This week’s theme
Counterpart words

This week’s words
materteral
attrite
autonym
exoteric
spear side


Previous week’s theme
There’s a word for it

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A.Word.A.Day

^*What the pluck does that mean?! If you find yourself scratching your head, consult your nearest violinist.

Arco: Playing a violin or another string instrument with a bow (from Italian arco: bow)
Pizzicato: Playing by plucking the strings instead (from Italian pizzicare: to pluck)

The gas store name Arco is an initialism for Atlantic Richfield Company. There’s no music in oil.
Not even rock music, even though petroleum is, literally, rock oil.

PRONUNCIATION:

(muh-TUHR-tuhr-uhl)

MEANING:

adjective: Characteristic of, or in the manner of, an aunt.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin matertera (maternal aunt), from mater- (mother). Ultimately from the Indo-European root mater (mother), which also gave us mother, material, matter, matrix, and matrimony. Earliest documented use: 1823.

NOTES:

This word is the feminine counterpart of the word avuncular (like an uncle). Materteral has its origin in the maternal aunt, but now it’s applied to aunts on both sides, just as the word aunt originally meant paternal aunt, from Latin amita (father’s sister), from amare (to love), but now applies to aunts of all kinds (including an ant’s aunt).

USAGE:

“Several things had prevented me from giving full attention to my nephew, X. Let us examine this lack of materteral attention and its causes.”
Kirstin Scott; Motherlunge; Western Michigan University; 2013.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: