – to lean, recline, rest)

EXAMPLE
“…Ector sone to him gan take,
He thoght him venge of that wrake;
Ector bare his sword on hye,—
For he hadde no spere him bye,—
He ȝaff the kyng Episcropus
Suche a recumbentibus,
He smot In-two bothe helme & mayle,
Coleret and the ventayle…”

From: The Laud Troy Book;
an anonymous Middle English poem dealing with the background and events of the Trojan War, dating from around 1400

ETYMOLOGY
from recray (to tire or wear out), from Anglo-Norman recreire, recreere and Middle French recroire (to desist, give up, to acknowledge oneself defeated, to yield in battle, to fail to go back on what one has said, to tire (something) out, to become tired out (especially of a horse), to confess (something), to go back on one’s sentiments or beliefs)

EXAMPLE
“…The toke[n]s ar not good
To be true Englysh blood
For if they vnderstood
  His traytourly dispyght
He was a recrayed knyght
A subtyll sysmatyke
Ryght nere an heretyke
Of grace out of the state
And dyed excomunycate…”

From: Agaynst the Scottes
By John Skelton, a1529

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rumor (a rumour), and foras (abroad)

EXAMPLE
Don’t gossip or rumiforate. When rumours are spread, a person’s reputation or character can be greatly damaged, even when the rumours aren’t true.

ETYMOLOGY
from rumgumption (good sense, shrewdness)

EXAMPLE
“…who’d have thought of that?–he’s a turning rumgumtious, and no mistake. Howsomdever, I must turn it over in my mind, and be even with him, somehow–I owes him one for that. I say, admiral…”

From: Varney the Vampire
By Thomas Peckett Prest, 1847

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin rhonchus (a snoring) + sonans, p. pr. of sonare (to sound)

EXAMPLE
“…Out marches the paleontologist Collett,
And with his little hammer
And scientific grammar
First knocks a mammoth tooth,
To put into his grip-sack;
Then constructs an awful name
By means of which to skip back
With a great rhonchisonant fury, on
The epochs carboniferous and Silurian…”

From: Biographical and Historical Record of Vermillion County, Indiana, 1888

ETYMOLOGY
from rake (vb.) + shame (n.).; perhaps suggested by rake-hell

EXAMPLE
“…An vgly monster of men, with a face as grieslie as a Beare, came vnto him, accompanied with a traine of rakeshames…”

From: Honours Conquest: wherein is conteined the famous hystorie of Edward of Lancaster 
By Henry Roberts, 1598