The Words of the Week - Mar. 15

‘Marchioness'

Goings-on with members of the British royalty led to considerable speculation online about the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, and as a result lookups for marchioness spiked.

As you might have noticed, a certain Marchioness with a hard-to-pronounce name has once again found herself in the news! Naturally, we're talking about Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, whose name gets dusted off every now and then when the internet remembers unsubstantiated rumors (RUMORS!) that she and Prince William allegedly (ALLEGEDLY!) had an affair.
— Mehera Bonner, Cosmopolitan, 13 Mar. 2024

Marchioness is pronounced \MAHR-shuh-nus\ and means “the wife or widow of a marquess” or “a woman who holds the rank of a marquess in her own right.” A marquess is “a member of the British peerage ranking below a duke and above an earl.” The domain or territory held by a marquess or marchioness is called a marquessate.

‘Greenwashing’

Greenwashing spiked in lookups as well, after the attorney general of New York announced that her office was suing a meat company over its claims that it would produce its products with net-zero emissions.

The New York lawsuit reflects the emergence of agricultural greenwashing as not just corporate fluff—but as a key area where the law can be used to hold food businesses accountable and protect consumers from having their good intentions exploited.
— Jan Dutkiewicz, Vox.com, 8 Mar. 2024

Greenwashing is “the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.” The word has been in use for over three decades:

In politics, Green Movement members are making a push in California and plan to start putting up their own candidates. And corporations are coloring their public relations programs green, an effort some critics call “greenwashing.”
— Maria Goodavage, USA Today, 9 Apr. 1990

‘Collateralize’

Collateralize had a rare moment in the sun last week, after the CEO of the insurance firm issuing a bond for Donald Trump announced that this verb applied to the bond.

Greenberg in his letter Wednesday said that Chubb had protected itself by requiring that Trump’s bond, like any others issued by the company, is “fully collateralized.”
— Contessa Brewer and Dan Mangan, CNBC, 13 Mar. 2024

Collateralize can be defined either as “to make (a loan) secure with collateral” or “to use (something, such as securities) for collateral.” The common legal sense of collateral is “property (such as securities) pledged by a borrower to protect the interests of the lender.” This descends from the earliest use of collateral in English: the word was first an adjective meaning “similar but subordinate.”

‘Mendacity’

In other legal realms, mendacity trended sharply on Friday morning, after making an appearance in an order issued by the presiding judge in a Georgia court.

However, an odor of mendacity remains. The Court is not under an obligation to ferret out every instance of potential dishonesty from each witness or defendant ever presented in open court.
— Scott McAfee, Order on Defendants Motion to Dismiss and Disqualify the Fulton County District Attorney, 15 Mar. 2024

Mendacious means “given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth,” and mendacity is “the quality or state of being mendacious.” The word comes from the Latin word mendax, meaning “lying” or “false.” It is often used to refer to people who habitually lie. Regarding the judge's assertion that "an odor of mendacity remains," we cannot say for certain what exactly mendacity smells like, but suspect that it is similar to when fresh fruit smells like a French cheese.

‘Pi’

This past week contained March 14th, a date that has been dubbed International Pi Day.

Math enthusiasts around the world, from college kids to rocket scientists, celebrate Pi Day on Thursday, which is March 14 or 3/14—the first three digits of an infinite number with many practical uses.
— Curt Anderson, AP News, 14 Mar. 2024

The mathematical value of π, or pi, begins “3.14...” which is why March 14 (3/14 or 3.14) was chosen to be International Pi Day. Pi is the English spelling of the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. It means “the symbol π denoting the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter,” and also means “the ratio itself; a transcendental number having a value rounded to eight decimal places of 3.14159265.” This means that the outside measurement of a circle is a little more than three times its width. This ratio is one of the most important constants in mathematics. Pi is probably used to stand for this number because it is the first letter of the Greek word that is the origin of periphery.

Words Worth Knowing: ‘Gigman’

Our word worth knowing this week is gigman, defined in our 1934 Unabridged Dictionary as “one who worships smug respectability as the great object of life.” The gig portion of this does not come from the word meaning “short-term employment,” but instead from the gig that means “a light 2-wheeled one-horse carriage,” a type of vehicle once much in fashion with certain classes of society. While the word gigman may have become thoroughly obsolete, the person it describes remains, we are sorry to say, a common part of life.