Etymology Word of the Week – As some of you know, in addition to working in the Admissions Office, I also teach Latin at Saint Ignatius and am something of a "word nerd." Thus, each week, I’ll sneak a vocabulary word (sometimes derived from Latin, sometimes not) into the e-blast. Here then is this week’s edition of the Etymology Word of the Week.
Dandelion
Definition: “a weedy plant of the daisy family having edible, deeply toothed leaves, golden-yellow flowers, and rounded clusters of white, hairy seeds.”
Origin/Derivation: From the French phrase dent de lion meaning “tooth of the lion”. The Latin and Greek stems for “tooth” are dent- and dont-, respectively.
Related Words/Phrases: al dente, dental, dentist, denture, indent, mastodon, megalodon, orthodontist, periodontal, trident, bident
(All information is from www.wikipedia.org, www.etymonline.com and/or www.dictionary.com)
“Old Saw” of the Week:
See if you can “complete the phrase” of this time-worn (but true!) adage:
“Waste not”…
...want not”
Caption: This is an older usage of “want” that means “to lack or need.”