Word of the Day!

sempiternal [sem-pi-tur-nl]

adjective:
(literary) everlasting; of never-ending durationeternal

Examples:

Must we imagine Sisyphus to be happy, as Albert Camus proposed? Or would a sempiternal - an eternal, unchanging - life ultimately lack any purpose? (Johanna Thomas-Corr, Help! I’m trapped in Groundhog Day, the novel, The Times, April 2025)

Fires raged and floods drove through streets and houses as the planet became more and more inimical to human life. The sempiternal nurdles, indestructible, swayed on and under the surface of the sea. (A S Byatt, Sea Story, The Guardian, March 2013)

I certainly didn't suspect a number of things: that I'd be soundly beaten by my teenage son; that shortly thereafter I'd become obsessed with table tennis; that my obsession would fuel a grueling initiation that, in a sense, is still going on today; that the sport itself would reacquaint me with some eternal principles of the Perennial Philosophy and afford me new glimpses of sempiternal wisdom; that it would teach me so much about myself, our human condition, and life; and that, finally, in 'humble' table tennis I'd be looking for the living presence that informs the phenomenal world. (Guido Mina Di Sospiro, The Metaphysics of Ping Pong)

A living shell in which its tenant lay dormant, her subjective will to live alone kept this woman going her sempiternal rounds of monotony. (Louis Joseph Vance, Joan Thursday)

He wrote: "Isn't that lovely and tear-drawing? true and tender and sempiternal?" And then he copied out the whole song, in case I should chance not to have the text at hand. (Baron Hallam Tennyson Tennyson, Tennyson and his friends)

Origin:
'eternal and unchanging, perpetual, everlasting, having no end,' early 15c, from Old French sempiternel 'eternal, everlasting' (13c) or directly from Medieval Latin sempiternalis, from Latin sempiternus 'everlasting, perpetual, continual,' from semper 'always, ever'. The earlier Middle English adjective was sempitern (late 14c) from Old French sempiterne and Latin sempiternus. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Despite their similarities, sempiternal and eternal come from different roots. Sempiternal is derived from the Late Latin sempiternalis and ultimately from semper, Latin for 'always.' Eternal, on the other hand, is derived, by way of Middle French and Middle English, from the Late Latin aeternalis and ultimately from aevum, Latin for 'age' or 'eternity.' Sempiternal is much less common than eternal, but some writers have found it useful. 19th-century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, wrote, 'The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, … to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why….' (Merriam-Webster)

adumbral [a-duhm-bruhl]

adjective:
(poetic) shadowy; shady

Examples:

while it could be considered a distant sonic cousin to Selena Gomez's cooing 'Good For You' off Revival, it has an adumbral quality its predecessor doesn't quite possess, and an intensity Lindemann will hopefully lean into on forthcoming tracks. (Maggie Lindemann Cements Her Dark-Pop Princess Status With 'Things', Popcrush, February 2016)

Within the adumbral interiors of the temples you find statues to each of the Hindu trinity, while the Shiva temple's exterior is decorated with galleries of bas-reliefs that tell the Ramayana story. (John Borthwick, Beacons of faith rise from the ruins, The West Australian, September 2013)

According to this version of weird fiction, it primarily concerns itself with destabilizing revelations of the adumbral numinous. (B Colbert, James Machin on Weird Fiction, transculture, February 2019)

He can be an adumbral yet compelling presence (as in his brief appearances in The Looking Glass War and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), as well as a figure who lives on beyond the confines of the printed page. (Jonathan Barnes, Coming in from the Cold, Literary Review, September 2013)

An opaque sky preens
diaphanous plumage
as I, like Narcissus,
ponder my reflection
in winter's adumbral waters. (Dale G Cozart, 'At a Lake in Winter')

He took a final drink of water from the creek and stood up, his sore, battered muscles protesting violently. Then he began to stumble through the adumbral forests to find a road. (Michael Knerr, Sex Life of the Gods)

Origin:
from Latin adumbratus 'sketched, shadowed in outline,' past participle of adumbrare 'cast a shadow over,' from ad 'to' + umbrare 'to cast in shadow' (from PIE root andho- 'blind, dark' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

captious [kapshuhs]

adjective:
1 apt to notice and make much of trivial faults or defects; faultfinding; difficult to please
2 proceeding from a faultfinding or caviling disposition
3 apt or designed to ensnare or perplex, especially in argument

Examples:

During the past 15 years Mr Maxwell has established himself as one of the few sui generis voices in experimental theater, and like all truly original talents, he has been subject to varied and captious interpretations. (Ben Brantley, Small-Town Americans, Street by Street to Eternity, The New York Times, October 2012)

Speaking for the poets, as if sizing up the discussion, was William Carlos Williams: 'Minds like beds always made up...' And for the philosophers, captious and ornery, was the great modern American logician Yogi Berra: 'The future ain’t what it used to be.' (Ian Crouch, An Evening of Examined Life, The New Yorker, February 2011)

But when the two reconvene, there is no talk of favors or captious admonishments, only the authentic joy of seeing a friend’s familiar face after so long. (Coleman Spilde, 'Black Doves' has all the delightful messiness of any true best friendship, Salon, December 2024)

I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)

Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre)

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viridescent [vir-i-des-uhnt]

adjective:
slightly green; greenish

The nuts arrive direct from the Mediterranean, and are then roasted and churned into a viridescent paste before becoming gelato housed in a silver tin. (Callum McDermott, The Best Things We Ate in Sydney in 2024, Broadsheet, December 2024)

Taking to Instagram, she shared a carousel of trees and waxed lyrical about mother nature's viridescent gift. (Mahira Khan finds solace among the trees, Express Tribune, December 2024)

Kalimpong offers a serene escape from the summer heat with its breathtaking vistas, viridescent scenery, and cascading waterfalls. (Krishna Priya Pallavi, August long weekends 2024: The complete list; where to travel near Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, Hindustan Times, August 2024)

Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and the population - gorgons and chimaeras dire. (Sidney Colvin (ed), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson)

But as he was about to back through the narrow crevice between the stones, he heard a voice floating above his head in the air, a girl’s voice, as liquid and as sweetly murmurous as the voice should have been of the nymph that should have haunted this viridescent pool. (Rupert Hughes, Within These Walls)

Origin:
shade of green, 1882, from the paint color name (1862), coined from Latin virid-, stem of viridis 'green, blooming, vigorous' + ian. English earlier had viridity (early 15c) 'greenery, greenishness, verdure'; virid 'green, blooming' (c1600). Viridescent 'greenish' is attested from 1788 in mineralogy; viridescence by 1830 in botany. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

invidious [in-vid-eeuh-s]

adjective:
1 calculated to create ill will or resentment or give offense; hateful.
2 offensively or unfairly discriminating; injurious
3 causing or tending to cause animosity, resentment, or envy.

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I am concerned today with Alfas and a section of the Ulama who engage in mercantilism and invidious rapprochement with occultic powers in order to be up ‘there’ in the world. (Afis A Oladosu, Of prosperity-preachers and materialism, Guardian Nigeria, September 2025)

The committee of the Bureau point out in their letter to the Government of India that in a matter of such importance to all the communities it is better to avoid any invidious distinction as was unfortunately made, and the committee hope that in connection with similar conferences in future Indian representatives will be invited. (Afis A Oladosu, Cotton and wheat conferences, Guardian Nigeria, September 2025)

He believes that awards are 'offensive', and describes them as 'invidious comparisons of works of art'. (Maya Binyam, Percival Everett Can't Say What His Novels Mean, Guardian Nigeria, March 2024)

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt. (Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things)

The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the economic differentiation to the point at which a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and this distinction is of an invidious character. (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class)

Origin:
c1600, from Latin invidiosus 'full of envy, envious' (also 'exciting hatred, hateful'), from invidia 'envy, grudge, jealousy, ill will' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Fittingly, invidious is a relative of 'envy.' Both are descendants of invidia, the Latin word for envy, which in turn comes from invidēre, meaning 'to look askance at' or 'to envy.' These days, however, invidious is rarely used as a synonym for 'envious.' The preferred uses are primarily pejorative, describing things that are unpleasant (such as 'invidious choices' and 'invidious tasks') or worthy of scorn ('invidious remarks' or 'invidious comparisons') (Merriam-Webster)

coeval [koh-ee-vuhl]

adjective:
1 of the same age, date, or duration; equally old
2 coincident

Examples:

Their personalities and their pain are made almost exactly coeval, with little telling slippage between. (Vinson Cunningham, The Search for Faith, in Three Plays, The New Yorker, November 2023)

It is the alien with whom we share our planet, a coeval evolutionary life form whose slithery slipperiness and more than the requisite number of limbs (each of which contains its own “brain”) symbolise the dark mystery and fear of the deep. (Philip Hoare, Octlantis: the underwater city built by octopuses, The Guardian, September 2017)

Flipping over the table mats at Chaaye Khana, one pre-empted and anticipated, where the wisdom of tea was already trilled about, Raj coeval writers like Orwell, Johnson and Lewis, heartily drunk on the brew, speaking freely on tea with some Japanese sage opining that “If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.” (Ramin Khan, Chaaye Khana lives up to its billing, dispelling the affectation of coffee with good, strong tea, The Express Tribune, January 2011)

The inn stood at one end of a small village, in which some of the houses looked so antique that they might, I thought, be coeval with the castle itself. (Catherine Crow, Round the Fire)

Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Origin:

'having the same age, having lived for an equal period,' 1620s, from Late Latin coaevus 'of the same age,' from assimilated form of Latin com 'with, together' + aevum 'an age' (from PIE root aiw- 'vital force, life; long life, eternity'). As a noun from c1600. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Coeval comes to English from the Latin word coaevus, meaning 'of the same age.' Coaevus was formed by combining the co- prefix ('in or to the same degree') with Latin aevum ('age' or 'lifetime'). The root aevum is also a base in such temporal words as longevity, medieval, and primeval. Although coeval can technically describe any two or more entities that coexist, it is most typically used to refer to things that have existed together for a very long time (such as galaxies) or that were concurrent with each other in the distant past (parallel historical periods of ancient civilizations, for example). (Merriam-Webster)