Sunday Word: Virga
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1word1dayvirga [vir-guh]
noun:
wisps or streaks of water or ice particles falling out of a cloud but vaporizing before reaching the earth's surface as precipitation. Also called Fallstreifen, fallstreaks, precipitation trails.
(click to enlarge)
Examples:
The Seattle area has so many different kinds of precipitation - drizzle, mist, showers, virga - that residents have taken to making up their names for it. (Christine Clarridge, Seattle-specific seasons and the different types of rain, The Seattle TimesFebruary 2022)
San Diego needs rain. And there’s plenty of moisture in the air, as you can tell by the clouds drifting by. But little, if any of it, will reach the ground on Saturday due to a phenomenon known as virga. (Gary Robbins, San Diego can expect rain that doesn’t reach the ground Saturday, The San Diego Union-Tribune, September 2009)
From 'virga', meaning 'observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground', to a 'beum-sléibhe', or 'sudden torrent caused by the bursting of a thundercloud', every drop is accounted for. (Fiona Macdonald, The vanishing words we need to save, BBC CultureNovember 2015)
Not infrequently in the wide skies over Yuma and other parts of the arid Southwest, residents watch sheets of rain begin to unfurl from auspicious purple storm clouds, backlit by the sun. But the rain stops halfway, hanging mid-horizon like a magician's trick. Known as rain streamers or by their scientific name virga, the half-sheets evaporate into the dry air before the rain can reach the ground. (Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History)
Origin:
Virga is from the Latin word virga, which means primarily 'branch' or 'rod,' but can also refer to a streak in the sky suggesting rain. Our featured word, which dates to the mid-20th century, is only the latest in a series of words from this root. 'Verge' (which originally referred to a rod or staff carried as an emblem of authority or a symbol of office) dates to the 15th century. The rare noun 'virgate,' which refers to an old English unit of land area, came from virga by way of the Medieval Latin virgata (also a unit of land area) in the late 17th century. The more common adjective virgate, meaning 'shaped like a rod or wand' arrived in the early 19th by way of Latin virgatus, meaning 'made of twigs.' (Merriam-Webster)
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Date: 2022-02-27 07:07 pm (UTC)And virga in its botanical sense may also tie into another obvious word: from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginity):
The word virgin comes via Old French virgine from the root form of Latin virgo, genitive virginis, meaning literally "maiden" or "virgin"—a sexually intact young woman or "sexually inexperienced woman". As in Latin, the English word is also often used with wider reference, by relaxing the age, gender or sexual criteria. In this case, more-mature women can be virgins (the Virgin Queen), men can be virgins, and potential initiates into many fields can be colloquially termed virgins; for example, a skydiving "virgin". In the latter usage, virgin means uninitiated.
The Latin word likely arose by analogy with a suit of lexemes based on vireo, meaning "to be green, fresh or flourishing", mostly with botanic reference—in particular, virga meaning "strip of wood".
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