Word of the Day

: March 28, 2014

adscititious

adjective ad-suh-TISH-us

What It Means

1 : derived or acquired from something on the outside

2 : supplemental, additional

adscititious in Context

"We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit, not for their adscititious or accidental advantages." - From Charles Caleb Colton's 1832 book Lacon

"I thrilled to crates of chilly hardware-coffee tins of rusty nails and mismatched bolts and nuts, odd attachments, gimcrack, rickrack, and adscititious crap…." - From William Davies King's 2008 book Collections of Nothing

Did You Know?

"Adscititious" comes from a very "knowledgeable" family-it ultimately derives from "scire," the Latin verb meaning "to know." "Scire" also gave us "science," "conscience," "prescience" ("foreknowledge"), and "nescience" ("lack of knowledge"). "Adscititious" itself comes to us from "scire" by way of the Latin verb "adsciscere," which means "to admit" or "to adopt." This explains why "adscititious" describes something adopted from an outside source.