• QUOTIDIAN •
Printable Version
Pronunciation: kwo-ti-di-yên
• Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning:
1. Daily, every-day.
2. Ordinary, every-day, commonplace, pedestrian, trivial, usual.
Notes: There are no tricks to spelling or pronouncing this word; just remember the ending is -an and not -en. To avoid this confusion altogether, you may use -al; quotidial is less frequently used but means the same thing. You may freely add -ly to either of these adjectives to make them adverbs: "It isn't helping Randolph to ask the boss quotidianly (quotidially) for a raise."
In Play: Anything done on a daily basis is quotidian: "Agnes's quotidian chores around the house included getting her husband out of bed each morning." Anything you see every day, that is ordinary and not unusual, is also quotidian: "Les Rich can't afford a Rolex, so he wears a quotidian timepiece he paid $19.95 for."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us (via Old French) from the Latin adjective quotidianus, from quotidie "every day", a word based on a phrase quot "how many, as many" + dies "day". If quot is remindful of other Latin interrogative pronouns, like quo "where", qui "what", quis "who", that is because they all come from the same Proto-Indo-European root: kw-, preserved in Latin but modified in Slavic and Germanic languages. The Slavic languages lost the [w], resulting in Russian kto 'who', kuda 'where to', kogda 'when', once all the Russian endings were added. In English the [k] became [h], giving us who, what, when, and where which (another one)—even if they are written WH, all are pronounced [hw].
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•The Good Dr. Goodword
QUOTIDIAN
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- Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 1476
- Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:58 pm
- Location: Carolinia Agrestícia: The Forest Primeval
Re: QUOTIDIAN
Seems to me such preaspiration is a regional (Southern?) manifestation..... Proto-Indo-European root: kw-, preserved in Latin but modified in Slavic and Germanic languages. The Slavic languages lost the [w], resulting in Russian kto 'who', kuda 'where to', kogda 'when', once all the Russian endings were added. In English the [k] became [h], giving us who, what, when, and where which (another one)—even if they are written WH, all are pronounced [hw]
Initial wh (excepting who) is indeed pronounced as Doc's hw for my mother who grew up in Mississippi ("hwhich", "hwhen"), but not for the likes of me and mine in greater Philadelphia. There's a marked geographic cue in this pronunciation that immediately points my ear's compass to the south and western south.
Comments?
The god Wiki adds:
hl-cluster, hr-cluster and hn-cluster reductions
The hl-cluster, hr-cluster and hn-cluster reductions are three reductions that occurred in Middle English that caused the consonant clusters hl, hr and hn to be reduced to l, r, and n. For example, Old English hlāf, hring and hnutu became loaf, ring and nut in Modern English.
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!
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- Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 1476
- Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:58 pm
- Location: Carolinia Agrestícia: The Forest Primeval
Re: QUOTIDIAN
actually my using Mom as an example was meant for her Southernness, not age or gender. I hear as many male speakers, if not more, use the preaspiration. The age factor I've never paid attention to, but the sound itself seems to say roughly Texas to Carolina.Yes, I've always thought the "pre-aspiration," as you so nicely characterize it, was related to age and to gender...
Now in France I heard a distinct postaspiration on vowel endings, depending on age and gender. The younger and/or more female the speaker, the more the postaspiration. Meanwhile, the manly mecs minimized it.
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!
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