Word of the Day

: September 30, 2023

palmy

adjective PAH-mee

What It Means

Palmy describes something that is flourishing or marked by prosperity, or something that is abounding in or bearing palms.

// They knew her in her palmy days when she was living high.

// They moved to a palmy suburb with lots of new homes and parks.

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palmy in Context

“The newspaper industry will survive, and golfers are in no danger of becoming an extinct species. Still, in both cases, the palmy days are probably long gone. Advertising revenues that largely sustained the press have been diverted to the upstart media of a digitized world, while the leisurely pace of golf proves increasingly out of step with the modern hurly-burly.” — James Gill, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), 6 May 2022

Did You Know?

Our language became a smidge more prosperous the day palmy first waved “hello.” As the palm branch has traditionally been used as a symbol of victory, so did the word palm come to mean “victory” or “triumph” in the late 14th century, thanks to the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer. Centuries later, William Shakespeare would employ palmy as a synonym for triumphant or flourishing in the tragedy Hamlet when the character Horatio speaks of the “palmy state of Rome / A little ere the mightiest Julius fell.” That use remains somewhat common, and English speakers have since dug back into palmy’s vegetal roots to develop the also familiar sense of “abounding in or bearing palms,” as in “palmy beaches.”