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Jul 8, 2024
This week’s themeMisleading words This week’s words adulterate metromania sexennial placer psychrophobia 
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI Previous week’s theme Americanisms 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargTo adulterate is not really an adult thing to do. We are not giving a moral lesson here. We are simply speaking etymologically. Adulterate is from Latin adulterare (to corrupt) while adult is from Latin adolescere (to grow up). Completely different roots.1 Language can sometimes be like a whodunit. Those you suspect have nothing to do with it, and vice versa. This week we’ll feature five words whose looks may be misleading: they don’t mean what you might guess they mean. 1Adulterate and adultery are related, though. When you engage in either, you introduce something/someone other to the picture. Now that we have done adultery, let’s do infantry as well. While adultery typically involves adults in practice, but not etymologically, infantry does NOT involve infants in practice, but it does etymologically. Members of the infantry were youth, foot soldiers, too inexperienced to be members of the cavalry. It’s from Latin fari (to speak), so an infant is literally one who is unable to speak (yet). adulterate
PRONUNCIATION:
(uh-DUHL-tuh-rayt)
MEANING:
verb tr.: To add a cheaper or inferior substance to something.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin adulterare (to corrupt), from ad- (toward) + alter (other).
Earliest documented use: 1526.
USAGE:
“Marseglia denied that he has ever adulterated his olive oil with other
vegetable oils.” Tom Mueller; Slippery Business; The New Yorker; Aug 13, 2007. See more usage examples of adulterate in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to
them. -Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (8 Jul 1621-1695)
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