This week’s theme
Words formed in error

This week’s words
megrim
posthumous
lutestring
messuage
frontispiece

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(LOOT-string)

MEANING:

noun: A glossy silk fabric.

ETYMOLOGY:

This fabric has nothing to do with a lute string. The word is a corruption of French lustrine, from Italian lustrino, from Latin lustrare (to make bright). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light), which also gave us lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, lynx, pellucid, lucubrate, limn, levin, and lea. Earliest documented use: 1661.

USAGE:

“Her modish Pomona green lutestring gown, which she’d thought so becoming earlier, now seemed a less than ideal choice.”
Heather Cullman; A Perfect Scoundrel; Signet; 2000.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: