Word of the Day!

deadfall [ded-fawl]

noun:
1 a trap so constructed that a weight (such as a heavy log) falls on an animal and kills or disables it
2 a mass of brush and fallen fall trees

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Deadfall is a particularly thorny problem, and the club’s latter-day lumberjacks head out with chain saws in tow to remove trees upward of 4 feet in diameter. (Gregory Scruggs, 'Labor of love' motivates scrappy nordic ski club in North Cascades, The Seattle Times, December 2023)

The three sticks should be perfectly straight, and about the same diameter and length. Finger-thick and one-foot long will work for most deadfall triggers. (Tim MacWelch, A Guide to the 15 Best Survival Traps of All Time, Outdoor Life, October 2019)

If you happen to wander off trail on a hike, navigating over and under the debris, known as deadfall, proves to be a challenge in daylight, but imagine facing that challenge in the dark. (Meagan Thompson, Treasure hunter is rescued in the mountains south of Butte, KXLF, November 2025)

Winding roads diving deep between steep hillsides littered with jagged deadfall and boulder-size talus, towns few and far between. (C C Weiss, Review: Micro-camping the Idaho wilds in Escapod's monocoque teardrop, New Atlas, December 2024)

Then, a video demonstrating an ancient deadfall trap received over a million views. (Oliver Whang, Is There an Ethical Way to Kill Rats? Should We Even Ask?, New York Times, February 2023)

We hauled some deadfall from these woods to the center of the meadow where we built up around our camp a sort of circular fence. (David Zindell, The Lightstone)

Origin:
The earliest known use of the noun deadfall is in the late 1500s. OED's earliest evidence for deadfall is from before 1589, in the writing of Leonard Mascall, translator and author. (Oxford English Dictionary)

divertissement [dih-vur-tis-muhnt; French dee-ver-tees-mahn]

noun:
1 a diversion or entertainment
2 a short ballet or other performance serving as an interlude in a play, opera, etc
3 a program consisting of such performances

Examples:

This season, the Act 2 pas de quatre, a speedy and demanding divertissement for three women and one man, was cut to help streamline the ballet. (Gia Kourlas, At New York City Ballet, Swans Use Grit to Find Glory , The New York Times, February 2020)

But this smart, fast-paced film is not really the zany, lighter-than-air divertissement that the term usually conjures. (Stephen Holden, 'Mistress America,' a Noah Baumbach Comedy on Getting By in a Backbiting World, The New York Times, August 2015)

Big-league ball on the west coast of Florida is a spring sport played by the young for the divertissement of the elderly - a sun-warmed, sleepy exhibition celebrating the juvenescence of the year and the senescence of the fans. (Roger Angell, The Old Folks Behind Home, The New Yorker, March 1962)

"I tell you all this," continued La Fontaine, "because you are preparing a divertissement for Vaux, are you not?" (Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask)

The divertissement, the masquerade, the pageant, the perpetual disguise of humanity that is too soon marred, too soon sad, the theatre, every conceivable artifice of light and shadow, sound and colour, speed and space, was needed to imitate these enchanted dells and forests, these magic lakes and unearthly palaces, where Armida and Gloriana might have disported. (Marjorie Bowen, Nightcap and Plume)

Origin:

Divertissement can mean 'diversion' in both English and French, and it probably won't surprise you to learn that 'divertissement' and 'diversion' can be traced back to the same Latin root : divertere, meaning 'to turn in opposite directions.' Early uses of 'divertissement' in English often occurred in musical contexts, particularly opera and ballet, describing light sequences that entertained but did little to further the story. (The word's Italian cousin, divertimento, is used in a similar way.) Today 'divertissement' can refer to any kind of amusement or pastime, specifically one that provides a welcome distraction from what is burdensome or distressing. (Merriam-Webster)

desuetude [des-wi-tood, -tyood]

noun:
discontinuance from use or exercise; disuse

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The chair offers not a weedy patina of desuetude but an apotheosis of its former occupant. (Dave Barry , The Idiot's Guide to Art, The Guardian, September 2009)

Even among the eccentric annals of poets who talked to God, angels, tutelary spirits, and disincorporated souls, Fernando Pessoa is a special case. (Arthur Lubow, A Photographer Turned the Tables on His Parents to Learn About Himself, The New York Times, March 2023)

The ancient bowling-green at the Stewponey remains in good condition to the present day, although the once popular and excellent English pastime of bowls has there, as elsewhere, fallen into desuetude. (Sabine Baring-Gould, Bladys of the Stewponey)

In process of time this religious house again fell into desuetude; but before it disappeared it had achieved a great name for good works, and in especial for the piety of its members. (Bram Stoker, The Lair of the White Worm)

No bond united him to the Saint-Germain quarters now in its dotage, scaling into the dust of desuetude, buried in a new society like an empty husk. (Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against The Grain)

Origin:

'discontinuance of use, practice, custom, or fashion,' mid-15c., from Latin desuetudo 'disuse,' from desuetus, past participle of desuescere 'become unaccustomed to,' from de 'away, from' + suescere 'become used to, accustom, habituate,' from PIE swdh-sko-, from extended form of root s(w)e- pronoun of the third person and reflexive (referring back to the subject of a sentence). From 1630s as 'state of disuse.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Desuetude must be closely related to disuse, right? Wrong. Despite the similarities between them, desuetude and disuse derive from two different Latin verbs. Desuetude comes from suescere, a word that means 'to become accustomed' (suescere also gave us the word custom). Disuse descends from uti, which means 'to use.' (That Latin word also gave us use and utility.) Although less common, desuetude hasn't fallen into desuetude yet, and it was put to good use in the past, as in the 17th-century writings of Scottish Quaker Robert Barclay, who wrote, 'The weighty Truths of God were neglected, and, as it were, went into Desuetude.' (Merriam-Webster)

doniferous [ion: do-nif-er-uhs]

adjective:

Bearing gifts

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Umm.... not really, since 'the only known use of the adjective doniferous is in the mid 1600s.' (Oxford English Dictionary). But this charming fancy was on the Beastly Words website...

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comprises the stem of donum 'gift' + -fer 'bearing' (from ferre 'to bear, carry') + -ous, an adjective suffix. In Latin the combining form of -fer was always preceded by an -i-, as seen in vociferous, odoriferous, and carboniferous. Donum is the noun from dare 'to give', do 'I give' and underlies another English borrowing, donate. It comes from PIE do- 'to give', which turns up in dat 'to give' and Greek dosis 'something given', which English borrowed for its dose. Ferre 'to bear, carry' comes from the same source as the English verb bear, PIE bher-/bhor- 'to carry, to bear (children)'. Initial bh became ph in Latin, later changing to f. In Russian this word became brat 'to take', beru 'I take'. We find the kin of this PIE word all around English, birth, burden, bier, (wheel)barrow and, of course, all the Latinate borrowings containing -fer: transfer, ferry, fertile. (alphadictionary.com, though I don't vouch for its accuracy!)