A.Word.A.Day --stolid

A.Word.A.Day

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Apr 20, 2015

This week’s theme
Words to describe people

This week’s words
stolid
ascetic
dour
intractable
lissom

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

There are some seven billion of us on this Earth and we are all interconnected. There’s this idea of six degrees of separation, that we are only six links away from any person. With online social networks, perhaps we have shed a few links already.

What words do you use to describe people around you? This week’s A.Word.A.Day presents five words that you might find handy to describe people in your network.

stolid

PRONUNCIATION:

(STAHL-id)

MEANING:

adjective: Having or showing little emotion; dull; impassive.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin stolidus (dull, stupid). Ultimately from the Indo-European root stel- (to put or stand), which is also the source of stallion, stilt, install, gestalt, stout, and pedestal, stele, and epistolary. Earliest documented use: 1600.

USAGE:

“But it would be very hard to confuse her for Marie Arnet’s lissom Susanna, even in the dark. There is almost as little sexual chemistry between Jonathan Lemalu’s stolid, character-less Figaro and Arnet’s more charming Susanna.”
Anthony Holden; A Marriage Made in Hell; The Observer (London, UK); Nov 5, 2006.

“Stolid Rotarians and Chamber of Commerce types, rather than the fiery southern conservatives ...”
Of Pensioners and Pork; The Economist (London, UK); Feb 15, 2014.

See more usage examples of stolid in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (20 Apr 1879-1949)

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