cachinnate

(KAK-uh-nayt)

To laugh loudly and boisterously; to guffaw.

This word is from Latin cachinnare, meaning "to laugh loudly," and is probably onomatopoetic.

"I have a feeling that the authors of that new book that says you can lose weight by sleeping more are going to be cachinnating all the way to the bank."

 

caliginous

(kuh-LIHJ-uh-nuhss)

Dark, misty, gloomy.

This word comes ultimately from Latin caligo, meaning "darkness."

"Fingers poised over the keys, Nigel mused, 'Hmmmm, what if I began with, 'It was a caliginous and stormy night.'?'"

 

callipygian

(kal-uh-PIDGE-ee-uhn)

Having a shapely butt.

This useful word comes from the Greek kallos, "beautiful" (as in the "beautiful writing" that is calligraphy), and pyge, the ancient Greek word for "buttocks."

"She figured that if she could spend 1,000 hours on the Stairmaster between now and her high school reunion, she¹d be looking quite callipygian when the big day arrived."

 

candidate

(KAN-dih-dayt)

Someone who seeks or is nominated for an office or honor.

In ancient Rome, those seeking election to public office traditionally wore togas rubbed with bright white chalk, all the better to reinforce the idea that they were pure of character. The Latin word candidus meant "white," or "pure," and so those who wore the white togas were called candidati -- the predecessor of our own word for would-be officeholders.

Candidate is an etymological relative of a number of words having to do with the idea of things that are bright, glowing, and pure, including candle, candor, and candid.

"Okay, but even if he did snort the white stuff years ago, the question remains: How candid does a candidate have to be?"

 

cantaloupe

(CAN-tull-ohp)

A muskmelon in season during late summer.

This sweet melon gets its name from a vacation getaway - namely, the pope's. This villa, just outside Rome in the town of Cantalupo, was where the Italians first cultivated this delicately flavored fruit from Armenia. Therefore they christened it with the name that evolved into cantaloupe.

"She had her doubts, but decided at last that she might as well take her psychic's advice and paint her bedroom walls the color of cantaloupe."

 

canter

(KAN-turr)

A smooth easy gait for a horse, faster than a trot, but slower than a gallop.

This familiar word has a colorful past: After the murder of Thomas a Becket in England's Canterbury Cathedral in the twelfth century, Canterbury became a popular destination for countless religious pilgrims traveling on horseback, including those described in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. By the early seventeenth century, the expression Canterbury pace had come to mean the easy gait at which these faithful rode to their destination. By 1673, Canterbury had become a verb, and by 1706, had shortened to canter.

"Spotting a pile of clothes on the riverbank, Vanessa slowed her steed to a canter, then a trot, then stopped altogether and ever so casually got out her binoculars."

 

cavil

(KAV-ull)

1. (verb) Raise trivial objections to.

2.(noun) A petty criticism; a frivolous objection.

It's from Latin cavillari , which means to "jeer" or "satirize."

"Another word of warning: Whenever Smithers hands back a report you've written and says, 'Not to cavil here, but ...' be prepared to pull up a chair, because you'll be listening to him for a long, long time."

 

cleave

(kleev)

Use it one way, and cleave means "to split" (as in what a meat cleaver does). So why is it that cleave can also mean just the opposite--that is, to "stick to," as in to cleave to a principle?

Actually, these cleaves are two different words that evolved to have the same spelling. One cleave comes from Old English cleofan, which means "to split," making it a linguistic relative of cleft. The other cleave is from Old English cleofian, which comes from an old family of Germanic words meaning to "adhere."

"Bearing in mind that one can cleave to one's spouse--and that pressures can cleave a relationship in two--the husband-and-wife authors of an oddly compelling new memoir about their marriage decided to call their book Cleaving."

 

 

cenacle

(SENN-uh-kull)

A clique or circle, especially of writers; a literary group.

The Romans' word for "meal" was cena, and they called the "dining room" a cenaculum. This word's English progeny, cenacle, first meant "small dining room", and later "a room where people with common interests gather." Eventually English cenacle came to refer specifically to any group of literary types who might gather in such a place.

"But most of all, she looked forward to those regular reality checks from her cynical cenacle."

 

cereal

(SEER-ee-ull)

A food prepared from various grains, such as wheat, oats, or corn.

Don't look now, but there's a goddess in your granola. The word cereal derives from the name of the Roman earth goddess Ceres, who, like her Greek counterpart Demeter, presided over the growth of crops, especially grain. Her name also inspired the Spanish word for the grain-based beverage called cerveza, or beer.

"I'm not kidding: Cindy's so phobic about fat that she puts orange juice on her cereal instead of milk."

 

chatoyant

(shuh-TOY-unt)

Changing in luster or color, the way cats' eyes do.

A relative of English "cat," this marvelous word comes from the French chatoyer, which literally means "to shimmer like cats' eyes."

"Following a brisk body scrub and generous application of pineapple mango-scented moisturizer, Vanessa slipped into a magenta-and-orange dress of chatoyant silk and stepped out into the night."

 

chiliad

(KILL-ee-add)

1. A group containing 1,000 elements.

2. A millennium.

Sick and tired of hearing about "millennial this" and "millennial that"? We borrowed our word millennium directly from Latin, but its Greek-based equivalent, chiliad, is a perfectly legitimate English word that works just as well. So how about if we all start using that one for the next year or so?

Just remember that it begins with a "k" sound, not "ch." (It comes from the Greek khilioi, meaning "one thousand," this Greek root that also provides the kilo in kilobyte -- and thus the K in Y2K).

"Actually, the new chiliad doesn't start until NEXT year, not that anybody seems particularly bothered by that fact."

 

coccyx

(KOCK-siks)

The tailbone.

It may sound cuckoo, but this bone at the end of the spinal cord is named after ... well, the cuckoo bird.

Early anatomists apparently saw a resemblance between this bone's triangular shape and the distinctive beak of the cuckoo bird. So they took the Greeks' name the cuckoo bird, kokkux, and Latinized it as coccyx.

"Let's just say that Jason's most recent skateboarding accident was none too kind to his coccyx."

 

coconut

(KOH-kuh-nuht)

The brown, hard-shelled seed of the coconut, or its edible white flesh.

Beware! A goblin lurks inside this word!

When Portuguese explorers first happened upon coconut trees in the tropics, they were struck by the way those three holes in the bottom of the nut resembled a little face. So they called it a coco, their word for a "goblin," "bogeyman," or "grinning skull." Somewhere along the way, speakers of English added the nut to its name.

"Well in that case, how about if we carve a coconut this year instead of a plain old pumpkin?"

 

comedo

(KAHM-ih-do)

A blackhead.

The Romans used the word comedo to mean "glutton," and later applied this name to those gluttonous critters, maggots. An imagined resemblance between the two led to the oh-so-helpful definition of "comedo" in the Oxford English Dictionary: "a small worm-like yellowish black-tipped pasty mass which can in some persons be made, by pressure, to exude from hair follicles."

"Alas, he discovered too late that his attentions were as welcome as a comedo on prom night."

comet

(KAHM-et)

A celestial body having a long tail.

This word's origin is surprisingly picturesque: In ancient Greek, the word "kometes" meant "having long hair." Aristotle first applied the name "kometes" to this hurtling body which indeed seems to have long hair trailing from its "head." The name was later adopted into Latin as "cometes," which eventually arrived in English as "comet."

"The annual shower comes from dust and ice pellets that break off from the comet Tempel-Tuttle as it whizzes around the sun." -- ABCNews.com, reporting on the Leonid meteor shower last November 17.

 

compound

(KAHM-pound)

A group of buildings enclosed by a barrier.

You might assume that the word compound (as in, for example "the Kennedy compound") simply reflects the idea that several buildings have been "compounded" together. But compound in this sense apparently comes from an entirely different source -- all the way from Malaysia, in fact. When European traders moved into the Far East to set up trading stations and factories, they surrounded them with stockades, and started referring to them by the Malay word kampong, which means "village" or "enclosure." Eventually kampong became compound.

"No, he's spending the weekend at the Camp David compound, but she's in - where else? -- New York."

 

comstockery

(kahm-STOCK-uh-ree)

Self-righteous, moralizing censorship.

As founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, one Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) earned the dubious distinction of overseeing the destruction of 160 tons of literature and photos he deemed immoral. Comstock held special contempt for one of George Bernard Shaw's plays, and in 1905 Shaw returned the favor by writing a letter to the New York Times, which read in part: "Comstockery is the world's standing Joke at the expense of the United States. . . . It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second rate country-town civilization after all."

"Look, I hate receiving those unsolicited ads for porno sites as much as the next person, but this latest proposal to censor the Net constitutes the worst kind of comstockery."

 

concatenation

(kon-cat-tuhn-AY-shun)

A series or chain.

From the Latin catena, literally, "a chain," (a relative of Spanish cadena, which means the same thing) comes this word for a series or anything similarly linked.

"Sorry I'm late, honey, but that last phone call from our deranged client in Poughkeepsie set off the most unusual concatenation of events!"

 

coruscate

(KORR-uh-skayt)

To sparkle, glitter; to exhibit dazzling virtuosity.

This glittering word comes from the Latin coruscare, meaning "to flash, sparkle, gleam, vibrate."

Sensing an opportunity, Vanessa leaned across the table, all the better to make her eyes coruscate in the candlelight, and purred, "So . . . do you know why they call it pasta putanesca?"

 

costive

(KOSS-tihv)

1. Suffering from constipation (or causing it)

2. Slow, sluggish

3. Stingy

Costive comes from Old French costeve, which meant the same thing. Both derive from Latin constipare, literally, "to cram together" or "pack tight."

"Personally, of course, I'd love to give you a raise, but you know how costive those upper management types can be."

 

crapulent

(KRAP-yuh-lent)

Sick from excessive eating or drinking.

Crapulent is from Latin crapulentus, which means "very much intoxicated." (It's apparently no relation to the similar-sounding four-letter word that describes what one feels like as a result.)

"See, my fear is that after all this pre-millennial buildup, we're going to party like it's 1999, and then on January 1, 2000, we'll all wake up feeling just as crapulent as ever."

 

crepuscular

(Krih-PUS-kyew-lurr)

Pertaining to twilight; dim, dusky.

The Romans' word for "twilight" was crepusculum, which comes from a family of words pertaining to "darkness." Their English offspring crespuscular is also applied to animals that become active at twilight or before sunrise, such as bats and birds. A lovely example appeared recently in The New Yorker, where writer Anthony Lane was describing the effect of the August 1999 eclipse:

"The air took on a quick chill, and the light grew weak and crepuscular."

 

cynosure

(SY-noh-shoor)

A center of attention.

Cynosure goes all the way back to the ancient Greek word kunosoura, which literally means "a dog's tail." But what, you may reasonably ask, is the linguistic connection between a pooch's posterior and a focus of interest?

It seems that the Greeks applied the name kunosoura, or "dog's tail" to the "handle" or "tail" of the constellation we call the Little Dipper. At the end of this "tail" is Polaris, the North Star, which long served as a guide for navigators. This sense of the "dog tail" that contained a "guiding star" led to our own use of the English derivative cynosure as "a reference point or guide," and eventually, "any center of attention."

"Our newly redesigned website will be a cynosure in cyberspace."

 

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