Category: Words

Today’s word of the day is appropriate, because all of you are readers nonpareil.

Nonpareil (nahn-puh-REL). Adjective. Having no equal; unrivalled, incomparable, peerless, unique.

Many of you might know this word from the candy which shares a name. We call them sprinkles, but I wish we used the Australian name–Hundreds and Thousands—because it is obviously so much better. I digress.

Sprinkles might be called nonpareils, but the word itself has a lot more to offer. It comes to us today from medieval poets, who used it to describe loves and kings, though not necessarily in that order. “[I] haue a nounparalle maystres,” The Duke of Orleans wrote in an English poem around the year 1450, for example: “The which hath hool my service & myn hert.”

In another middle English poem, a French knight asks a bunch of Scottish knights about their king. One speaks up: “[I] sey for trouthe that he is Le nounpareil that euir [I] sawe or herde speke of.” Strong words.

Some time later, the word descended from the pages of poetry and made its way into the streets. In 1730, for example, you could go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of A treatise of buggs. By John Southall, maker of the nonpareil liquor for destroying buggs and nits. This isn’t a joke. You can read the book on Google Books.

Despite Mr. Southall’s best effort, nonpareil is still a wonderful word to describe things that are unequaled. Like all of you. I hope you all enjoy a weekend nonpareil.

Just watch out for “buggs.”

Truth is the best policy, they say, and in truth: with everything happening in the world, I forgot to think about any more Words-of-the-Day last week. Sorry about that.

Part of the problem is that it’s hard to think of words quite recondite enough to share. Let’s remedy that this week with a word you’ll be proud to show off.

Recondite. (REK-un-dyte).Adjective. little known or understood; abstruse, obscure; profound.

This $2 word comes from the Latin word reconditus, which means the same thing; but if you look a little deeper, the root is actually condere, which can be translated as: “to put or bring together,” “to put up, store,” or “to conceal.” (1)

It’s that last one, that element of concealment, that makes recondite words so popular for words-of-the-day columns and so annoying to everyone who doesn’t know what they mean. Just look at this list of Merriam-Webster’s Words-of-the-Day from last month. Even Microsoft Word is a little chapfallen by this list. Spellcheck does not recognize the word rectitudinous and dutifully places a little red squiggly line underneath. Talk about recondite!

The word first came to English-speakers through an astronomer, John Bainbridge (2), waxing philosophic about the Great Comet of 1618:

“I hope this new Messenger from Heauen,” he wrote, “doth bring happie tidings of some munificent and liberall Patron…by whose gracious bountie the most recondite mysteries of this abstruse and diuine science shall at length be manifested.”

That’s nice, but I think I prefer the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote:

“Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects.”

Have a great week! Don’t be afraid to share your suggestions for words—recondite or not—and I’ll credit you when I write them up.

(1) One of the standard Latin textbooks, by the way, teaches students that Latin was basically sung. So that’s ♫Con-de-re♬, like an opera singer.

(2) Bainbridge described himself as “Doctor of Physicke, and louer of the mathematicks.”