numismatic • \noo-miz-MAT-ik\ • adjective
*1 : of or relating to the study or collection of coins, tokens, and money
2 : of or relating to currency : monetary

Example sentence:
Jason was disappointed to learn that the 1936 buffalo nickel he owned had virtually no numismatic value.

Did you know?
The first metal coins are believed to have been used as currency by the Lydians, a people of Asia Minor, during the 7th century BC, and it is likely that folks began collecting coins not long after that. The name that we give to the collection of coins today is “numismatics,” a word that also encompasses the collection of paper money and of medals. The noun “numismatics” and the adjective “numismatic” came to English (via French “numismatique”) from Latin and Greek “nomisma,” meaning “coin.” “Nomisma” in turn derives from the Greek verb “nomizein” (”to use”) and ultimately from the noun “nomos” (”custom” or “usage”). From these roots we also get “numismatist,” referring to a person who collects coins, medals, or paper money.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

caesura • \sih-ZYUR-uh\ • noun
1 : a break in the flow of sound usually in the middle of a line of verse
*2 : break, interruption
3 : a pause marking a rhythmic point of division in a melody

Example sentence:
“Without so much as the caesura of a drawn breath I was first shouting in joy, then screaming in shock.” (E.L. Doctorow, World’s Fair)

Did you know?
Caesuras (or caesurae) are those slight pauses one makes as one reads verse. While it may seem that their most obvious role is to emphasize the metrical construction of the verse, more often we need these little stops (which may be, but are not necessarily, set off by punctuation) to introduce the cadence and phrasing of natural speech into the metrical scheme. The word “caesura,” borrowed from Late Latin, is ultimately from Latin “caedere” meaning “to cut.” Nearly as old as the 450-year-old poetry senses is the general meaning “a break or interruption.”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

undulate • \UN-juh-layt\ • verb
1 : to form or move in waves : fluctuate
*2 : to rise and fall in volume, pitch, or cadence
3 : to present a wavy appearance

Example sentence:
The opera singer’s voice undulated as she expressed the grief and despair of the song.

Did you know?
“Undulate” and “inundate” are word cousins, sharing “unda,” the Latin word for “wave,” as their common ancestor. No surprise there. But would you have guessed that “abound,” “surround,” and “redound” are also “unda” offspring? The connection between “unda” and these words is easier to see when you learn that at some point in their early histories each of them essentially had the meaning of “to overflow,” just as “inundate” (which can mean either “to overflow” or “to overwhelm”) does. Today that connection is obscured, since the “overflow” senses of the words are, well, down the drain.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

benedict • \BEN-uh-dikt\ • noun
: a newly married man who has long been a bachelor

Example sentence:
Tabloid reporters never tire of asking celebrity benedicts what they think of married life.

Did you know?
“Benedick” is the chief male character in Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing. Throughout the play, both Benedick and his female counterpart Beatrice exchange barbed comments and profess to detest the very idea of marriage, but the story eventually culminates in their marriage to each other. As a result, Benedick’s name came to be applied to men who marry later in life. The spelling was changed to “benedict,” possibly by association with a use of “benedict” meaning “bachelor” (although the evidence for this use is scant). Some early 20th-century usage commentators regarded the respelling as incorrect with regards to the etymology, but “benedict” has become the established spelling nevertheless.

From Merriam-Websters Online

slugabed • \SLUG-uh-bed\ • noun
: a person who stays in bed after the usual or proper time to get up; broadly : sluggard

Example sentence:
Rather than be a slugabed for her entire vacation, Jeanne made it a goal to rise at 6:00 AM and go for a jog every morning.

Did you know?
The first known usage of “slugabed” in English can be found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1592), when Juliet’s nurse attempts to rouse the young heroine by chiding, “Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed!” The first half of the word, “slug,” is a now-rare verb once used in English to mean “to be lazy or inert” or “to move slowly.” Experts believe this word to be of Scandinavian origin, and the same thing can be said of the noun “slug,” which can mean “sluggard” or “lazy person” as well as refer to the slow-moving gastropod. The second half of our featured word, “abed,” is a word still used in English today to mean “in bed.”

From Merriam-Websters Online

orchidaceous • \or-kuh-DAY-shus\ • adjective
1 : of, relating to, or resembling the orchids
*2 : showy, ostentatious

Example sentence:
“There’s no clutter; no outlandish designer flatware or china; no orchidaceous, wordy wine lists. . . .” (James Villas, Town and Country Monthly, March 1998)

Did you know?
In its sense first used by botanists in the 1830s, “orchidaceous” means “belonging to the family Orchidaceae”—that is, to the orchid family, a very large family of flowering plants. While the basic shape of an orchid is simple—three petals with, on many orchids, an enlarged middle petal—there is no such thing as a typical orchid. Orchids range in size from very tiny flowers on inch-high plants to flowers a foot across, and they grow in habitats from tropical rain forests to semideserts. But when people use “orchidaceous” as a flashy term in phrases like “orchidaceous writing,” “orchidaceous colors,” and “orchidaceous ladies,” it’s the colorful, showy tropical species they have in mind—species which, as Jacob Breynius, a 17th-century German botanist, put it, “surely excite our greatest admiration.”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

devious • \DEE-vee-us\ • adjective
*1 : deviating from a straight line : roundabout
2 : behaving wrongly : errant
3 : tricky, cunning; also : deceptive

Example sentence:
In The Discoverers, Daniel J. Boorstin describes the Strait of Magellan as “the narrowest, most devious, most circuitous of all the straits connecting two great bodies of water.”

Did you know?
If you think someone devious has lost their way, you’re right, etymologically speaking—the word derives from the Latin adjective “devius,” itself formed by a combination of the prefix “de-” (”from, away”) and the noun “via,” meaning “way.” When “devious” was first used in the late 16th century, it referred to a literal wandering off the “way,” describing something that meandered or had no fixed course (”a devious route” or “devious breezes”). Relatively quickly, however, the word came to describe someone or something that has metaphorically rather than literally left the “right path,” and then to apply to deceitful or otherwise behavior that is not “straight”-forward.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

phlegmatic • \fleg-MAT-ik\ • adjective
1 : resembling, consisting of, or producing the humor phlegm
*2 : having or showing a slow and stolid temperament

Example sentence:
He is a phlegmatic coach at courtside, but in the locker room he fires up (and, when necessary, reams out) his players, inspiring them to win.

Did you know?
According to the ancient Greeks, human personalities were controlled by four bodily fluids or semifluids called “humors”: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Each humor was associated with one of the four basic elements: air, earth, fire, and water. Phlegm was paired with water—the cold, moist element—and it was believed to impart the cool, calm, unemotional personality we now call the “phlegmatic type.” That’s a bit odd, given that the term derives from the Greek “phlegma,” which literally means “flame,” perhaps a reflection of the inflammation that colds and flus often bring.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

maverick • \MAV-rik\ • noun
1 : an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf
*2 : an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

Example sentence:
The award-winning columnist was regarded as a political maverick who clashed with his colleagues on many issues.

Did you know?
When a client gave Samuel A. Maverick 400 cattle to settle a $1,200 debt, the 19th-century south Texas lawyer had no use for them, so he left the cattle unbranded and allowed them to roam freely (supposedly under the supervision of one of his employees). Neighboring stockmen recognized their opportunity and seized it, branding and herding the stray cattle as their own. Maverick eventually recognized the folly of the situation and sold what was left of his depleted herd, but not before his name became synonymous with such unbranded livestock. By the end of the 19th century, the term “maverick” was being used to refer to individuals who prefer to blaze their own trails.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online

lyric • \LEER-ik\ • adjective
1 a : suitable for singing to the lyre or for being set to music and sung b : of, relating to, or being drama set to music; especially : operatic
2 *a : expressing direct usually intense personal emotion especially in a manner suggestive of song b : exuberant, rhapsodic
3 : having a light voice and a melodic style

Example sentence:
The critics are praising Jessica’s debut novel as a lyric masterpiece that bravely lays out the emotional tensions experienced by its young author.

Did you know?
To the ancient Greeks, anything “lyrikos” was appropriate to the lyre. That elegant stringed instrument was highly regarded by the Greeks and was used to accompany intensely personal poetry that revealed the thoughts and feelings of the poet. When the adjective “lyric,” a descendant of “lyrikos,” was adopted into English in the 1500s, it too referred to things pertaining or adapted to the lyre. Initially, it was applied to poetic forms (such as elegies, odes, or sonnets) that expressed strong emotion, to poets who wrote such works, or to things that were meant to be sung; over time, it was extended to anything musical or rhapsodic. Nowadays, “lyric” is also used as a noun naming either a type of poem or the words of a song.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

From Merriam-Websters Online