Word of the Day!

mythopoeic [mith-uh-pee-ik]

adjective:
1 of or relating to the making of myths
2 serving to create or engender myths; productive in mythmaking

Examples:

Gloria Steinem's New York is a bit like everyone's: a mythopoeic territory at the intersection of real estate, restaurants and workaholism, with bits of love, sex and ambition thrown in. (John Leland, What I Learned About a Vanished New York From Gloria Steinem, The New York Times, October 2016)

Shelley had turned it into a mythopoeic representation of the Romantic poet Keats 'butchered' by critics. (Kaiser Haq, The poet as mythopoeic hero: Adonis, Dhaka Tribune, November 2017)

Like most big cosmic ideas, this one has almost certainly been purloined, ornamented and abused more than once in the vast works of mythopoeic bricolage which DC and Marvel, America's main comic-book publishers, have provided to the world over the past decades. (O M, The growth of Marvel's universe through 'Black Panther' is welcome, The Economist, February 2018)

A lot of thought went into that visual and mythopoeic synthesis, which also incorporates a strong element of Celtic and Germanic folklore. (Mike Hale, 'Carnival Row' review: Nothing new to see here, Gulf News, September 2019)

Perhaps Charles Strickland's power and originality would scarcely have sufficed to turn the scale if the remarkable mythopoeic faculty of mankind had not brushed aside with impatience a story which disappointed all its craving for the extraordinary. (W Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)

Haggard is the text-book case of the mythopoeic gift pure and simple... Haggard's best work will survive because it is based on an appeal well above high-water mark. The fullest tides of fashion cannot demolish it. A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. (W Somerset Maugham, C. S. Lewis, 'The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard')

Origin:

'pertaining to the creation of myths, giving rise to myths,' 1843, from Greek mythopoios, from mythos + poiein 'to make, create'. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

fumarole [fyoo-muh-rohl]

noun:
a hole in or near a volcano, from which vapor rises

(click to enlarge)

On Wednesday afternoon, Popocatépetl emitted a huge fumarole that split in the middle, eventually taking the shape of a giant heart as it rose into the sky. (Flights suspended in Puebla as Popocatépetl volcano grumbles, The Washington Post, Mexico News Daily 2024)

Gas vents, also known as fumaroles, are also activating around the volcano's summit and Crater Peak vents, the latter being the location where the 1953 and the 1992 eruptions occurred. (Sam Walters, Activity at Alaska’s Mount Spurr Suggests That The Volcano Is About To Erupt, Discover, May 2025)

Downhill from Viti, the landscape belches audible steam blasts from a fumarole at Hverir, a misty, moody landscape with hiking paths that go past scalding ponds not far from the warm Myvatn Nature Baths, where we recovered from our hikes and talked geology with the Danish couple. (Elaine Glusac, Driving Iceland’s Overlooked North, The New York Times, June 2022)

He did the trick with a fumarole of cigarette smoke escaping from her lips. ( Robert D McFadden, Hiro, Fashion Photographer Who Captured the Surreal, Dies at 90, The New York Times, August 2021)

In ordinary climates, a fumarole, or volcanic vapour-well, may be detected by the thin cloud of steam above it, and usually one can at once feel the warmth by passing one's hand into the vapour column, but in the rigour of the Antarctic climate the fumaroles of Erebus have their vapour turned into ice as soon as it reaches the surface of the snow plain. (Ernest Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic)

Directly overhead, in the face of an almost perpendicular cliff, were three of the cavern mouths, which had the aspect of volcanic fumaroles. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Seven Geases)

Origin:

Italian fumarola, from Italian dialect (Neapolitan), from Late Latin fumariolum vent, from Latin fumarium smoke chamber for aging wine, from fumus (Merriam Webster)

chary [chair-ee]

adjective:
1 cautious or careful; wary
2 shy; timid

Examples:

Instead, 'West Side Story' languished when it was first released, its core audience of older filmgoers still chary of venturing into theaters. (Ann Hornaday, Awards season this year is already a nothingburger. And that's okay., The Washington Post, January 2022)

With a writer so chary of detail, the reader rushes to fill in. (Caleb Crain, Sally Rooney Addresses Her Critics, The Atlantic, September 2021)

I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely even with her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far as to describe the dinner in Gerrard-street, if we had not then come into a sudden glare of gas. (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations)

Prince Vasili knew this, and having once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. (Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace)

Origin:

Middle English chari 'actively concerned, diligent; sorrowful, sad,' late 12c, earlier cearig (in early 12c homilies Martha sister of Lazarus is bisig and cearig), from Old English cearig 'sorrowful, full of care,' the adjective from care, qv.

The sense shifted 16c from 'disposed to cherish with care' to 'sparing, not lavish, frugal' (by 1560s, often with of). Compare the sense evolution of careful. Cognates include Old Saxon carag, Old High German charag 'full of sorrow, trouble, or care.' (Online Etymological Dictionary)

How did chary, which began as the opposite of cheery, become a synonym of wary? Don't worry, there's no need to be chary - the answer is not dreary. Chary's Middle English predecessor, charri, meant 'sorrowful,' a sense that harks back to the Old English word cearig, meaning 'troubled, troublesome, taking care,' which ultimately comes from an assumed-but-unattested Germanic word, karō, meaning 'sorrow' or 'worry,' that is also an ancestor of the word care. It's perhaps unsurprising then, that chary was once used to mean 'dear' or 'cherished.' Both sorrow and affection have largely faded from chary, and today the word is most often used as a synonym of careful. (Merriam Webster)

sacerdotal [sas-er-doht-l]

adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of priests
characterized by belief in the divine authority of the priesthood

Examples:

He seemed indeed a sacerdotal figure - a high priest who offered his own life before accepting the animal's. Every one of us was transfigured by the rite. (Christopher North, Taurine state of grace , The Critic, March 2021 )

After the reading - ‘Neither pray I for these alone...' - one of the ladies was so pleased with the sacerdotal language that she blew me a kiss across the aisle. (Jason Goodwin, 'When someone dies, you can lose a place, as well as a person', Country Life, June 2019)

In the meltdown's aftermath, a small unregulated bank is unusually suspect, especially when operating in a 'sacerdotal-monarchical state established under the 1929 Lateran Treaty' and reporting to an abstract nominee with an ethereal address. Nor can it help that the bank is a market-maker in loaves and fishes. (Matthew Stevenson, The Vatican Bank: In God We Trust?, newgeography, May 2013)

The brand inspires a sacerdotal devotion in many of its workers (its archives contain the papers of one of the atelier's premieres, or heads, who served from 1947 to 1990). (Matthew Schneier, Atop Dior, Balancing Art and Commerce, The New York Times, July 2017)

He would immerse himself in the sacerdotal labor of translation. (Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl)

Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles)

Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the coast, which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten in less than four leagues. (Father Lobo, A Voyage to Abyssinia)

One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. (Herman Melville, Typee)

Origin:

'of or belonging to priests or the priesthood,' c 1400, from Old French sacerdotal and directly from Latin sacerdotalis 'of or pertaining to a priest,' from sacerdos (genitive sacerdotis) 'priest,' literally 'offerer of sacrifices or sacred gifts,' from sacer 'holy' (see sacred) + stem of dare 'to give' (from PIE root do- 'to give'). (Online Etymological Dictionary)

Sacerdotal is one of a host of English words derived from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning 'sacred.' Other words derived from sacer include desecrate, sacrifice, sacrilege, consecrate, sacrament, and even execrable (developed from the Latin word exsecrari, meaning 'to put under a curse'). One surprising sacer descendant is sacrum, referring to the series of five vertebrae in the lower back connected to the pelvis. In Latin this bone was called the os sacrum, or 'holy bone,' a translation of the Greek hieron osteon. (Merriam-Webster)