The Words of the Week - June 21

‘Mug shot’

A well-known singer was arrested last week, and searches for mug shot spiked as a result.

The Sag Harbor Village Police Department released Justin Timberlake’s mug shot today, with the singer’s famous blue eyes bloodshot and glassy, his stare, unmussed hair and just-so beard that of someone long used to having his picture taken.
— Greg Evans, Deadline, 18 Jun. 2024

A mug shot is “a photograph of usually a person's head and especially face,” specifically “a police photograph of a suspect's face or profile.” While the word is occasionally found spelled in hyphenated manner (mug-shot) or as a closed compound (mugshot) we enter it as an open compound (with mug & shot as two words separated by a space). The term is a combination of mug meaning “the face or mouth of a person” and the sense of shot meaning “a single photographic exposure.” These words have been used together as a compound noun since the early 20th century, although they can be found in similar form (with mug as a noun and shot as a verb) several decades earlier.

You might get small-pox— Get your ugly mug shot.—Rogers. We are ready for work, call and see us. E. N. Rogers, Photographer, Atwood and St. Francis
—(advt) The Republican Citizen (Atwood, KS), 2 Jun. 1893

‘Juneteenth’

Juneteenth was celebrated last week, and the word had its now-annual spike in lookups.

Community braves heat to celebrate Juneteenth, ‘holiday of resilience’
— (headline) The Washington Post, 19 Jun. 2024

Juneteenth is observed on June 19th as a legal holiday in the United States in commemoration of the end of slavery in the U.S. It is worth noting that the federal name for this holiday according to the United States Code is Juneteenth National Independence Day. Juneteenth is also called Black Independence Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Juneteenth Independence Day.

While Juneteenth was only recognized as a federal holiday in recent years, it has been celebrated since the 1860s, and we have published evidence of the name Juneteenth used to refer to June 19th celebrations as far back as the 19th century.

For Galveston to send abroad for orators for its coming “Juneteenth” is like carrying coal to Newcastle. There are about as good speakers—persons who know all about English as she is spoke—in the city by the sea as anywhere.
— Galveston Daily News (Houston, TX), 22 May 1890

Last Wednesday the citizens of this city and vicinity, native Texans, assembled in the fair grounds to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the liberation of the bonded Afro-American of Texas. … Closely following the speakers an animated game of base ball was witnessed; when the happy throng repaired to their homes expressing themselves as highly pleased with their first Juneteenth celebration.
— Parsons (Kentucky) Weekly, 22 Jun. 1895

June 19th, or, as it is humorously referred to, “Juneteenth,” is the day the news of the emancipation proclamation reached Texas, so annually the day is celebrated much as we do Fourth of July.
— Chicago Defender, 3 Jul. 1915

‘Paint’

Paint also saw considerable interest, after The New York Times used it (and then replaced it) in a headline in a manner that many found questionable.

The NYT write-up of the new Biden ad takes on the kind of weird distancing that political reporting sometimes offers up as objectivity. The headline – “Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon” – suggests maybe it’s an open question whether Trump is a felon.
— David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo, 17 Jun. 2024

Paint is a word with many shades of meaning, and the sense which most closely matches the use intended by the Times is presumably “to depict as having specified or implied characteristics.” Critics pointed out that this sense is often employed to indicate that certain characteristics or qualities are subject to debate or interpretation.

‘Quintessential’

Willie Mays, widely viewed as among the greatest baseball players of all time, passed away last week, and numerous obituaries described him with the same word: quintessential.

Mays was the quintessential five-tool player. Of his dominance in the game, legendary Negro Leaguer Buck O’Neil, himself a Hall of Fame inductee, called Mays “the best Major League ballplayer I ever saw.”
— Donald Liebenson, Vanity Fair, 18 Jun. 2024

Mays was the quintessential complete player, mastering all of baseball's fabled “five tools” - hitting, running, throwing, fielding and hitting for power.
— Mark Herrmann, Newsday (Long Island, NY), 19 Jun. 2024

Mays was a quintessential five-tool player, someone with the speed, hitting and fielding ability amazed his contemporaries and still resonates more than 50 years after his final MLB game with the New York Mets in 1973.
— Craig Meyer, Tuscaloosa News, 18 Jun. 2024

Quintessential is defined as “perfectly typical or representative of a particular kind of person or thing.” The word comes from the Medieval Latin quinta essentia, literally, “fifth essence.” This was due to the medieval belief that in addition to the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—which made up our environment there was a fifth element comprising the stars and planets.

‘Dolorifuge’

Our word worth knowing this week is dolorifuge, defined as “something that banishes or mitigates grief.”

The children, who had made use of this idea of Tess being taken up by their wealthy kinsfolk (as they imagined the other family to be) as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse, began to cry at Tess’s reluctance, and teased and reproached her for hesitating.
— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)