This week’s theme
Words having origins in tree names

This week’s words
corroborate
palmary
willowy
birch
fig

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(WIL-oh-ee)

MEANING:

adjective
1. Of or related to a willow tree. For example, bordered, shaded, or covered by willows.
2. Gracefully tall, slender, and lithe.

ETYMOLOGY:

Gracefully drooping branches of a willow have, for more than two centuries, inspired people to evoke the tree when describing a woman. The word willow is from Old English welig, ultimately from the Indo-European root wel- (to turn or roll), which also gave us waltz, revolve, valley, walk, vault, volume, wallet, helix, voluble, welter, and devolve. Earliest documented use: 1766.

USAGE:

“As soon as Steve Jobs learned that his beautiful, willowy, blonde girlfriend, Laurene Powell, was pregnant in 1991, he began musing that he might still be in love with the previous beautiful, willowy, blonde girlfriend, Tina Redse.”
Maureen Dowd; Limits of Magical Thinking; The New York Times; Oct 25, 2011.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: