A.Word.A.Day --incalescent

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Today's Word

incalescent

PRONUNCIATION:

(in-kuh-LES-uhnt)

MEANING:

adjective: Becoming warmer or more ardent.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin incalescere (to become warm), from in- (intensive prefix) + calescere (to become warm), from calere (to be warm). Earliest documented use: 1680.

NOTES:

A person can be incalescent with desire, anger, fever, or a thermostat set by someone else.

USAGE:

“The incalescent mercury paper, like the gold process, reveals Boyle’s continuing attempts to confect the philosophers’ stone.”
Michael Hunter, ed.; Robert Boyle Reconsidered; Cambridge University Press; 1994.

“At length he pulled back to let her see all the hungry need, all the incalescent desire she evoked in him.”
Prudence Martin; Love Song; Dell; 1983.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. -Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (27 May 1911-1978)

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