Word of the Day

: January 16, 2017

paladin

noun PAL-uh-din

What It Means

1 : a trusted military leader (as for a medieval prince)

2 : a leading champion of a cause

paladin in Context

The prince summoned the paladin to commend him for his actions in battle.

"This collection of stories by one of England's best novelists is both playful and serious in the manner of Laurence Sterne, the 18th-century author of 'Tristram Shandy'…. Sterne was the master of the marginal, the random, the inconsequential. In our own day, David Foster Wallace, Geoff Dyer and Ali Smith have become the paladins of this goofy manner." — Edmund White, The New York Times, 2 Dec. 2016

Did You Know?

In ancient Rome, the emperor's palace was located on the Palatine Hill, known as Palatium in Latin. Since the site was the seat of imperial power, the word palatium came to mean "imperial" and later "imperial official." Different forms of the word passed through Latin, Italian, and French, picking up various meanings along the way, and eventually some of those forms made their way into English. Paladin is one of the etymological heirs of palatium; another descendant is the word palace.