The Words of the Week - Oct. 16
Dictionary lookups from elections, diplomacy, and Indigenous Peoples’ Day
‘Indigenous’
Monday was Indigenous Peoples’ Day and saw a corresponding rise in lookups for Indigenous.
Ashleigh Brooks, a Tuscarora speaker, researcher, and cultural educator from North Carolina, was the main speaker, exploring the healing power of ancestral plants, the traditional medicines rooted in Indigenous lands, and the growing commercialization and overhavesting of plants, including California white sage.
—Alexa Gagosz, The Boston Globe, 13 Oct. 2026
The relevant and usually capitalized sense of Indigenous is defined as “of, relating to, or descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized.” The word comes from the Latin noun indigena, meaning “native.”
‘Incumbent’
With U.S. elections just a few weeks away, lookups were high for incumbent.
An incumbent and her challenger are vying for the next four-year term as a Cape Coral City Council member for District 4 in Southwest Florida’s Lee County.
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An incumbent is “a person who holds a particular office or position.” When incumbent was first used in English in the 15th century, it referred to someone who occupied a benefice—a paid position in a church. This was often a lifetime appointment; the person could only be forced to leave the office in the case of certain specific legal conflicts.
If you think that there is an etymological connection between incumbent and recumbent (“lying down”), you are correct. Both words come from the Latin cumbere (“to lie down”). In fact—and you may want to at least sit down for this, if not lie down—the adjective incumbent, in addition to its familiar “obligatory” use (as in “it is incumbent on/upon us to take action”), can be used to meaning “lying or resting on something else.”
‘Ambassador’
A scandal involving a U.S. ambassador led to higher-than-usual lookups for ambassador.
Ms. Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, has faced a string of damaging reports including asking a Republican donor to pay off a credit card.
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We define the relevant sense of ambassador as “a diplomatic agent of the highest rank accredited to a foreign government or sovereign and appointed for a special and often temporary diplomatic assignment as the resident representative abroad.” The word traces back to the Medieval Latin ambasciātor, itself from the verb ambiasciāre (“to communicate, send a message, send an envoy”) + the Latin agent suffix -tor.
‘Harvest’
Harvest was trending this week. ‘Tis the season, after all.
Extension specialists reported that soybean harvest is progressing across Wisconsin but remains behind the five-year average pace. Corn silage harvest is nearly complete, and about 72% of the state’s corn crop has reached maturity.
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We define the relevant sense of harvest as “the season for gathering in agricultural crops.” It can also refer to the act or process of gathering in crop, a mature crop (as of grain or fruit), the quantity of a natural product (such as salmon or timber) gathered in a single season, or an accumulated store or productive result. The word traces back to the Old English hærfest, which shares an older ancestor with the Latin carpere (“to pluck, gather”) and Greek karpos (“fruit”).
Word Worth Knowing: ‘Vampire’
As legends go, vampires are certainly ancient, but the word vampire (“the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep”) is not. Legends of bloodsucking creatures go back to Ancient Greece, with harrowing tales of them rising from burial places at night to drink peoples’ blood before hiding from dawn’s daylight. These stories were especially popular in eastern Europe, and the word vampire originally comes from the Serbian word vampir, which then passed from German to French, coming to English in the 1700s.
He was generally invisible, as I have said; but some time after I had moved, I saw him one morning from the hill, stretching his grey wings over the valley, like some fabulous vampire, who had spent the night sucking the wholesome juices of the sleepers below, and was sluggish from the effects of his repast.
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