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)

mantra [man-truh]

noun:
1 (Hindu) a word or formula, as from the Veda, chanted or sung as an incantation or prayer.
1 an often repeated word, formula, or phrase, often a truism

Examples:

Maybe the 'us against the world' mantra is something that can drive the team on towards the heights that they have so far been unable to get to. (Andy Burke, Is there 'entitlement' around Scotland or has Townsend misjudged criticism?, BBC, November 2025)

Maharishi taught a form of meditation derived from the Vedas, the foundation of philosophical thinking in India, known as mantra meditation, in which a person silently sits alone with the eyes closed, and repeats in the mind a sacred Sanskrit mantra that is believed to be endowed with spiritual potency. (Syama Allard, Buddhist mindfulness is all the rage, but Hinduism has a deep meditation tradition too, Hindu American Foundation, May 2021)

Greenland is still a place where 'the weather decides' can be a liberating mantra - once we accept that we're powerless to do anything about the weather, we can give up control. (Gabriel Leigh, Greenland Wants You to Visit. But Not All at Once., New York Times, February 2023)

It was hard to find adequate space to run and stretch and even harder to find a quiet corner for my breathing and mantra ritual. (Ibtihaj Muhammad, Proud)

He was sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest, and he was chanting the statement like a mantra, but loudly. (Dave Eggers, Zeitoun)

Origin:
1808, 'that part of the Vedas which contains hymns,' from Sanskrit mantra-s 'sacred message or text, charm, spell, counsel,' literally 'instrument of thought,' related to manyate 'thinks,' from PIE root men- 'to think.' Meaning 'sacred text used as a charm or incantation' is by 1900 (Online Etymology Dictionary)

contretemps [kon-truh-tahn, kawntruh-tahn]

noun:
1 a minor dispute or disagreement
2 an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance

Examples:

It’s enough to make an artistic director throw up a white flag, though Sachs’ decision to retire had nothing to do with this latest contretemps. (Charles McNulty, Stephen Sachs documents an American family torn apart by Jan. 6 in his new play, Los Angeles Times, March 2024)

Shiffrin has won so often, in fact, that when she skips a race, or two, it spawns a minor contretemps. (Bill Pennington, Mikaela Shiffrin Wows Skiing When She Races - and When She Doesn't, The New York Times, February 2019)

The latest in this series of contretemps between the Congress president and the BJP is the rebuttal by Arun Jaitley, currently union minister without portfolio, who felt compelled to take on Rahul in a Facebook post a day after he got home from hospital following a kidney transplant. (Sujata Anandan, Saving the drowning farmer , Salon, June 2018)

This little domestic contretemps is then, I presume, disagreeable to you! (E Phillips Oppenheim, The Yellow Crayon)

She had meant to take a stroll herself before breakfast, but saw that the day was still sacred to men, and amused herself by watching their contretemps. (E M Forster, Howards End)

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When contretemps first appeared in English in the 1600s, it did so in the context of fencing: a contretemps was a thrust or pass made at the wrong time, whether the wrongness of the time had to do with one’s lack of skill or an opponent's proficiency. From the fencing bout contretemps slid gracefully onto the dance floor, a contretemps being a step danced on an unaccented beat. Both meanings are in keeping with the word’s French roots, contre- (meaning 'counter') and temps (meaning 'time'). (The word’s English pronunciation is also in keeping with those roots: \KAHN-truh-tahn\.) By the late 1700s, contretemps had proved itself useful outside of either activity by referring to any embarrassing or inconvenient mishap - something out of sync or rhythm with social conventions. The sense meaning 'dispute' or 'argument' arrived relatively recently, in the 20th century, perhaps coming from the idea that if you step on someone’s toes, literally or figuratively, a scuffle might ensue. (Merriam-Webster)

lollygagging [lol-ee-gag-ging]

present participle of verb:
1 spending time idly; fooling around and wasting time

Examples:

I can’t just be out there and just lollygagging around. I’ve got to be focused. (Percy Allen, Victoria Vivians might be missing piece in Storm’s championship pursuit, The Seattle Times, May 2024)

On Monday evening, a Times reporter spotted the otter lollygagging along the coast between the lighthouse and the nearby surfer statue. (Susanne Rust, A renegade sea otter is terrorizing California surfers: 'It’s a little scary’, The Los Angeles Times, July 2023)

An illustrative moment - Mitch Marner passing the puck out of his own end to a Florida player in the neutral zone, then lollygagging back to guard the weak side of his own net. Panther Jesper Boqvist was not lollygagging. (Cathal Kelly, Maple Leafs can win this series, but the problem is nobody actually believes it, The Globe and Mail, May 2025)

Virginia drivers caught lollygagging in the left lane are paying a high price for that slow ride. Thousands of drivers have been fined since July, when Virginia began issuing $100 tickets for driving too slow in the left lane or committing similar violations such as failing to stay in the right lane except when passing. (John Bacon, Driving too slow on Virginia highways can cost you $100, USA Today, April 2018)

So the great physicist, the hope of the civilized world, ultimate founder of the galactic empire, is found lollygagging with a broad. (George O Smith, The World-Mover)

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contumely [kon-too-muh-lee, -tyoo-, kuhn-too-muh-lee, -tyoo-, kon-tuhm-lee, -tyoom, -chuhm ]

noun:
1 insulting display of contempt in words or actions; contemptuous or humiliating treatment
2 a humiliating insult

Examples:

There's a big difference between despised love and disprized love, and between a proud man's contumely and a poor man's contumely. (Stephen Marche, The Algorithm That Could Take Us Inside Shakespeare's Mind, The New York Times, November 2021)

Few things irritate me as much as the contumely heaped generally upon escorted tours. (Anthony Peregrine, Why you're wrong about coach tours - they are the greatest way to travel, The Telegraph, June 2019)

Lloyd, who's played by Matthew Rhys, of The Americans, is not happy about this assignment. His specialty is the exposé - heaping contumely on public figures who he feels deserve it. (Kurt Loder, Review: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Reason Magazine, November 2019)

The Speccie's star columnist is the rudest man in Christendom, the Godzilla of contumely, an all-time non-sufferer of fools who horsewhips his targets the way Hunter S Thompson and Christopher Hitchens once did. (Kyle Smith, The (Other) Greatest Magazine in the English-Speaking World, National Review, April 2020)

But one of her day-dreams was that in some mysterious and unthinkable way Peter Penhallow should fall in love with her and sue for her hand, only to be spurned with contumely. (L M Montgomery, A Tangled Web)

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Geoffrey Chaucer was writing about the sin of contumelie, as it was spelled in Middle English, back in the late 1300s. We borrowed the word from Middle French (whence it had earlier arrived from Latin contumelia), and it has since seen wide literary use. Perhaps its most famous occurrence is in Hamlet's To be or not to be soliloquy:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely....

That's not to say the word has no use in modern English. For example, political columnist Mona Charen expressed the opinion that then-President Bush had not only been criticized by those on the left of the political spectrum, but had "also suffered the contumely of some on the right and of seemingly everyone in the center." (Merriam-Webster)

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)

hierophant [hahy-er-uh-fant, hahy-ruh-, hahy-er-uh-]

noun:
1 (in ancient Greece) an official expounder of rites of worship and sacrifice.
2 any interpreter of sacred mysteries or esoteric principles

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The number five also equates to the hierophant card in tarot, which is associated with spiritual guidance and learning. (Olivia Munson, What does 555 mean? Details on what angel number means for your relationships, work life., USA Today, January 2023)

According to local legend, the tradition began as a solution to a severe famine in Bode, with a hierophant suggesting that piercing one's tongue would improve the state's condition. (Ani, Nepal: Bode's 30-year-old Sujan Bagh Shrestha continues century-old annual tongue piercing tradition, Tribune India, April 2025)

At the corner plaques she fitted her movements to their design--wild in Spring, languorous in Summer, in Autumn a bacchanal, in Winter a tempest. Before the throned Ceres she became a hierophant, and her dance a ritual. (John Buchan, The Blanket of the Dark)

The hierophant was a revealer of holy things... It was essential that the hierophant should be a man of commanding presence and lead a simple life. (Dudley Wright, The Eleusinian Mysteries And Rites)

And here, from the venerable hierophant, who from a strict sense of duty had left his sick-bed to come hither and instruct me, the words seemed to possess a peculiar meaning and value; his simple appeal to my own sense of rectitude had all the force of a profound thought extracted from a world of thinking. (Herbert M Vaughan, Meleager)

Origin:
'expounder of sacred mysteries,' 1670s, from Late Latin hierophantes, from Greek hierophantes 'one who teaches the rites of sacrifice and worship,' literally 'one who shows sacred things,' from hieros 'sacred,' from PIE root eis-, forming words denoting passion + phainein 'to reveal, bring to light' (from PIE root bha- 'to shine'). In modern use, 'expounder of esoteric doctrines,' from 1822. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Hierophant, hieroglyphics, and hierarch have a common root: hieros, a Greek word meaning 'sacred.' Hierophant itself joins the root with a derivative of phainein, which means 'to show.' The original hierophants were priests of the ancient Greek city of Eleusis who performed sacred rites. In the 17th century, when the word was first documented in English, it referred to these priests. By the 19th century, English speakers were using the term in a broader sense. A hierophant can now be a spokesperson, a commentator, an interpreter, or a leading advocate. (Merriam-Webster)

oneiric [oh-nahy-rik]

adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of dreams

Examples:

Then there's Jake Messing's selection as Best Artist, whose dense and powerful images seem to peer into the oneiric heart of Healdsburg, that dream state between what we think we know and what we can barely imagine. (Best of Arts and Entertainment 2024, The Healdsburg Tribune, November 2024)

Set to a haunting score by the director's brother Giorgi, this melancholic mystery presents Georgia's open plains and mountain regions in alien, oneiric contexts. (Christian Zilko, NYFF Reveals 2025 Currents Lineup, Including New Films by Tsai Ming-liang and Radu Jude, The Guardian, August 2025)

In 'A Boy Named Isamu,' James Yang imagines an ideal, almost oneiric day in the life of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a young child. (Sergio Ruzzier, Portraits of Three Artists as Young Children, New York Times, November 2021)

More practically, and from a totally different point of view, M Chabaneix, having studied the continuous subconscious, divides it into nocturnal and waking subconsciousness. If the former be a question of sleep or of the moments preceding sleep, it is oneiric or pre-oneiric. (Remy de Gourmont, Decadence, and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas)

I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me. (Will Self, How I Write)

He is at once a stratum of the earth and a streamer in the air, no painted dragon but a figure of real oneiric power. (Seamus Heaney, Beowulf)

As George Orr slipped into another oneiric state, the fabric of reality trembled. His dreams, potent and uncontrolled, reshaped the world with each passing thought, blurring the lines between imagination and actuality. (Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven)

Origin:

'of or pertaining to dreams', 1859, from Greek oneiros 'a dream' + -ic. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The notion of using the Greek noun oneiros (meaning 'dream') to form the English adjective oneiric wasn't dreamed up until the mid-19th century. But back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, linguistic dreamers came up with a few oneiros spin-offs, giving English oneirocriticism, oneirocritical, and oneirocritic (each having to do with dream interpreters or dream interpretation). The surge in oneiros derivatives at that time may have been fueled by the interest then among English-speaking scholars in Oneirocritica, a book about dream interpretation by 2nd-century Greek soothsayer Artemidorus Daldianus. In the 17th century, English speakers also melded Greek oneiros with the combining form -mancy ('divination') to create oneiromancy, meaning 'divination by means of dreams'. (Merriam-Webster)

mountebank [moun-tuh-bangk]

noun:
1 a person who sells quack medicines, as from a platform in public places, attracting and influencing an audience by tricks, storytelling, etc

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Jay was so enamored of Malini that he devoted an entire chapter of his book, 'Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women,' to the man he described as the 'last of the mountebanks.' (Leanne Italie, A magical trove of Ricky Jay ephemera hits auction block , The Seattle Times, October 2021)

“He was, in fact,” Mencken writes, “a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses…. (Dan Kennedy, H L Mencken: Semi-forgotten genius or a flawed but talented figure?, Media Nation, December 2011)

Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body; men that undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky, in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out. (Francis Bacon, 'Of Boldness')

This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, stops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a case slung to his back. (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist)

I remember when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which (as he told the country people) were very good against an earthquake. (Joseph Addison, 'Essay Number 240', The Tatler, 1710)

Origin:

'peripatetic quack; one who sells nostrums at fairs, etc,' in Johnson's words, 'a doctor that mounts a bench in the market, and boasts his infallible remedies and cures;' 1570s, from Italian montambanco, contraction of monta in banco 'quack, juggler,' literally 'mount on bench' (to be seen by crowd), from monta, imperative of montare 'to mount' + banco, variant of banca 'bench,' from a Germanic source. Figurative and extended senses, in reference to any impudent pretender or charlatan, are from 1580s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Mountebank derives from the Italian montimbanco, which was formed by combining the verb montare ('to mount'), the preposition 'in' (converted to im, meaning 'in' or 'on'), and the noun banco ('bench'). Put these components together and you can deduce the literal origins of 'mountebank' as someone mounted on a bench - the 'bench' being the platform on which charlatans from the 16th and 17th centuries would stand to sell their phony medicines. Mountebanks often included various forms of light entertainment on stage in order to attract customers. Later, extended uses of 'mountebank' referred to someone who falsely claims to have knowledge about a particular subject or a person who simply pretends to be something he or she is not in order to gain attention. (Merriam-Webster)

spindrift [spin-drift]

noun:
1 spray blown up from the surface of the sea
2 fine wind-borne snow or sand

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While the rest of the group heads out for a swim, I excuse myself, hop off the walkway to explore the unpaved crevices, and discover a little secluded cove frothed in spindrift. (James Nestor, Life on the Rocks, Scientific American, February 2018)

A foot of new snow had fallen the night before, and spindrift whipped off La Meije, a sea of icy blue glaciers pocked by crevasses and cliffs unfurling down its flanks. (Kelley Mcmillan Manley, On These French Ski Slopes, You're on Your Own, The New York Times, November 2016)

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! (Rumi, 'Where Everything is Music')

But oh! for the South-east weather -
    The sweep of the three-days' gale -
When, far through the flax and heather,
   The spindrift drives like hail. (Henry Lawson, 'The Ports Of The Open Sea')


Origin:

'steady spray of salt water blown along the surf in heavy winds,' c. 1600, according to OED a Scottish formation from verb spene, alteration of spoon 'to sail before the wind' (1570s, a word of uncertain origin) + drift. 'Common in English writers from c 1880, probably at first under the influence of W[illiam] Black's novels' [OED], who did use it in 1878. Before that in mid-19c it was most frequent in English as a name of sailing ships, yachts, and race-horses. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Spindrift first set sail in the mid-18th century under Scottish command. During its first voyage, it was known by the Scottish moniker speendrift. Speen meant 'to drive before a strong wind,' so a 'speendrift' was a drift of spray during such action. In 1823, English speakers recruited the word, but signed it up as spindrift. At that time, its sole duty was to describe the driving sprays at sea. However, English speakers soon realized that spindrift had potential to serve on land as well, and the word was sent ashore to describe driving snow and sand. Today, spindrift still serves us commendably at sea and on land. (Merriam-Webster)