Word of the Day

: January 29, 2014

logy

adjective LOH-ghee

What It Means

: marked by sluggishness and lack of vitality : groggy

logy in Context

I was feeling logy after eating such a big meal, so I decided to take a brief nap.

"I often feel logy before putting on a record that I'm slated to review, like I'm getting up in the morning for work. But that dissipates. The music soon becomes a pool cue that gets mental billiards rolling, points clacking against counterpoints." - From an album review by Carl Wilson in Slate Magazine, November 1, 2013

Did You Know?

Based on surface resemblance, you might guess that "logy" (also sometimes spelled "loggy") is related to "groggy," but that's not the case. "Groggy" ultimately comes from "Old Grog," the nickname of an English admiral who was notorious for his cloak made of a fabric called grogram-and for adding water to his crew's rum. The sailors called the rum mixture "grog" after the admiral. Because of the effect of grog, "groggy" came to mean "weak and unsteady on the feet or in action." No one is really sure about the origin of "logy," but experts speculate that it comes from the Dutch word "log," meaning "heavy." Its first recorded use in English, from an 1847 London newspaper, refers to a "loggy stroke" in rowing.