Monday, October 10, 2016

Today's words

A couple of not new to me words of the day with interesting enough aspects for me to include here:

roister /ROY-ster/ - to engage in noisy revelry : carouse
I was familiar with this word already, though it took me a moment to place it. I thought it's root might turn out to be related to that of "rooster," but this doesn't appear to be the case. I hate it when we make language more complicated, though: I prefer the older, shorter forms for verb and the people who engage in the activity. 
odious /OH-dee-us/ - arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance : hateful
Every time I see this word, it takes my brain a moment to separate it from "onerous," even thought I'm familiar with both words and the distinction between them. But the thing that surprised me was to see that this one shares roots with "annoy." The Merriam-Webster site doesn't provide the etymological path for most words that aren't the word of the day, But fortunately there are other online sources to investigate the route between the Latin odium (which of course has also made its way into English as a noun) and annoy.

No comments:

Post a Comment