Word of the Day

noun

"A surfeit of the sweetest things / The deepest loathing to the stomach brings...." — From William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1596

"Every day, we're bombarded by options; the surfeit of decisions we don't really need to make can be overwhelming." — From a restaurant review by Tania Ballantine in Time Out, June 14, 2012

There is an abundance—you could almost say a surfeit—of English words that derive from the Latin "facere," meaning "to do." The connection to "facere" is fairly obvious for words spelled with "fic," "fac," or "fec," such as "sacrifice," "benefaction," and "infect." For words like "stupefy" (a modification of Latin "stupefacere") and "hacienda" (originally, in Old Spanish and Latin, "facienda") the "facere" factor is not so apparent. As for "surfeit," the "c" was dropped along the path that led from Latin through Anglo-French, where "facere" became "faire" and "sur-" was added to make "surfaire," meaning "to overdo." The Anglo-French noun "surfet" ("excess") entered Middle English and went through a number of spellings before settling on "surfeit."

-----------------------------------------------

Anderson LIVE Audience Pick: adorkable

In honor of National Dictionary Day (Oct. 16), Anderson LIVE selected "adorkable" as the top audience submission for "a new word you would love to see in the dictionary."

adorkable (which is actually a word that Merriam-Webster has been tracking for several years) is defined as "attractive and charming in a nerdy or dorky way"

Visit our archives to see previous selections »

A mug with meaning:

The Definition of "Mug"

Browse all items »

Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP