This week’s theme
Is it a noun or a verb? Both!

This week’s words
assart
rapture
skirr
corbel
mordant


Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle Dawn at the Mountain
🌍	Langitude Trace java home

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(MOR-duhnt)

MEANING:

adjective:	Biting, caustic, or sarcastic.
noun:	1. A substance used to fix a dye in or on a material.
	2. A corrosive substance used in etching.
verb tr.:	To treat with a mordant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French mordant (biting), present participle of mordre (to bite), from Latin mordere (to bite). Earliest documented use: 1791 for the noun, 1474 for the adjective, and 1839 for the verb.

NOTES:

Dyers and etchers love this word, but comedians really know how to give it some bite. Some other words from the same Latin mordere (to bite) are morsel and remorse. Morsel is a little bite, and remorse is the bite that comes back for seconds.

USAGE:

“For [novelist Lorrie] Moore, ‘the bardo of the hospice’ is a mordant metaphor for human existence, a place where laughter isn’t the best medicine, it’s the only medicine: All we’ve got left is a collection of bedpans and deadpans.”
Ron Charles; Hitting the Road With His Semi-Dead Girlfriend; The Washington Post; Jun 18, 2023.

“What, in Pantone numbers, was the shift in red between cochineal used neat and cochineal mordanted with tin?”
Vera Rule; A Perfect Red By Amy Butler Greenfield; The Independent on Sunday (London, UK); Jun 19, 2005.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: