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• pulverulent •

Pronunciation: pêl-ver-(y)ê-lênt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Dusty, covered with dust, powdery. 2. Crumbly, friable, given to crumbling to powder. 3. Consisting of dust or a fine powder.

Notes: Today's Good Word represents a lexical anomaly: it has an unusual suffix, -ulent, found in only a few other adjectives, such as turbulent and fraudulent. It is accompanied by an adverb, the predictable pulverulently, and a noun, the equally predictable pulverulence.

In Play: One sense of today's word is "covered with dust": "Al Garithem comes home from class each day in clothes pulverulent with chalk dust, collected by standing too close to the blackboard." Another is "crumbling into tiny pieces": "Constance Noring found her contract with the news network to be pulverulent as soon as it hit the court system."

Word History: This word derives directly from Latin pulverulentus "dusty, powdery" a noun based on pulvis, pulveris "dust, powder" + -ulentus "having, abounding in". The PIE root which led to pulvis, pel-/pol- "dust", also produced pollen, poultice, and polenta. In other languages it turns up in Russian as pepel' "ash", in Greek as poltos "porridge", and Lithuanian pelenai "ash". It turns up in English powder via a circuitous route. Old French inherited the word as poldre from Late Latin. Now, the L became U as it does in many English words today on the east coast of the US (help = [heup]). By the time English borrowed this word, it had become what it is today in French: poudre. Modern English adopted this word and adapted it to English spelling: powder. (Our gratitude for Iain Smallwood's suggesting this word in the Alpha Agora most assuredly isn't pulverulent.)

What do y'all think, could there be pulverulent snow?

Yup. We have it. Meterologists say it all the time:
"Dusting of Powder-careful on your morning drive".

But let's hope there's no more this year.

I would not care if I never saw it again.

As long as you did not see it because it was not there, rather than because you had developed pulverulent cataracts. Personally I quite like a short period of snow - as long as it does not linger and go mushy and grey.

Nice treatment though Doc, thanks.

Our snow comes in Oct/Nov and stays until
April. It becomes so hard it is frozen, one can
run a car over it. Gets black along the streets,
and piles of it on parking lots stay forever,
even the kids get sick of playing on it.
Nope, I'd stick with pictures of it on calendars
or holiday cards.

Which is why I constantly wonder why anyone lives north of Memphis, TN.

We need to have our heads examined I'm sure.

Speaking of pulverulent snow, I once worked in Montreal. A native told me it was the snowiest city in the world. When I opined that Buffalo, NY may have them beat he replied, "Buffalo is a town, not a city." The subway system and connecting tunnels, all bordered with underground shops, makes a great way to get around Montreal in the winter.

As a former farm boy, I well remember my Dad, a Federal Agricultural Agent, discussing the friability or pulverulence of the the soil. In Dallas, Texas the soil is not so pulverulent. It is either in a state as hard as concrete or a muddy slush. Right now, it is a muddy slush and I have gardening that I can't do.

Philip, I hope things clear up soon so you can hoe, hoe, hoe to your heart's delight.