Word of the Day!

kitty-corner, catty-corner [kit-ee-kawr-ner, kat-ee-kawr-ner ]

adverb or adjective:
in a diagonal position from, especially outward from the corner of a square.

Examples:

A McDonald's is kitty-corner from a Walmart, and Tim Hortons is across the street from AAA. Convenient as it all may sound, this district is not quite real. (Katherine LaGrave, The Evolution of Miniature 'Safety Towns' for Kids, Bloomberg, June 2019)

The restaurant, which was built with an indoor and outdoor bar, sits kitty-corner to the school grounds. (Asher Price, Torchy's Tacos seeks alcohol waiver at South Congress spot, Axios, September 2024)

The next year began my transformation. I began to write about the High Line Canal, which was catty-corner to my apartment. (Loren M Hansen, Commentary: Becoming a bike advocate and how Streetsblog Denver helped me find community, Streetsblog Denver, January 2022)

I typically sit on the edge before pivoting 90 degrees and swinging my legs up, but then I'm still obliged to scooch - in kitty-corner fashion, as though my butt is a knight in a giant game of couch chess. (Nicole Shein, Are Sofas with Chaises Out of Style, or Here to Stay?, bob vila, July 2022)

Nancy had dropped my arm and was gliding kitty-corner fashion, across the floor. (Harold MacGrath, The Man on the Box)

Lieutenant Bill McDonald volunteered to lead a squad and break into a small house, just across a narrow little street and kitty-corner to the right. (Edwin L Sabin, With Sam Houston in Texas)

The grocery store is kitty corner from the coffee shop. Using my little makeshift diagram below, the blue cat is kitty corner from the orange tabby (and vice versa). (Michael Kwan, Idiomatica: Why Kitty Corner?, beyond the rhetoric, August 2018)

(click to enlarge)

'diagonally opposite,' 1838, earlier cater-cornered (1835, American English), from now-obsolete cater 'to set, cut, or move diagonally' (1570s), from French catre 'four,' from Latin quattuor (from PIE root kwetwer- 'four'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Though peaked ears and spanned whiskers may be suggested by every variant, whether what is diagonal or oblique to or from something else is considered kitty-corner (or kitty-cornered), catty-corner (or catty-cornered), or catercorner (or catercornered), these seemingly feline-inspired directional words have nothing to do with cats. Instead they are yet more evidence of the English language's canoodling with French.

In the French of the 14th-16th centuries, quatre, the word for 'four,' could also be spelled catre. English speakers said 'ooh, that's handy' and snapped the term right up, but very sensibly (we think) spelled it cater. They already had a perfectly good word for 'four,' of course (it being four), but they liked that cater word for playing games and used it to refer to the four of cards or dice.

The four spots on dice, or four symbols on cards, can be seen as making an X, and it's suspected that this is how cater came to develop extended senses of 'diagonal' or 'diagonally.' English then made cater into a verb meaning 'to place, move, or cut (across) diagonally,' as in 'cater the pieces on the board,' but that never grew beyond some dialectal use. Also largely destined to flourish in dialects were a number of compound words that used cater to mean 'diagonal' or 'askew,' such as catabias and catawampus. Catercornered (and later catercorner) caught on more broadly. Eventually the dice and cards were forgotten and that first syllable settled very cat-like into a sunny spot in the lexicon and spread itself out: catty-corner and kitty-corner (and their -ed variants) were the inevitable outcome. (Merriam-Webster)

peradventure [pur-uhd-ven-cher, per-]

noun:
1 chance, doubt, or uncertainty.
2 surmise
adverb:
(archaic) it may be; maybe; possibly; perhaps

Examples:

Peradventure they make sales on the January 31, they must ensure that they deposit the money in banks before the close of the working hours because old notes would cease to be legal tender from February 1, 2023. (Fear, anxiety as deadline to deposit old notes approaches, Nigerian Tribune, August 2022)

He could not feel any real happiness until he learned beyond peradventure that all was well. (Edward S Ellis, The Young Ranchers)

The trumpet and the opening coffin indicate peradventure the resurrection. (W T Vincent, In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious)

My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows! (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)

"Only," continued the postmaster, "if you will put up with a little carriage I have, I will harness an old blind horse who has still his legs left, and peradventure will draw you to the house of M. (Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask)

Origin:

Middle English peraventure, paraventure (late 14c), per auenture (c 1300), from Old French par aventure. Refashioned 17c as though from Latin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

When Middle English speakers borrowed par aventure from Anglo-French (in which language it means, literally, 'by chance'), it was as an adverb meaning 'perhaps' or 'possibly.' Before long, the word was anglicized to peradventure, and turned into a noun as well. The adverb is now archaic, though Washington Irving and other writers were still using it in the 19th century. 'If peradventure some straggling merchant ... should stop at his door with his cart load of tin ware....,' writes Irving in A History of New York. The noun senses we use today tend to show up in the phrase 'beyond peradventure' in contexts relating to proving or demonstrating something. The 'chance' sense is usually used in the phrase 'beyond peradventure of doubt.' (Merriam-Webster)