• proditory •
Pronunciation: prah-di-tor-ri • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Treacherous, treasonous, perfidious.
Notes: The few dictionaries that list this word list it along with its large family as obsolete. That family includes proditor "traitor", prodition "treachery, treason", prodictious and proditorious "treasonable", and prodited "betrayed". It is unusual that a word with so much family to support wanders away forever.
In Play: Today's word comes in handy when you want to say "treasonous" without using the more common word: "The candidate's proditory collusion with Venezuelans won him his seat in the US government." However, it could come in handy around the house: "June McBride forgave her husband's proditory affair with Ali Katz and went on with her life."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Latin proditorius "treasonable, treacherous", probably via Old French. This personal noun was created from the past participle, proditus, of prodere "to betray", compiled from pro "through, beyond" + the combining form of dare "to give". The neuter past participle of dare is datum, the plural of which is data, so the fundamental meaning of data is "the given(s)". Latin inherited dare from PIE de-/do- "to give", source also of dative, as in 'dative case', the to/for case. It is also the source of Sanskrit dadati "to give", Armenian tam "do", Greek didomi "I give, permit" and doron "gift", Russian dat' "to give" and dacha "vacation cottage", Lithuanian duoti "to give", Irish dánaigh "to give", and Welsh dodi "to give". (Now let's give Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, an editor of the Good Word series, a bow for finding and sharing with us such a well-hidden Good Word as today's.)
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