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Jul 28, 2025
This week’s themeMisc words This week’s words vicissitude trenchant untrammeled pillory temerity 
Vicissitudes
Sculpture: Jason Taylor Previous week’s theme Back-formations 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargWhat makes a good word? All of them, really. Even the obscure ones, like fulvous. You may not use it every day, but it’s out there, shading feathers and foxes alike. Still, we get it. Sometimes you want words with a bit more mileage. Words that show up in GRE prep books, office reports, or that sternly worded email from corporate. Words like precarious, flagrant, and factious. We hear you. So this week we’ll feature words that are not just good, but gainfully employed, words that earn their keep by showing up for duty daily -- to the extent that two of them can be found in each usage example. vicissitude
PRONUNCIATION:
(vi-SIS-i-tood/tyood)
MEANING:
noun: A change in circumstances, typically one that is unwelcome.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin vicis (turn, change). Ultimately from the Indo-European root
weik- (to bend or wind), which also gave us weak, week, wicket, wicker,
vicarious, and vicar. Earliest documented use: 1576.
NOTES:
The word is often used in the plural, vicissitudes, for the ups
and downs of life. As these things go, when the word is used, usually
it’s more downs than ups. When you hear a friend mention vicissitudes
of their life, chances are it’s a layoff at work, a heartbreak, or that
mysterious lump on an X-ray.
Not their trip to Disneyland. A roller coaster ride doesn’t count as
vicissitudes.
USAGE:
“Like every Sendak story, Where the Wild Things Are explores his preoccupations, chief among
which are the vicissitudes of his own childhood, and the temerity and
fragility of children in general.” Cynthia Zarin; Not Nice; The New Yorker; Apr 17, 2006. See more usage examples of vicissitude in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that
one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or
unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. -Karl Popper,
philosopher and professor (28 Jul 1902-1994)
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