Word of the Day!

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)

stertorous [stur-ter-uhs]

adjective:
1 characterized by heavy snoring
2 characterized by a harsh snoring or gasping sound

Examples:

During the five days of Wally's visit, I twice asked Sally how things were going. The first time - this was two seconds before she fell into sleep, leaving me in bed listening to stertorous Wally - she said, "Fine. I'm glad I'm doing this. You're magnificent to put up with it. I'm sorry I'm cranky... zzzzzzz." (Richard Ford, How Was It To Be Dead?, The New Yorker, August 2006)

In the mid-19th century, the horse-pulled calliope, a instrument that emits stertorous whistles via steam power, also found a regular place in the circus band. (Jennifer Gersten, A Brief History of Circus Music, WQXR, June 2017)

As the martyred poet Chenier, Jonas Kaufmann transforms the traditionally stertorous 'spinto' tenor sound into a thing of wondrous handsomeness, modulating tone, vowel and colour with immaculate poise and musical intelligence. (Peter McCallum, Andrea Chenier: Moments of artistry and sheer vocal beauty, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 2019)

The patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that he had suffered some terrible injury. (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

But the address was exactly right; it breathed stertorous, beef-and-beer, prayer-book loyalty in every line. (Hulbert Footner, Entertaining a Prince)

(click to enlarge)

'characterized by a deep snoring,' 1802, with -ous + Modern Latin stertor, from Latin stertere 'to snore,' a derivative of sternuere 'to sneeze,' from PIE imitative pst-, to render the sound of sneezing. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

scabrous [skab-ruh-s]

adjective:
1 having a rough surface because of minute points or projections.
2 indecent or scandalous; risqué; obscene:
3 full of difficulties

Examples:

These letters - wry, scabrous and revealing - form the backbone of Wifedom. Funder embroiders around and through them to conjure the woman behind the pen - a kind of psychological ventriloquism, a 'counterfiction'. (Beejay Silcox, The mysterious absence of George Orwell’s first wife, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 2023)

That would be an unusually swear-filled, scabrous kindergarten class, naturally. (Martin Amis, Remembered by Writers, The New Yorker, May 2023)

In the early 1980s, a lot of London looked as scabrous as the power station; now it is the capital's last great ruin. (Rowan Moore, Why Battersea power station must be preserved, The Guardian, May 2012)

I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours. (Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing)

He saw the fish-like scales, the scabrous whiteness of the slimy skin; saw the veined gills. (Robert Bloch and Henry Kuttner, The Black Kiss)

It assumes a great variety of forms, which serve in many instances to characterize species; besides which peculiarities there are others to be noted, as the mode of its insertion into the pileus, its having or not having a ring, the circumstance of its being scabrous, glossy, or tomentose, reticulated, spotted, or striped, of one colour above and another below, or of its changing colour when bruised, any of which may sometimes assist our diagnosis. (Charles David Badham, A treatise on the esculent funguses of England)

And I tell you frankly, Monsieur Hanaud, that the name of the widow Chicholle is scabrous. She is of the bad quarters of this town. (A E W Mason, The Prisoner in the Opal)

Origin:

1570s, 'harsh, unmusical' (implied in scabrously), from Late Latin scabrosus 'rough,' from Latin scaber 'rough, scaly,' related to scabere 'to scratch, scrape' (from PIE (s)kep- 'to cut, scrape, hack'). The sense in English evolved to 'vulgar' (by 1881), 'squalid' (by 1939), and 'nasty, repulsive' (by 1951). The etmological sense of 'rough, rugged, having little sharp points' is attested in English from 1650s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)